#oneaday Day 279: Criminal Records

I sort of miss the whole ritual of buying music from a shop. You know, going in there, agonising over whether or not you really want to spend twelve quid on a CD from a band you're not sure you like based on a song you've heard so much on the radio you basically Stockholm Syndromed yourself into convincing you were a fan of?

Back when we actually still did that sort of thing, I had a fairly shameless attitude towards buying music, even though I occasionally got the piss taken out of me when I was a teen. This attitude started pretty early on, when the first music album I purchased for myself with my own money was Oasis' Definitely Maybe… literally the day before (What's The Story) Morning Glory? came out. After earning the jeers of my peer group for that particular escapade, I pretty much decided to go "fuck it", and just buy stuff I felt like buying, without shame. Same approach I take with video games to this day, as it happens.

That's not quite the full story, mind. There were still CDs that I saw in the shops that I knew it would effectively be social suicide to purchase, if anyone ever found out I did so. Generally speaking, as a teenage boy, anything by a boy band was right out, as were any of the particularly cheesy pop acts like S Club 7 or Steps. And, of course, the Spice Girls.

I maintained this feeling of warding off potential musical shame for a while, but then I went along with my parents to a party at my "Aunty" Sue and "Uncle" Peter's house. (I put "Aunty" and "Uncle" in quotes because they're not actually related to me; they're the kind of "Aunty" and "Uncle" that means "friends of my parents") I forget the exact occasion, but it was definitely some sort of celebration. And Aunty Sue and Uncle Peter had a big house — it used to be a school, in fact, but they were also rather well off.

Anyway, I always thought Uncle Peter was kind of cool in that way you never, ever mention to your parents when you're an adolescent, because declaring someone who isn't a celebrity but is from a completely different generation to you is "cool" is absolutely unthinkable.

The reason I thought Uncle Peter was cool was because as part of furnishing their absolutely enormous house, he had an amazing hi-fi system, and an enormous collection of records on various media formats (including several ones that were "weird" by the early '90s, like reel-to-reel tapes and 8-tracks) that covered possibly the most eclectic selection of musical tastes I think I've ever seen.

While Aunty Sue and Uncle Peter were setting up for the party, I happened to wander into the room with the hi-fi, where Uncle Peter was browsing through a big pile of CDs. And, to my surprise, I saw several "criminal" records among them — most notably the Spice Girls' first album, Spice.

I don't know why I felt this way, but something in my brain changed at that point. The thought process was something along the lines of "well, if Uncle Peter can buy a Spice Girls album and not spontaneously combust, would it really be so bad if I did so, too?"

So, not long after that trip and the party, I went out and bought myself a copy of Spice for myself. And I listened to it. And I enjoyed it! I thought a couple of tracks were a bit poo (interestingly, the tracks I tended to like least were the ones that had become singles, like Wannabe, which I still don't like all that much) but I overall… didn't regret my purchase, and listened to it a good few times. And when Spiceworld came out the following year, I bought that, too, also without shame.

I still didn't tell anyone I was buying these albums, nor did I do it in front of them, of course — I still had a certain amount of pride. But I also didn't hide these albums when anyone came to visit, nor did I attempt to concoct any sort of stupid lie about not knowing how they got there, or someone sabotaging my CD collection, or whatever. It was just part of my musical tastes at the time — which grew to be rather eclectic as a direct result of my own willingness to buy "criminal" records.

I sort of miss that. I still like listening to music, particularly when I'm doing something dull, but the thought of just putting a CD on and listening to it as a self-contained activity now feels almost alien to me. There are times when I consider starting to collect CDs again in an attempt to rediscover that lost pleasure of just listening to music as an activity in and of itself… then I remember I have a house bursting at the seams with video games already, and thus not really anywhere to put CDs, so I have to content myself with streaming, like most of us do these days.

My one hangover from those days is that even while streaming music, I tend to prefer to have full control over what I'm listening to, and I will more often than not listen to a full album rather than just putting it on a "Shuffle" or "Radio" setting. I still like that musical journey you take through a good album, but I do miss the whole ritual of buying the CD, taking it home, looking at the artwork, reading the sleeve notes and the lyrics and listening to the music intently and attentively.

I wonder if we'll ever come back around to that? There's already growing unrest and dissatisfaction with streaming video services, with some (including me) actually preferring a return to physical media. But can we go back? Should we? I don't know. But I'm definitely still tempted to rebuild that CD collection. I bet second-hand music CDs are dirt cheap these days.

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 276: Writer's Block, Occurrence #976,425

I've been pootling through the "Random Post" option at the top of this blog for the last half an hour, trying to think of something to write about, and nothing has been particularly forthcoming, so I'm just going to do what I usually do in this situation, which is to start typing and just see where things go from there. Expect stream of consciousness, and nothing of any real consequence.

I have the farts this evening. I don't think I've eaten anything particularly fartworthy, but I am cracking off some rippers. I had a bit of a stomachache last night, so perhaps it's a remnant of that. It doesn't really matter. All that does matter is that I am trouser-trumpeting like a good'un, and I haven't even shat myself. Winner. Nothing worse than following through on a fart, which is something I have, to my knowledge, only done once, and in my defence I was already quite ill with something else at the time. (It was not, before you ask, being intoxicated in any way.)

I've spent much of this evening chasing down additional endings in Tokyo Dark: Remembrance, which I've been playing on Switch. This is an adventure game that was recommended to me a while back, and happened to come up as a recommendation just as a limited-press physical release became available, so I snapped it up. Hearing that it was on the short side, I figured it would be an ideal game to squeeze into this gap between finishing Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles X arriving, and indeed it has been. I'll write in more detail about it on MoeGamer at some point in the next few days, but suffice to say for now that it's an interesting blend of detective work, a touch of yakuza shenanigans, and some Shinto-inspired ghost stories. Good times.

I reckon next up I'm probably going to work on finishing Soul Blazer on SNES. I'm into the fourth main chapter of that now — I believe there are seven, but I could be wrong — and have been really enjoying it. There's something about the tone of the whole thing that I really like; doubtless it's partly down to the relative limitations placed on the text (and the localisation) due to the platform it's on, but it has a strangely… earnest tone to its dialogue that I am finding rather compelling. Again, probably more about that on MoeGamer at some point in the near future.

More farts. And I've left this a bit too late to write anything of any real substance, so I think I'm going to go and have a poo (just in case, you know) then go to bed. Tomorrow is a new day that… will be much like this one. And now the robot vacuum has started up, so it's definitely time to go to bed. Good night!

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#oneaday Day 271: Caught on camera

The other day, I was caught on camera doing something I shouldn't have. Nothing serious, I might add, but the whole event concluded in a rather more positive way than I have typically come to expect from situations like this.

Here in Southampton, there's an area known as Portswood which has a bunch of little shops, a supermarket that has changed hands/brands several times (I think it's currently a Waitrose, which seems remarkably out of keeping with how the area is primarily students) and is one of the main routes from the outskirts of town (where the university is) to the town centre.

At least it was. At some point in the last six months, they have changed the main bit of Portswood into an area that only buses, taxis and "authorised vehicles" can go into, and it's camera-protected.

The other day, I was giving my wife a lift to the hospital (nothing to worry about, just a routine test) and, on the way back, I drove through this area, completely missing the signs indicating that I'm not actually allowed to drive through there any more. I didn't notice until my second journey through, when I was picking my wife up. And my heart sank; I knew that I'd gone through when I really shouldn't have, and that it was my own fault I hadn't seen the actually quite clear and prominent signage. There was no defending this in the same way you can get out of parking charge notices on private land (which is something I have successfully done in the past).

So I braced myself for a fine or whatever punishment was coming my way. Nothing happened for a few days, so I started to wonder if the "camera" signs on the area were just a deterrent rather than, you know, telling the truth.

Today, I got a letter. I saw it was from "Southampton Parking Services" on the return address, and I thought this is it, I'm going to be hit with a fine, or points on my license, or something.

But no!

I was very surprised to discover that the letter was just a "warning", telling me that I had indeed broken the rules, but that because it was less than six months since these new measures had been put in place, I wouldn't be fined or punished in any other way, so long as I didn't do it again.

I'm not accustomed to local councils or those in charge of traffic measures being so reasonable, but I assume there's some sort of legal situation in place that requires them to implement a "grace period" like this when they make some sort of drastic change to the traffic restrictions in an area. After all, I doubt I'm the only one who made an honest mistake and passed through, completely oblivious to the signs because I had no reason to be looking out for anything different to how things were the last time I'd driven through there. And while if they fined everyone who passed through when they weren't supposed to I'm sure they would make absolute bank, I suspect they don't want to be dealing with the inevitable court cases and legal wrangling that would result.

Whatever the reason for it, I'm grateful for it; it means that I avoided a £70 fine. I would have gladly paid the fine if I had been required to, since I will hold my hands up and say the situation was my own fault for not paying enough attention. But I am happy to have been let off with a warning and no further consequences. And I'm pretty certain I won't accidentally make the same mistake again!

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#oneaday Day 267: Do some exercise

For a little while, my left knee has been absolutely killing me. It hurt to bend it, it hurt to kneel down, it was even quite painful extending and bending my leg to go up and down stairs. It was getting so painful that I was reaching a point where I was genuinely quite concerned I had somehow fucked it up beyond all hope of recovery despite not having actually done anything to it other than "be fat".

Taking advantage of a brief (brief) moment of motivation earlier today, I decided to set up the treadmill my wife bought a little while back, and which the pair of us have failed to make good use of since it arrived in the house and we realised we don't really have a super-convenient place to keep it. I plonked it down in front of the living room TV (where it just about fits between the sofa and the media cabinet) and plugged its ridiculously short cable into an extension, then into the wall. Then I set it going at a gentle 3.5 speed (mph, I presume) and just did ten minutes while I watched a bit of an episode of Friends.

When I got off, my knee wasn't in agony any more. It's still a little bit painful, but it's not at the "oh my God, are they actually going to have to chop my leg off?" level of pain it has been in the last week. So I am forced to conclude that after many, many years of a largely sedentary lifestyle, my body is finally reaching a point where it is literally screaming out for me to do some exercise. Which is nice.

I joke, but it sort of is nice to have some actual, unavoidable motivation for doing some exercise. I'm not averse to the idea at all — numerous gym memberships, periods of going swimming regularly and even just about surviving a 10K in the pre-COVID days will attest to this — but summoning up the motivation in the last five years has been really difficult, particularly if "doing some exercise" involves putting in some effort before you can even start — getting equipment out, getting changed, rearranging a room or driving to the gym.

But the treadmill, currently propped up against the wall in our living room, is reasonably easy to set up — I just have to move the coffee table out of the way, plug it in and we're away. So I'm going to start doing just a little bit every day. Just ten minutes at a time to begin with, as I don't want to overwhelm myself and kill off that motivation before it leads to any sort of productive gain in ability level or fitness. Just ten minutes of putting these tired old legs to a bit of use, and apparently that works wonders.

Who knew? Everyone did, of course, but sometimes it helps to have a little reminder that people who tell you to get some exercise aren't just talking out their arse or trying to get you to do something you don't want to do. It actually, really does help. So I'm hoping starting slow will help with the feelings of physically painful lethargy that have been becoming increasingly apparent since COVID. And we'll see how things go from there.

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#oneaday Day 265: Corporate Inefficiency

I have worked for Big Corporations before on a few occasions in my life, and while my experiences were… mixed, to say the least, there were some occasional good times. At one of them, anyway. The other was inoffensive at best; the last is a period of my life that I would set fire to if it was possible to do such a thing with an expanse of time.

But my God I do not miss corporate policy and procedure, also known as the three thousand steps you are supposed to take in order to get anything done.

I obviously can't give specifics for various reasons, but I have been contending with this sort of thing just recently. I work for a small company who, by virtue of its size, is able to Get Shit Done in a pretty timely manner for the most part. Occasionally we have setbacks, but we deal with them, we communicate directly with one another and, for the most part, we handle the challenges each day presents us.

Just recently, I have been having to deal with a large corporation. As noted, I can't say who, or what, or why, and I wouldn't even if I was able to. Let's just say it's a large company and leave it at that.

On the 7th of this month, I sent something over to our contact at this company for them to review, give their stamp of approval and let us get on with our jobs. It is now the 27th of this month, my contact is still "putting a team together" to look at one document I sent them twenty days ago and I'm just sitting here wondering what on Earth these people are doing all day.

In working with all manner of different companies to do what we do, I have encountered many different responses to "can you just give this document a quick once-over and let us know if everything's OK with it?".

The absolute best people to work with are the ones who go "yeah, that all looks fine, we trust your judgement" and let us get on with it, usually responding within a day or less. These are not as uncommon as you might think, but I do wish they were a bit more common. This usually happens when you are dealing with an individual rather than a company.

The next best people to work with are the ones who provide helpful and timely feedback. The ones where they might have a few specific "requirements" when working with them, but who are perfectly helpful and nice about the whole thing, and get back to you promptly. This usually happens when you have a single point of contact who you have a good relationship with at a reasonably sized company.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have the ones who come back with an absolute mountain of last-minute feedback that it would have been nice to know a little bit earlier, but who are still remarkably understanding about the whole thing and often quite apologetic. This can be annoying, but at least it's workable. This tends to happen if there is a bit of a language barrier that precludes more "real-time" communication and feedback.

And then you have this situation, where you send out one document and twenty days later it doesn't appear that anyone has looked at it whatsoever because they're still arguing about who should look at it. This happens when you are dealing with a larger company, although the exact degree depends on the company.

This is by far the most frustrating experience I've had with this whole "getting sign-off" step in the grand scheme of what we do on a day-to-day basis, and I'm aware I'm being vague about all this, but I sort of have to be.

But I also wanted to express my frustration. Because it's really fucking annoying, not just for me but for the other people who need to use my document (once approved) to get on with their jobs. And there is no good reason for it. It will inevitably be some sort of Corporate Policy and Procedure that is bogging things down, some capital-P Process that is being followed internally their end while we are left completely in the dark as to why we've been left twiddling our thumbs for twenty sodding days.

If you're someone who replies to emails immediately, thank you. If you're someone who trusts professionals to do their job, double thank you. And if you're the one responsible for creating stupid, pointless, irritating corporate delays like this… well, I hope you step on a Lego brick in the very near future.

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#oneaday Day 263: Room service

It is, if you will pardon my deliberate misuse of a term typically used to mean something else, that time of the month again: the time when I get to drive two and a half hours from my home, hole up in a hotel for the evening and then go in to the office tomorrow.

The hotel I normally stay at, known as The Broadway, is quite nice. The rooms are pleasant and the beds are comfortable. My only real objection is that its bathrooms are very inconsistent. Sometimes I'll get a room with a lovely big bath, which it is a delight to luxuriate in after that long drive. And at others, you'll get ones like the one I have this time, featuring a shower cubicle far too small for a human being (let alone a larger gentleman such as myself) and a toilet placed in such a way that you have to lean around the toilet paper dispenser to be able to sit down and do a poo.

Oh, and they use those horrible office-style single sheet toilet roll dispensers, too. I have taken to bringing my own proper toilet roll rather than spend my poos here scrabbling away at sheets of toilet paper far too thin to have any practical purpose whatsoever.

The one thing I will particularly compliment the Broadway on is its food. In the morning, you get a lovely breakfast included, and it's much better than what you'd get in something like a Travelodge or Premier Inn, in that someone cooks it for you to order rather than batch cooking everything and leaving it to congeal under heat lamps.

I hadn't had dinner here before, so I thought I'd treat myself this evening, and it was excellent. I had a full rack of ribs followed by a chocolate sundae, and both were delicious as well as being generous portions. Bad for the diet, of course, but these trips away always mess with any good intentions to eat healthily, anyway. Back on track when I get home tomorrow.

Tomorrow's session at work promises to be interesting. Rather than just a regular day at the office, we're having a day of brainstorming product ideas, so I'm intrigued to see exactly how ambitious the organisers think we should be. I obviously won't be able to tell you anything that is decided or discussed tomorrow, but I have some fun ideas that it will hopefully be enjoyable to brainstorm a bit.

And with that in mind, it's probably time to get some sleep. So I'm off to do just that.

#oneaday Day 262: Just a little bit worse

I'm aware that the following is going to make me sound painfully middle-class, but I'm going to say it anyway, because it's important to the story.

When I was a kid, the ultimate treat for enduring a shopping trip with my parents was not a trip to McDonald's or a big bag of sweets. It was going to the Marks and Spencer food section, getting a prawn and mayonnaise sandwich and a can of Caribbean crush, and enjoying both of those in the car park before the drive home. I'm not exaggerating when I say those sandwiches were delicious, and I'd give anything to experience them again.

"So just go to Marks and Spencers and get one," you may well say. And to that I would simply say… they're not the same. Just as so many other things are not the same as they used to be; just as so many other things have been gradually, subtly, almost imperceptibly enshittified over the years, so too have Marks and Spencer prawn and mayonnaise sandwiches.

In fact, pre-packed sandwiches in general have been on a downward spiral for many years now. When I was a little old to be dragged around Cambridge shopping with my parents, my friend Plummer and I would often go out for a drive of an evening, perhaps stopping by a nearby "old man pub" that we enjoyed, then swinging by the 24-hour Tesco petrol station to enjoy some midnight sandwiches before going home. While those sandwiches were never quite of the same quality as the mythical Marks and Spencers prawn and mayonnaise sandwiches, they were still pretty good.

Nowadays, every time I stop by a shop and think "oh, I'll get a Meal Deal" I also accompany that thought with "maybe the sandwiches will be better this time". But they never are. The bread is always soggy and too cold, the fillings are always underseasoned, nigh-flavourless in many cases, and as someone who physically retches if he can taste raw onion, my options are often a bit limited, to boot.

The possibility had occurred to me that perhaps I was nostalgically romanticising the concept of pre-packed sandwiches, and particularly the Marks and Spencers prawn mayonnaise sandwich. But then I consider all the other things which are indisputably worse than they used to be, and it's hard not to feel like everything now costs more but is also considerably worse.

Take a Kellogg's Variety pack, for example. I used to love these, because it was a bunch of little cereal packets, one portion each, that meant you could have a varied breakfast each day. Some of them were "healthy" (and I use the term loosely with regard to breakfast cereal, I'm aware), such as Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies, but there were always some "treats" in there too: Frosties, Ricicles, Coco Pops. I used to love getting a Variety pack when I went to go and visit my Nan; she'd always get them in for me because she knew I enjoyed them, and she'd always make me jelly and ice cream. I miss her and my Grandad.

A while back, Andie and I went for one of our occasional holidays at Center Parcs. While I was there, I thought "hey, I'll get a Variety pack! I haven't had one for ages." I was disappointed to discover that not only to Ricicles just flat-out not exist any more, but the balance in the Variety pack was now overwhelmingly in favour of Rice Krispies, one of the most boring cereals on the planet. Two packets of regular Rice Krispies and a packet of Rice Krispies Multigrain Shapes, whatever ungodly abomination of the breakfast table those might be. (They're not awful. But they're also not interesting.)

Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes, too, used to be my all-time favourite cereal, but the last box of them I've had has been immensely disappointing as has the box of Weetos I got alongside them. Neither of them are so bad as to make me want to throw them out completely, but they're also both considerably inferior than they once were. They just seem to lack a lot of the flavour that they once had.

I know the answer, of course: it's sugar. Everything has far less sugar in it these days, because sugar is the great sin that has made us all fat. And perhaps there's some truth to that — but then I also find myself thinking that numerous previous generations had full-sugar, full-fat diets and came through the experience without ballooning into an obesity epidemic. So what went wrong? How is it that our bland, flavourless, low-sugar, low-fat, joy-free food of today is still making us fatter than we've ever been in our lives?

Reflecting on things, I think part of the problem might be that the lack of sugar in "staples" such as the everyday breakfast cereal specifically makes me crave some actual sugar. And that's when I go out and get a chocolate bar or a cinnamon bun or whatever. And because I feel that so frequently, and so often indulge myself, I am, not to put too fine a point on it, a fat fuck.

Would I feel differently if my everyday food had more sugar, more fat, more flavour to it? I don't know. I know that I have gradually gained weight over the course of the last 25-30 years or so, but the vast majority of that weight has been in the last five years, since COVID. In those last five years, I've felt far more cravings for things that are bad for me than ever before, and I think that's a big part of the problem. When your everyday foods are leaving you feeling unsatisfied and craving more, you're tempted to binge on the things you're craving just to try and feel a little more fulfilled.

It's a more complex situation than that, of course; as I've alluded to numerous times on this blog, my relationship with food is more akin to an addiction, and is tied closely to my mental wellbeing. But I do often find myself wondering that if our everyday food and drink was a bit less artificially bland, we might all paradoxically be a bit better off.

No way to know, really, I guess. All I'm left with is the absolute certainty that if I get a prawn and mayonnaise sandwich from Marks and Spencer today, I will be left disappointed thanks to soggy bread, flavourless prawns and reduced-fat mayo. Not a patch on the real thing from 30+ years ago. And I don't think we're ever getting that back.

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#oneaday Day 257: When it's bollocks, say it's bollocks

I am an avid reader of Ed Zitron's blog (sorry, newsletter, because apparently that's just what we call blogs now) Where's Your Ed At? If you're at all interested in the tech space, I highly recommend you subscribe or at least check in on it regularly, because Zitron is one of the only people in the space who has the balls to say it like it is: that an awful lot of what is coming out of the mouths of tech companies right now is complete and utter bollocks.

Today, a story went round about a research project at Microsoft where they were using generative AI for "game ideation", and also noted that they thought they could use their generative AI models for "preservation". This was reported on by Tom Warren, senior editor at The Verge, thus (screenshotted rather than embedded 'cause the coward deleted it after everyone dunked on it):

Now, if you know anything about video game preservation, you know that feeding an old game into a generative AI model and then hoping it will hallucinate at least a rough approximation of the original game experience is not "preservation". It's bastardisation at best, a completely useless endeavour at worst, and a massive waste of energy and money regardless of the result that comes out of the other end.

Game preservation is a problem that, for the most part, we have solved. We have excellent software emulation solutions, built over the course of decades of development. Hardware emulation via FPGA at an affordable cost for the general public has advanced hugely in just a few short years. Software libraries for pretty much any system you can think of are archived in their entirety at numerous places across the Internet, and strong strides have been made in providing commercial, legally relicensed versions of classic games for a modern audience, both on existing modern systems and on bespoke emulation-centric devices.

So why, then, why the fuck would we want a generative AI model to make a best guess at what a video game that already exists and has been preserved perfectly well might look like if you play it for longer than 10 frames?

That paragraph above is what tech journalists should be asking. And the reason I bring up Ed Zitron at the start of this post is because he's one of the only people to actually ask questions like this: to take a look at the utter garbage being spewed by today's tech companies and to say "this is complete horseshit, what the actual fuck are you on?"

And Zitron, being an outspoken type, is not afraid to call out today's tech journalism space for not doing this. And he's absolutely right to do so. It is the tech journalism sector's job to look at what it going on, to realise that it is complete horseshit and then have the confidence to say that it is complete horseshit.

But they won't do that, for a variety of reasons. Advertising deals. Exclusive access. PR partnerships. An inexplicable desire not to rock the boat, despite the fact the boat has a huge hole in it and has been steadily sinking for 15-20 years at this point.

I'm not one of those people who thinks that journalists are taking bribes for positive reviews in literally all circumstances — I have experience in the industry, remember, and the most I had to worry about in that regard was a mild admonishment from my editor for criticising a Mortal Kombat game's DLC plan when Mortal Kombat was the cover game for that issue of GamePro.

But come on now. Tech journos should be looking at this utter garbage that keeps getting flung our way, and instead of declaring it "interesting" and doing the stupid looky-eyes emoji that makes their post immediately look like a 14 year old girl wrote it, they should be going "hang on a minute, what does that actually mean?" then exploring it further, asking some probing questions (which inevitably won't get a response, but that in itself says something) and then confidently declaring the latest generative AI "innovation" to be what it is: complete and utter horseshit doused in the finest snake oil.

And people wonder why the entire journalism sector is floundering. Could it perhaps be because very little actual journalism seems to be getting done?

Shout-out at this point not only to Ed Zitron's aforementioned blog, but also the excellent coverage of the Elon Musk nonsense in the States by Wired's politics department, 404 Media being a rare example of tech journalism that actually asks those hard-hitting questions, and Aftermath for doing something similar with games journalism. There are still people doing good work out there. But the people on the big, well-known mastheads, like Warren above, need to step their game up, stop being so incredulous and start acting like actual journalists.

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#oneaday Day 254: Nothing Much

I've had a nice quiet weekend that has been almost entirely occupied with Xenoblade Chronicles. I thought about making some videos, but decided that I didn't really have the mental fortitude to sort that out, so I have just had a completely relaxing weekend where I thought about nothing of any importance whatsoever, and just enjoyed myself.

This is a valuable thing to do now and again, particularly if you are feeling any sort of burnout or stress, which I most certainly have been of late. Honestly, I feel like I am starting to come out of the other side of the funk I've been in for the last while. I'm not completely out of it by any means just yet — and I'm sure the first time I look at social media for work on Monday I will suffer a mental health setback — but I am feeling a bit better, partly for having spent some time just relaxing, partly for having got some things off my chest with the post the other day, and partly… well, these things just pass eventually, usually.

That, honestly, is one of the things that's kept me holding on through difficult times — the knowledge that "this, too, shall pass". It always has done. Sometimes there have had to be difficult decisions made in order to encourage this, too, to indeed pass, but for the most part, just gritting your teeth and hanging on in there generally allows one to pass any number of this, toos, that might find themselves coming your way. And thankfully this most recent bout of the blues appears to have fallen into that category.

One thing I try to do when I'm feeling low is to ponder the things I do have that I should be — and am — grateful for. I'm not saying that just because you have things to be grateful for that you shouldn't be sad, of course — processing one's emotions is important and healthy — but rather, I think I'm saying that when things get hopeless I find it helpful to remember that I do not, in fact, have nothing, and that as difficult as it can be to appreciate that when you're down the bottom of a depression hole, those things you do have are a welcome sight when you eventually clamber back out.

That was a tortured metaphor, I know, but I'm just bashing things out on fumes here. Early night tonight and an attempt to get back into a routine of feeling like a vaguely normal human being. I don't know if I'm quite ready to return to the super-early mornings and going for a walk down to the shop, but I can at least look to tomorrow with good intentions if nothing else.

I hope you've had a pleasant and appropriately relaxing weekend, and that your week ahead isn't looking too stressful or chaotic. I am very much ready for a break, but I have a couple of weeks to get through before I can enjoy that break. That's feeling eminently doable at this point, though, so here's to Getting Back Into Things.

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#oneaday Day 253: Why do I need software to make my keyboard charge

I've been having an issue with my fancy, expensive Razer keyboard for a while. I've had it plugged in to USB, but as soon as I take the USB cable out, it seems to completely forget that it's been on charge and just die. This meant that I couldn't use it wirelessly, which was one of the keyboard's main selling points: it was a rare example of a mechanical keyboard that was also wireless. It didn't used to do this.

For a while, I just thought the battery was dead. Then I remembered that I'd uninstalled the Razer software a while back, because a shonky update process had made it cause my computer to pitch a shitfit and completely lock up for ages. So, out of curiosity, today I reinstalled the Razer software, plugged in the keyboard to charge and went off to play Xenoblade Chronicles for a couple of hours.

I am now typing this with the keyboard's USB cable unplugged, and the battery reading 100%. So it was the fucking software. My keyboard officially will not charge its battery unless you have Razer's stupid software installed.

Thankfully, they seem to have fixed whatever the locking-up issue was when I uninstalled it, so it's not a huge inconvenience to have it installed again. But it's pretty annoying to have spent several months thinking that my keyboard was broken in some way, or that it needed a new battery, only to discover that a completely arbitrary piece of software was preventing my keyboard from doing something that, you'd think, it should be able to do without any software intervention whatsoever. I mean, USB charging is a fundamental part of most of our tech these days, and most pieces of tech can charge without a piece of software running. You just plug them into a wall, the device goes "ooh, there's power coming in, I should route that to the battery" and that's that.

But no. Not for Razer, apparently, and I suspect there's other manufacturers who do the same thing, too. Logitech, for example, pissed people off when they tried to install some weird AI software into people's mouse drivers a while back, and the general enshittification of tech is, at this point, extremely well documented — though the number of people actually doing something about it, or even acknowledging that it's a problem, is rather slimmer than it perhaps should be.

Now, I'm not saying that my £150 keyboard not charging when its software isn't installed is really making my life significantly worse in the same way that Facebook and Instagram's abusive practices are systematically destroying the mental wellbeing of individuals in the name of perpetual corporate growth, but it's still symptomatic of the age we're living in. 20 years ago, if I had a wireless thing with a rechargeable battery, I could just plug it in and be safe in the knowledge that it would, y'know, charge. Today, apparently, that is not the case. And that seems stupid. Really stupid.

But I guess that's the world we live in now. So, for now at least, we just have to live with the stupidity.

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