#oneaday Day 201: A very merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! I hope you've all had a suitably pleasant and relaxing day — or if you're one of those families where your relationship with your relatives is a little strained, that the day has been, at least, tolerable.

It was a nice fairly quiet day at my parents' place and childhood home. We got up, had some breakfast, opened some presents, had some lunch and then settled in for a lazy afternoon. Much of my day was spent playing The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, which I am enjoying very much. I also bought Andie a copy of Super Mario Party Jamboree, and that seems like a lot of fun also. We had a brief game earlier, which I won quite convincingly.

Andie also bought me one of Matt Berry's albums, specifically his one of classic TV themes. I enjoy Berry's work as an actor and comedian but was completely unfamiliar with his musical work. It's very good, and the selection of '70s and '80s tunes is pleasantly nostalgic. I've queued up a playlist of his other albums for us to listen to on the drive home tomorrow.

I hadn't realised he played so many instruments. Besides vocal contributions on tracks which demanded it (mostly the theme from Rainbow) he also plays a wide variety of keyboard and percussion instruments. The album is more than just a fun novelty; it's very listenable.

Anyway, that is that. We don't want to wake up too late tomorrow as we want to get back in good time to see the cats. We've been keeping an eye on them via our security cameras and they seem fine, but I suspect they will be happy to see us. And so on that note, I bid you a fine good night.

#oneaday Day 200: Night Before Christmas

It's a late and short one this evening as we're away from home and the main PCs for Christmas. We're spending Christmas Day and a bit of Boxing Day with my folks, and New Year with my in-laws.

It's a long drive from where we live to my childhood home but we had a remarkably smooth run this evening. I think we successfully managed to time it so that everyone else had thought they'd get their travelling out of the way a bit earlier. Even the accursed M25 was mostly clear.

God, I really fricking hate typing on a phone so this is almost certainly going to be a particularly short entry today, particularly as it's already half midnight.

I guess on that note I should probably say an early "Merry Christmas!" to anyone who happens to be reading right at this moment. I will give you a more enthusiastic festive greeting tomorrow when I'm a bit more awake, presents have been exchanged and we're all full of turkey goodness.

For now then, it is time for the Last Sleep Before Christmas, so to all a good night or whatever.

#oneaday Day 197: Winding down for Christmas

Yesterday was the last working day before Christmas, as I have Monday and Tuesday off next week. I'm technically working between the 27th and the new year, but I somehow suspect not much is going to get done between those dates. I feel like that period should just be public holiday for everyone — and no, not like some places do, where they force you to take some of your holiday allowance to cover that period, even though the whole office is shut.

Anyway, as a result of work being over for now, I have entered into full-on chill out mode. I'm still nursing a cough that has stuck around after a bit of a cold I had recently, but that's on the way out, I think. I was hoping to record a video or two today, but it was making me cough, so I decided to set that aside for the day and just relax. Not every day has to be about doing something "productive", after all. Even though I wrote nearly 3,000 words on my experiences with Super Mario RPG over on MoeGamer. You can read 'em by clicking here!

After the holiday period is over, I'm going to refocus and try and sort out my body, weight and health. Before the end-of-year wind-down, both Andie and I were having some decent success with counting calories using the NHS Weight Loss app, so we're both going to get back to that. I'm sick and tired of feeling like shit, hating the way I look and feeling like there are so many things I can't do, and I want to do something about it. But that's all going to have to come from me, because the attempts I've made to get someone to help me haven't been… well, very helpful.

Slimming World was all right, and I turned back to that because I had some very good success with it quite some time ago. It hasn't been quite as effective for me the last couple of times I've tried, though; the "restrictions" on one's diet start to feel a bit suffocating after a while, even though they take great pains to try and make out that they're not "restrictions". The principle is sound, though — paying attention to what you're putting in your mouth and how much of it — so that's where more straightforward calorie counting comes in.

I also got referred to a weight loss programme by my doctor called, rather patronisingly, "The Weigh Ahead". This was absolutely fucking useless, because I had contact with someone once every two weeks, and it alternated between a bored-sounding nutritionist who gave me such mind-blowing advice as "eat more vegetables" and "eat smaller portions" and an actually quite helpful therapist, who helped me confirm some feelings I've had about why I have got into the state I'm in. Unfortunately, speaking to said therapist once every four weeks wasn't nearly enough to get any productive work done, so the whole thing ended up feeling like a complete waste of time.

So, like I say, this has to come from my own stocks of motivation, dedication and self-control, all of which are in relatively short supply. I'm hoping a nice relax over the holiday period will help re-energise me and allow me to focus on things both personally and professionally, and that 2025 will allow me something of a fresh start.

I know this is the same old bollocks people say every holiday season, but practically speaking, it's a good time to be thinking about this sort of thing. Christmas is inevitably something of an indulgence for us all, and that's absolutely, perfectly fine; it's natural to want to set things straight after such an indulgence. So that's what I intend to do. Zero guilt for anything I enjoy over the holiday season, then face, accept and conquer the consequences thereafter. That sounds like a positive mindset to me!

For this evening, time to melt into the couch and play Paper Mario.

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 196: Migration complete!

We sorted out the problems MoeGamer was having. If you happen to care, the problem I was having was this: the site itself appeared to be working just fine, but a number of image links were broken, the Media Library appeared to be full of empty images and attempting to hotlink to files that I knew were there was throwing a 404 "Not Found" error.

The solution was surprisingly simple. On my former Bluehost account, MoeGamer was hosted in a subdirectory of the public_html folder, and the domain name had been pointed to that subdirectory as its document root. That means if you went to moegamer.net, it would assume you meant "[the address of my hosting]/public_html/[the subfolder name]" rather than just the more conventional "[the address of my hosting/public_html/".

The problem stemmed from the fact that once my domain had been mapped to my Zume hosting instead, the document root was set to public_html rather than the subfolder, and that meant it wasn't quite looking in the right place for lots of things — most notably images hosted on the site that weren't being delivered via content delivery network, and plugins for WordPress.

The solution was simple: move all the MoeGamer files out of that subfolder into public_html and now everything is sorted and working as it should do. I'm glad; I was worried this was going to be a whole palaver to fix, but it turned out to be something pretty simple. It's just fortunate that I spotted the discrepancy when I did; I had a feeling Bluehost had done something "non-standard" when I hosted my sites with them, so I followed a hunch and it turned out to be correct.

I have little doubt that the guy helping me from Zume's support desk would have figured it out before long, though. Zume's customer service during this whole migration has been absolutely exemplary. And because they promise "same-day migration" but were unable to achieve this with Bluehost's dumbass setup, they've given me a free month of hosting as compensation. I didn't ask for this nor did I indicate I was in any way dissatisfied with their service; they just gave it to me. Top-notch stuff.

I know this was a whole faff, but hopefully I won't have to do it again for a while. Fingers crossed that Zume 1) sticks around and 2) doesn't get bought up by the company that made Bluehost (who used to be good!) shit. And in the meantime, I feel like both this site and MoeGamer have seen a significant performance increase, which is great.

Anyway, with that nonsense over, I can perhaps get back to more regular updates over on MoeGamer. I have a few games that I want to write about, but I've been holding off while all this was sorted. Perhaps I shall be spending some time writing tomorrow!

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#oneaday Day 193: Migration woes

I was suspicious when the new hosting provider I've signed up with, Zume, offered "same-day migration" — not because I doubted their abilities, but because I doubted my current/prior host, Bluehost, would make it in any way easy to get everything off their servers and onto someone else's.

Turns out I was correct. Migrating a complete website setup like mine should be a case of going into cPanel and exporting something called a "cpmove" archive, which contains everything about the website: all its content, all its configuration, everything. Naturally, this is only something you can export yourself on a more expensive plan than I'm on, leading to multiple conversations with support people via a bloody chat interface, during which they consistently failed to understand what I was asking of them, despite me spelling it out to them very clearly and repeatedly.

The first time they ran the export, it seemingly worked correctly and created an archive, but said archive was, for some reason, faulty — and in the meantime, it had filled up my hosting account's storage space. So I then had to delete that and spend another couple of hours waiting for the person on the other end of the chat to run another export, only for them to first of all misunderstand the fact that I wanted to export two websites (this one and MoeGamer) not just this one, and then to completely miss the whole "cpmove" part.

Thankfully, the representative from Zume that I've been dealing with has been inordinately patient throughout this entire process, and has been keeping me informed on progress. It seems that he will be able to complete the migration without the "cpmove" part, it'll just take a bit longer to get things set up. I'm fine with this; I'm not in a rush to get it done, so I'd rather it be done right than done fast.

Self-hosting your own website certainly gives you more flexibility than being locked in to something like WordPress.com — to say nothing of the inherent risks of hosting your entire website on someone else's service — but man, it is a pain in the arse when something like this happens. And make no mistake: this is happening because Bluehost are deceptive fuckers who gave absolutely no indication when I signed up that their prices were going to increase this much after a year. We're talking an increase from about £60 to nearly £300. Absurd. And I bet they count on people just thinking "eh, I can't be bothered to fix it, so I'll just pay up".

Well, no. I'm not paying up. I'm looking forward to hitting the big red "CANCEL" button when all my sites are successfully transferred over, and here's hoping that Zume lasts at least a few years before enshittifying itself, too.

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#oneaday Day 191: Moving online home again?

Annoyingly, it's looking like I'm going to have to uproot this here site and MoeGamer yet again, because my current host has increased the annual price of hosting by literally about four times over the supposedly "introductory" offer I wasn't aware that I was on. Reading around, it seems this company — Bluehost, 'cause I'm going to name and shame — is notorious for doing this, and I am just the latest of many people to fall foul of it. So don't use Bluehost.

Thankfully, I have seen a few recommendations floating around, and I think the one I'm probably going to go with is Zume. This is a UK-based hosting service that comes particularly recommended by the nerds on r/webhosting, plus they supposedly do a free complete migration and you can pay monthly — though of course, as always, it works out more expensive to do that than paying for a year or two up front. Honestly, I think I'd rather have a predictable £10 a month than £X every year or two, though, as that's much easier to budget for.

I'm probably going to start the process for this going tomorrow. Supposedly they'll get the whole shebang done same-day, but it remains to be seen if that actually is the case. This is, I guess, then, your official warning that there may be some unexpected downtime both here and on MoeGamer at some point in the next couple of days.

I wish I didn't have to do this, as moving "online home" is almost as frustrating as having to move your real home. Granted, there's a lot less putting things in boxes and cleaning, but there's still a laundry list of things you need to remember to do — and inevitably an equally as long list of things that you have already forgotten that you need to do. But, well, I'm not paying nearly £300 for a year's web hosting, because that is daylight fucking robbery. £10 a month? Fine. I am 100% okay with that.

Here's hoping that 1) Zume sticks around for the long term, 2) Zume doesn't get eaten by a big corpo that jacks up prices to an absurd degree and 3) the whole migration process goes smoothly. Fingers crossed, and further updates as events warrant.

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#oneaday Day 190: My most confusing relationship

I think sufficient years have probably elapsed since this was a thing that I can probably talk about it without repercussions. If, on the off-chance, the subject of today's post happens to read this… uh, sorry? But you really confused me foe a while, and I think I want to talk about that.

I am, to put it politely, not someone who has had a lot of luck with women over the years. It's probably more accurate to say that I was not someone who had a lot of luck with women over the years, given that I am happily married, but hopefully you get what I mean. There were not many notches on my bedpost before I settled down.

Probably my most confusing relationship began during my first year at university. I had joined the university Theatre Group, and, while I felt quite awkward around a lot of its members still, I had enjoyed being part of a production of "The Scottish Play", and my involvement with the group only grew after that first year.

It was around Christmas time in my first year at university. The Theatre Group had hosted a nice meal down at a restaurant on the Southampton waterfront that doesn't exist any more, and somehow — I genuinely cannot remember how — I had become engaged in conversation with a young woman I hadn't encountered prior to thar evening. I shall spare her real name for the sake of privacy, so let's call her X.

As I say, I don't remember the exact circumstances of how we got talking, but I do remember that the evening concluded with me walking her back to her halls of residence, having a good snog and exchanging phone numbers. It was nice. Although in the intervening years, I have attempted to recall where her halls of residence were — they weren't one of the more "well known" ones in Southampton — and am not entirely sure they exist any more, or indeed if they ever did.

Regardless, I thought that was a pretty swell way to end an evening, and as such we made arrangements to see one another again. With Christmas coming up, I also bought her a small gift — in retrospect, probably too much too soon — which took the form of a small cuddly gorilla because, I believe, she had at some point indicated that such things were cute.

Not long after providing said gift, I was unceremoniously dumped via text, and I thought that was that. Except it wasn't. What it actually was I don't really know, aside from the fact that it really was jolly confusing for… probably three or four years in total.

We took a trip to London together and went to see an art film called Intimacy which had a lot of naked cocks in it, and we held hands throughout the film. She came to the house I was renting on several occasions, and we shared a fair few moments of intimacy, though something always felt a little awkward and off a out them — probably my fault for feeling disbelief that anyone would ever want to do such things with me. And we texted a lot.

I don't remember much of what we talked about, but we did text one another a lot. Initially, because I was quite confused about the nature of our relationship and not quite sure if I should push things, I wasn't quite sure how to act. But over time, I came to feel like I was enjoying these messages — if secretly dreading any time someone would ask "who've you been texting all evening?" and not really having a coherent answer.

There have been times over the years where I wonder what might have been there. There have been times where I have wondered if I missed a great opportunity. And there have been times when I think back on that whole situation and still have absolutely no idea what to make of it all.

So here's to you, X. Our time together may have confused the fuck out of me — and indirectly taught me that communicating clearly is probably the best basis for a solid relationship, even if it can be difficult at times — but I certainly think back on it fondly.

As the fat disgusting mess I am today, I think I'd probably be ashamed to show you what became of me, but 20 years ago? You certainly made life interesting for quite some time, to be sure.

#oneaday Day 189: A story from last night

I promised you a story from last night, didn't I? I'm afraid it's not super interesting, nor does it involve me personally getting into a hilariously embarrassing situation, but it was a noteworthy part of the evening nonetheless.

For our Christmas do, we started at a cocktail bar in Covent Garden called, inexplicably, Blame Gloria. While we were there, we were taught some basic drinks-pouring skills and also taught how to make a few different cocktails: a Zombie, a passion fruit Martini, and a Blow Job.

It was fun, though everyone retrospectively agreed that starting drinking at 3pm when a significant number of us are the wrong side of 35 was perhaps a misstep, but anyway.

After the cocktails, we took a wander over to a relatively nearby place called The Piano Works, where we were going to have dinner and some more drinks. I did not enjoy this place very much; the food was good (apart from some sprouts with the turkey dinner that were as hard as golf balls) but it was so very loud.

I realise this makes me sound like the worst kind of old man, but as an autistic person I can be quite sensitive to noise at the best of times, and I think my absolute least favourite noise is the sound of a crowd of people all shouting in a futile attempt to have conversations in a room where the ambient noise level is far too loud to make this in any way practical.

In other words, the music was too loud, which meant everyone was yelling, and I found that exceedingly unpleasant. That is not the story; it is just context.

Anyway, after we'd had our food and had sat for a bit, we were ushered on our way so the next bookings could have our table. Several of us headed straight for the door; a few others went via the toilets. I was part of the former group.

After a few minutes, it became clear that the toilet group were not emerging. It didn't take long to discover why: the doors to the bar burst open and out came a screaming, crying woman that several people — both bar staff and friends, from what I could understand of the situation — were having trouble calming down.

"GET YOUR 'ANDS OFF ME!" she screeched. "YOU'RE BEING FUCKIN' 'ORRIBLE TO ME! I 'AVEN'T DONE NOTHING WRONG!"

This sequence of phrases repeated itself over and over for a few minutes, then she added "I WANNA SEE A POLICEMAN" to the mix. She was furious about something, but I couldn't really work out what. She was angry at the bar staff and the people who were presumably her friends, but primarily for them taking her out of the bar; I could not glean what the situation actually stemmed from. I suspect it was just "she was being a little too drunk" and she had been encouraged to move on.

The screeching and wailing went on for a good ten minutes or so, during which time the few of us who had managed to escape were ushered a little way down the hallway to get away from any potential "incidents". Someone finally managed to do something to calm her down, though, and by the time she finally tottered down the stairs and into the street, supported on either side by the people I assume to be her friends, she was giggling.

The whole scenario was a tad unsettling to watch, to be perfectly honest. I know this sort of thing tends to make for "funny stories", and immediately after these things happen, everyone tends to just sort of shake their head, go "bloody hell" and then attempt to make light of the situation, but it can be quite scary to be in the vicinity of something like that happening. It felt like there was quite a real risk of the screeching woman becoming violent, so kudos to whoever it was (and whatever they did) that managed to calm her down a bit.

I've been absolutely trollied in my younger days — I tend to stop well before I become foolish nowadays, on the rare occasions I do drink, because the depression tends to hit first — but I don't think I've ever been in such an absolute state.

Well, there may be one possibility. The only time I've been drunk and had absolutely no memory of what I did was on my brother's stag night many years ago, when I supposedly got so hammered (underage, too) I was sick on a waiter's shoes. I have no memory of this, though I do very much remember the hangover (my first, in fact!) the following day.

Even then, though, I don't think I ended up screeching and yelling at people. One might argue yakking on a waiter's shoes is worse than that. My situation probably also made people around me feel a tad unsafe, and I should probably be grateful to my Dad, who I believe is the one who managed to get me back to the place we were staying safely.

This ended up being about me after all, heh. Well, I don't make a habit of being like that any more. That was a very long time ago, and, as I say, I tend not to drink much now anyway. And when I do, I tend to find "sad drunk" hits faster than "silly drunk" these days. Which is a bit of a shame, but probably something we all need to come to terms with as we get older.

So that's my story. It may not have been super exciting, but I hope it painted a bit of a picture of my experience with London nightlife!

#oneaday Day 188: Afterparty

Work Christmas do today. We started at 3pm so I was pretty much tapped out physically and mentally by 7pm, so I'm now safely ensconced in my Travelodge room.

This does, of course, mean that I won't have any particularly embarrassing stories to share — unless you count tapping out early as "embarrassing", in which case, get over yourself, some of us can't handle more than a few hours in a noisy environment without our synapses frying — but I do have something else to share thanks to stopping in at a dodgy off-license on the walk from King's Cross station to the hotel.

Dessert Skittles! I wasn't going to let a novelty like that just slip past unnoticed, so it's time for an impromptu taste test. Here are the supposed flavours, as outlined by the packaging:

If that's hard to read, we are promised Cherry Cheesecake, Choco-Orange Cake, Blueberry Tart, Lemon Pie and Strawberry Ice Cream. Let's get crackin' with the snackin'!

Cherry Cheesecake: Very cherry-y, which is not a flavour I typically associate with Skittles. Not actively unpleasant, though. There's a strange aftertaste — which I assume is supposed to be the "cheesecake' part — that doesn't quite work for me, but on the whole, these are Pretty Okay.

Choco-Orange Cake: The first one of these I tried, I didn't like at all, because it just tastes like an orange Skittle gone wrong. Orange Skittles already exist, after all, and are good. It's the "choco" part that is the problem, particularly as the "choco" and "cake" part of the equation are added without any real chocolate or cake being involved. A second go made this one much more palatable, though, so don't give up on these if the first one tastes a bit funny.

Blueberry Tart: An actually pretty convincing blueberry flavour. No real trace of the "tart" part, but who cares? Skittles are about the fruit flavours. Like the cherry ones, blueberry isn't a flavour I would typically associate with Skittles, but it works. Probably the best so far.

Lemon Pie: This is another example of them taking a Skittles flavour that already exists and making it slightly worse, this time by adding a slight meringue flavour. Not the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth, but just straight up lemon Skittles are indisputable better.

Strawberry Ice Cream: And another instance of messing with arguable perfection. These are the red Skittles, but slightly worse. Again, not actively unpleasant, but not as good as the regular flavours.

On the whole, then, Desserts Skittles are a resounding Not Bad. I don't think I'd grab them again if regular Skittles were also on offer, but they're not going in the bin, let's put it that way. Nope, they're going in Mr Tums to soak up some of the many cocktails from earlier while I watch some garbage on TV.

Thank you for indulging me this fine evening. I do have a story I can tell about this evening (that isn't about our group) but I'll save that for tomorrow. For now, comfy bed, sugary snacks, chronic flatulence and trash TV. Good night!

#oneaday Day 187: Anxious mess

I've been an absolute ball of pent-up anxiety for… probably a few days this week, if I'm honest, but it's been particularly bad today. As is often the case when I find myself getting panicky, there isn't really a concrete root cause of it, but there are plenty of factors that haven't helped.

I'm having one of those times where everything just feels a bit overwhelming, and I feel like I can never quite get "on top" of things. It's not necessarily having too much to do or think about, more a disproportionate sense of how "important" everything is.

The rational part of my brain knows that nothing I'm presently fretting about is important or worth worrying over, but when your brain enters panic mode, none of that matters; it just builds and builds and builds until you feel ready to burst.

Like, right now I'm typing this on my phone and the inaccuracy of the keyboard is winding me up way more than it would do under normal circimstances.

I think being ill hasn't helped matters. Part of what I've been worrying about is whether or not I would be better enough to attend tomorrow's work Christmas activities. They should be fun, but they're also filling me with a certain amount of trepidation and social anxiety, and worrying over whether or not I'd be well enough to attend has just been making me feel worse.

But I'm going to try and clear my mind, get some sleep, then go and enjoy myself tomorrow. I get to take a trip to London, then enjoy making cocktails, a nice dinner and then some evening drinking and socialising. And no worrying about travelling back late from London, as we have a hotel laid on for us. So that will be nice.

It will be nice. There's no need to worry. Then at the weekend I get to go see my brother because he's making one of his occasional trips across the pond back here, and see my parents for a bit (prior to seeing them again at Christmas!)

Everything will be fine. I just need to keep telling myself that. None of what I have just outlined is any reason to be uneasy, scared or anxious. So I just need to calm down, chill out, relax and sleep.

So let's see if I can achieve at least one of those.