Category: Not Games

1319: The Fine Art of Working from Home Without Going Mental

The title of this post would probably suggest that I am something more of an authority on this subject than I actually am, but I do at least have the benefit of experience to draw from when talking about this.

Working from home may sound like an absolute dream come true, but it can be surprisingly challenging, particularly from a motivational perspective. I’m fortunate in that I like my job and enjoy doing it; if I was doing something less enjoyable like, say, the audio typing for insurance companies that I did for one dark summer, I’d probably be feeling less positive about things.

That’s not to say that even with a job you enjoy, working from home isn’t fraught with distractions from all angles, ranging from something as simple as a desire to go and get yet another coffee to the myriad procrastination tools The Internet offers.

I think the most difficult thing to deal with, though, is the fact that there’s no-one else around. I’m not a particularly “social” person, as you know, and struggle with small talk, especially with people I don’t know all that well. However, that’s not to say that I don’t necessarily enjoy company; on the few occasions I’ve been down to the Eurogamer offices in Brighton, I’ve enjoyed being around other people doing the same things I’m doing, even if most of them spent most of the day with headphones on, immersed in their own work. It was nice to just be around others, and to be able to jump in to occasional conversations.

In order to counter the loneliness thing, I often make a point of going out, even if it’s just to the local coffee shop. (I’ve been there so often now that the staff recognise me, though I’ve stymied their attempts to pigeon-hole me with a “usual” by regularly ordering different drinks.) I find that it’s quite pleasant to change environment and do some work with other people around, even if I don’t have anything to do with them directly. There’s just a nice atmosphere; a sense of comfort, of not being alone. Weird, I know, but true.

It’s not an ideal situation, of course — it’s over half a mile of walking to get to said coffee shop, and then when I’m there I’m expected to, you know, actually buy something, which costs money, but eh. I can take the rough with the smooth.

Perhaps what I should actually do is open up a coffee shop in my living room so there can be people milling around at all times while I do my work. But that sounds like an awful lot of effort, frankly.

Eh. There’s no easy answer, and I’m not sure I’m even looking for an “answer” — I think, on balance, I’d rather be doing what I’m doing from home than feeling my life slowly being sucked out of me by a traditional office job.

I’ll leave you with this Mitchell & Webb sketch, which pretty much sums things up rather nicely.

1317: Never Gonna Dance Again

Aug 27 -- yayWe went to a wedding today — that of our friends George and Mitu — and it was a pretty spectacular affair. Given their respective families’ diverse cultural and religious backgrounds (civil ceremony, followed by Islamic blessing, plus traditional Bengali and Ukrainian ceremonies, plus some Greek dancing somewhere along the way), there was a hell of a lot going on all day. I wouldn’t expect anything less from this particular couple; one of many complimentary things I can say about them is that they certainly don’t do things by halves.

As the evening session got underway, though, I found myself becoming contemplative, specifically with regard to the matter of dancing. I have never been a particularly good dancer, though when I first started university all it generally took to actually get me on the dance floor was a few vodka and Red Bulls. These days, though… I just can’t do it. I can’t bring myself to do it at all, and I find that fact a little distressing.

It’s not that I particularly want to dance, see — I think dancing is, on the whole, one of the more ridiculous things the human race has decided is a good way to spend its time — but it’s more the wider picture: over the last few years I’ve become very conscious of the fact that I find it very difficult to outwardly express joy in any form, whether that’s simply through saying something positive, “acting” excited or doing something typically associated with joyfulness like, say, dancing.

The precise reasons for this state of mind elude me somewhat, though I have more than a few suspicions that it’s something to do with either or both of the two related issues that are depression and self-esteem. Whenever I feel like I’m being “pressured” to act excited or joyful, I just clam up and feel horribly embarrassed; like if I do outwardly display some form of excitement or joy, people will immediately call it out for being “fake” or something. Perhaps “fake” isn’t the right word; it just doesn’t feel “right” to do or express these things. I can’t quite pin down if it’s a sense of feeling like I don’t “deserve” to feel these things — I don’t think it’s that — or whether it’s just a sense of embarrassment at being anything other than the stony-faced dude in the corner of the room.

I think it’s also something to do with social pressure. I have no problem with being excited when I’m by myself (ooer) and, as regular readers will note, I also have no problem with expressing excitement for something via the medium of the written word. But place me in a situation where I’m supposed to be acting excited? I can’t do it. I feel like people are judging me and will somehow not believe that I’m happy or excited if I don’t do it “enough” — ironically, though, this often makes me do some sort of half-hearted Fluttershy-style “yay” rather than genuinely act excited, which probably leads to the exact issue I’m afraid of.

(Incidentally, that whole “yay” scene with Fluttershy is absolutely, positively, 100% the reason why I love that show so much. I absolutely am her, in more ways than one.)

Sooooo. Yeah. If something cool happens to you, that’s great. I really am happy for you. If I don’t appear to be showing it on my face, however, it’s nothing personal. It’s just the way I am.

Yay.

1316: Get Hype

I’ve written about this on at least one occasion before, but the fact that Breaking Bad is on television again has reminded me of the curiously inverted effect that hyperbole has on me. In other words, the more people waffle on about how amazing something is, the less I want to pay any attention to it whatsoever. I’ve long since muted everything to do with Breaking Bad for this reason, as it’s completely dulled any enthusiasm I might have once had for something that is — by most accounts — very good.

Breaking Bad is a curiously extreme example of what I’m talking about. It’s doubly infuriating because everyone posting about it on social media is also being incredibly conscious of spoilers — Breaking Bad fans hate spoilers — and thus what we end up with at the time a Breaking Bad episode is broadcast is a string of tweets that say absolutely nothing. To be more precise, they tend to be nothing but a string of tweets of people going things like “OH MY GOD” and “WOW” which has absolutely no meaning whatsoever to those who aren’t watching the show.

Now, I’ll grant that Twitter provides a reasonably practical means for Breaking Bad fans to get together and discuss the show — or, more accurately, “react” to it in real-time — but it really doesn’t inspire anything like in-depth discussion, and thus I have to question the value of doing this, particularly as it has several knock-on effects: 1) people who don’t like Breaking Bad get pissed off 2) people who might have wanted to watch Breaking Bad at some point get fed up and decide they don’t really want to watch it until everyone shuts the fuck up about it and 3) the people who are actually watching Breaking Bad are only giving the show half their attention because they’re flip-flopping back and forth between the TV screen and their phone.

I tried the “livetweeting” experience a couple of years back when I got vaguely into The Apprentice. I picked up a few followers in the process and found some entertaining people, too, but it really wasn’t worth it; the number of people who got irritated at it didn’t really make up for the people I “met” in the process, and the interactions I was having with others who were “reacting” to the show in real time were superficial at best. I didn’t find it particularly valuable, in other words; certainly no more so than sitting around watching a show with friends in the same room, which is something I don’t tend to do — TV, for me, tends to be an accompaniment to something else (like eating dinner) rather than an activity in itself.

More than the fact I didn’t find it particularly valuable socially, though, I just found it frustrating to do — if I was tweeting while watching, I found myself unable to concentrate on what was going on on the screen, so eventually I gave up, much to the relief of my Twitter followers.

Ultimately, it’s your Internet; if you want to “ooh” and “aah” at Breaking Bad while it’s on, feel free — I simply reserve the right to mute your ass if you do it too much!

Grump over. Time to go to a pre-wedding celebration.

1313: Whew

Aug 23 -- End of the WeekThat’s what’s felt like a very long week over and done with. And I’m happy to see the back of it. It’s been tiring and stressful, though I’m not entirely sure why; nothing really specifically stressful or distressing has happened as such, it’s just been… bleh.

I haven’t had particularly restful sleep all week; that’s part of the problem, I think. We appear to be bang in the middle of Flying Things That Like to Bite You About the Arse, Legs and Arms season. I’m not sure exactly what form said Flying Things That etc. are taking this particular year, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard mosquitoes at the very least. Bastard things.

Trouble is, it’s at that frustrating sort of temperature where if you shut the windows it’s too warm, open the windows and it’s slightly too cold (plus Flying Things That etc. come in uninvited), put a fan on and you wake up with a mouth like a badger’s been sticking its arse in it all night long.

I’m not sure why I’m telling you all this. I think my brain has just plain shut down for the weekend, suggesting that I should attempt to get some sleep and hopefully feel a bit fresher in the morning. After all, it is Final Fantasy day tomorrow — Early Access for Final Fantasy XIV starts tomorrow, which I’ve been looking forward to a lot.

I levelled my Thaumaturgist class to 20 — the level cap for the recent open beta — and made a start on the Weaver crafting class. I’m torn as to what to do when I get back in, though; should I start a new class, or carry on developing the ones I’ve already been working on? I haven’t tried a “Disciple of the Land” gathering class at all yet, and I’ve been curious to.

I guess I don’t even have to decide if I don’t want to. That’s one of the nice things about the new game; once you’ve reached level 10 in your starting class and completed the appropriate quest, you can then switch classes whenever you want simply by swapping out your weapon. This is absolutely ideal for situations where you want to play with friends who are perhaps just starting out in the game — I’d be able to swap to a class I haven’t levelled at all and help them out from the very beginning. For situations where that isn’t practical, the Level Sync function artificially limits your level in situations like dungeons and boss battles to ensure you’re never overpowered and that you always have a decent challenge to take on.

Incidentally, if any of you reading this are planning on playing the game and want to meet up with me, my character’s name is Amarysse Jerhynsson (naturally) and she calls the Ultros server home. Depending on how many of my colleagues at USgamer I manage to rope into joining me, I may start an official USgamer Linkshell on that server; in the meantime, I’m part of the Giant Bomb Linkshell and will continue to be part of that once the game goes live. (A Linkshell is basically a global chat channel; not quite a guild, but a means of a group of people to communicate with one another. FFXIV does have “guilds” in the form of Free Companies, too; a single character can be in one Free Company and, I think, eight Linkshells at once.)

I’m just rambling now. I’m off. Good night all.

1312: Hoarding

Aug 22 -- HoardOccasionally I look around and wonder why I keep some of the crap I do.

I’m actually not that much of a hoarder — I’ve been fairly ruthless about throwing useless crap out on several occasions, usually when moving house — but there are some thing that, over the years, I just haven’t been able to bring myself to part with.

One of the things that’s stayed with me for over half my life now — well, several things, really, if we’re being picky — is my old school work. Not all of it — reading through old school books would make me cringe — but some of it. Most notably, I appear to still have most of my coursework assignments from A-Level Sociology (and possibly GCSE Integrated Humanities, too), all my course notes from A-Level English Language and I even found one of my GCSE (or possibly A-Level… I forget) Music compositions the other day — a piano piece called “The Storm” that I momentarily contemplated giving a French title (“L’Orage”, which I’m not even sure is grammatically correct) before mentally punching myself in the face with a silent admonishment to not be so fucking pretentious.

The aforementioned English Language notes actually moved binders during the course of my studies, but I still have the previous ring binder they were in before they got a bit too… big. Said smaller binder was decorated on the inside covers by my friends and I (mostly me) with a series of fake classified advertisements, many of which are in-jokes that I can still remember but which, going by past experience attempting to resurrect them with my old school friends, are probably remembered by only me. For example, I can remember exactly whom the advert “Ninja Assassin Wanted to Eliminate Annoying Twat in English Class” refers to; likewise, I remember who the phone number for the adjacent “Ninja Assassin for Hire” panel belonged to. Other jokes are a little more obvious: an advert inviting people to acquire fake identification to get served in pubs by writing to the local police station (postcode PE19 999, obviously); an advert for a new book called “How to Use Windows 95 Without Getting in a Stress” (judged “indispensible” by the Daily Mail, apparently); Poppets offering a new “Rabbit Poo” flavour.

Interestingly, the inside cover of my English Language folder also marks an instance of Capitalising Things to Make Them Sound Like Official Things that predates TVTropes by a good few years, and also displays a convincingly large amount of evidence that I held some sort of deep-seated grudge towards Cambridgeshire Careers Guidance for some inexplicable reason. It’s also quite magnificently dated by the references made throughout the adverts — the ad for the fictional PC product Mr Volpe’s MATHS! Is Not Boring… Honest proudly boasts of “16-bit colour video starring Mark Hamill and Patrick Stewart” and “music by Oasis” along with the fact it’s “powered by Id’s Quake Engine”; meanwhile the Hanson Interactive CD-ROM apparently came with “tickets to see Hanson live, a working sniper rifle with live ammunition (for use at concert) and actual footage of band members being dismembered horribly” (with no apparent realisation that if they’d already been recorded being dismembered then there’d be no-one to shoot at the concert).

It is, in short, a rather eye-opening glimpse into my psyche from when I was around 15. I’m not sure it’s a healthy image, but eh. It helped make me the person I am to– WAITAMINUTE

Photo on 22-08-2013 at 23.08

1306: Mark Book

My brain occasionally lapses into childhood when I contemplate looking at comment sections, because, as full of cretins as they sometimes are, comment sections are the modern-day equivalent of the red (sorry, green — red’s too aggressive) pen scribblings your teachers would scrawl after your assignments at school.

Imagine if the two scenarios were reversed, though. That’d be weird, wouldn’t it? Get your maths homework back with “lol fake and gay” written after it; read a New Statesman article and discover the entire comment section is nothing but people writing variations on “You have the beginnings of a good argument here, but your overuse of the word ‘problematic’ displays a disappointing lack of creativity that ultimately hurts the piece’s credibility. See me to discuss.”

Actually, I think in the latter case, that’d probably be preferable, to be honest.

I joke, but I do genuinely feel like I’m being “marked” when I see that there are comments on things that I’ve posted. In some senses, when you put something up for public perusal — particularly on something with a wider audience than this teeny-tiny personal blog — you are being marked, particularly if you’ve written something contentious.

A lot of writing on the Web is designed to persuade people of something or other, whether that’s that the reader should go and buy Gone Home (you probably should) or that the art in Dragon’s Crown is going to bring about the downfall of society as we know it (it’s probably not), and as such when someone feels compelled to leave a comment, they’re going to be going through your arguments, deciding whether or not they agree with them and then leaving their “judgement” on the piece. If someone agrees with you, it’s like getting a nice big tick, a “Good.” and a gold star; if someone disagrees with you — particularly if they do so aggressively — it’s like not only having a lengthy teacher comment that you hope your parents don’t catch a glimpse of, but it’s like having that comment publicly read out to the rest of the class.

Except there’s one key difference between comments and marks — comments are (theoretically, anyway) a dialogue; marks from your teacher are a one-way thing. (At least they were when I was at school; I wouldn’t be at all surprised if modern education invited pupils to “respond” to their teacher’s comments and/or “appeal” if they didn’t feel they’d been treated fairly.)

That’s a pretty big difference. Even if someone gives you a “bad grade” through a negative comment or a complete disagreement/dismissal of your opinion, you can attempt to engage with that person and start a conversation. Sometimes interesting discussions can arise; other times, utterly pointless shouting matches can result, leaving you wishing you’d never written the fucking thing in the first place.

Are comments valuable? There’s no easy answer to that question. I don’t think they’re valuable in all circumstances — it’s extremely rare to find a helpful YouTube comment, for example, and comments left on Facebook are 95% pointless, regardless of whether they’re left on personal posts or adverts — but at other times they can be the source of thought-provoking discussion and even the fostering of friendships. (Comments on this site have certainly fallen into that latter category, which I’m happy about, and over on USgamer we’ve mostly enjoyed respectful, well-considered discussion and debate from our commenters so far, which is immensely encouraging to see.)

Would the Internet be a better place without comment sections? Quite possibly; but it would also remove a lot of the ability to converse and engage with things that we take for granted today. So, for better or worse, they’re clearly here to stay.

Just remember to give your favourite writers a good mark every now and then!

1305: Kiss Kiss

Okay. After mentioning it the other day in my lengthy post about hentai, I feel compelled to talk a little more about the anime KissXSis, since I’ve watched a few more episodes of it now and am about halfway through the complete run.

KissXSis is, let’s not mess around here, not a fine work of art. I am finding it entertaining, certainly, but I question as to whether or not it’s “good”. It’s certainly not something that everyone would appreciate, given that it’s riddled with gratuitous fanservice throughout and actually gets a whole lot racier in certain episodes than I thought it was going to.

Speaking completely honestly and frankly, though, this is quite refreshing in a strange sort of way. It’s a show that has absolutely no shame whatsoever — in its subject matter; in its gleeful celebration of eroticism; in its acknowledgement that teenagers — both male and female — are horny little fuckers. While I’m well familiar with this side of Japanese culture from eroge, this is, I think, the first show that actually goes noticeably further in this direction than others I’ve seen.

Let’s back up a mo just in case you’re unfamiliar with this series — and let’s face it, unless you’ve specifically sought it out for one reason or another, you probably are. (I’m actually fuzzy on exactly how I came across it in the first place, to be honest; I think I may have stumbled upon it on a fansub site or something.)

KissXSis is a slice-of-life anime (there, that’s probably enough to put a bunch of you off; as regular readers will know, however, I’m a big fan of this sort of thing) in which the male lead Keita is constantly harassed by his twin stepsisters Ako and Riko. Keita — initially at least — knows that despite the fact he is not related to his sisters by blood — and despite the fact his father (his blood parent) is seemingly desperate for him to get with one or both of them — it would probably be a bad idea to do anything inappropriate with them. That doesn’t stop them from trying, however, and indeed the temptation proves to be a little too much for Keita on more than one occasion — though the show consistently interrupts anything truly outrageous happening before it gets out of hand.

If that were all, the show could have probably hobbled along as something of a one-trick pony for twelve episodes or so, with Ako and Riko concocting increasingly elaborate plans to seduce Keita — and indeed it looks as if it might go that way in the first couple of episodes. As the series progresses, though, the cast gradually expands and Keita’s relationships become more complex. We have his awkward relationship with the quiet, shy librarian girl Miharu whom Keita regularly ends up accidentally and unintentionally doing totally inappropriate things to, usually as an indirect result of the twins’ interference; we have his “childhood friend”-type relationship with his underclassman Mikazuki, a loli with an pantsu-flashing fetish whose innocent appearance belies the fact she’s actually far more mature than her 23-year old sister; and, in the arc I’m just getting into, said 23-year old sister — also Ako’s homeroom teacher — turns out to not only be a closet otaku, but also a bit of a pervert herself, much as she’d rather deny that fact to herself and everyone around her.

It’s a horny little show, much of whose humour revolves around sexuality and inappropriateness, and it’s perhaps for this reason it’s not all that well-known over in the West — I don’t believe it’s had an official translation or localisation, which might explain the hack job on the subtitles in some of the episodes I’ve watched so far. It’s oddly endearing, though, and like a good eroge it knows when to turn up the heat and when to relax. It’s a massive prick-tease for a significant proportion of its screen time, and if you’re as shallow a pervert as I am that will doubtless be enough to keep you watching. However, alongside all this is an amusing — if occasionally uncomfortable — tale about teenagers coming to terms with themselves and their feelings, told by a genuinely memorable cast of characters. Ako and Riko in particular are both genuinely loveable characters and I’ve found myself rooting for them to get with Keita even despite the inherent “wrongness” of it all.

So, then, while it’s not a show I’m going to recommend specifically to you or to anyone, I’ll just say that I am enjoying it as a bit of a guilty pleasure at present and leave it at that. You may do with that information as you please. (Except blackmail. I hate blackmail.)

(Oh, and it has one of my favourite ending animation/song combos I’ve seen. Super-simple, but super-effective. I’ll leave you with it.)

1300: I’m Not a Foodie

After going out for a very nice (and expensive) meal for a friend’s stag weekend tonight, I can confirm something I’ve suspected for quite some time now: I’m not a foodie.

It’s not that I can’t appreciate food that has had care, attention, time and effort expended on it to make it look, taste and smell great. It’s just that I don’t think these expensive restaurants are significantly nicer than something simple. If anything, I find fancy food too fussy — there are too many flavours for me, when I much prefer something simple, homely and enjoyable.

Take steaks. I love a good steak. Steak is one of the most delicious meats there is when just cooked nicely and served up by itself, perhaps with some chips and/or a bit of salad. Smother it in some sort of sauce or marinade, though, and it becomes considerably less appealing — the delicious taste of the steak is, more often than not, overwhelmed by the taste of the sauce, and that’s not the reason I wanted to have steak in the first place.

The menu this evening had a lot of delicious things on it — steak, fish, chicken, pasta, gnocchi. And yet I found it very difficult to pick something I actually liked the sound of, because for every item that was based on something I enjoy — steak, fish, chicken, pasta, gnocchi — it was promptly made far too fussy by rubbing rosemary all over it, festooning it with onions or incorporating herbs and spices I’d never heard of.

This may sound like being a fussy eater and I guess it sort of is — my longstanding violent dislike of onions precludes me from eating a lot of fancy food, which is often riddled with them — but more than being fussy, it’s simply the fact that I just don’t really enjoy food that’s too “complicated”, for want of a better word. I don’t know whether this is because I don’t have a particularly refined palate, or because I’m not used to food of this type, or because it’s just my particular tastes, but regardless of what the reason is, I think I would, in most cases, much rather have a pub lunch or a nice roast dinner than anything that been anywhere near the word “jus”.

I wonder how you refine your palate for things like this? I often contemplate this question when confronted with an impressive-looking cheeseboard, none of which I have the slightest inclination to eat, or am invited to appreciate a salad as being anything more than just bland leaves… or, indeed, as with this evening, am presented with a number of individual ingredients I like by themselves that are smothered with things that I either actively dislike or don’t really appreciate in conjunction with the things I do like.

So there you have it. I’m not a foodie. Consequently, I’m something of a cheap date, too.

1299: It’s Four O’Clock in the Morning

Good morning! I’ve just got in. (Well, I got in about half an hour ago, but whatever.)

I’ve been “out” this evening. I recall writing a post a while back about how I don’t really “go out” any more in the way I used to — that’s “go out” in the sense of “going somewhere to imbibe a lot of alcoholic beverages then stumble somewhere you probably won’t remember in the morning.” And yet this evening I found myself doing almost exactly that. (The only part lacking was the “lot of alcoholic beverages”, since I was driving.)

It was my friend James’ stag night this evening, you see — an event which is continuing over the weekend. This evening was intended to be a fairly conventional night out — a nice meal, then maybe a couple of drinks somewhere, then back home in preparation for other stuff tomorrow. Since we’re all considerably older than we used to be, we weren’t particularly intending on doing anything “big” or time-consuming like clubbing, but somehow here I am at nearly 4am having just rolled in from what ended up being a rather long night.

The specifics? Not a chance. What happens on the stag night stays on the stag night and all that.

Suffice to say, though, I was surprised how much I ended up enjoying myself, and it was largely down to two things: the company, who were pleasingly laid back for the whole evening, and the venues, which, while hastily chosen in all cases apart from the restaurant we’d booked, turned out to be entertaining, pleasant places to hang out. And by that — yes, I’m aware how old I sound when I say this — I mean they were places where you could actually hold a conversation with the people you were with, rather than having to bellow small talk into each other’s ears — something which I always find to be embarrassing and surprisingly exhausting.

On the whole, I think James had an eminently suitable start to his stag night, weekend, whatever you want to call it. The evening took a few twists and turns I don’t think any of us were expecting when we started, and I think everyone had a good time. I also think most people involved were surprised that we all still had what turned out to be a lengthy night out in us — it’s nice to know that we’re perhaps not as decrepit as we might have perhaps thought we were.

I do quite urgently need to sleep now, though, despite the amount of Coke I’ve imbibed over the course of the evening. I can have a lie-in tomorrow morning, at least, then it’s Doing Stuff that is Probably a Little More Sedate Than This Evening tomorrow afternoon and evening. For now, adieu.