#oneaday Day 505: Getting to know Yiruma

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I have been making a concerted effort to get back into playing the piano more regularly, and as part of that process, I bought some new music books. One of them was another album of pieces by Ludovico Einaudi, a composer whose work I had enjoyed playing both for the way it sounded and for its relative "pick-up-and-play"-ability. While I was picking up this second book of Einaudi, I was also recommended a book by a Korean pianist named Yiruma, so I thought I'd take a chance, go in blind (deaf?) and see what he was all about.

I've played a few pieces from Yiruma's book today, and they are lovely. Moreover, they are pitched at a slightly higher ability level than most of the Einaudi stuff I have played to date, which is exactly what I wanted; I wanted something that pushed me just a little bit without being overwhelming, as that will help me in rebuilding my confidence, which is the main point of this overall exercise.

Yiruma, for the unfamiliar, is a South Korean pianist whose real name is Lee Ru-Ma. He studied in the UK at the Purcell and subsequently King's College London before later moving back to South Korea after his military service. Over the years, he has composed both standalone music and soundtracks to films and animation. Apparently his music saw particular popularity during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, although good ol' Wikipedia doesn't specifically cite a source (or reason) for this.

I can kind of get why, though. The 2020 lockdowns were an unsettling period where none of us really knew what was going to happen, and Yiruma's music is pleasant, relaxing, uplifting and emotional. Indeed, in the front of the book I bought there's a message from him saying:

I hope my music finds its way into your hands whenever you feel happiness, heaviness, or need light in your darkest times.

This was what I wished for, and this wish could come true through you. I sincerely hope that someday the music remains a part of your memory.

Aside from what I assume is a slightly clunky translation, the sentiment is nice. The guy wants to feel like there is a personal connection between him, his music, and the people who are enjoying it — presumably whether they are just listening to it or actually playing it for themselves. And the 2020 lockdowns were a time when we could have all done with a bit more in the way of personal connections — as much as I joked at the time about not having to go out being a real pleasure for an introvert, the last five years have been… difficult, so far as interpersonal relationships are concerned. While I don't think Yiruma is saying his music is going to "solve" anything, he does seem to sincerely hope that it will bring some form of comfort or distraction from potentially difficult times — and provide some nice memories too.

Ultimately that's what good music is about: feeling some form of emotional connection. The exact form that takes depends on the specifics of the music itself, but it's pretty much a constant across much of both the artistic and mainstream, popular side of things.

I'm looking forward to playing some more from the book, as I like what I've played so far. If I figure out a decent means of recording, I might even share some with you sometime. After a bit more practice, though…

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 504: Enshittification comes for TV Tropes

Like it or loathe it — and there's an increasing number of people in the latter camp in more recent years, for reasons I'll get onto — but TV Tropes is an Internet institution.

At least it was, until today, when they decided that enough was enough with all those pesky users who didn't want their privacy invaded and their data sold and thus were running adblockers. Now, when attempting to view a page on TV Tropes, you get this screen:

This will probably be familiar to anyone who has viewed any number of websites in recent years. It's a step back from being a complete paywall, in that they'll allow you in if you just disable your adblocker a little bit, pweeeze, we'll only share some of your data with unknown third parties. But it's still a shitty move — particularly for a site like TV Tropes, which has always been a community-driven site. In fact, without the community, TV Tropes wouldn't exist.

As writer Aidan Moher put it earlier on Bluesky:

Aidan Moher
@aidanmoher.com
(Games Journalist)

TROPE: Popular website built entirely on unpaid community labour dies after blocking content from community unwilling to submit to exploitative data collection monetization methods.

That's right. Part of the reason why TV Tropes was so beloved, even with its problems — we're getting to those, I promise — was because it was built by the people. Much like Wikipedia, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale, TV Tropes was absolutely dependent on its enthusiast, volunteer authors and editors. Without those people tirelessly cataloguing examples of tropes used in all manner of media to a frighteningly comprehensive degree, there would be no TV Tropes.

But… now what? People are not going to pay for TV Tropes, and an adblocker is pretty much essential for browsing the modern Internet if you want an experience that is in any way tolerable. So now someone who might otherwise have wanted to contribute to the community effort that is TV Tropes is now locked out from doing so, with their only choices being to pay up or open the floodgates to God knows whatever advertisers are doing these days. (No, I'm not opening up a non-adblocked browser just to see what it's like now.)

Not only that, but this is essentially TV Tropes saying that it wants to profit from the unpaid labour all those volunteer contributors and editors have put in over the years. Because you can bet your sweet bippy none of that $5 a month/$25 a year subscription fee is going anywhere near the pockets of the people who have really made the site what it is today.

This, obviously, sucks, and is just another example of enshittification. Specifically, it's almost a textbook example of what Cory Doctorow was referring to in one of his first pieces he wrote on the subject, The Enshittification of TikTok:

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market", where a platform sites between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

In the case of TV Tropes, you have your "users", who are the people who browse the site for fun, entertainment or in the hope of learning something; then you have your "business customers", who are the volunteer contributors, without whom the site wouldn't exist; the abuse of those "business customers" through locking them out unless they subscribe or open the adblock gates is the stage we're at now. I'd argue in this instance we skipped the usual "abusing users" part and jumped straight to "abusing business customers and users".

As I say, this clearly sucks, and it seems like a sure-fire way for TV Tropes to almost immediately make itself completely irrelevant to the rest of the Internet.

But! That might not be the worst thing in the world. Hear me out.

This is not to put down the incredible amount of time and effort TV Tropes contributors have spent cataloguing myriad tropes and even more countless uses across many, many different forms of media. I absolutely do not have an issue with the people who have taken the time to do that, because those people are creatives; they have made something.

No, the problem with TV Tropes is that, over time, it became a resource for the lazy. This is not TV Tropes' fault itself, but rather it's an extension of a general sense of dwindling media literacy across society. Why think for yourself about something you've just seen, played or heard, when there's a 3 hour YouTube video essay waiting to "explain" it to you in what appears to be authoritative detail? Why ponder the specific way a movie, TV show, video game or book chose to present its narrative, when you can just look it up on TV Tropes and get a ready-made list of "discussion points" that you can "borrow" and use for yourself? (Certain members of the "3 hour YouTube video essay maker" group are definitely prone to this, with some pretty much quoting TV Tropes pages verbatim in the name of "analysis".)

I have had conversations with people who will not even consider starting to watch a new TV show if there isn't a "companion" podcast (official or otherwise) ready and waiting to explain each and every episode to them. This is both frightening and baffling to me! Particularly when it comes to media that is designed to be fairly undemanding, mainstream entertainment!

TV Tropes isn't solely to blame for this, of course — blame can also be laid at the feet of reactionary, short-form video content on platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts as well as the generally dwindling attention span of people online these days — but it is a symptom of a broader problem. And one of those sources of that problem going away might not be a terrible thing in the long term, as callous as that might sound to those who have poured hours of time and effort into researching things for that site.

Regardless of your feelings on TV Tropes — on the whole, I've always been fond of it, but then I've always used it more as entertainment than a source of "serious" research or analysis — this is an unfortunate day for an Internet institution, and I suspect it absolutely will not be the last longstanding website to take this direction.

Once Wikipedia and the Internet Archive go that way — and no, them occasionally badgering you for donations doesn't count — that's when you know we're really fucked. Let's hope that never happens.

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#oneaday Day 503: One Audi

I have been doing my best to have a bit of self-discipline and play the piano more. I like playing the piano. I have always liked playing the piano, but I don't make nearly enough time to do so these days, and that absolutely needs to change.

I'm not planning on becoming a big famous concert pianist or anything, but it is nice to be able to just sit down at the piano, play something and it sound at least moderately tolerable. Preferably good.

Part of the issue I've had is because I have lacked that discipline for a frankly unhealthy number of years at this point, I haven't lost my skills as such, but I lack a lot of the confidence in my abilities that I perhaps once had when I was at my arguable peak of ability, around the age of 18-20 or so. I can still play quite a few of the pieces that I played back then, but there are also some pieces I once played that are far too terrifying to even contemplate trying again until I get myself back up to what I would imprecisely describe as "scratch".

As part of rebuilding confidence, it's always nice and helpful to have some pieces that are pretty much "pick up and play". Although sight-reading always used to be one of the most terrifying parts of music exams, I've always been very good at it, and all the more so if a piece of music is, and I don't wish to sound overly arrogant here, pitched a little lower than the peak of my actual abilities. After all, that is what the sight-reading section of music exams assessed: your ability to pick up and play a piece that was pitched a few "grades" below the exam you were taking.

One album of music that I've been enjoying playing recently is one that my mother bought for me a good few years back, but which I haven't spent a lot of time exploring. And that is Ludovico Einaudi's The Piano Collection, Volume 1. Interestingly enough, there does not appear to be a Volume 2 (I have looked this evening) but there are quite a few other Einaudi books out there, one of which I've ordered, along with a book by a Korean pianist named Yiruma who appears to be in a similar vein.

Einaudi's music is… uncomplicated, minimalist, often predictable, even repetitive. As acclaimed a pianist as he is, the complexity of his compositions is a far cry from the Bachs and Beethovens of the world. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. He composes pieces of music that just sound nice, and which have plenty of scope for expression and interpretation. I must confess I've never actually listened to him actually playing the pieces in the book — although in some respects, that might also be a good thing, as it means I can put my own interpretation on them, play them how I feel they should be played, which is as important a part of performance as anything. (That said, I have put one of his albums on in the background while I type this.)

One thing I do find quite interesting about Einaudi is that he uses a lot of compositional techniques that I used when I had to compose pieces for GCSE and A-level music. As such, I guess I feel a sort of vaguely "personal" connection to several of his pieces, because they feel quite like something that I could have written at some point. That's an oddly… comforting feeling, I guess I'd describe it as? To have a tenuous sort of creative connection with an Italian pianist-composer that I know pretty much nothing about. It's… nice.

So yeah. I have been playing a fair bit of these Einaudi tracks of late, and enjoying them enough to grab another book of his stuff to explore. So hopefully doing this a bit more often will help me rebuild my confidence and perhaps tackle some more ambitious pieces in the medium- to long-term.

And now, having written this, I probably better go play a bit, hadn't I?

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#oneaday Day 501: The difference a supportive employer makes

I had my annual appraisal at work today. Honestly I always dread this because of just… everything going on inside my head most of the time, not least of which is ever-present impostor syndrome, but I was especially dreading it this time because I knew I would have to have a Difficult Conversation about aspects of my job that I was struggling a bit with. The details are not important, but nothing you need to worry about — my career is fine and I have not murdered anyone!

Why should this make me feel dread, rather than hope about having an open conversation that both I and my colleagues can move forward from? Because on multiple occasions in the past, attempting to have a Difficult Conversation like this has resulted in a less-than-supportive atmosphere from my immediate superiors and employers. On multiple occasions it has led to me leaving a role altogether. And, as I'm sure you're aware from my general enthusiasm for what I do now, I did not want that to happen this time around.

I had no reason to believe that speaking my mind and being frank about my mental health would result in disastrous consequences for my job and career in this particular instance, of course — I get along very well with my colleagues, immediate superiors and even senior management. That's the advantage of working for a relatively small company: you can get to know everyone, and they can get to know you.

But still I felt it: that dread. What if it was misinterpreted as me being lazy, or not wanting to do my job, or something like that? Impostor syndrome is a terrible thing, as it means you live in constant fear of being "found out". Exactly what you fear being "found out" is often not entirely clear, but the end result is often that familiar feeling of dread when you're in a situation where the right thing to do is to confront something that's been worrying you, and seek support if needed.

As should hopefully already be clear from the title of this post, the Difficult Conversation went well, and I now feel a lot more confident and hopeful about the future. I won't go into details because you don't really need to know — it's nothing any of you need to worry about, I should add, however — but suffice to say that we have a Plan for the immediate and mid-to-long-term future that will hopefully result in me feeling a lot better about a lot of things, and feeling a lot less in the way of the burnout I have been suffering a bit over the course of the last while.

It's all about thinking about where your particular strengths and skills are, and considering how you can best use those as part of your overall team. Go into a situation like this thinking "I don't want to do this any more" and the whole thing is probably going to end sub-optimally. Go into this thinking "these are the things I'm good at, and I don't think my current responsibilities make the best use of those skills", however, and you can look to the future with hope and positivity. This is, it should not have to be said, a good thing.

Because ultimately, we have to work. That's the way society is. In the absence of any sort of universal basic income scheme — which is a whole other topic of discussion — we all have to work. And if you have the opportunity to make a change for the better and not find your mental health ebbing away at least partly as a result of daily responsibilities that aren't a good fit for you, it pays to take that bold step, say "I'm not entirely happy right now", and try to figure out a good solution for yourself.

I am painfully aware that not everyone has the luxury of being able to do this. I have been in situations where I have not had the luxury of being able to do this in the past, and it really sucks. So I was beyond pleased when the end result of the discussions today was positive, helpful and hopeful, and I'm glad I had the courage to stand up and admit that I had been struggling a bit. I am incredibly thankful for the opportunities I've been given, and the position in which I find myself. It took me a very long time to get here, so I am keen to make it work as well as I can.

So that's what I'm doing. And I'm grateful that I can do that.

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#oneaday Day 500: Meaningless milestone celebration

It's post 500 of my second time around on this nonsense! Hooray! We should celebrate, probably!

500 posts, of course, doesn't really mean anything, because it's not a year (it's more than that) and it's not two years (it's less than that). Although "500" is a nice round number, time's frustrating need to use non-round numbers means that doing something 500 days in a row (give or take a couple of missteps here and there, which have always been corrected and accounted for) doesn't mean anything other than the fact you reached an arbitrary milestone.

But a milestone it is, nonetheless, and so celebrate we shall.

I have been enjoying getting back to this daily blogging malarkey. Blogs are all but dead these days, of course, but as I've frequently noted on here, I don't write this for any sort of Internet approval or to watch numbers go up. I write this because I find it valuable and helpful to do so. It's a means of expressing myself that has only let me down on one occasion in the last 17 years, and that was the fault of the platform holder at the time rather than the medium itself. It's a means of, at times, processing complicated thoughts that I'm not sure how to talk to people about. It's a means of me helping to understand myself, I guess.

It took me a little while to get back into the rhythm of things, I'll admit. When I kicked things off again on June 8th last year, I wasn't in a great place mentally. It hadn't been long since we had lost our beloved Meg, and I was still reeling from that somewhat. I had just had a day of fun with some friends, though, and that had energised me somewhat, inspiring me to put "pen" to paper once more. I note with a grim expression that I have not heard a peep from any of those people since I got exceedingly frustrated and upset with them in May of this year, which is something I am not going to get into right now. Sigh. I digress.

Anyway, yes. I was not in an amazing place mentally, but I was also conscious of not wanting every single post on here to be moaning about something, or to keep retreading the same subject matter over and over again. On my past time in the #oneaday mines, I managed to put out some of my most creative blog posts — and often during some of the bleakest periods of my life, too. Hardship breeds creativity or something. That's not a saying, but you know what I mean.

Over time, I think I've settled back nicely into a reasonably good rhythm of being able to write about personal things, write about things I enjoy like books, games and music, and write complete and utter nonsense. Some may say that a blog needs to have a "specialism" if you want readers, and to that I say two things.

One: I've already said that I don't particularly care about readers. No, that sounds too harsh; it's not that I don't care, but it's more that… this place is primarily for me, and anyone who happens to stumble across it, read it and enjoy or get something out of it is a happy bonus. I'm not going to actively discourage anyone from reading, but I'm also not going out of my way to promote it or try and get people to read, either. I don't even share most of these posts on what little social media I still have remaining.

Two: I have a blog with a specialism. It's called MoeGamer. You might already follow it. If you do, thank you, and that's great! This blog is, and always has been, unfiltered Pete. It's my online scrapbook of sorts, where I can just write whatever nonsense is in my head on any given day, and then perhaps look back on it in a few years time and recall some things that I might have otherwise forgotten. That is actually something I do quite often.

So anyway. After 500 days on this second trip around the block, I'm happy with where this blog is and what I'm doing with it. It's a shame that we'll likely never see the same sort of blogging community as we once had in the early days of the #oneaday project first time around — there are some people I met from that period in time that I really miss, and have no idea where to find them any more! — but this place is fulfilling the purpose that, more than anything, it was always designed for.

So here's to 500 days of this rubbish, and maybe another 500 more after that, and maybe many more 500s after that. Meaningless milestone it may be, but it is still a milestone. So happy 500 to me!

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#oneaday Day 496: Farewell, DI Parker

I am still watching Death in Paradise on my lunch breaks, and I've just got to the end of Ralf Little's run as the lead, Detective Inspector Neville Parker. He follows Ardal O'Hanlon, Kris Marshall and Ben Miller in taking the central role, and I think his run on the series might have been one of my favourites to date.

I enjoyed Miller, Marshall and O'Hanlon's time in the leading role, too, but Little's time in the hot seat felt like it had one of the most coherent character arcs for the central character. It helped that he, as a character, probably had the most room to grow of all the show's leading men to date — and the fact he was in place for about three and a half seasons, which is longer than his predecessors.

Death in Paradise is a heavily formulaic show, and to some people, that sort of thing can be annoying. Hell, formulaic shows are, at times, anathema to me — I can't stand reality TV shows that all adopt the "one of them gets voted off after a long, pregnant pause" format, for example — but for some reason, I find the relative predictability of Death in Paradise enjoyable, even comforting.

That extends to the role of the lead character, too: they're always a fish-out-of-water detective who has been brought across from some British police force (O'Hanlon's character, despite being Irish, was part of the Metropolitan Police in London before joining the Honoré gang) but the exact form of that varies somewhat. Miller's DI Poole was a grumpy old fart who gradually softened as he spent time with his comrades, until he was murdered, anyway; Marshall's DI Goodman was clumsy and scatterbrained but brilliant; O'Hanlon's DI Mooney was by far the character who was most at ease on the island; then Little's DI Parker went to the other extreme.

Initially resistant to everything the island of Saint-Marie had to offer — and allergic to everything — Parker was gradually brought out of his mosquito-repellent shell by his DS, Florence Cassell (Josephine Jobert), who had been a fixture on the show for some time, and showed some real character growth, culminating in him developing feelings for Florence. It was not to be, however, as not only did she reject him, at least partly because she was still smarting from the murder of her former fiancée, but a case forced her undercover and subsequently into the witness protection programme, conveniently bringing her time on the show to a close for a while.

Parker had a number of other good storylines along the way, too. They were ridiculous if you stop to think about them for a moment, but the same is true for the entirety of Death in Paradise. If a single locale had the murders per capita that Saint-Marie has, I suspect the authorities would declare it a complete lost cause and just firebomb it into oblivion. But I digress.

Probably the best of Parker's storylines was his holiday romance with a woman named Sophie. This initially appeared to be a complete mirror image of Goodman's romance with Martha, which ultimately led to him departing the show (and the pair getting their own spinoff series) but subsequently developed into something much more interesting. I doubt any of you reading this particularly care about Death in Paradise spoilers, but for the sake of anyone who might fancy watching this silly show, I will refrain from giving any further details for now.

Parker's finale, which saw him all set to depart Saint-Marie on a worldwide journey of self-discovery — just in time for Florence to return to the island and realise her feelings for him — was a good one, too. The promotional material for the episodes on BBC iPlayer did a good job of implying that it might be Parker who ended up murdered in his last episode — as previously noted, it wouldn't be the first time the show had killed off its lead — but he ultimately got a good, happy sendoff. I was glad about that; as a character, it felt like he deserved a happy ending. Not that Miller's poor old DI Poole didn't, but the surprise, sudden nature of his departure was very effective, and I'm not sure it would have worked for a second time, even with multiple seasons in between them.

Anyway, I'm surprised at a few things about my enjoyment of this show. Firstly, quite how attached I am to the various characters. Secondly, how well it handles feeling coherent despite a core cast that has been almost completely replaced multiple times over the course of its various seasons. By firmly grounding the show in its geographical setting, and having characters like Commissioner Patterson and bar owner-turned-mayor Catherine, the show establishes itself as a firm base that the rotating core cast builds atop, and it works. It helps prevent the show feeling too stale — and it's nice to see that some characters do get the chance to come back, too. I was particularly pleased to see the return of Danny John-Jules' Dwayne Myers, especially since his former squeeze Darlene had become an officer of the Honoré force in the meantime.

It's ultimately all rather silly comfort TV, and I suspect as soon as I've finished watching its complete run, I'll forget all about it. But for now, Death in Paradise has been a thoroughly pleasant watch — and I look forward to seeing where it goes from hereon.

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#oneaday Day 495: Bullying

Inspired by, of all things, an episode of Death in Paradise that had bullying as its core motive for murder, I feel inspired to reflect on some past incidents where I have encountered bullying. Because there have been quite a few, and, honestly, I'm not sure that many of them ever ended up being resolved in a particularly satisfactory manner. (I have not, to date, committed murder.)

This might be a long one, just to warn you. I haven't written it yet, so I don't know, but I have a feeling this might be a long one. You have been warned!

I have always been a somewhat awkward individual to varying degrees. In my middle age, I now know this to be an autistic spectrum disorder, of course, but growing up (and onwards into young adulthood) I never really sort of felt like I quite fit in.

In primary school, I somehow attracted the attention of several bullies. I don't recall doing anything in particular to rouse their ire initially; I guess I was just seen as an easy target. The kid with the unfashionable hair and the big ears and the posh-sounding voice.

This started early on. Kids from the upper end of the school would pick on me, a kid considerably younger than them, mercilessly. I would be taunted for my ears, I would be insulted, I would even be beaten up. Occasionally I would lash out, and inevitably get in trouble for doing so. On multiple occasions, I recall my frustration at the sheer injustice of it all being such that I ended up deliberately provoking the bullies in question so they would do something they shouldn't have, and I would do my best to ensure it was within eyeshot of a dinner lady. But, again, I don't think anything substantial ever really got done about it.

Oh, sure, the bullies might have been put in "the yellow book" once or twice (our headmaster thought it was cute that people getting in trouble could get put in "the yellow book" or "the red book" according to the severity of the transgression, using football's yellow and red cards as an analogy) but they suffered no lasting consequences for their actions and demonstrated no remorse whatsoever.

What's worse about being bullied at school is when some people see you getting bullied, they decide to side with the bully — whether just for a quiet life or because they genuinely wanted to be seen as one of the "cool kids" — and that, on more than one occasion, included people that were supposedly my friends. On multiple occasions, I fell out with these supposed friends because they had decided to pick on me, not in that sort of silly, lighthearted way you do with your friends, but in the same way as the bullies. It really sucked, but pretty much every time I eventually forgave them, for ours was a Christian school, and forgiveness was What You Did.

As I progressed up the school and my former tormentors left, I still wasn't free. Some days people that I otherwise got along perfectly fine with would just turn on me, and I'd be left with nowhere to go, full of anger and frustration at a world that just wasn't fair. I was doing well academically — probably one reason the bullies decided to pick on me, as shameful as that might sound — so it was upsetting and frustrating that I couldn't just enjoy school. What made things worse is that there were other people in the same "top groups" for various subjects at me, and they never suffered like I did; they were "in" with the "cool kids" and thus never had to contend with this.

When I arrived at secondary school, I hoped that it would be a fresh start. And it was, to a degree. On my first day, I was sat next to a kid named Murray, who I didn't know because he had come from a different primary school. I turned around to my friend Matthew and said, with some genuine anguish, "I can't remember how to make friends," but he just shrugged and continued getting along with the person he had been sat with. I attempted to make small talk with Murray, but it didn't really go anywhere.

Some time later, Murray decided that I would be a suitable target for bullying, and he took to insulting me and physically abusing me to varying degrees. It was relentless, and all too familiar to me — and this time, it was coming from a member of my peer group, and thus someone I couldn't easily escape from.

I cracked one day. After he'd been flicking rubber bands at me all morning, I turned around, grabbed him by his collar and thumped him really hard in the face. Unfortunately, the moment I had picked to do this was exactly as our headmaster was walking around the corner, and he saw everything.

To the credit of the school's senior staff (and my parents, when they were informed), they agreed that I had been pushed too far by Murray's behaviour, and they understood why I had lashed out, but they also made it clear that what I had done in response was also unacceptable. My secondary school wasn't a Christian school like my primary school, but it still very much held the attitude that the "correct" way to respond to a bully was to "just say 'no' to them". Like that helps when you're being beaten up.

As a result, I ended up put on "report", which meant that for a week, during lunchtimes and breaktimes, I had to report to a member of staff every five minutes and get a sheet of paper signed. As a deterrent for doing anything stupid, it was certainly effective, but it was also mortifyingly embarrassing. I recall bursting into tears in the dining hall, surrounded by my bewildered friends, at the frustration of the situation. Because it was frustrating, but in that instance, I, at least, knew that Murray had suffered a harsher punishment than I had. I believe he was suspended for a short period; he may even have ended up expelled at some point, because I actually don't remember running into him again beyond year 7 — though that may just be the haziness of the distant past talking.

At secondary school, I once again suffered those occasions when people would inexplicably turn on me without provocation. I absolutely was not a cool kid as a teenager; I had terrible hair (and no understanding of how to make it not-terrible, a trait I maintain to this day and primarily avert by shaving my head), I had teenage zits, I probably smelled bad, and I wasn't into anything cool like football. I understood early on that cliques formed, and I was fortunate enough to find myself in a little clique of my own, and those friends mostly stuck by me for the majority of secondary school. But there were still days when, for one reason or another, they'd decide to play up at my expense.

I think my least favourite incident in this regard was the time when, on attending the local county concert band, as I did on a weekly basis, I overheard a girl I thought I got along well with (and rather fancied, truth be told) talking to her compatriot from another school on Second Clarinet. She was being less than complimentary about someone, but the conversation sounded amusing and fun. So I asked her about it during the break in the rehearsal. She laughed it off and said nothing, and I knew immediately that it was about me. I don't know if she intended me to overhear, but I never quite felt the same about her after that.

On one particularly memorable occasion, a fight was organised between me and another kid also named Peter; I had no particular beef with him, so this fight being organised was more baffling to me than anything. I suspect it was the kids responsible wanting to feel like they had "power" over people, like they could make them do anything. I hope they were severely disappointed when neither of the two Peters turned up to the supposed fight time and place.

As I progressed through secondary school, bullying became less and less common, and completely non-existent by the time I reached sixth form, which is one of many reasons I look back on that period as one of the best times of my life. It was bliss to be in an environment where I could thrive, surrounded by people I got along with and liked, and not bothered by people who, for whatever twisted reason they had justified in their mind, wished me ill.

I was fortunate enough to not encounter any bullying during my time at university, either. I had a good group of friends who were very supportive, and we were a close-knit group that did a lot together. That staved off any interference from anyone who might wish any of us harm — we had one another's backs if it came down to it, but it never did, thankfully.

When I finally left university as a qualified teacher, I once again encountered bullying — not just as a teacher tasked with resolving such incidents in his class, but also as a member of staff. I felt ostracised and unwelcome among much of the staff of one of the schools I taught at, including my own head of department, and felt very unsupported. It was this, among other things, that contributed to my having a nervous breakdown on the job; I will forever be grateful to the few teachers on that staff who would give me the time of day, and who were supportive, both during that particular episode and when I just needed a good rant come 3.30 in the afternoon — the head of the English department and the head of Drama in particular.

And that wasn't the end of it. When I worked in retail, I had what appeared to be a dream job for quite some time, progressing through the positions it was possible to have at the store, and learning a lot in the process. Then one day, I learned that one of my colleagues and friends was being mistreated quite badly by management; I agreed to act as a witness in some frankly unwarranted disciplinary proceedings he was suffering, but managed to end up with a target painted on my back as a result. I ended up bullied out of that job, even going so far as to bring official grievance proceedings against the managers responsible — but of course, that went nowhere.

Management closed ranks and completely ostracised me from thereon, so I wrote them a six-page resignation letter than explained exactly why I was leaving. To my great satisfaction, this letter caused the entire management team to lock themselves in a meeting for an entire day. It didn't help my career — I had already committed to leaving, anyway, but it sure felt good.

The penultimate incident that happened is one that still genuinely causes me traumatic flashbacks to this day — and I will name and shame the company in this instance. SSE, the energy company, by far the worst place I have ever had the misfortune to work, and that includes three failing schools.

SSE's corporate culture is to obsess about safety. And I'm not joking. This is a company where you get told off and written up if you're seen not holding a handrail going up stairs; where you get a stern warning from your manager if you drop a pen under your desk and don't wear a "bump cap" to retrieve it; where the obsession with Safety is an active detriment to productivity.

My problems there actually didn't stem from this side of things at all, surprisingly; it stemmed from my team leader and her team leader, both of whom one day apparently decided to take a dislike to me. I had been working well as someone who helped keep SSE's poorly organised website up to date, and I had even led up a project to completely refresh M&S Energy's website, since that was actually part of SSE. I was a productive member of the team, and, up until this point, I had thought I was getting along with everyone.

One day, I was pulled aside by these two individuals and presented with a letter saying that I was to face disciplinary action for looking at my mobile phone too often during work hours. This was back when I was big into Twitter, and thus my phone was something of a lifeline for communicating with far-off friends, particularly since the friends I saw in person on a semi-regular basis were already starting to become… less regular sights.

Also, I didn't really feel like it would be a problem, since not only was I completing all the work that had been assigned to me in a timely manner and to an excellent standard, all the other members of my team — including the one accusing me now — were on their phones all day every day, and I even caught one of them writing a fucking novel on her computer when she was supposed to be working.

Apparently, because I was still technically on my probation period, they decided to treat this complete non-issue with the severity of if I'd just fucked the photocopier and made the CEO watch or something. I was given notice of a disciplinary meeting whose outcome was clearly decided in advance, and given the opportunity to plead my case. I did so. I was fired, and because I was still on my probation period, that was that, then and there. It was abundantly clear that I had just been bullied out of a second job for no discernible reason other than two people had inexplicably decided to take issue with me. Maybe I made them look bad by getting work done more quickly and better than them. To this day, I genuinely have no idea; I just know that I hate those two individuals.

I yelled obscenities at the gathered group around the table, because I figured if I was never going to see them again, I might as well. I was fucking furious. And I still am, every time I think about this scenario. During particularly low ebbs of mental health, I find myself back in that room, surrounded by people who inexplicably hate me for no reason, and I want nothing more than to lash out more than I actually did. Flip the table. Fling a phone at someone. Beat someone with their folder of "evidence" (which, aside, was remarkably empty-looking). Go much further than yelling "fuck you" and storming out of the room, slamming the door so hard a picture fell off the wall.

That side of me scares me a bit, to be perfectly honest. It scares me that my mind conjures up such images — and it scares me that every time I feel like I've been pushed to feeling like that, it's because I've been bullied; it's been a situation that has been beyond my control.

There is a more recent example, too, that relates to my time at USgamer, and honestly I've always been hesitant to talk about it in specifics for a whole manner of reasons, but suffice to say that, too, was a very obvious instance of bullying. More than ten years later, I am still furious with the person responsible, and how they have never, ever seen any consequences for their actions — and likely never will. The most I can do is never, ever buy a book with his name on — and perhaps punch him in the balls if I am ever unfortunate enough to be in a room with him.

And this is to say nothing of the numerous minor incidents I have encountered over the years where a complete stranger will insult me and threaten me because of the way I look, and my weight. All of those are bullying, too. The most recent of those was just a couple of weeks ago.

As I say, the most frustrating thing about bullying is that, more often than not, there is no closure. There is no justice. And, if you've ever been a victim of it, that really sucks — because all you can do is pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and hope it never happens again. That this last incident, finally, will really be the last time you have to suffer.

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#oneaday Day 492: Character progression

On this particular stint of post-holiday weight loss, I have thus far lost 13.4 pounds, which is as near as dammit to a stone. (I have to look up how many pounds are in a stone every time, because Imperial is stupid, but it's still the default way one weighs oneself here in the UK, despite us being metric in every other area of life.) Granted, on said holiday I put on a lot of weight, so this is pretty much putting me back to where I was, but at least I know that much is possible, and thus it must continue to be possible to lose more.

There's no secret this time around, no fad diets or artificial restrictions on what I'm eating: just simple, straightforward calorie counting. And it appears to be working! For now, at least. So long as I stick to my limits for the vast majority of the week, I can even have complete days off — such as my work trip to London, or yesterday, when Andie and I both just fancied a nice treat from the local bakery — and still lose weight. This is good!

It takes a little mental adjustment to recalibrate yourself to a calorie limit, particularly if you've been less than attentive to your daily intake, but once you're there, I find you can gradually start to intuit how much you can allow yourself per day. And, given that I'm a big lad and thus naturally burn a fair amount of calories just by existing, I have not, to date, felt like I'm having to "deprive" myself of anything. I can even enjoy multiple chocolate bars per day — so long as they're not, say, 750g Dairy Milk bars.

I say there's no secret; I guess the one thing I would say that I've… I don't know if learned is the right word, but I've certainly established it firmly in my mind at this point… is that it pays to understand the things you reach for when you fancy a snack or a little treat during the day. By ensuring that we always have reasonably low-calorie offerings in the house for when we both fancy such things, it means we are much less inclined to go to the shop and buy a big bag of Haribo or the aforementioned 750g Dairy Milk bar.

I had inadvertently trained my mind into thinking that something wasn't "satisfying" if you could consume it quickly, and that really doesn't have to be the case at all. Lidl do these fake Kinder bars on their "Mister Choc" brand that are small enough to be about 100 calories each, and even though you can devour them in three bites, they're enough to stave off cravings for quite a while. If you want to go even lower calorie, then "Skinny Whip" bars or own-brand equivalent (I think Lidl's are just called "Whipped") are about 76 calories, and pretty much as good as something like a Milky Way.

I've also pretty much switched entirely away from cans of pop to squash with carbonated mineral water. I have a thing, particularly with diet soda, that I don't really know how to describe — I get to a point where it feels like it will be undesirable to drink them, because it… not burns exactly, but doesn't feel nice going down. I find this is much more likely with diet cola drinks than diet fruity sodas (Fanta, fake Lilt etc) but there are definitely times when my body goes "no fizzy pop, no". At those times it is seemingly absolutely fine with some orange squash made with carbonated mineral water, so I've been drinking quite a lot of that. And that, in turn, has been helping me just drink more generally, which I think is helpful.

I feel a bit better, too. After the holiday I was feeling exhausted, achey and generally Not Good, and the reason was because I was heavier than I'd ever been. I still have a very long way to go before I am where I want to be — the long-term, often unattainable-feeling goal is to lose enough weight to finally get this damn hernia that I've been suffering with for a very long time treated — but right now, I am feeling more positive about all this than I have done for quite some time.

Hopefully I won't find myself reaching a plateau any time soon, because that is always the worst feeling, and involves having to completely rethink the habits you thought you had established… but that hasn't happened thus far over the course of the last month, so here's hoping that things continue in the correct direction for at least a little while yet.

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#oneaday Day 483: I regret buying an expensive keyboard and mouse

A while back — probably a few years back at this point — I discovered the joy of a mechanical keyboard and a good quality mouse. Actually, it's probably more accurate to say I rediscovered it; growing up, after the Atari ST, we had a couple of "proper" IBM PCs, complete with Model M keyboard, and I have fond memories both of using that keyboard and of being able to hear it all the way downstairs when my Dad was typing on it upstairs.

But yeah; I started with a relatively cheap "Tecknet" wired mechanical keyboard and liked the feel and sound of that, so a little while later I decided to spend a bit of money and treat myself to some pricier models: specifically, a Razer Blackwidow V3 Pro keyboard and a Razer Basilisk X Hyperspeed mouse. I chose the Blackwidow V3 Pro specifically because it was a mechanical keyboard that was also wireless — for a while, that was a hard combination to find — and the Basilisk X Hyperspeed because it seemed to be decent without being overcomplicated.

I regret my purchases.

Not because either of them are unusably bad or anything, but because both of them have just enough little annoyances about them to make me wish I'd just stuck with the cheaper kit I was using before — or going with another manufacturer. Razer is very much the basic bitch of PC pimping — although I will say their Kiyo X webcam is genuinely excellent, and I have absolutely no regrets there.

Let's start with the names. If I hadn't told you the Blackwidow was a keyboard and the Basilisk was a mouse, would you have been able to determine which was which? I still have to look it up every time, which is very unhelpful when Razer's software (we'll get onto that in a moment, believe me) informs me that the battery is low on one of them. It doesn't have a helpful little icon showing whether it's the keyboard or mouse; it just says the battery is low in the Blackwidow or the Basilisk. And I'm fucked if I can remember which is which. (Although writing this blog is, annoyingly enough, probably going to help me remember.)

Okay. So the Blackwidow. It's a nice keyboard — feels nice to type on, makes a nice clicky sound when you do so. But it has an eminently stupid design that causes it to get filthier than any keyboard I've ever used. Rather than having the keys in a slightly recessed cutout from the main body of the keyboard, which is easy enough to clean if you take all the keys off and then Hoover it or something, the keys "float" slightly above the keyboard case, which is otherwise solid. This means all manner of disgusting crap gets caught in between and beneath the keys within about five seconds of you starting to use it, and cleaning it seems woefully ineffective because immediately after doing so, it attracts filth again.

Possibly related to the perpetually filthy status is the fact that the volume knob on the top right of the keyboard is a real roll of the dice on whether or not it'll actually do what you want it to do. A significant portion of the time, it will do the exact opposite of what you are indicating you would like it to do, and sometimes it will just judder back and forth between two values. The particularly annoying thing about it is that I generally don't use it to adjust the volume, so any time I have to use it, it is because I have knocked it accidentally. And on multiple occasions it has taken several minutes to revert it to 100% after it had dropped to just 80% or so.

The Blackwidow has the obligatory RGB lighting that everything vaguely "premium" has to have on PCs these days, and this is all very nice, apart from the inexplicable fact that the hash key refuses to light up when the keyboard is in wireless mode. It's not broken, because it lights up when the keyboard is connected via USB, and it's not a faulty profile, because I've tried changing the profile and even setting the options for that key individually. It's just… fucked somehow in a non-mechanical way. And it's little annoyances like that which make you realise how surprisingly often you want to use the hash key in the dark.

Speaking of wired versus wireless, I discovered a while back that the keyboard will not charge its battery unless the Razer software is installed. This was something of a problem when I determined that the Razer software was causing my PC to freeze up. (It transpires that something else was wrong on a deeper level, because a complete reformat and Windows reinstall fixed the freezes, but still.) It's also just fucking stupid. What other USB device does not charge unless you are running a specific piece of software? One of the main benefits of USB is that you can just plug a thing into a socket and it charges, even if the computer doesn't know how to talk to the device otherwise. But no! Not the case with the Razer Blackwidow V3 Pro. So pro that it can't handle charging without its special software to hold its hand. Real fearsome.

Now, onto the Basilisk, which I think I hate significantly more than the Blackwidow, which at least is 98% reliably functional, wireless hash key aside. I have never had as many connectivity problems with a wireless mouse as I have done with the Basilisk. I don't sit an unreasonable distance away from my computer — basically the computer is under my TV, and the keyboard and mouse are on a coffee table in front of the sofa — but this goddamn thing will not stay connected if there is any form of obstacle in its path. And I mean anything. Put a box of biscuits in front of it so you can stuff your face while idly browsing YouTube? Flashy light, lost connection. Put a glass of drink vaguely in front of it for mid-game refreshment? Flashy light, lost connection. Put a discarded lunch plate on the table near it because you'll take it to the kitchen the next time you stand up? Flashy light, lost connection.

It's annoying, because other than this fairly glaring issue, the Basilisk is a nice mouse. It has a good, comfortable shape, nicely clicky buttons and a scroll wheel that, so far, does not appear to have suffered the same fate as the volume control on the Blackwidow — or, indeed, the fate every single Apple mouse I have used has succumbed to. You can actually scroll with it, in other words. It has a couple of side buttons that default to forward/back buttons when web browsing, but I don't really use them. As a basic mouse, it's comfortable, and were it not for the connectivity issues, I would like it a lot. Unfortunately, the connectivity issues happen frequently enough for it to be massively irritating.

"So just replace them!" you might say. "Reader, I spent £250 on the pair of them," I will reply. "I am going to at least attempt to get my money's worth."

And then, sotto voce, "And then never spend that much on a keyboard and mouse ever again."

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#oneaday Day 482: Among the dead

I got off my arse and went for a walk this evening. I'm going to try and make a bit more of a habit of this. I know I have said this before, but since I am starting to see some success in establishing the good habits necessary for weight loss, I should get some exercise in there too, as that will help with the whole calorie deficit thing, as well as getting my body generally moving and hopefully a bit less stiff (not in a good way) than it has been for the last [x] years.

I mostly like going for a walk, even if in my current state I am painfully slow at getting anywhere, particularly if there is any sort of incline whatsoever. The annoying thing about where we live is that we're sort of at the top of a hill, so whichever direction I set off in to go for a walk, inevitably at least some of the way back involves going uphill to varying degrees.

I've tried a few different routes on various occasions, and the most… acceptable I have found strikes a good balance between being reasonably picturesque (a significant portion of it involves walking through the local cemetery, which, although maudlin, is also quite pleasant and peaceful), being a decent distance to get some reasonably good exercise out of, and not having overly difficult changes in elevation for my battered and broken body to have to contend with.

I find cemeteries quite interesting. I often find myself looking at the graves; part of me wonders if I'll see a name I recognise, but the rest of my brain explains that is fairly unlikely. As such, I find my own life briefly touching the fleeting existences of complete strangers and pondering their circumstances, and what kind of people they were. Sometimes there are clearly tragic stories, such as the extremely ornate memorial which had been raised to a baby who lived less than an hour. At others, there is clearly family history, with little quotes and well-wishes from people — usually couples. Sometimes it's just a simple expression of remembrance, such as with the rather out-of-place looking grave with the simple wooden cross marking its location, surrounded by more elaborate marble headstones.

Supposedly Benny Hill is buried in that cemetery. I didn't go looking for him; I just remember happening to notice his name marked on Google Maps when I was pondering a route to take before I left.

I thought about getting some sort of fitness tracker up and running before going, but then the part of my brain that is specifically trying to disconnect from stuff like that took over and reminded me that I don't need or even want "numbers" — the important thing is just getting out and doing it. Yes, yes, I know we're all supposed to do 10,000 steps a day, but all I find when introducing metrics into the mix is added anxiety. Just get out there, do the thing and be happy that you did it.

So I did!

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