I realised that I don’t think I’ve talked about this on this ‘ere blog before, so now’s as good a time as any.
You should consider a mini PC. You know, those little square things that are much too small to put anything in and don’t have graphics cards. Yeah, them. I got this one and it has completely taken over from “the gaming PC” (which is hooked up to the TV in the living room) as my daily driver for work, and also for video capture and streaming. (I still do video editing on the gaming PC, though, because having an actual graphics card is helpful there.)
I’ve been very pleasantly surprised how capable that thing is, even if I continually want to call its brand name “Beedrill” instead of “Beelink”. (I had to look up my order to check.) It’s a nippy little thing when running Windows 11 — which is nowhere near as bad as naysayers think, particularly when you turn off/forcibly remove all the AI shit — and for anything other than bang up to date graphically intensive polygonal games, it performs admirably. It is superb at emulation, for example.
Its small form factor makes it very portable — I now take it to the office when I have to go in, instead of a laptop — and it has plenty of connectivity, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. I’ve added a powered USB hub to mine just for maximum flexibility — I have a lot of things hooked up to it — but if all you need is a wired mouse and keyboard and maybe some additional USB storage, you’re sorted with just the included ports.
I hadn’t even considered mini PCs prior to picking this one up, but when I decided I wanted to move my day-to-day work from home out of the living room and up into my study, something made me give them a look. And I was surprised to read plenty of positivity about them — it seems these little things are quite fashionable at the moment. And, having now owned one since May of this year (it feels like longer already — it’s a fixture now!) I am delighted with how it’s performed and how flexible the damn thing is.
The only thing — besides triple-A gaming — that I’ve found it’s not really up to is simultaneously running a reasonably modern game and recording/streaming it at the same time. It’s fine doing this with emulation — my last few Atari ST videos were done on this machine — but when I thought about streaming UFO 50 a few weeks back, it wasn’t quite up to the job. Which is a shame, but not the end of the world, because I also have an Elgato hooked up to it, so I can just stream/record from other devices such as the 400 Mini, Evercade VS and, soon, Switch — I’ve bought a second Switch dock specifically so I can dock my Switch and stream from it.
So if you’re in the market for a new PC and you know that your uses aren’t going to be super-demanding — and yes, this even includes games, so long as they’re not, like, super-fancy ray-traced gubbins — I can confidently say a mini PC is a good investment. They’re particularly ideal if you want to set up some sort of emulation box or a system primarily used for entertainment — video streaming, music, that sort of thing. They’re small, compact, quiet and, best of all, cheap.
So yeah. That’s my sales pitch. You should consider a mini PC. I’m glad I did!
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.
It’s been nearly a week that I’ve been following the NHS 12-week “Weight Loss” app programme so far, which basically just means I’ve been counting calories for 6 days. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a few things. I’m yet to weigh myself to see if anything has happened as a result of this week as yet — I’ve set “Monday morning after the really long morning piss” as the weekly weigh-in — but as with most things like this, the programme is as much about getting yourself into decent habits as it is about making number go down.
The thing I’ve been most pleasantly surprised about is how possible it is to eat “normally” and enjoyably without breaking the calorie bank. In the last week, I don’t feel like I’ve really had to “give anything up”; when I’ve fancied some crisps, I’ve had some crisps, when I’ve fancied some chocolate, I’ve had some chocolate. The important thing is paying attention to those things and ensuring you don’t do them to excess, and being honest about counting them. As such, even though I’ve had crisps and chocolate and a few other bits and pieces most diets would probably count as “naughty” on some diet plans throughout the week, I’ve still come to the end of each day below the calorie allowance I have.
Now part of this is because I’m a big lad and thus need a few more calories than someone who is normal-sized, but I figure cutting back can be a gradual process. In thinking about what I’m eating and counting the calories, I’m already finding myself thinking “well, I can probably do without that and it will save me 250 calories”. For example, with lunch today I eschewed a bag of crisps and I didn’t really miss them. I suspect long-term I can retrain myself to think that lunchtime doesn’t have to involve a bag of crisps, and thus a bag of crisps can be mentally moved from “expected part of lunch” to “occasional treat”. That seems like a positive step, for sure.
This is a positive move. One of the reasons I have found myself struggling with more “plan-based” approaches in recent years is the feeling that I’m “giving things up” and “missing out” on them. When you specifically rule out certain things from your diet, it turns out that you really crave them. And while when I did Slimming World 10 years or so back I could handle that, this time around I’ve really struggled. And thus it was time to try something different.
As I say, so far it remains to be seen if what I’ve done this week has actually had any tangible effect or if I need to step my efforts up a bit, but from next week I’m planning to start being a little more active again.
Y’see, part of the reason I’m in the state I’m in is due to the COVID years. The whole lockdown thing, coupled with general laziness, caused me to gain a bunch of weight, stop doing any sort of exercise and even start feeling a bit uneasy about going outside generally. That’s not a good place in which to find yourself, so I need to start taking additional steps to sort that out, and getting back into a gym habit will be a good means of doing that.
The reason I haven’t done that this week alongside starting the calorie counting is I did my back in somehow while we were away on holiday, and it’s just starting now to feel like it’s a bit better. I didn’t want to agitate it with exercise, so I’ve been waiting until whatever the problem was appears to have “healed”, and I think it’s pretty much there. So from Monday, I’m going to make an effort to go to the gym at least three times throughout the week.
I think I talked about this elsewhere, but I also plan to not overwhelm myself by suddenly starting a long, intense exercise routine. I’m going to begin by just going and doing, say, 20-30 minutes walking on the treadmill. I have a bit of a mental block where I feel like “just” doing that is a waste of time, but when you’re in the state I’m in, it’s absolutely not. Ideally what I’d want to do is maybe one day 20-30 minutes on the treadmill, then the next day just do the strength training machines, then alternate back and forth between them. That way, over the course of the week, I can end up having done the “recommended” amount of exercise, and I’ll have also done a bit of both cardio and strength.
I don’t yet know if my mental wellbeing and willpower is quite up to that as yet, but it’s something to aim for at least. For now, I’m going to count “went to gym at least three times” next week as a success, and anything more than that is a happy bonus. And that will kick off on Monday, giving me tomorrow to relax a bit, make sure my back is in working order and mentally prepare myself for what’s ahead.
I want to beat this. I know it’s possible, and I know it’s going to be hard work. Right now I’m feeling oddly motivated, so I wanted to put pen to paper and actually express that. Whether I feel the same way on Monday remains to be seen, but these sorts of things always have to be one step at a time, slowly but surely.
And so here I am, taking those slow but sure steps. Here’s hoping they prove to be both worthwhile and sustainable.
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.
I must admit, I am a sucker for Established Brands doing some sort of Limited Edition gimmick. So when I saw the local Tesco Express had refrigerated Pepsi Electric, which is blue Pepsi, I was immediately intrigued and knew I had to indulge in what would almost certainly be an incredibly disappointing experience. Particularly as Pepsi Electric is a zero sugar soda and therefore will almost certainly taste like it has never been near anything that has been anywhere vaguely in the vicinity of “nature”.
But come on, blue Pepsi! What’s not to like? I will now take you on a semi-visual journey of my thought process while exploring this bottle of inevitable disappointment.
Okay, here we go. I have a small degree of trepidation, but I’m sure it can’t be that bad.
Cap off, mild amount of fizz. Promising, inasmuch anything can be promising at this stage of proceedings.
The first sip. I am immediately hit by something almost, but not entirely, unlike Pepsi.
My immediate reaction was pretty much what this face suggests.
“The fuck is this actually supposed to taste of?” It’s “Citrus cola” apparently. It tastes (and looks) a little bit like cleaning fluid. Or, you know, what I imagine cleaning fluid to taste like based on the smell.
Another glug to make sure. Despite my “cleaning fluid” comment above, I’m not completely repulsed by the experience so far.
The initial belch from this bottle is disappointing, both in terms of length and girth.
I continue the assignment. I have, after all, started, so I should finish. I don’t like wasting food and drink I’ve paid money for, even if it’s not something I like. The only exception to this is anything which tastes heavily of raw onion, which will actively repulse me and make me want to throw it away. Thankfully “Onion Pepsi” has so far remained in the purely conceptual stages.
Ladies, try not to get too excited. I am a happily married man. But Pepsi Electric does indeed turn your tongue blue.
A new belch emerges! This one has a little more body to it, but it’s still disappointing compared to fizzier fizzy drinks, particularly in terms of length and overall volume.
At this point, I’m contemplating whether I should rethink my “finish what you start, unless it tastes of onion” policy.
In for a penny…
…in for a pound. I do try and chug the remainder of the bottle in one go, but as with most drinks that are artificial sweetener-forward, I find it difficult to drink a lot at once. Full-sugar Coke or Pepsi I could quite happily down a 500ml bottle in one go (and produce some absolutely thunderous belches afterwards) but this is proving challenging.
Eventually it takes two “chugs” to drain the rest of the bottle, and I am left with a slightly lingering sense of regret.
One final burp. I was hoping this would be “the big one”, but it disappoints.
Final conclusions: not actively unpleasant, but not particularly pleasant, either. Not something I will buy again. As with most “flavoured colas”, I find that the “flavour” actively takes away from the enjoyment of just drinking a cola.
Zero sugar cola — specifically Coke Zero, Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max — has a distinctive flavour that I am on board with. Coke Zero in particular tastes enough like regular Coke that I don’t feel I’m “missing out”. Any time you add some sort of “flavour” atop the basic cola flavour, though — or if you’re just Diet Coke, which is fucking disgusting — you amp up the artificial sweetener taste, which is gross.
Plus there wasn’t nearly enough fizz. When I drink a nice cold bottle of cola, I want to be able to summon up a belch from the very depths of Hell afterwards. The post-Pepsi Electric burps were impotent, however, making the whole experience feel rather underwhelming.
Overall, a resounding shrug of the shoulders and general sense of indifference. 73%
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.
I’ll level with you, dear reader, I don’t really know what to write about tonight, and it’s already twenty past midnight, so I decided I would just start typing and see what came out. I had been looking for inspiration in past blog posts, but ended up just reading them rather than taking any actual ideas from them. It’s times like this that I’m glad I’ve managed to keep this one site up and running for so long — even though it has had a few challenges in the last year in particular.
But anyway. Looking back at the blog posts I wrote more than 10 years ago — I was idly browsing through entries from January 2011 — I found it striking to ponder how some things have very much stayed the same (depression, anxiety, loneliness) and others have changed quite a bit.
In one post, for example, I noted a modest ambition of mine as being able to one day buy a brand-new car. To date, I have done that not once, but twice. Well, kind of. I got roped into one of those hire-purchase schemes because I am not good at talking to salespeople, and when the term on one was concluded, I was faced with either paying up several thousand more pounds to keep the car I’d already paid several thousand pounds into on a month-by-month basis, or switching to another new car and continue paying for that on a month-by-month basis.
Not having several thousand pounds to spare at the time, I chose the latter option, which resulted in me getting a worse car for more money. But at least when that one was up, I did have the money to spare to just finish purchasing it outright. Regrettably, it was due to my inheritance from my last remaining grandparent passing away — thanks, Nan D — but that same car is still sitting comfortably on my driveway and will hopefully last a good few years more yet.
Back in 2011, I don’t think I would have ever contemplated having a nearly-new piano, which I do now. Of course, 2011 was right when I was in the middle of one of the worst periods of my life, having recently separated from my first wife and started enduring what, at the time, I thought was the great indignity of having to move back in with my parents. (My mental state was not good at the time. I mean, it’s not good now, but it was really bad then. I am now, at least, genuinely and honestly grateful for that safety net I had and wouldn’t like to think of what might happened to me had my parents not saved me from a very bad situation. But enough of that for now.)
On the whole, my life in 2024 is in a much better place than it was in 2011. I have a stable job that I like in a field I’m proud to be part of, a decent income, an incredibly supportive and understanding wife whom I love very much, two wonderful cats whom I also love very much, and a game collection that would blow the mind of my teenage self. In terms of general “life situation”, I can’t complain all that much.
But I miss people. As a socially anxious and introverted person, I’m sure that’s not something the me of a decade or two back would have ever thought I’d say, but man. Loneliness fucking blows. And the longer it goes on, the harder it feels like it is to do something about it. There are people I probably could reach out to and attempt to rekindle past friendships, but what does one say in that situation, and via what medium?
I feel like I’ve had about a decade of everyone I know drifting away from me for one reason or another — or perhaps me drifting away from them, or perhaps both — and now I just don’t really know how to handle that. I would like nothing more than to return to the good old days of the “Squadron of Shame” club on 1up.com and our later website and podcast, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin recapturing those good old days — or even if it’s possible to do so.
The one positive thing I’ve found in recent months is that social network BlueSky has a pleasing “early 2010s” Twitter vibe to it right now, and that is gradually helping me to build up a sense of online confidence that has been severely knocked over the course of the last decade or so.
That’s a start, at least, as loathe as I am to rely on a social network website for interacting with people, knowing as I know now that all these services eventually go down the route of enshittification. Real-life, meanwhile, I have a lot more work to do in, as my present physical condition means that I’m afraid and/or ashamed to see anyone I used to know in person because of the amount of weight I gained over the COVID years, so that’s going to be a harder, more long-term project, but, well, I guess I have plenty of time on my hands.
Well, then, how about that. “Nothing to write about,” he says, then goes and rambles on for nearly a thousand words. I guess that’s the approach to take when I can’t think of anything, then. Just sit down and write. That’s what #oneaday has always been about. And that’s what I’ll continue to do.
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.
Now that I’m back from holiday — and had a thoroughly lovely time, aside from apparently putting my back out because I am an old man — it’s time to get serious about the ol’ weight loss. I’m fed up of treading water and making no progress, so I’m trying a bit of a different tack. Slimming World unfortunately hasn’t quite been working for me this time around, so I have instead decided to try the NHS weight loss app. This is pretty much just a glorified calorie tracker, but it has some helpful articles and things that pop up over the course of following a 12-week plan, plus encouragements to check your progress at sensible intervals rather than obsessing over things daily.
I’m also intending to get back into the gym when my back feels a bit better. I have a casual half-plan to alternate cardio and strength training days so I neither overwhelm myself with too much “stuff” on a single day, nor do I feel like I’m “taking up” too much of my personal time with exercise. I know I should consider exercise a valuable use of my personal time, but the reality of the situation is that I’m still in a position where I somewhat resent it. That needs to change, and it’s going to be a gradual process. So establishing a simple, manageable and minimally intrusive routine is what I think will work for me.
Same with the food. I’ve talked a little on here about my experiences with food and why I’ve ended up the way I am, and based purely on anecdotal evidence, I feel like I’m struggling with a kind of “addiction”. Y’see, I’ve seen people struggling with addiction (to substances other than food) and, as unpleasant as it is to think about and admit, I recognise a lot of similar habits in myself.
Where someone with an alcohol addiction can’t resist buying a bottle of vodka from the shop and hiding it upon getting home, “self-medicating” with it in secret even if other people know that’s what they’re doing, I, too, will find myself at the shop telling myself I “deserve” something that is bad for me. Often multiple things that are bad for me, compounding the problem. And I know they’re bad for me, because I’ll inevitably scarf them down before I return home and take care to throw away the evidence of my secret shame before doing so.
And it absolutely is a form of “self-medication”. I eat to relieve all sorts of things. Boredom, sadness, tiredness, loneliness; any sort of vaguely negative emotion, my body’s conditioned response has become “eat something”. And that’s got me into a terrible situation that with every passing day it feels harder and harder to escape from. I’m ashamed of myself and disgusted with myself, and yet still these behaviours persist.
But I am, at least, aware of them. And gradually changing those behaviours is what I’m trying to do with this new, simpler approach. Today I have come in under my calorie goal and still have enough remaining for a nice glass of milk to accompany bedtime. I haven’t accompanied every trip downstairs with a chocolate biscuit or a bag of crisps, and honestly I haven’t really missed them. I had a decent breakfast, a perfectly acceptable lunch and a good dinner, none of which were the depressing sorts of things you read in slimmers’ “success stories”. And approaching things this way has not left me feeling like I’m “missing out” on anything.
Because that was one of the problems I was having with Slimming World this time around. While their plan is effective if you can follow it, if you get into the mindset that you’re “not allowed” certain things, that just leads you to crave them more. And then you indulge those cravings a little bit “because just one won’t hurt”, and before you know it you’re completely sabotaging your own efforts, completely conscious of the fact that you’re doing so.
That’s what happened to me this time around. I had got myself into the mindset that I could “get away” with the odd little “cheat” here and there, but the odd little cheat here and there turned into near-constant cheating, to such a degree that I was actively hampering my own efforts.
And honestly, there is nothing more depressing than reading something like this:
What I used to eat for breakfast:
Bacon sandwich
Fried Egg
Sausage
Beans
2 slices of toast
Large cup of coffee
What I eat now:
Small handful of chia seeds
Berries I foraged from the weeds in the back garden
A couple of twigs
Pond water
It is possible to lead a comfortable, healthy lifestyle without living exclusively off bits of old wood chippings and leaves. It has to be. There are myriad normal people around the world who happily exist on a day-to-day basis, able to enjoy an occasional coffee and a cake and a Tesco Meal Deal for lunch without ballooning to an absurd size. The key, as with anything, is not to do the “treats” to excess. And that is the difficult bit, because treats are delicious and can often induce a temporary feeling of what appears to be happiness and satisfaction
But it’s temporary. Then comes the regret, and the self-loathing, which you end up wanting to… you get the idea.
Anyway. This is a fresh start. Nothing that came before matters. There shall be no guilt, no regret, just determination. I will see how things go from here. It can’t hurt to try.
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.
I finished the Silent Hill 2 remake this evening. Aside from some truly infuriating boss battles towards the end — which is, at least, true to the source material — it was a fantastic, respectful experience that pays wonderful tribute to a horror classic while adding enough mechanical tweaks to make it a bit more palatable to a modern audience. But I don’t want to talk about that today. Instead, I want to talk a bit about fear, because while I was playing Silent Hill 2, I got thinking about things I’ve been irrationally afraid of over the years.
Fear is a strange thing — and, indeed, often irrational, hence the existence of the word “phobia”. I suspect there’s a lot for psychologists to unpack by looking at the things we are irrationally afraid of — or even the things that we feel a bit uneasy about.
When I was a child, I was afraid of quite a few things. The main one was spiders. I still don’t like spiders and will likely do anything in my power to get myself out of a situation involving a particularly large hairy spider, but I have mellowed a little in that regard over the years. That’s a pretty common, boring one though; most people spend at least some time in their life being afraid of spiders, and it’s not a particularly unreasonable fear, I don’t think; while obviously little house spiders aren’t going to do anything to harm you, the aforementioned large hairy spiders can absolutely do some serious damage to you, and thus I think it’s just fine to want to say “fuck that” to all spiders.
A more unusual fear I had was a fear of passing by my bedroom window in the middle of the night. In my childhood bedroom, my bed was in a sort of little “alcove” at the side of the room, and in order to leave the bedroom (to visit the toilet, say) I had to climb out of the alcove and pass by the window. For some reason, I was absolutely convinced that there was something lurking somewhere in the vicinity of that window, so if I needed to get up and go for a wee in the middle of the night, I’d often leap past the window so I spent as little time as possible exposing myself to the unknown evil that was lying in wait.
An equally bizarre fear that I think was related to the window thing was a fear of a plush toy pajama case I owned, known as American Brown Bear, because he was from America and he was a brown bear. I was absolutely fine with American Brown Bear in the daytime, but at night-time I was convinced he was possessed by some unknown evil presence, and I suspect at least one of the things I feared with regard to my bedroom window was American Brown Bear jumping out and “getting” me.
I sort of know where that one came from. And I mean “sort of”, because the thing that I think caused that fear couldn’t have possibly happened, making me think that it was some sort of dream, hallucination or other false memory. Or perhaps it’s an actual memory of something someone did that I’d come to have peculiar associations with. Either way, it’s a strange one. Are you ready?
I was convinced that when American Brown Bear would jump out and “get” me, he would shout “MRS. LINCOLN PUPPIES”. And for some reason, I found this absolutely terrifying, despite it obviously making no sense whatsoever. I have no idea who Mrs. Lincoln is, or indeed why I should care about her puppies — or what American Brown Bear had to do with the puppies, for that matter. But what I do know for sure is that that phrase struck the absolute fear of God into me as a young’un.
For the record, American Brown Bear never “got” me, to my knowledge, and likewise the ancient evil lurking in the vicinity of my bedroom window never showed itself, either. And, as a result, I eventually left those fears behind — particularly once my brother left home and I was able to move into the larger bedroom at the back of the house. The windows in that room weren’t scary.
Another completely irrational feeling — I’m not sure I’d call it a “fear” as such — that I’ve had for as long as I can remember is another oddly specific thing, and that is that I feel distinctly uneasy around toilets with a very high cistern. You know, the kinds you get in sort of Victorian-era houses that have never really been updated; the kind of toilet that looks ridiculous if you draw it, because the cistern is comically high up compared to modern toilets.
I don’t know why I have this sense of unease around them. I don’t know what I think is going to happen. Perhaps it’s more a fear-by-association sort of thing; toilets like this tend to be in old houses, which tend to be in varying states of disrepair and often have lots of spiders lurking in dark corners. Whatever the reason, I don’t like them and will generally avoid having to spend any time in a toilet with a high cistern. I’ll have a wee in one no problem, but I’d rather not go for a poo on a toilet like that. I have no idea why, but that is the reality of the situation.
A related fear that I had as a child which I subsequently got rid of was an irrational fear of extractor fans in bathrooms. Oddly enough, I remember the exact circumstances under which I developed this fear. At the time, my language skills were still developing — I was about 4 or 5 years old at the time — and we were visiting America. My Dad had, I think, been doing some work out there, but because he was out there for some time he was able to bring the rest of the family along. It was a great (and long, from what I recall) trip, during which we took in, among other things, Disney World in Florida.
The reason I mention my language skills developing at the time is because I didn’t know what an extractor fan was called, so I called it a “dotch”. More accurately, an extractor fan which came on when you pulled a cord to turn the light on in a bathroom was a “wim-dotch wib hamdongs”; “dotch”, meanwhile, was a more generic term that could just mean “ominous-looking air vent”, as seen in the bathrooms of my grandparents’ houses.
Anyway, the reason I became frightened of the dotch was because of a Muppets movie we had watched on television. The Muppet Movie, as it happens, and specifically this scene:
Yes, that is Kermit the Frog being put into what is essentially an electric chair — sorry, an “electronic celebrectomy” machine. I found this scene intensely traumatic when I saw it as a kid, and I was horrified to discover that the bathroom light in the motel we were staying at at the time — the Edison Motor Inn, Poughkeepsie, NY, if you were curious — resembled the glowing circular light at the top of the “electronic celebrectomy” machine. For some reason, that then led me to associate the wim-dotch wib hamdongs that came on at the same time as the light with this “electric chair”, which then caused me to be afraid of dotches for a good few years afterwards.
I don’t think I ever told anyone the specifics of that because even then I knew it was a ridiculous association to make in my head — in fact, for many years, I was convinced that I had completely made up the above scene, and wasn’t able to confirm it was real once and for all until YouTube came along. But that’s the thing with irrational fears: they are completely irrational, and make no sense. However stupid you know they are, if they’ve taken a hold, they will still frighten you, even as part of your brain is frantically telling the scared part “you are being ridiculous“. And it seems I was particularly prone to this sort of irrational fear as a kid.
You will be pleased to know that I am no longer afraid of dotches. Spiders, no thanks. Toilets with high cisterns, only if I have to. But dotches? I think I’m fine now. Probably.
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.
We’re back home! Boo! Although honestly, we’re both kind of knackered, so it’s nice to get back home, see the cats and have the prospect of our own bed waiting for us. It’s been a lovely break, and we enjoyed a final dip in the pool before we departed early this afternoon, but now we both need a day or two to get ourselves back in working order for a vaguely normal existence from Monday onwards!
I was pleased to see that my cat Patti has been getting along with my mother-in-law while we were away. Patti is a very shy, scared cat when confronted with anyone other than us, but it seems that she’s learned to trust my mother-in-law over the course of the last few days. The pair have spent some time together before and they had a similar outcome; Patti hid for the first little while, but eventually came out and became quite friendly and sociable once she determined once and for all that there was no threat, and, in fact, there was the distinct possibility of being spoiled with treats.
Oliver, meanwhile, has seemingly had a lovely time. He’s already a very sociable cat, and it sounds as if my mother-in-law has had a nice time playing with him. We reckon he’s probably about a year and a half old at this point, and he still loves to play for hours; we’ll often hear him kicking his toys around well into the early hours of the morning once we’ve gone to bed, and he is showing no signs whatsoever of slowing down just yet.
A few packages arrived while we were away. One was a pair of swimming shorts that I paid for next-day delivery on in the hope that they would arrive before we left; needless to say, they did not, in fact, arrive on the next day thanks to Yodel being fucking idiots. “We need some more information about your address,” they said. “Please contact us.” They did not provide any means of contacting them, so I had to go ferreting through their support pages until I found the dreaded “Live Chat” option, then had to endure the obligatory Indian person with broken English copy-pasting set phrases and platitudes from their handbook, only for the outcome to be “we don’t actually need any information about your address, we just fucked up and didn’t even attempt to deliver it”, which was nice. But at least I have a spare pair of swimming shorts for future excursions, I guess.
The one package I was hoping to arrive hasn’t come yet, though: a box of all the Atari-branded sauces. As someone who enjoys sauce, I’m looking forward to trying these, and I also think it will make a fun video to try them all for the first time on camera, so I’m hoping these will arrive sometime soon. Sadly, they’re not here yet and don’t look like they’ve even been dispatched as yet, so I will have to wait a little longer to learn exactly what Yars’ Revenge tastes like.
Anyway, I’m pooped and my back hurts, so I’m going to bed, in my own bed. I suspect I will not wake up until quite late tomorrow. And that’s fine. I’m technically still on holiday, even though I’m back home. And I intend to continue enjoying that holiday until work starts again on Monday!
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.
It must seem incredibly quaint to people who grew up after a certain point to know that when we wanted to watch something on television, we used to be beholden to an arbitrary schedule that wasn’t decided by us, the viewers.
Sure, pay-per-view and on-demand services existed, but they were often extremely expensive and in some cases still beholden to someone else’s schedule.
Today, of course, if you want to watch something you just call it up from any of the bazillion streaming services available, or raid your network-attached storage that is loaded up with pirated movies you’ve torrented over the course of the last decade.
Streaming services have their own drawbacks, of course, with the two main ones being that there are about as many streaming services as there used to be cable packages, and the dreaded “analysis paralysis”, where being given complete freedom to choose anything often causes you to end up choosing nothing.
The reason I bring this up is because while we’ve been away on holiday, we haven’t had any TV-connected streaming devices with us. And you know what? It’s been kind of nice. We’ve watched a bit of telly while we’ve been here, and it’s just been whatever happened to be on while we wanted to just zone out for a bit. And broadcast television as it exists today is more than happy to cater to this type of viewer.
You know the sort of thing: shows that require zero commitment or even attention, like game shows and reality TV programmes about traffic police. Mindless garbage, to be sure, but somehow to me will always feel less offensive than attention-deficit slop on services like TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Perhaps that’s just my age talking — and to be clear, there’s plenty of broadcast TV I find too offensively awful to even watch as background noise — but everything we’ve watched “by chance” this week feels like something I’ve actually got something from, even if it’s just some general knowledge trivia. I absolutely do not get that from “pov: u ordered a large fish and chips at wetherspoons”.
Anyway, it’s time to go home tomorrow, so it will likely be back to not watching any broadcast TV at home. It’s been a nice change, though, and a reminder that some forms of media still aren’t quite as dead as some people would like you to believe.
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.
Well, I’ve been well and truly hit with the Mandela Effect today.
Earlier, I was playing Maniac Square, a puzzle game by Spanish arcade developer Gaelco. Andie overheard the music and asked, “why does that game have the Blue Peter music?”
“It doesn’t,” I said, absolutely convinced of this fact. Blue Peter, as everyone knows, has Sailor’s Hornpipe (or, to give it its more correct name, College Hornpipe) as its theme. The same one they play at the Proms every year.
Except it doesn’t.
Blue Peter, I have learned, actually uses a tune called Barnacle Bill. It’s similar, but different. Have a listen.
Here’s Sailor’s Hornpipe, with a YouTube thumbnail that resembles the Blue Peter logo, just to add insult to injury:
And here is the Blue Peter theme in one of its more famous incarnations by Mike Oldfield of Tubular Bells fame:
You will hopefully forgive me for getting the two confused. But wait! What’s this?
It’s only bloody Mike Oldfield doing the Sailor’s Hornpipe. And just to confuse matters, his rendition of Barnacle Bill for Blue Peter in the ’80s is often misattributed to being a B-side to Tubular Bells called, you guessed it, Sailor’s Hornpipe. Except that one actually is Sailor’s Hornpipe.
For anyone reading this who isn’t British, I’m sorry. I’m not sure I can adequately explain Blue Peter to you other than to say it was a children’s TV show that, during my childhood at least, made a lot of things involving “sticky-backed plastic”, and occasionally also had wild animals shitting in their studio. It’s also the origin point, for a certain generation anyway, of the phrase “here’s one I made earlier”.
You’re going to go and tell me that isn’t true either now, aren’t you?
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.
Well, that’s our first “full” day of holiday over and done with, and we’ve had a pleasantly relaxing, chilled out day. The temptation when coming somewhere like Center Parcs is to want to be doing stuff all the time, but honestly we’ve had a very nice day today just visiting the swimming pool in the morning, getting some bits and pieces from the shop for lunch and dinner, and then just enjoying hanging out in our lodge.
It’s strange, isn’t it? Even when you’re doing the sort of things you’d usually do at home, they somehow feel more “special” when you’re doing them somewhere out of the ordinary. I had a cheese baguette at lunchtime and it was approximately 48% more delicious by virtue of the fact it was prepared and eaten by me in a forest cabin rather than our house.
The wildlife around here is insanely tame. Earlier in the day, a group of ducks came up to our window and actually started tapping on it. They somehow knew we’d just made sandwiches, and wanted to participate. At other times, we’ve had deer and squirrels come right up to the patio doors, clearly begging. It seems the advice to not feed the wildlife mostly falls on deaf ears. And the wildlife, it appears, is not above being cute in an attempt to get food.
For activities that don’t involve going outside, I decided to play through Ufouria: The Saga on Evercade while I was here, and I beat it earlier today. That was thoroughly satisfying; it’s a great game, and I’m glad I took the time to play it. Perhaps some words on MoeGamer about that one when I get back.
Anyway, it’s now well after midnight and I should probably sleep. No real plans for tomorrow except to have dinner out, and perhaps do some “Adventure Golf”. Toodle pip.
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.
