Right, I said yesterday there were other things I was going to be making an effort with from the beginning of the new week, so I guess I have to talk about those now. Or at least one of them.

One of the things I've already mentioned to a certain degree when talking about "scheduling" is trying to get myself feeling a bit healthier again. This will come about as a combination of following the Weight Watchers diet Andie and I started a while back, and getting back into doing some exercise. I've struggled with both for the last little while, so I need a hard reset on both.

The exercise thing has been troublesome and perhaps slightly worrying. Since I sprained my ankle a few months back, I feel like I haven't quite "recovered". I don't mean that my ankle still hurts — though it did the other day — but rather I feel like my entire body is aching a lot more than it used to. I suspect this is probably the result of inactivity on top of an already sedentary lifestyle, but it's been causing me a not insignificant amount of physical pain of late.

I'm hoping that actually getting those muscles moving again will help to alleviate this by simply "loosening" everything up, but I don't know if it quite works like that. At the very least, I'm going to give it a go, though. And I think what I might probably do is rather than trying to cram everything into a single session, I'm going to take one session to do some more "cardio" stuff (though probably taking it relatively easy to begin with) and the next to do strength training. It's easy to feel like you have to do as much as possible while you're at the gym, but really there's no need; I can go as many times as I want or need in the week.

The food thing is… a challenge. I like food, and food brings me comfort. I often need comfort, because I have numerous mental health struggles. Unfortunately, overconsumption of food makes me unhealthily overweight, and that causes me anxiety and depression, so I… you get the picture.

The thing I liked about Weight Watchers when we started doing it before Christmas was that it didn't feel overly restrictive. Since I'm in a position where I need a reasonable amount of energy just to exist per day, I have a lot of flexibility in what I can eat per day and still be able to lose weight. That will drop off over time — and I suspect that's where things will become challenging — but to begin with at least, I have the option to eat actually quite a bit each day, so long as it's the "right" stuff.

It's the getting it right bit that is challenging — but now that the Christmas and new year period is over and I'm pretty sure we've eliminated all the "treats" from the house, it will be easier to get back on track. And once I start seeing some results, that will motivate me again.

So that's that. From tomorrow, I'm going to attempt to get up early and get some gym time in in the morning. I'm not going to overdo it, but I am going to attempt to establish some habits. And on top of that, I'll be tracking my food and drink intake very carefully, unlike what I've been doing lately.

It's going to be hard to get back on track, but I've done it before, I can do it again. Good luck to anyone else who is trying to do something similar.

Next week is going to be a proper "reboot" for me. The first week of the new year hasn't quite gone to plan, so I need to make an effort this coming week.

There are a number of things I'm going to do. And I think it might help me out to itemise them. Perhaps you will get something out of this, too, but I'm typing this mostly for my own benefit, I must confess!

My first goal is to establish a better sort of "daily schedule" for myself that allows me to fit in all the things that I want to be able to do. I have a list of things that I want to be able to do regularly — not all of them need to be every day, but ideally each of them need to have several opportunities a week. Those things are:

• Work the day job (obviously, this isn't going anywhere)

• Get video projects done (at present, doing these at weekends works quite nicely, but I may spread them out throughout the week instead)

• Pick up Atelier MegaFeature again

• Practice the piano (I've got a bunch of new music and it'd be nice to be able to actually play some of it)

• Spend some time catching up on FFXIV

• Read Full Metal Daemon Muramasa (this is technically "work" but it's a significant enough time commitment to be worth scheduling in its own right)

• Get to the gym at least a couple of times a week

• Get to the swimming pool once or twice a week

• Make time to read manga/novels/watch anime

• Get back on diet (it was working, then we completely fell off and basically need to start over)

• Enjoy some retro games on Evercade

• Enjoy some current games

There's probably some more things too, but those are the things that immediately spring to mind without having to think too hard. I'd add "see friends" to that list but I'm kind of sick of being the only one who makes an effort in that regard, so I'm also kind of over making an effort. If they invite me, I'll come, but no more suggestions from me that get summarily ignored.

It may sound like a drastic solution, but I'm thinking that actually dividing my week up into specifically scheduled blocks of time — almost like a school timetable — might actually be a helpful process for me. Of course, it doesn't pay to be too rigid with these things, but I feel like the number of dreams I've had recently about not having my school timetable on hand (both as a student and as a teacher) is trying to tell me something.

At the very least I feel like things that can be neatly divided up into chunks of time — like going to the gym, or spending a set amount of time catching up on FFXIV, or practicing the piano… or, indeed, thinking about it, most of the things on that list — would benefit from actually being scheduled in some way. So from Monday I'm going to give it a shot.

What I would like to be able to do is get up earlier than I do currently, go do the gym and/or swimming before work starts, then have the rest of the day available to do work and the other things on the list. Unfortunately "getting up early" has been proving very difficult for both Andie and I of late, but I guess it's one of those many things where you just have to build good habits — and resist bad ones. Bed is so nice and warm and comfy, though.

As for other things I want to do… well, I've rambled on a bit today, so I'll save them for another post. Writing the above has helped me sort a few things out in my mind, though, so thank you for indulging me on that front. Now, time to go enjoy some Evercade, I think…

Have you played Wordle? It's the currently fashionable "thing" to be playing, and pleasingly it's not in any way annoying, predatory, monetised or full of advertising. It's just a simple, fun little thing. You can try it out here.

Wordle is a simple word-guessing game in which you have up to 6 guesses to figure out a 5-letter word. After making a guess, you're told, Mastermind-style, whether you have any letters in the right place, or any letters that are correct but in the wrong place. Notably, you're also told which letters are not in the word at all, so this can help inform your subsequent guesses.

It's straightforward, it's enjoyable and it takes a couple of minutes to play — because you can only play one puzzle a day. That's not an arbitrary "Get More Energy!" restriction either — there's simply one puzzle a day that is the same for absolutely everyone who plays. And part of the fun comes from sharing the "grid" pattern of whether or not you solved the puzzle — this shows your sequence of guesses in terms of your "letter in the right place" and "letter in the wrong place" positions, but not what the actual letters were.

This is neat because it's eminently shareable, but it's not thrusting "advertising" in everyone's face. The default "share" button doesn't even give a link to Wordle — it just posts the puzzle number, how many attempts you got it in and your "grid", so if anyone is interested in finding out what Wordle is, they have to do so themselves. That somehow feels less obtrusive than constantly sharing links to the same thing over and over again.

I think the best thing of all, though, as previously mentioned, is that Wordle is clearly just a project the author Josh Wardle (see what he did there) made for a bit of fun, rather than in an attempt to make money or be an advertising platform. There's no monetisation on Wordle at all; it just is. And let me tell you, finding something actually entertaining on the Internet that is completely free of cynical monetisation, predatory practices and otherwise manipulative behaviour is a genuine pleasure these days.

So yeah, Wordle. It's a good.

It's been kind of tough to get back into the swing of things for the new year so far. I don't mean work-wise — that's all going fine, since I didn't really take a ton of time off from doing that. Rather, I mean things like getting back on track with the diet, going to the gym and that sort of thing.

We're about a week into the new year, and despite Andie and I saying that we were going to get straight back on the Weight Watchers regime, we've spectacularly failed to do so thus far. Likewise, my aching body is practically hungering for some exercise, so I know that going back to the gym would probably make me feel a whole lot better after not really moving a whole lot for months, but I'm finding it hard to take that "step".

I think part of it is the fact that the changeover of years kind of didn't really feel like much of an "event" this year, whereas in years prior to COVID there was an obvious "transition" from the holiday season to the "back to work/school" moment. We haven't really had that for the last couple of years, and thus I suspect it's hard to put your foot down and say to yourself "right, I am going to start doing this right now, and that's that".

We're nearly at the weekend and I want an ice-cream, though, so perhaps an indulgence for now to soothe my troubled mind, and a proper proper reboot on Monday. Hopefully. Wish me luck.

Started reading Full Metal Daemon Muramasa this evening after a request from a Rice reader, and I'm enjoying it so far. It's quite… dense and heavy going at times, but it's also thoroughly intriguing in that inimitable Nitroplus sort of way, so I'm anticipating great things. It's also one of the highest-rated visual novels I've ever seen on VNDB — and those folks are usually pretty stingy with their ratings — so it was something I wanted to check out at some point anyway.

For the unfamiliar — from what I can make out, anyway — Muramasa is set in an alternate history Japan (or Yamato as it's known here) circa 1940. Since time immemorial, battlefields have been dominated by supernatural suits of armour known as tsurugi, piloted by musha. A tsurugi gets its power from a smith literally infusing his soul and humanity into it — though by the time our story begins, scientific advancements in cloning have allowed tsurugi to be mass-produced without loss of life.

I'll write more about all this on Rice in the near future — likely across several articles — but Muramasa has done a nice job of depicting the situation from a variety of alternative perspectives so far. The initial intro depicts the true horror of these tsurugi on the battlefield — and the massacres that result when they are irresponsibly wielded by the power-hungry — while the first main chapter focuses on a more "human" story: a group of kids who want to track down their missing friend, whose disappearance appears to have something to do with a musha.

I'm not far enough into the game to know much about any other details as yet, but supposedly the narrative explores the ideas of good and evil and sometimes circumstances meaning that you're not able to pick either of them; a lot of it ties in with the real-life legend of the Muramasa sword, samurai culture and the like. It's thoroughly compelling so far, but also clear that it's going to be a challenging, uncompromising read going forward.

The translation is top-notch so far. I follow a bunch of the people who were responsible for it on Twitter, and they're quite rightly proud of their work; it really is excellent. It reads well, it features evocative prose and while there are, of course, moments where the English text elaborates somewhat on what was originally said in Japanese, the tone is consistent. In many respects, it reminds me somewhat of Deus Machina Demonbane, another Nitroplus title that featured florid prose, vivid descriptions, absolutely horrifying scenes and giant robots.

It's a long one — VNDB places it at around 68 hours or so — but I'm definitely interested to see where it goes from here, and particularly to see what other narrative perspectives we're going to witness this all unfold from. The character who is ostensibly positioned as the "protagonist" in the promotional material has only appeared as a side character so far, so I'm wondering what's up with that.

Only one way to find out!

I picked up Forza Horizon 4 in the Steam sale. I actually signed up for a trial of Game Pass to give it a go initially, but Game Pass makes me feel so vile and dirty I ended up cancelling it in favour of just buying the damn thing. The Steam version was available for a good price with all the expansions and DLC, anyway, while the version on Game Pass was just the base game.

Forza Horizon 4 is great! I'm not sure why I've never tried this series before. I think, honestly, it's the Forza name that had put me off; prior to getting my Logitech G29, racing sims had always annoyed me with their difficulty, so I'd kind of sworn off anything Forza — well, that, and I never jumped on board with anything Xbox post-360, so.

For the unfamiliar, though, Forza Horizon 4 — and the series as a whole, I guess — is emphatically not a petrolhead sim. Rather, it's more along the lines of something like Test Drive Unlimited: big open-world map with lots of things to do that aren't just races, lots of cars to piss around in, a real sense of "just enjoy yourself". It is probably what the Project Gotham Racing series would have evolved into if Bizarre Creations were still with us — the "skill points" system that rewards you for everything from smashing fences to big airtime is very much like the old school Kudos system.

And, for those who have heard me talk about racing games and sims before, Forza Horizon 4 scratches my "I want to drive a crap car" itch perfectly. My current ride is a dark green Morris Minor (albeit one with some upgrades that make it outperform any Morris Minor you've ever seen) and I also have a stock Citroen 2CV in my garage for when I feel like it. There's even a Ford Transit available, though I haven't acquired that for myself yet.

One of the best things about the game is that it appears the various events tailor themselves to your vehicle of choice. So if you want to run rally races in a Morris Minor, you can do; your opponents will have cars from the same "class". In this way, if you find the more terrifying sports cars hard to handle — and some of them really are tricky! — you can stick to something you're more comfortable with for most of the game. I like this a lot; it means you can use the cars much more as a means of "expression" than in some other games.

And, of course, there's Forza's famous livery editor. I haven't delved into this at all as yet, but I used to enjoy tinkering with it on the old Forza games. Perhaps I'll do some Final Fantasy pixel art like I normally do — that's relatively straightforward to accomplish and looks cool.

Anyway, it was a good investment, and it plays great with the wheel. So I'm pretty sure that's going to be my "comfy game" of choice — a game I play "just for me", because with its soundtrack there's no way in hell I'd be able to make videos about it — for the indefinite future. Because pratting around in cars is always fun!

Back to work for realsies tomorrow. The new year is officially here!

After writing yesterday's post, I put a few things into practice. I didn't go so far as unfollowing everyone on Twitter, but I may have completely revolutionised the way I use the platform in a positive way.

Basically I sorted everyone I followed into a few lists: gaming, retro gaming, VTubers, friends, artists and anime bloggers. Those are the things I particularly care about, so anyone who didn't fit neatly into one of those areas from my following list is just in no-list limbo now. Then I started training myself to go straight to the "Lists" function on Twitter instead of "Home".

That looked like it might be all right — but I noticed a few flaws. Most notably, the fact that all the retweets from people I'd turned off retweets for were back with a vengeance, since Twitter's Lists function doesn't respect your settings in this regard. (It doesn't respect your muted user settings, either.) Retweets are a big part of the anxiety-inducing "noise" on Twitter, so I really wanted them gone.

I looked into it a bit further and discovered that you can use Lists in TweetDeck and turn off Retweets in them. Ideal. Not only that, but given the way TweetDeck works with customisable columns, you can completely eliminate your "home" timeline altogether and look exclusively at lists if you so desire. Even more ideal.

So I'm going to be making use of that for a while and see if that improves my general outlook on things. Signs are good so far; it was a good 20 minutes before several of those columns moved at all earlier, which is much easier to deal with than the constant "rolling" they have when retweets are active and there are lots of people all yelling at each other!

Like I say, the easy option would just be to delete Twitter, but as I mentioned yesterday, I've had enough opportunities for stories, leads and other such things come up via Twitter to make it worthwhile maintaining at least a token presence on there. So I'll stick with that for the moment — unless things happen to take a serious turn for the worse.

Thank you for bearing with me while I think through all this out loud — and perhaps it might help some of you to make better, healthier use of the platform, too!

Happy new year! I have a bunch of stuff I want to talk about today, but no real… structure in mind for talking about them, so forgive me if today's post is a little disjointed. I feel like there's a bunch of things I want to get off my chest, and the start of a new year feels like as good a time as any to ponder them, so let's do that.

The main thread running through all this is that in 2022, I think I want — probably even need — to rethink my relationship with the Internet in general. Longtime followers will know that I've often commented on how my feelings towards social media in particular have soured in recent years, and in the last few weeks I think I've really pinned down exactly why I feel so negatively towards the idea of social media in general.

When I first joined Twitter, which must have been probably 2009 or so, I reckon, I did so because the place where my online friends and I used to hang out — the 1up.com Radio forums, which were ostensibly the place to discuss the site's podcasts, but also became "the mature end" of the community — were obliterated from the Internet in favour of a stupid, simple "Games" and "Not Games" divide.

What was once a nice community where different types of people could interact with one another in their own distinct areas became a complete clusterfuck, and an unpleasant place to hang out. So we jumped ship to Twitter, which was just starting to get big at the time. And it worked well; this was long before Twitter had added even Retweets to its core offering, so the site's original mission of allowing for "microblogging" was very much intact.

On top of that, it was a great place to hang out and actually talk to people in an asychronous manner; if you were online at the same time as a friend, you could chat in quasi real-time, whereas if you were in different time zones — as I always have been with the majority of my online friends — you could leave a message for them to read later.

When I look at Twitter today, it's unrecognisable from that. Scrolling down my timeline, the vast majority of posts are very obviously people trying hard to do one of several things: have a "viral" post; provide "shareable content"; post the "funniest" reaction to something that has happened; or establish themselves as an "influencer" or "content creator".

None of those things are conducive to conversation. Someone posting "retro gaming memories" with nothing more than images pulled from Google Image Search every day isn't really engaging with the hobby; they're trying to get followers, shares and likes. Someone living their entire life by their stream schedule doesn't strike me as someone who is enjoying life. And someone who is always first in line to respond to [insert vaguely Internet-famous person here] doesn't feel like someone who wants to chat; they feel like someone who wants to promote themselves, and feels like piggybacking off someone more popular than them is a good way to do that.

Now, I know I've been guilty of most of these things at one point or another for a variety of reasons, but every time I've done them it's felt… frustrating. Unfulfilling. Particularly since over the last… probably two or three years now, getting anyone to actually respond to anything on Twitter feels like getting blood out of a stone. And Lord knows I've tried different ways of doing things. Starting conversations. Sharing articles. Responding to other people. Being deliberately provocative. It's just all so much effort, and the potential rewards on offer have been feeling of less and less value as time has gone on.

Now, realistically speaking I probably need to maintain a Twitter presence, because I've had enough contact from game developers and publishers via the platform to convince me that it's a helpful means of communication for some people and companies. But all semblance of "pleasure" from the platform has gone. When I scroll through Twitter it's not fun. It's not interesting. And it sure as heck isn't social.

So I basically want to find a way to remove it from my life without giving up the occasionally useful things that it offers — and ideally without offending anyone. And I think I'm probably overthinking it. When I've taken a break from Twitter in the past, I've been very clear about providing alternative contact details for people to say hi to me elsewhere… and it's been exceedingly rare that anyone has actually made use of those. So I'm inclined to think that if people aren't going to make that effort for me, I probably shouldn't be fretting so much about what they might think if I were to disappear or at least change the way I use the platform.

By extension, this also means that I'm not in any great hurry to join any other social media platforms. I detest the vapid nature of Instagram and TikTok, Facebook is a cluttered mess and full of idiots, Pinterest is pointless and any other social media platforms that have attempted to establish themselves have quickly become havens for some of the absolute worst people on the Internet.

This also kind of extends to the idea of streaming, too. On the one hand, I quite like the idea of doing streaming as a way of meeting some new friends, chatting with them while I play some games and whatever. It seems, at first consideration, to be a nice possible solution to the frustration I feel over not having anyone living nearby that I can really share my love of gaming with.

On the other, I've seen what "pursuing streaming" has done to some people that I know and like very much (no-one reading this, I hasten to add) and… I don't like it at all. I don't like how "false" those people have become; I don't like how the things they post on social media have become transparent attempts to court engagement rather than genuine attempts to talk to others; I don't like how their life has come to revolve around their numbers, their revenue or whether or not they're close to reaching Affiliate, Partner or whatever it is you do on Twitch; and frankly I can't be arsed with all the stupid needless Bits, Points, emotes, subscriptions and whatever other crap you have to fuck around with in order to "do Twitch" properly.

A lot of this is, I'm sure, "old man is out of touch", and I'm perfectly happy with that. To be honest, the possibility of keeping up with all this stuff and still being able to enjoy my own hobbies is exhausting. I like doing what I do now with videos and writing, and I feel like I should focus on those things that I do specifically enjoy doing, and simply cast all the other stuff aside. But then, of course, those doubts enter my mind: should I care more about these things? Should I get over my dissatisfaction with social media? Am I missing something?

I honestly don't know. But I do feel like I need to make some significant changes, because worrying about all this bollocks has been causing me significant anxiety for quite some time. I haven't decided exactly what form those changes will take as yet, but they need to be made.

Here's what I'm thinking:

• Rebrand my Twitter account to be something along the lines of "RiceEditorPete" so people know at a glance that they can get in touch with me about Rice Digital stuff.

• Completely restructure how I use Twitter. Unfollow everyone for a clean "home" screen. Use lists for various things — one for friends, one for professional contacts, one for retro gaming, one for artists, one for gaming news, one for VTubers, etc. That way I can concentrate on a topic at a time as required, and ignore the other junk.

• Schedule my Twitter use rather than use it as an idle distraction. Perhaps check it once at the start of the working day, once at lunchtime and once at the end of the day. Break the habit of it being a "default" thing to fiddle with if my mind is wandering.

Just those things will probably help — though they'll be an effort, too. But I think they're probably worth trying.

If you've had any success in managing the frustration of being online in 2021 and beyond, I'd love to hear it.

There was an attempted murder pretty much outside our house last night. I overheard some extremely aggressive shouting in the street in the middle of the evening, but thought nothing of it at the time — we don't live in what I'd describe as "the best" area, so it's not altogether unusual to hear rows between residents of the nearby flats overflowing into the street for one reason or another.

Part of me was aware that this sounded a little more serious than the usual situation, though, but I chose not to go and nosey through the curtains to see what was going on — it's not as if there was anything I could have done, anyway, and I always feel a bit weird spying on situations like that to see what is happening, even if it is at least partially out of concern for my own safety.

We got some idea that something was obviously wrong a little later in the evening when both Andie and I had retired upstairs to read, play retro games and just relax before going to sleep. Andie had stepped outside for a moment before coming up, and had seen a lot of police cars around — not only that, but a group she recognised as our neighbours were standing out in the street, seemingly in their night clothes.

By the time she came back in, the police had cordoned off an area on the main road near the road we live on, which is evidently where the incident had actually taken place, and a chopper was hovering overhead. The tape is still up today, so presumably there's still some investigation happening. Andie ran into our neighbours earlier today; apparently they had been evacuated from their house for unspecified reasons — presumably one or more of the perpetrators hiding out in their garden.

Naturally any event like this is surrounded by hearsay and gossip, but according to local press the incident involved someone being "seriously assaulted" and suffering injuries to their back and thigh. Two people — a middle-aged man and a younger woman — have apparently already been arrested on suspicion of "conspiracy to murder" and, so far as I'm aware, the victim is still alive. I overheard some people from the local area in our nearby Tesco Express saying that they'd seen the arrested man brandishing a machete around, so I guess that answers at least part of the equation.

Not a super-nice way to end the year, but at least it sounds as if the situation has been brought under as much control as it could have been under the circumstances. I hope the victim recovers and that the perpetrators are brought to appropriate justice. It's deeply unsettling to think of something so vicious occurring right on our doorstep — though thankfully in the several years we've been here, this is the only really "serious" incident I'd say has happened aside from aforementioned arguing in the street.

Anyway! Happy new year?!

Sorry for the silence again. Mental health has been  putting me through the wringer for the past few days and I haven't been feeling my best; that tends to make certain things fall by the wayside!

Really having a blast with Project CARS 2. I think the thing that appeals to me about it is that it places no expectations or demands on me, but simply allows me a variety of ways to have fun pissing about in cars.

As much as I like a good career mode — and Project CARS 2 does have a substantial career mode — this sort of "sandbox" play is something I really enjoy, particularly when there are ways you can add a bit of structure to the experience.

For example, I've developed a real love for the 1971 Escort and the Azure Coast point-to-point track, and the game caters perfectly to me by providing a leaderboard specifically for time trials in the 1971 Escort on the Azure Coast point-to-point track. So I can drive my favourite shitty car on my favourite impractical course and feel like I'm actually "competing" at something rather than simply driving aimlessly.

The weekly community challenges, which basically seem to be a couple of specific time trial events, are a nice means of encouraging you to try some different setups too. Earlier today I did some fun "ice racing" along with taking a powerful Ferrari out for a spin, and both provided a very different experience — but both of which were a real pleasure with the G29 wheel.

It's kind of interesting, really. While there do seem to be a lot of po-faced, super serious racing sim types in the Project CARS community — I saw one person get mauled in the forums for asking if there was a way for getting some music to play during races — I'm having quite a lot of almost "arcadey" fun with the game.

I don't mean in a handling sense, mind; Project CARS 2 handles very convincingly, and I bet it would be an absolute nightmare on controller. But more in the sense that I can boot it up, have a bit of quick, immediate fun and then go do something else.

It — and the G29 — were a good investment, then!