Hello! I'm ill,  and typing this on my phone from bed, so please excuse any typos or weird mistakes

I do not wish to be ill,  particularly with exciting things happening on Wednesday that I need to prepare for. But, well, here we are.

I've got away with not being ill for a while. My hernia hasn't even been bothering me too much of late — although my coughing today has put a bit of strain on it — so I was probably "due" a bit of grossness. Fun.

Anyway, apologies this isn't a happier or more interesting post for today, but I just need to sleep. Please look forward to Atari A to Z tomorrow though, it's one of my favourite episodes to date!

Night night. COUGH COUGH CHOKE SPLUTTER WHEEZE

When was the last time you had a bath? I'm not saying you stink or anything, I'm asking when was the last time you actually took a bath rather than a shower?

I've kind of rediscovered baths in the last couple of years, after many years of always taking showers instead. It's one of those things that I think I developed a weird mindset about growing up — I associated baths with early childhood and then being "old enough" to take a shower instead, so I somehow thought that taking a bath was a childish thing to do; not the sort of thing a "grown up" did.

This is nonsense, of course, since baths are designed with grown-ups in mind (although maybe not fat people like myself) so I'm not entirely sure how and why I developed that mindset. There's also the companion mindset that "baths are for girls", as exemplified by that one episode of Friends where the girls catch Chandler taking a bath and mock him mercilessly for it.

What's not to like, though? You can lie down and relax, and being in water feels really nice. I used to be a bit scared of hot water, but over time I've developed quite a taste for a hot bath that makes you "tingle" a bit. It was especially nice this evening after a gym session; a nice way to relax after some activity and an easy way to get the stank off before bed.

A pleasant end to a fairly unremarkable weekend, then. But at least there's an exciting weekend coming up, as I mentioned in yesterday's vlog… more on that soon!

Good evening! Here you are, five minutes before midnight, so still technically on time! This is a bit of a quick and dirty vid (not like that) so if there's anything you'd like to find out a bit more about, feel free to drop me a comment or message and I'll happily show anything you like in more detail in a future episode! 🙂

Morning! I forgot to write anything yesterday, didn't I? Allow me to make it up for you now, then there'll be a vlog coming later for "today's" post.

Andie and I have been doing some "house work" today. For quite some time, we've been meaning to sort out the media unit in the living room where most of the games consoles live. It's also where I record my videos, and where my PC lives.

For quite some time, it's been a pretty chaotic, jumbled mess of cables, as seen in this "before" shot.

I mean, it did the job, but there were cables sticking out everywhere and it wasn't very tidy. It was easy to lose cables that you needed down the back, and there was a bit too much stuff crammed into not quite enough space.

Down the back of the TV itself was a nightmarish mass of eldritch tentacles, all tangled up in one another, just waiting for that one time you really need one specific cable, and find it's been devoured by the Great Old Ones.

So, the first thing to do was to get everything out of the damn thing and give it a good clean. Lots of dust, as you can probably imagine!

This is all the stuff that came out from around the TV: two PS2s, a PS3, a PS4, a PSVR setup, an Xbox 360, a Wii, a Wii U, a SNES, a SNES Classic, a Mega Drive, an N64 and a Dreamcast. Plus various Chinese boxes to connect old shit to new shit.

AFter giving everything a good clean, we reassembled and rearranged the stuff in there so it was spread out a bit more nicely. Consoles that can be easily emulated for video capture purposes — SNES, Mega Drive, N64 in a pinch — are moving to my "retro room" upstairs so they can be enjoyed on my CRT, and that leaves more room for everything else to spread out a bit and have a bit more room for itself.

The Wii, PS3, Xbox 360 and PS4 get the slots under the TV as the latter three in particular can benefit from a bit of ventilation.

The Wii U, Dreamcast and PS2s go down the side. And then, down at the bottom — we're really pleased with this…

All the cable chaos (a necessary evil with this much kit) is confined to one little compartment, and we've used Velcro sticky things to mount all the Chinese boxes and capture units to the underside of that shelf to make a cool little "rack" of places to plug things in. Much neater than having multiple little boxes sliding around all over the shop.

So that was today's job! In the vlog I'll post later today (I really need a shower before I appear on video for anyone) I'll give you a more detailed tour of the setup and my game shelves in here, too. Please look forward to it! See you soon!

Annual appraisals at the day job today. As noted the other day, I was feeling extremely anxious about this, perhaps at least partly because my overall mental health hasn't been the best lately, and also I'm keenly aware that I've been quite bored at said day job — though trying not to let it show!

As a little bit in the back of my mind suspected it would, everything went absolutely fine. So that's that anxiety over and done with for another year. I'm glad. But I still hate this sort of thing; it feels like being back at school, and that kinda sucks. I guess it's a necessary evil of sorts, and it's something that happens in pretty much every place of work in my experience… I just don't like that feeling of being "judged". Still, at least it's not as harsh as teaching observations where a "satisfactory" performance was literally not considered to be… well, satisfactory.

The upside of the appraisal process is that it leads to pay rises in the new year, and that's happening. I don't know how much or exactly when yet — or, indeed, even if I'll be there by the new year, as I've discussed recently, but that remains to be seen! — but it's happening. Which is good.

I'm also likely to be changing my working hours along with the rest of my team; there are some terrible roadworks on, like, the only major road that leads to our place of work, and starting an hour earlier in the morning means we can miss the traffic that builds up by the time of our normal start. So, assuming HR don't complain, very soon we'll all be working from 7.30 until 4.30. I'm not relishing the idea of the early start, but the early finish will be pleasant; it'll feel like there's much more of the evening free to enjoy when I get home, which will (hopefully) outweigh the annoyance of getting up at an ungodly hour of a morning.

Now all that stress has passed for another year, I think it's time to go and have a lie down and hopefully enjoy a peaceful sleep!

Last month — almost to the day, as it happens — I took a photo of myself. You may not see it, as it is a photograph of me in my pants. And while I am more than happy to record podcasts and video commentary without trousers on (hey, I always keep what's visible decent!), I draw the line at sharing my revolting fat body with… well, most people.

No, this was primarily for me. Not for my own enjoyment, you understand; while I do genuinely quite enjoy reading my own articles and watching my own videos, looking at myself in my pants is not something I do unless I have to. The reason I did this was with the intention of taking more pictures every so often to see if I'd see any visible changes as a result of both the Slimming World diet I'm sort of following (motivation is proving challenging for both Andie and me) and my gym regime, which I am still following.

I took another photo today. I was a little disappointed to see that… well, I couldn't really see any obvious differences. It wasn't soul-crushing or anything, though, for two main reasons: firstly, Andie commented that she could see a difference the other day (and it's always easier for other people to notice such things than it is for yourself) and secondly, I can quantify my own increase in strength in numerous areas, proving that the gym has been effective over the course of the last 8 weeks or so.

When using the machines at the gym now, I'm using much heavier weights than I was when I started. If I'm feeling particularly spicy, I'm also able to do 5 sets instead of 3 at that heavier weight, though not on everything. I can also manage about 20 minutes (or possibly more) of light cardio on the exercise bike as a warm-up to the strength training without feeling completely exhausted; YouTube videos and anime episodes are a good way to pass the time there.

I've noticed particular improvements in my abdominal muscles, which I was hesitant to work too hard on due to my hernia, and my legs. My legs are actually the one part of me I'm already reasonably happy with, because since they have to carry the considerable bulk of my top half around, they're already pretty strong. But even there I'm able to challenge heavier weights.

I've seen smaller but still noticeable improvements on my arms, shoulders and chest. In all those cases, I feel comfortable lifting slightly heavier weights than when I started, though the difference isn't as large as with the abdominal and leg machines. I'm still a bit too scared to do a proper bench press with a barbell because of all the stories I've read of people getting pinned underneath the bar, but I should probably give that a go at some point; I reckon I could probably handle the bar (which is about 20kg, I believe) at this point. One day I'll muster up the courage to give it a try, preferably in some sort of safety rack so I don't have to talk to a stranger and get them to spot me.

So it's going pretty well in that regard. I feel stronger and… I'm not sure if fitter is the right word, because I still clearly have a lot to work on, but it's definite, obvious, quantifiable progress. And that makes me feel a bit less bad that the weight loss hasn't been going super-well; while exercise doesn't necessarily directly affect weight loss, it can carry various benefits that can assist with weight loss, such as kickstarting your metabolism. (I learned that from How Heavy Are The Dumbbells You Lift?, yes I did)

I'm certainly going to keep at it. I'm kind of curious to see what I can achieve with some long-term commitment. I have no intention of getting particularly buff or anything, but it's interesting to challenge yourself now and again.

Something that, over the years, I've found to frustrate me a great deal is when people get stuck in routines that are weird, annoying or unproductive. To be perfectly honest, this is where a lot of my frustrations with my current day job come from.

I'm not going to share details — largely because they're quite dull, not that that has ever stopped me from writing about something on here! — but suffice to say that the work we do is so set in its ways now that it feels like it would be impossible to convince the people who have been there longer than me to try something differently.

Which is annoying, because anyone can see that the way we do things is stupid. We had a conference call with our US counterparts a few weeks back, where one of our team demonstrated what we had to do, and I could practically see their bewildered faces as she demonstrated the myriad hoops we have to jump through to do something that should, in theory, be pretty simple: sending text off for translation, then putting that text in the right place for the right countries.

Part of the trouble is something I think I've mentioned before, which is our reliance on proprietary tools. Every place I've worked that has had tools built specifically for them has ended up with these stupid, pointless procedures, because inevitably the tools end up being used for something they weren't designed for in the first place. In our case, we are using a tool that was originally designed for managing the localisation of email messages — a function it performed with one of the most hideous, unintuitive interfaces I've ever seen, I might add — for localising web pages, which is entirely different.

There are better solutions out there more suitable for the job at hand. But at this point making use of them would require a complete shake-up of everything a significantly sized team of people does on a daily basis. So I just have to grit my teeth and get on with it!

Doesn't mean I can't have a good whinge now and again, though. It's therapeutic. Thank you for indulging me!

I've been dealing with a lot of anxiety today. It's probably a lot of things all piling up and exploding like fireworks in my brain, but it's made for quite an unpleasant day living inside my own brain. It doesn't help that it's annual appraisal time at the day job, too, which always riddles me with impostor syndrome by the bucketload. Still, although I'm bored a lot, I'm not doing a bad job (I don't think, anyway!) so there shouldn't be anything to complain about. Doesn't stop me worrying though.

These feelings are why I make a point of working on MoeGamer and my videos every day. Those are things that, when I work on them, I feel both satisfied and confident. They are mine, they're not answering to anyone else — and despite that, there are people enjoying them. Such as you, you lovely person, you.

It's important to have something like that in your life, I think. Going through your day perpetually anxious about never being good enough or never doing enough is no way to live. It's good to push yourself and ask yourself if you can do better, of course, but getting yourself into a mindset where you never feel like you're good enough doesn't help.

I'm saying this as much to myself as to anyone else right now. I'm feeling anxious and stressed, and I would like it to go away now please. Hopefully a good sleep will help!

New MoeGamer Podcast coming tomorrow! Chris and I talked at great length on a variety of subjects, and it was a real blast. I'm really pleased with how some of the discussions turned out — we had a particularly good one on the subject of Senran Kagura, just in time for the series' eighth birthday today, and for the currently running Cover Game feature.

The upcoming episode doesn't have a "main" topic as such, because there were a lot of news stories that we wanted to cover and talk about. This led to some very interesting discussions, though, so we hope you enjoy it. I especially hope you enjoy it as it took all day to edit and came out to over two and a half hours in length, our longest show to date!

Now it's back to the grindstone of the day job again tomorrow, so I should probably get some sleep as it's 1:15 am. I actually finished editing much earlier in the evening, but, you know, Super Metroid. And yes, we talk a bit about that on the podcast…

Anyway. That should be available on YouTube and Soundcloud tomorrow at some point whenever it uploads — it's busy rendering right now. Please look forward to it, and thank you, as ever, for all your support!

Hello! Here's another one of them vlog things, where I talk about this week's happenings and take you on a brief tour of an interesting old book I have in my collection!