#oneaday Day 661: When people would gnaw off an arm for a freelance writing gig, using generative AI is unforgivable

In the last 18 years, 4,535 posts and 3,263,700 words (yes, really, I got a plugin to count them and everything), I have never once felt the need to outsource my thinking and creativity to a machine. There are two posts written by "guest authors" (which, spoiler, were actually both me in a cunning disguise!) and there are a couple of posts where I perm i tted drunken friends the opportunity to contribute a sentence or two to a post I was writing while out and about, but the remainder is all me, scooping out the contents of my brain and plopping it onto the page for no other reason than the fact that I enjoy doing so, and occasionally find it helpful.

Today, this notice appeared in the New York Times on a book review it had published:

Editors' Note: March 30, 2026:
A reader recently alerted The Times that this review included language and details similar to those in a review of the same book published in The Guardian. We spoke to the author of this piece, a freelancer reviewer, who told us he used an A.I. tool that incorporated material from the Guardian review into his draft, which he failed to identify and remove. His reliance on A.I. and his use of unattributed work by another writer are a clear violation of The Times's standards. The reviewer said he had not used A.I. in his previous reviews for The Times, and we have found no issues in those pieces. The Guardian review of "Watching Over Her" can be read here. (link)

This, to me, is unforgivable. Supposedly there are plenty of writers out there who are doing this — or something like it, anyway — but to me, it is unfathomably awful. To be a writer, someone who cares about one's craft, you have to give a shit. And absolutely nothing says "I don't give a shit" quite like relying on generative AI so heavily that your article has to be pulled because its plagiarism was too obvious.

I mean, when you think about it, it's obvious that this would happen, given the way generative AI works and is trained — if it's pulling all its wording from existing texts that it has absorbed (without any compensation for the original authors) from around the Web, then of course it's going to come up with some of the same things, perhaps even the exact same phrasing.

You'd think it would be obvious, anyway — and that any writer worth their salt would not, as a result, rely on it — but apparently this is not the case. Much how the above-linked Wired article should really result in all the authors named being blacklisted from every freelance writing pool, effective immediately, this incident should be the end of Alex Preston's career. There should be no second chances. To quote the old Batman meme, this is the weapon of the enemy; we do not need it; we will not use it.

Believe me, at this point I've heard every pro-AI argument there is — some, like the nonsensical "back in the '90s some people thought the Internet would be a bad thing!!" one, more than others — and none of them stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. AI does not make you a better writer. AI does not make you a writer. The only thing that makes you a writer is, quite simply, writing. And if you are not sitting down and writing something for yourself — whether that be through putting pen to paper, tapping away at a keyboard or dictating your words verbally — you are not a writer. And no, "writing" your prompt to get the bot to churn out a thousand words for you does not count.

Humanity's written languages have survived for thousands of years — albeit with plenty of evolution — through people being taught how to use them. It is, today, a fundamental part of your early socialisation process to learn how to read and write; yes, some folks have specific learning needs that make it harder or even impossible for them to do so, but even for them, generative AI is emphatically not the answer, as we have plenty of assistive methodology and technology that can allow these people to thrive that does not rely on the odious fad that is presently bleeding the planet dry.

So I'm sorry, I have no patience left whatsoever for any incidents like this. The people involved in the Wired and New York Times articles above deserve to be kicked out of their career. Because if they have no respect for writing as a craft, why on Earth should any readers be expected to have any respect whatsoever for the shit they've churned out through the bots?

There are myriad people out there who would chew off their own arm for an opportunity to have a byline beneath a prestigious masthead — and every one of them who relies entirely on their own writing abilities, rather than outsourcing their creative process to the planet-burning chatbot, deserves those opportunities a million times more than those who clearly have no respect for themselves, their peers, or their readership.

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 659: Justice for RTS: achieved... again

I realised I never followed up on RoseTintedSpectrum's recent YouTube woes that I posted about a while back. Chances are if you're familiar with Rosie's work, you already know that there was, thankfully, a happy ending to the situation: he got his YouTube Partner Program status back, which means he can get paid again, with the only unfortunate news being that there would be a month or so's delay before he would be able to get what was owed to him during the demonetisation incident.

If you're not familiar with Rosie's work, however, I thought I'd take today to highlight some of the great things he's been doing, because he's a hardworking lad who makes consistently entertaining YouTube videos on a variety of subjects. He shot to (relative) stardom when he decided to cover the questionable classic UK TV show GamesMaster, and, having previously been a channel primarily about old games (and longstanding GamesMaster rival-though-not-actually-that-similar show Bad Influence!), he decided to lean into what had brought him some success, and cover old TV instead.

GamesMaster is still a recurring feature — his most recent video covers the legendary "Dave Perry Super Mario 64 Incident" — but he also looks at old kids' TV shows, too, and offers commentary that is both hilarious and insightful, and without dropping into either dry, boring quasi-academia or just straightforward summaries of the shows accompanied by occasional "oh my God, you guys, I can't believe they did that" reactions.

Anyway, here's some of my favourite videos from him. I recommend subscribing to his channel and giving them all a watch — many of them are on the long side by the very nature of covering entire series at once, but he punctuates these with short videos about fluff like Rainbow and Rosie and Jim if you want something a bit shorter.

Here's the aforementioned video about GamesMaster and The Dave Perry Incident. It's worth watching the prior videos in the run-up to this, as it's interesting to revisit the show and contemplate how it evolved (and not always for the better) from series to series, but this one, which many of the newer members of Rosie's audience have been eagerly awaiting for some time, represents some of his best work to date.

California Dreams is not a show I remember ever seeing back in the day, and having seen Rosie's retrospectives on it, I'm not sure whether or not I would have been into it. It's undoubtedly rubbish, particularly when viewed from a modern perspective, but it's also a really interesting show to explore, and Rosie's videos on the subject do a great job of explaining why. You won't come away from them desperate to watch the series as a whole, but even if you never saw it back in the day, you'll feel like you have a better understanding of its existence and its context.

Tottie: The Story of a Doll's House is another show I don't think I ever saw, and I'm not sure I would have watched it when I was a kid even when it was on. However, like his retrospective on California Dreams, Rosie manages to make a look back on the subject compelling, interesting and frequently hilarious — as well as pointing out the weirdly dark nature of a show about stop-motion animated toys, in which the title character is, by a significant margin, the least important character in everything that unfolds on screen.

And finally, from his earlier (pre-GamesMaster) channel, a video on Xenon 2, and how the reality of a game that was popular back in the day can differ quite significantly from the critical consensus on its original release — and how people who cling relentlessly to the latter can make it quite difficult to talk about something.

Rosie's a good lad who puts a ton of effort into his videos, and I'm happy to see he's enjoyed so much success over the last few years. His recent woes with YouTube — along with a similar, but worse situation back in 2024 — are an unfortunate reminder that this sort of success can be worryingly fragile through no fault of the creator. So go give him a view or two, and if you like what you see, consider becoming a YouTube member or a Patreon supporter. Good work — particularly when it's achieved without the usual manipulative "influencer" tactics — deserves to be compensated, or at the very least, appreciated.

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#oneaday Day 658: A random selection of pieces of music that make me smile

It's getting late and I haven't thought of anything to write and I'm full of curry, so let's do a MULTIMEDIA POST, shall we?

I'm partly inspired by a discussion I had earlier in a Discord that I'm a member of, in which we talked about things we liked from creators who clearly just made things for the joy of creating them — not in the hope of "going viral" or making a living out of them. I'm talking about stuff like Badgers, Badgers, Badgers and its ilk — although as it happened, a lot of those works did end up going viral and doubtless making their creators a fair amount of money. The point is that they weren't created with that in mind from the outset.

Funny, silly comedy songs and animations aren't the only thing I want to talk about today, though. More broadly, I just want to share a few things that always make me smile. Not always because they're funny, but because I just find them uplifting in some way. And where better to begin than with the irrepressible Hatsune Miku?

I'm not sure what exactly caused me to hyperfixate on this piece of music from Hatsune Miku Logic Paint S so much, but make no mistake; I most certainly did hyperfixate on it, as for a significant portion of my time playing the Picross-esque puzzles in Logic Paint S, I had set the in-game playlist to be nothing but this track.

I think I like this just because it's undeniably cheerful, bouncy and upbeat. It feels like it fits Miku nicely, and it's a good accompaniment to doing some puzzles — or just for when you need a bit of a pick-me-up.

My first encounter with Cave's classic bullet hell shoot 'em up series Dodonpachi was on iOS devices, where there was an excellent version of Dodonpachi Resurrection. One thing which still stands out about the mobile version of this game is that it features an exclusive game mode that not only has its own mechanics, it has a completely different soundtrack to the game's regular, rather more moody score.

People like the standard Dodonpachi Resurrection music a lot, and to be sure, it's good. But there's something I really like about these completely new tracks from the mobile version — and particularly this one, which accompanies the opening level. It's got that real adventurous "we're setting off on a brave, bold mission!" feel to it that I really like; it's full of hope for the future, rather than a bleak sense of submission to the endless horrors that await. And I think we could all do with a bit of that right now.

I maintain that Inti Creates' Gal*Gun games are some of the best games that no-one will admit to playing because they're about making girls collapse in euphoric ecstasy by pointing at them. All three of them are really solid rail shooters, each with their own distinctive mechanics and story to follow, and they all have great soundtracks, too.

This track, used for a lot of the regular levels in Gal*Gun 2, is a short but sweet track that really sums up the game's energy. There's not a trace of maliciousness anywhere in any of the Gal*Gun games, and their music never fails to make me smile.

Right, time we had a silly one. I remember coming across this one for the first time and absolutely pissing myself laughing. It still always makes me chuckle now… particularly the "Cock!" break in the second verse.

This sort of thing is very representative of what was going on in the Badgers, Badgers, Badgers-adjacent space on sites like rathergood.com, b3ta.com and Weebl's Stuff back in the mid '00s to the early '10s. The thing I like is that although endearingly lo-fi, particularly in the vocal samples, the whole thing is very well put together and works as a standalone song. It's just better with the animation.

Regrettably, the original animation for this piece is no longer available. It used to be that you could type in "2204355" into Google Search, hit "I'm Feeling Lucky" and it would take you to a technicolour Flash animation featuring a pixelated dancing guy from an old KFC advert and this delightful chiptune remix of the theme from ALF. Thankfully, the person behind the music came forward and published the music in its full glory on YouTube some 15 years ago, so even though the Google trick doesn't work any more, we can, at least, still enjoy the tune.

Side note: this blog is old enough that I blogged about when I first found this. It was, it has to be said, a particularly dark period in my life, when I had just split from my first wife and was at the lowest I've ever been. I happened to stumble across this one evening and found that it drove the darkness away for a few minutes at a time, so I watched that stupid animation over and over for hours. Thank you, mystery 2204355 creator, and thank you, Zalza, for helping me in my hour of need, even if you have no idea that you did so.

I wrote a bit about Sbassbear the other day, but I can't not mention their most recently published Game Grumps remix, as it's one of their best yet. Once again, this is a video I just keep returning to because it makes me smile.

Actually, to hell with it, there's another Sbassbear one I love also, and I can't pick between these two, so you're getting both:

I love BEANS because it's just so chaotic and ridiculous. But I love Shnigedy Ding Dong because it encapsulates the feeling you get when playing Tetris Effect Connected — and specifically, the wonderful mode where three people team up against another player, every so often bringing their independent wells together into one giant superwell, accompanied by a massive crescendo in the music and… as Dan says in the video, "ohhh, I love it so much!"

Right, that's enough. Off to bed with me now.

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#oneaday Day 657: Drain Blaster

After over 4,500 posts on this blog (and another 2,300 or so on MoeGamer), it will probably not surprise you to learn that I sometimes have difficulty thinking of something new to write about. Indeed, there are a number of topics I have written about multiple times, often without realising it — and often with inadvertently using some of the exact same arguments and phrases each time I do so. At least nobody can say I'm inconsistent in the way I do things.

With that in mind, and given that this is a personal blog, it stands to reason that I should probably start talking about weird, hyper-niche things that, statistically speaking, very few people probably give a shit about. But if Chris "Papapishu" Person's work over on Aftermath is anything to go by, there will always be an odd little audience who are very much into weird, hyper-niche things.

I guess part of the reason I tend to hold off on writing about weird, hyper-niche things is worrying about whether or not I will actually be able to fill a convincing blog post on the subject, but, well, I've taken care of about half of what I consider the "bare minimum" for each day with this preamble, and thus I now feel suitably equipped to actually tell you what I want to talk about.

Today I would like to tell you about our toilet plunger.

A plunger is one of those things that you don't really think about needing until it's too late. At least, I've always been that way; I am fortunate in the fact that my wife likes to be prepared for all sorts of eventualities, and thus she is the sort of person to purchase a toilet plunger in the anticipation that we might need one at some point.

But my wife didn't buy just any old plunger. Oh, no. She bought a Drain Blaster.

You might think that looks quite like a normal plunger, and you would be partially right; like a regular old plunger it has the big rubber thing that you put over the hole in the bog, along with a smaller head for dealing with, presumably, plugholes. (I have only ever used it for the toilet.)

Where a Drain Blaster differs from a regular plunger may well already be apparent from the picture above, but just in case it isn't: it's all in that thick cylinder of a body, and the handle above it. Because you can pull that handle out to fill the cylinder with air, and then blast the air back out by plunging the handle back in.

And you know what? It does an amazing job of unblocking a toilet. I don't really know how one uses a regular plunger for the same job other than just sort of… plunging it in there and hoping for the best, but with the Drain Blaster it really is as simple as putting the rubber bit over the hole in the toilet, pulling up the handle and pumping it a few times until you hear everything proceed on its merry way down your soil pipe. I am yet to encounter a blocked toilet that has been able to stand up to even the briefest assault from a Drain Blaster, and, as someone who blocks the toilet more frequently than he would perhaps like to admit, I am exceedingly grateful that, at some point in the past, my wife decided to go hard on our choice of plunger.

I am reminded of a legendary group text (it may have been an MSN Messenger conversation, given the era) from among my friendship group at university, when one of our number (not me, surprisingly) admitted that he had produced a poo so formidable that he absolutely could not get rid of it. It eventually took several kettlefuls of boiling water to break up the beast enough for it to finally vacate the premises, and he chronicled the entire process, which was unfolding late at night when, being university students, many of us could be relied upon to be a little bit tipsy and thus very receptive to such a saga. Thankfully this was an age before smartphones, so there were no pictures involved, but the entire process was chronicled in exhaustive detail. I will never forget it.

I mention this because I wonder how different his experiences would have been if he had a Drain Blaster. I don't even know if Drain Blasters existed back then, though given that the device is essentially a bike pump with a plunger head, I would be surprised if they didn't. Could the sheer volume of this legendary turd stand up to the relentless assault of a Drain Blaster, or would the boiling water still be necessary? I guess we will never know.

Anyway, that's what I wanted to talk about today. If you read all of that… uh… well done, I guess?

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#oneaday Day 656: User error

One reason I absolutely cannot wait to ditch my professional social media responsibilities (which will be at some point in the next few months, in all likelihood) is the phenomenon of users making an error themselves, then yelling at us for their own mistake. There have been two separate examples of this just today, and I'm glad I was too busy to reply to them (the chap who's been helping us out with social media handled them) because I'm not sure I would have been able to resist being sarcastic. (Naturally, I won't name and shame or give the exact examples here, but anyone who has worked in any sort of tech with a vaguely public-facing aspect will likely know the sort of thing I'm talking about.)

Whenever I see something like this, it just comes across as a completely alien way to react. If I'm using a device, and it behaves in a way that I don't expect it to, the first thing I look for is if I'm doing anything wrong — which I inevitably am. I use it as an opportunity to learn exactly what it is that I'm doing wrong, then to never make that same mistake ever again, because I learned what the problem was and how to fix it. The absolute last thing I would consider doing is going on social media and yelling at the company who makes the product in question — particularly when there is absolutely no way of them solving my issue without making me look, at the very least, a little bit stupid.

I get that people are frustrated when things don't work the way they expect and they don't know why. But receiving a message filled with swearing and abuse because you didn't think to press a single button that would immediately resolve the problem you are having — yes, this really was one of the incidents today — does not make the person who has to answer that message feel particularly inclined to want to help you. I mean, most of the time they will go out of their way to help you, even for particularly stupid questions — contrary to popular belief, there are, in fact, stupid questions — but you can rest assured that they're having a good giggle at you behind your back.

Note that I absolutely do not have a problem with someone who does have a question with a simple and straightforward answer, and who asks that question without becoming abusive. I am more than happy to help anyone like that out. But someone who bursts into an inbox with no prior contact and fills their message with "wtf" and "ffs" and all that sort of shit… well, they're not getting their relationship with us off on a particularly good foot now, are they?

The only time I've ever yelled at a company on social media was when CEX missold me an expensive arcade stick with the promise it would work on the consoles I asked if it would work on, and it did not do that. After the staff in the shop refused to help, I had little option but to Karen it up a bit and eventually got the situation resolved. I'm not particularly proud of that little episode, but I did manage to get it resolved without any swearing or abuse at the staff in question — just a lot (a lot) of repeating myself.

Anyway, don't be rude to staff of a company if the fault is actually completely of your own creation. It's not hard.

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#oneaday Day 654: Jensen Huang is an enemy of the arts

The headline is probably not news to most of you reading this, but I feel like it's worth commenting on, because the NVidia CEO just can't seem to keep his mouth shut.

To recap: a little while back, NVidia introduced its new "DLSS5" technology via transparently obvious Digital Foundry advertorial video. I still don't really know what DLSS is, or what it used to be I guess, but this latest incarnation of it did… not go down well, to say the least.

The reason? It's fucking generative AI, because of course it is. In this case, it's generative AI that takes two multi-thousand dollar graphics cards to render a slop filter over the top of the perfectly functional graphics the game already had. Early defenders tried to convince everyone else that it was just "improving the lighting", but then Huang came out and said the following:

First of all, [the critics are] completely wrong. The reason for that is because, as I have explained very carefully, DLSS5 fuses controllability of the geometry and textures and everything about the game with generative AI. It's not post-processing at the frame level, it's generative control at the geometry level.

(Tom's Hardware)

Okay. So it is generative AI. Which sucks. And everyone hates. And in this instance, it is adding what is colloquially referred to as a "yassification" filter atop character graphics in particular, making them look markedly different from their actual, canonical designs. You know, the ones that artists worked on.

Today, Kotaku posted what I would argue is a bit of a fluff piece on the subject, quoting Huang extensively. Huang is presumably in some sort of "damage control" mode — although not that much, because the part of NVidia that makes decent graphics cards for gaming PCs and consoles is of very little importance to a company that has very much thrown its entire lot in with generative AI.

From the Kotaku piece, quoting Huang, who was speaking on a recent episode of Lex Fridman's podcast:

DLSS 5 is 3D conditioned, 3D guided. It's ground truth structure data guided. And so the artist determined the geometry we are completely truthful to. The geometry maintains in every single frame.

Okay, first of all, what the fuck does "ground truth structure data guided" mean? Secondly, I'm sure the geometry is still there, it's just underneath a hallucinated AI-generated image.

He goes on (emphasis mine):

Every single frame, it enhances but it doesn't change anything. The system is open, you could train your own models to determine, and you could even in the future prompt it. You know, 'I want it to be a toon shader, I want it to look like this kinda,' so you can give it even an example. And it would generate in the style of that, all consistent with the artistry, you know, the style, the intent of the artist. And so all of that is done for the artist, so that they can create something that is more beautiful, but still in the style that they want.

So let me get this straight. It "doesn't change anything", but it does "generate in the style of" how it is prompted, am I getting this right? So it does, in fact, change something?

And who is doing this "prompting", exactly? Who is saying "I want it to be a toon shader"? The end user? Because that sure as fuck doesn't sound like being "consistent with the artistry and intent of the artist". Or is it the artist? Because if an artist wants their visuals in a toon style, they'll design them in a fucking toon style in the first place and they don't need the slop machine to do it for them. Or they don't if they're an artist with any fucking skills, anyway.

All this just confirms exactly what we've known for a while now: Jensen Huang is an enemy of the arts. He doesn't give a shit what the "style and intent of the artist" are, because his magic slop machine can just overwrite it and make it look "more beautiful". Fuck the artists who worked hard on each scene, each character, each object. Fuck having a coherent, distinctive artistic vision and visual style — bring on the uncanny valley AI slop! Fuck everyone who makes it their life's work to bring interactive worlds and the characters who inhabit them to life!

Jensen Huang, you are a rancid little fuckboi who, years after this bubble pops, will be looked back on as one of the most insidious, dangerous influences on the arts that there has been for a very long time. I'm not sure what sort of legacy you think you're leaving behind, but I can tell you with great confidence that it will not be a flattering one.

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#oneaday Day 652: New Tricks - done

I've finished watching the full run of New Tricks, the BBC sort-of police procedural about the "Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad", or UCOS, a unit in London's Metropolitan Police made up of one actual police officer and several other retired coppers. I enjoyed it a lot, even if the cast changes in its latter seasons arguably made it into a bit of a different show, and it meandered a bit in search of its own identity as a result.

New Tricks opens with UCOS being fronted by Sandra Pullman (Amanda Redman), a semi-disgraced police officer who gained notoriety after shooting a dog on a bungled raid that left the person she was supposed to be rescuing paralysed after falling out of a window. She assembles a colourful team of former police officers, including the diamond geezer Gerry Standing (Dennis Waterman), the extremely neurodivergent Brian "Memory" Lane and the relatively-normal-but-talks-to-his-dead-wife Jack Halford.

Between them, they form an initially uneasy alliance that subsequently blossoms into both genuine friendship and a wonderful sense of camaraderie as they solve a series of cold cases, many of which have been dormant for 20-30 years or more. As a result, Pullman more than redeems herself in the eyes of her superiors — though she still occasionally gets stick about the whole dog-shooting thing — and her band of merry old men find some meaning in their lives, as well as some closure in some longstanding issues.

This core cast remains constant for a significant proportion of the show, and we get to know them all very well. Halford is the first to leave; after finding closure on the murder of his wife, he departs to live out the end of his life peacefully after discovering he has a terminal illness. Lane is next to go, once again after reaching some closure on his "case that got away" — closure that involves him sacrificing his new career in the name of justice and the truth when he accuses a powerful member of the police for wrongdoing.

Standing lasts the longest, sticking around until the second episode of the show's final season. The two-part story that sees him departing after having faked his own death gives him a good story to go out on; he didn't have quite the same "issues" hanging over his head as Halford and Lane, so he needed something like this to make his departure an event of note in the same way, and it worked well, revealing some hitherto unknown details about his past career that felt very much in keeping with what we had learned about him over the course of the prior eleven seasons.

The replacement cast members include the Glaswegian Steve McAndrew (Denis Lawson), who is rebuilding his life following estrangement from his wife and son; Dan Griffin (Nicholas Lyndhurst), who is a frighteningly competent, knowledgeable individual who acts a bit as the group's "Superman" at times, despite occasionally demonstrating himself to be a bit unaware in terms of social interactions; and the latest to join the group, following Standing's departure, is Ted Case (Larry Lamb), a superstitious but intelligent former detective with a gift for interviewing witnesses and interrogating suspects. Outside of the "old men" of the group, Pullman is eventually replaced by Sasha Miller (Tamzin Outhwaite) towards the end of the series, and while this is probably the biggest upheaval the series saw, she settles into the new role quickly and does a good job.

New Tricks, across its entire run, strikes a good balance between the inherent comedy in such an unusual, eccentric ensemble cast, and the inherent darkness of a series about investigating longstanding cold cases, typically murders. The show thankfully sidesteps some of the clichés of police procedurals after its initial episodes; the pilot episode and the first couple of regular episodes give Pullman a superior who is the very definition of the stereotypical "shouting police chief", but before long he is replaced by Robert Strickland (Anthony Calf), an altogether calmer individual who, while coming from a background of privilege, often sides with "the little guy" (relatively speaking) rather than The Establishment as a whole. In the context of the series, this means that while he is often outwardly a by-the-book sort of individual, on the down-low he is immensely supportive of UCOS' eccentricities and lets them get away with a lot — because they get results.

(Yes, I know UCOS can be argued to be part of "The Establishment" also, given that they are a police department in their own right. But New Tricks makes a point of showing that the police as a whole are certainly not infallible, and there are several cases that involve the unit uncovering corruption within the organisation, eventually bringing justice to someone who had been wronged, many years ago in some cases.)

New Tricks' biggest strength is in its characters. We get to know the initial ensemble cast particularly intimately over the course of their time with the show; the later additions are also plenty likeable and get their own stories to shine, though by the simple fact that they have less time on screen in total, we never feel we quite get to know them as well as Pullman, Standing, Lane and Halford. Ted Case is the character who suffers the most in this regard; joining the cast full-time partway into its final season, some of his development feels a little rushed — although this, in itself, works quite well in the context of his character. The reveal that he is gay is handled in a particularly entertaining way that, from the relatively little we know of him at that point, feels very much in keeping with how he does things.

Given that the show ran for a long time — 2003-2015, to be exact — means that things change quite significantly in society over the course of its complete run. The show starts in a pre-smartphone age, for one, though the team are all comfortably using tablets (as in, iPads, not little boxes of pills) by its conclusion, and, as you might expect from the composition of its cast, issues such as sexism and ageism are explored. Several episodes, particularly later in the show's overall run, also deal with crimes that have a racial component or that involve domestic abuse and sexual assault, and while the show isn't particularly gory or shock-horror, it also doesn't shy away from real issues.

I'm sure there's plenty one could criticise about the show as a whole, particularly as today, in 2026, a lot of people have a somewhat skeptical view of the police and their role in society — and the way in which police-centric TV shows can somewhat "whitewash" this fact. But taking it as pure escapism — as a fun detective show with some colourful characters — it was highly entertaining, and I'm glad I took the time to watch it from start to finish.

Now I need something to replace it…

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#oneaday Day 651: New project idea

I've had an idea for A Creative Project. I get these every so often. Sometimes I follow through on them, sometimes I start them and don't finish them, sometimes I don't even start them. This one is actually one I've been mulling over in my brain for quite a long time, and I think I'm just going to go ahead and do it.

Rather frustratingly for you, I'm not going to give you any details on it just yet because it's something I want to keep secret until I'm ready to launch it. It's the kind of thing that's going to take quite a while to put together, you see, and I want to launch it when it's in a "complete" state rather than doing things piecemeal. It is, however, something that I hope folks will find worthwhile and valuable, and it will allow me to realise something that I have wanted to achieve for quite some time, but have never really quite figured out the best way to go about.

I'll be honest: the reason why my brain is always mulling over Creative Projects is because as I get older, I feel increasingly… I don't know, "concerned" about What I Will Leave Behind. I'm not planning on dying any time soon, I hasten to add, but when I look back over my time on this Earth, I want to feel like I achieved something that mattered. My wife and I have not had kids and are not going to have kids (through mutually agreed choice) and as such any "legacy" I leave behind will have to depend on what I was able to achieve in the time allotted to me.

Now, I'm sure one could say that I have already "left something behind" — several things, in fact. There's this blog, there's MoeGamer, there's the stuff I wrote for various websites (although most of those are now defunct and thus only accessible via the Internet Archive and/or websites that have ingested all the material from a now-dead other site), there's the contributions I've made to magazines over the years, there's my YouTube channel, there's all the Evercade manuals I've had a hand in writing, there's the blogs and videos I've made for Evercade.

And yet, I dunno, I sort of feel dissatisfied. I feel like relatively few people know who I am. When people look back on sites like USgamer and GamePro, I'm never mentioned. Whenever I've launched new Creative Projects, they don't get any buzz from peers I may have worked with or adjacent to. Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no desire to be "famous" (or "infamous", for that matter) — but sometimes it does just feel like it would be nice to have a little bit of recognition (or, hell, just acknowledgement) for the hard work I've done over the years.

As always, if you're reading this, the above is not directed at you. If you're reading this, you probably Give A Shit about me, and that is nice, so thank you. I'm just talking more broadly. I'm not getting any younger, and it seems that getting vaguely maudlin over whether or not you have "achieved" anything in your lifespan is a natural thing to do when one is not getting any younger.

There's a line from the Final Fantasy IX manual that always sticks with me at times like this. For the longest time I was convinced it was attributed to Zidane, but it's actually attached to Freya's character profile in the original manual. The line is "To be forgotten is worse than death."

I probably don't need to explain myself there, do I…?

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#oneaday Day 649: Collapse

I'm exhausted. Busy day at work, big lunch, long and tiring drive home. A mostly good day, though, aside from the twat driving at 45mph in the middle lane of the M3.

Lunch was good. The boss treated us to a meal at a local (to the office) Turkish place. I had calamari as a starter followed by lamb moussaka. It was really good, but it made me just want to nap for the afternoon!

On the way back, I listened to some stuff from Sbassbear, a musical collective on YouTube that are probably best known for their Game Grumps remixes, which are consistently hilarious and incredible in their quality.

Tonight I listened to two of their more "conceptual" albums. The first was GrumpWave, which was a series of 30+ minute lo-fi tracks with some of Arin and Dan's more thoughtful conversations overlaid. It was a rather contemplative listen, and I really enjoyed it.

The other thing I listened to was Fever Dream Radio, an ADHD nightmare of an album designed around the concept of a restless, anxious soul constantly channel flipping on the radio. It's a lot to take in but was frequently hilarious. Musical comedy is tricky to do well, because to really succeed you have to absolutely commit to The Bit, but Sbassbear has always taken even their most ridiculous compositions and arrangements very seriously. If you think you can handle it, I recommend giving it a listen in its entirety.

Oh, also we have no Internet at home so I'm writing this from bed on my phone. And on that note, time for some very well earned sleep!

#oneaday Day 648: Kim Bab Keyboard

I've been doing this wrong all this time. I'm on my umpteenth monthly visit to the office, blogging from a hotel room, and somehow it has only just occurred to me that you can, in fact, plug a keyboard into a phone and type on that rather than using the touchscreen. Altogether a much more pleasant experience, and much more conducive to actually writing something of substance.

Of course, I cannot actually promise that anything following will actually be of substance, but at least I won't be complaining about how much I don't like typing on my phone, because right now I'm typing on my nice keyboard.

I don't really know why this has never occurred to me before. I think at least part of it is down to the fact that plugging a keyboard into a device that is considerably smaller than the input device always felt… "extravagant" somehow, to an unnecessary degree. But I guess it's not that strange. On a trip up to the Edinburgh Fringe with the university Theatre Group (many years ago at this point), I purchased a portable wireless keyboard to use with my Palm handheld, and that was perfectly acceptable to me. So, since I have my keyboard in my bag anyway because I'm bringing my computer to work, I figured I might as well use it for this.

So what have I got to report today, other than the usual long drive down some of the worst roads in the country? (The M25 sucks, as has been well-established on these very pages on numerous occasions, but the A1 is full of potholes now, too.) Well, I decided for my food this evening I'd do something a bit different; rather than loading up on a big bag of portable junk from the nearby Morrisons, I thought I'd try a local Korean place that I've walked past many times and been intrigued by, but never actually given a go.

So I decided to give it a go — and this was, it seems, a very good idea, because the food was delicious. I don't know Korean cuisine particularly well, but the lady behind the counter was extremely helpful, even going so far to ask me if I'd ever eaten the food they had on offer before, and offering me some suggestions and recommendations accordingly. I eventually plumped for Korean chicken kim bab (I think that's spelled right), which is essentially Korean sushi rolls.

This is what they look like:

They were delicious! As well as the Korean fried chicken with a delicious sweet but spicy sauce, there also appeared to be some combination of cucumber, cabbage, carrot and (I think) white daikon radish. And, thankfully, no onion or onion-adjacent stuff. I've found that Korean food doesn't seem to have a lot of onion in it, unlike cuisine from some other areas of east Asia, so I'm absolutely fine with that.

So yeah. That was a good decision, and I will be going there again — perhaps to try something a bit more adventurous next time. It was definitely a substantial, satisfying meal, and at £9 for a generous portion it wasn't excessively expensive either. Sure, it's more than a supermarket sandwich, but it was also several orders of magnitude more tasty. And probably not terrible for you, either.

So that was a nice discovery, and has put me in a relatively pleasant mood for the remainder of the evening. Now I'm just killing time in my room until it's time to sleep, then we have a Big Exciting Meeting (that I've been reassured doesn't mean anything Bad) tomorrow, and the boss is taking us all out to lunch, which will be nice. I know I complain a lot about having to do this monthly visit, but honestly, it's nice to actually see everyone semi-regularly, and if we get treated to something tasty, so much the better.

On that note, then, I think I'm going to spend an hour or two playing some Activision games on Evercade, then hopefully get a good night's sleep for what should be a busy but rewarding day tomorrow. Have a pleasant evening!