Gonna have another good go at this "fitness" thing again starting from next week, because I'm increasingly aware with each passing week that the entire pandemic situation has knocked my body and general sense of physical wellbeing for six. And I don't mean because I've had COVID — I mean the general inactivity of the last year and a half has really taken its toll on me, and I haven't been looking after myself properly

I've known for some time that I'd need to do something about this, but I think the big problem up until now has been thinking of doing so as something of an "inconvenience" — something that I begrudgingly do at a time when I don't feel like I'm "missing out" on something else. It occurred to me today that I really need to change that thinking: I need to think of taking care of myself as something that I want to do, and something that I'm going to make time to do.

So starting from Monday, I'm going to get myself into a regular regime of swimming and gym visits. I've changed my gym membership from my local 24 hour place to a complex in town that has a swimming pool. Its opening hours are a bit more restrictive, but that will hopefully prevent me from going "ah, I'll go at 11pm when it's quiet", and then not going.

What I'm planning to do, then, is make some time around 7pm-ish every day to either go for a swim or visit the gym. I'm not going to do anything particularly "heavy" to begin with — I just need to get into the routine first, then take things from there. And the reason I wanted to incorporate swimming is that it's something I genuinely enjoy and find quite relaxing, even though I'm not terribly good at it. It also has the potential to be quite good exercise or at the very least a means of getting the whole body doing something, and that's what I need right now.

Before I jump into all that, I'm going to have a nice quiet weekend — no recording, no writing, no pressure on myself, just time to relax. I'm super-tired right now — partly as a side-effect of the second shot of the COVID vaccine but also just being a bit run-down generally — so I'm going to take the weekend to hopefully get a sense of relaxation to a suitable level before jumping into something a bit more "rigorous" starting on Monday.

What this means is that there will be no new videos on YouTube next week (except one announcing this short break) and no new part of the Atelier MegaFeature this weekend. Daily posts will continue here, though — and S-Rank Patrons will get a wallpaper this weekend, too. I think I might owe you two, actually, because I don't think I got around to one in the month just gone.

Things will be back to normal the following week — I just want to take this weekend to sort of collect myself and "reboot" somewhat without applying any sort of pressure.

I'm sure you all understand and have no objections to me doing this, but I wanted to let you all know regardless! Thank you for your understanding and continued support, and I'll (hopefully) be back to full strength in short order! Well, full mental strength, at least — I think the ol' body might need more than a quick tune-up at this point.

Anyway, that's that. Just wanted to let you know!

After I wrote the post the other day about "rebuilding" my Spotify library, something suddenly occurred to me: if I were to search by the years in which I was actively buying music on CDs, I would likely be able to track down most of the things I once owned. Although I tended to prefer stuff on the indie side of the spectrum (with occasional dalliances into the most delightfully awful of cheesy pop), so far as my musical tastes went they were nowhere near as… "obscure" or "niche" as my video game tastes, so surely it would be reasonably straightforward.

And it actually was; turns out that Spotify has a series of curated playlists that collect together a bunch of the biggest hits of each year, stretching right back for… well, I didn't test how early it was, but they definitely went back to 1992, which is when I remember buying my first CD (Oasis' Definitely Maybe, which cemented my reputation as being uncool and unaware of anything fashionable by being the CD I purchased literally a single day before its follow-up (What's the Story?) Morning Glory came out) and, as you might expect, continue right up to today.

I mostly focused on adding albums that I definitely owned, but in a few instances I've added some extra ones of artists I remember particularly liking. And I'm pleased with the results; I'm sure there's some albums that I've missed — and there's definitely some compilation CDs that aren't there, since Spotify doesn't do those (though some people have made playlists to "simulate" said compilations, interestingly) but for the most part, looking at my Spotify library now reminds me very much of my classic CD collection: varied and broad, but not so excessively large that I'd only ever end up listening to one or two albums.

That's the trouble with digital music and indeed digital media in general; give yourself too much choice and you end up not picking anything. That's kind of why I wanted to do this little exercise; by limiting myself to things that I know I like (or once liked, at least) I'm more likely to enjoy and appreciate all of it, rather than just treating it as disposable. Because it saddens me how disposable music is considered today — and while I know collecting a bunch of streaming playlists together isn't really doing anything about that, it at least gives me something of a feeling of the "good old days".

Spotify has a neat "library" function, where even though you don't "own" anything on the platform, you can still build up a "collection" of albums and music that you like listening to on a regular basis.

Since I tend to prefer listening to albums rather than playlists full of random bits and pieces, this is great for me — so I've been making an effort to rebuild my late '90s/early '00s CD collection that I no longer own. Several house moves ago, we did a fair bit of "downsizing" of possessions, and as part of that we had a big Music Magpie session with old CDs in order to get a bit of money in exchange for our old garbage.

Oddly, despite being quite attached to that CD collection, I've been struggling to recall its exact contents. Certain inclusions are easy, because everyone had them at the time — stuff like Alanis Morisette's Jagged Little Pill, all the Oasis albums up to Be Here Now and the like — and there are likewise a fair few "mainstream indie" albums that I remember owning. But I'm reaching a point where I'm at something of a loss as to what to add next; I'm sure I used to have more than I've added to the library so far, but I really can't think what it might be.

I know I bought a fair amount of cheesy pop like Spice Girls and S Club 7 semi-ironically (I did not-so-secretly genuinely like quite a lot of it) but that doesn't account for what feels like a big gap in my virtual collection. And, weirdly, I can't find the receipt for the Music Magpie order that we did, so I can't check against the listing of the CDs that we actually got paid for.

Oh well, I'm sure it will all come back to me at some point. And perhaps I'm forgetting some of those albums for a good reason!

Still not feeling quite up to full capacity — had a nice nap earlier — but managed to get all the recording I wanted to do done, so that's something. Even managed to get a Simmin' and Chillin' done, too — actually ended up recording it twice because OBS went loopy on me without me noticing first time around, meaning we lost the wonder of my journey from Paris to the south of France. Instead, we're going from the south of France to Portugal.

As I'll talk about a bit more in the Simmin' and Chillin' video, which I'll post tomorrow if it doesn't take too long to process, I've got some fun plans in mind for Retrounite this coming week now that the site's security issues are resolved and everything is all happy and good. I'll explain the specifics in the video, but here's an exclusive teaser of what I have planned:

Graphic design is, as the saying goes, my passion.

Anyway. Time for sleepytime now, I think, though I might have a bit of toast first. We seem to have a surfeit of bread, and the best means of dealing with that situation is to make toast, particularly if there's good jam available. And there is good jam available, so that's what's about to happen.

Hope you've all had a good weekend; here's to yet another week on all our inexorable, mutual slides towards the inevitable heat death of the universe. Tatty-bye!

Feel like crap today — think I'm being hit by the worst of the vaccine side-effects, so I'm going to get an early(ish) night in just a moment. Then hopefully I'll feel reasonably fresh to do some video recording tomorrow!

After getting a bunch of Atelier Firis done as I hoped, I closed off my evening with a nice drive in Euro Truck Simulator 2. That game really is delightfully comfy, and the experience can vary nicely according to how you set it up, too — you can create a very different atmosphere for yourself simply by whether or not you have the in-game radio (which actually streams from Internet radio stations, some of which cater specifically to Euro Truck Simulator 2) turned on or not.

Tonight, I had it turned off, so the only sound was the muffled noise of my engine from within the apparently nicely soundproofed cabin on the Mercedes whatever my truck is, the rumble of the road beneath my wheels, and the occasional swoosh of a car passing — punctuated, of course, by occasional law-abiding use of indicators. My truck has nice-sounding indicators, so I make a point of using them appropriately.

Tonight's drive took me from Groningen in the northern Netherlands to Paris, France. It was a reasonable length trip that didn't provide a ton of particularly spectacular scenery, but there was an enjoyable bridge crossing which the Internet reliably informs me is known as the Afsluitdijk. I like bridges, and this was a good one — although I guess more accurately it is a dam and/or a causeway. Either way, it was probably the main highlight of the trip.

My head is aching and my eyes are having trouble staying open, so I'm off to bed. Lots to do tomorrow, so I hope I'm feeling better by then!

It's finally the end of a long and stressful week, and thankfully I think all the stress is over and done with. The sites are working as they should, the issues are resolved and thus, all being well, next week should be back to normal.

Have been feeling some vaccine side effects today; been very tired and a bit ache, so had a good nap earlier. Then spent most of the evening playing Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. I didn't feel like I had the mental energy for Atelier, but will be spending some serious time on it over the weekend.

Got some more videos to record over the weekend too. Was pleased with how well the Quartet video was received, so there will definitely be more applications on Atari ST A to Z going forward, so long as it's practical yo do so. Plenty of interesting music programs if nothing else; I'm not sure I can make a video about something like Zoomracks 2 interesting!

Anyway, time for a long nap and a nice lie-in, then hopefully a nice weekend. Hope you all have a good weekend too!

Been a stressful couple of days. Retrounite suffered a bot/virus/spam attack that it's been taking a while to recover from, and Rice Digital had some issues earlier too that necessitated me working into the evening to fix some of the damage that was caused. Thankfully, neither situation was malicious, I don't think — the latter definitely wasn't, not sure about the former — but it's still been a pain in the arse to deal with.

Thankfully, it's all resolved now, so hopefully I can enjoy a reasonably straightforward and quiet end to the week. Andie's been ill and I've been tired out from my second COVID shot so I'll be glad when this week is over — I just want to sit back and relax for a bit. I haven't even had much time to play a lot of Atelier Firis this week, which is frustrating — I'm enjoying it a lot but I just feel like my evenings keep getting taken over by… something, yet when I try and figure out where all the "free" time has gone I come up empty.

Ah well. At least the heat wave has broken and we've had some nice cool rain over the course of the last few days. That's a relief, at least; dealing with stressful work stuff through that would have been an absolute nightmare. It's still pretty warm and humid here, but not nearly as uncomfortable as it has been, so hopefully we've seen the back of "summer" for now.

This week I'm going to get some videos recorded and knuckle down to some serious Atelier. I think I've had a chance to play enough to be able to write something over the weekend, but we'll have to see; this one might take a little longer than "usual" for various reasons.

Anyway, enough worrying. Time to relax after a particularly stressful day in a stressful week!

Think I forgot to write again yesterday — I believe I forgot to take my meds in the morning and didn't notice until later so ended up feeling a tad fuzzy-headed, depressed and anxious of an evening, so wasn't exactly thinking straight. Apologies! Here I am now, though.

Had my second shot of the vaccine (Pfizer crew represent) today. So far I appear to have been mostly clear of ill effects aside from the expected achey/heavy arm, though I did have a nice nap after work which suggests I might have been a bit tired. I understand that some of the effects might not show up until a day or two later, though, so… looking forward to that, I guess?

Nothing much else to report right now. Going to settle down for a weekly Final Fantasy XIV session in a bit; I'm making nice progress through Stormblood, so it hopefully won't be all that long until I'm actually into stuff that is brand new to me! Exciting. Very interested to check out the Omega raid cycle and, of course, Shadowbringers.

I am, however, also battling a strong urge to play Euro Truck Simulator 2 and Bus Simulator 18, because I've developed a real strong attachment to these games, and they're nicely chilled out affairs that are quite often just what the doctor ordered.

Maybe I'll drive a route or two before bed. But first, Doma needs me!

I opened Launchbox earlier. "Installing Launchbox," it said, before taking ten minutes to update itself, refresh its database and actually start.

I opened Spotify earlier. "Installing Spotify," it said, before disappearing from the screen for several minutes and then starting as if nothing had happened.

I started up my PS4 to download Samurai Warriors 5 earlier. "Installing system update," it said, deciding to spend ten minutes installing that before actually downloading the thing I'd asked it to download.

I turned my phone on earlier. "Software update ready to install," it said. "Do it later," I said. Then it did it anyway while I was in the middle of transferring files from it.

This is really bloody tiresome. And yes, I know you can turn automatic updates off. But in quite a few cases, doing so prevents you from actually using a piece of software until you turn them back on again — and in some cases, turning automatic updates off just means that it repeatedly bugs you to download an "optional" available update until you do so.

The Internet is many things, but one of the things I detest about it the most is this never-ending torrent of updates we have to endure in our daily lives. Nothing ever seems to be in prime condition any more; in the case of applications like Spotify and Launchbox, it feels like there are updates every other day sometimes. And when I just want to listen to some music or browse some completely legitimate ROM collections that I have ripped myself from my own games, yessirree, I can't be arsed with having to go through a whole install process every single bloody time.

First world problems, I know. But come on. It's annoying.

Think I forgot to write — apologies. In exchange, I present to you a guide to some of my favourite bad puns, jokes and/or references in my video titles. I'm never sure if anyone actually "gets" some of the references I make, but they make me happy, and to be honest that's all that really matters. With that in mind, here's a selected assortment:

• FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO LANTERNS (Bruce Lee, Atari 8-bit) – referencing The Beastie Boys' Fight For Your Right To Party, because in Bruce Lee you are fighting to get lanterns. And probably to party, but I've never got that far.

• LAYING CABLES (Juice!, Atari 8-bit) – If you're laying a cable, you're having a poo. But it's also what you're doing in Juice!

• JOEY DOESN'T SHARE FRUIT (Kangaroo, Atari 8-bit) – In Friends, Joey doesn't share food. A baby kangaroo is called a joey. In Kangaroo, you don't share fruit.

• NEAR A TOMATO (The Upper Reaches of Apshai, Atari 8-bit) – This was a common "hilarious" mispronunciation of Nier: Automata back when it came out, but in The Upper Reaches of Apshai there is rarely a time when you aren't near a tomato — one that wants to kill you.

• MATTER OF FACT IT'S ALL DARK (Dark Side, Atari ST) – A reference to Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon, which concludes with a very quiet outro that includes the revelation that the moon doesn't really have a dark side; it is, in fact, all dark, and the part that appears "light" is just due to the sun. But you knew that.

• PIRAMITSUDO MAJITSUKU (Gem'X, Atari ST) – What the katakana on the emphatically not Japanese Gem'X's packaging actually says, rather than what they intented (which was presumably "piramiddo majikku", or "pyramid magic")

• POLITICS IN GAMES (Mercenary III, Atari ST) – I was hoping this title would make more people angry than it did. You know how people get pissy about video games having "politics" in them? Well, Mercenary III is literally a game about politics.

• EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR (Garfield: Winter's Tail, Atari ST) – Shakespeare's best ever stage direction. The source? The Winter's Tale, of course.

• CONFIDENCE AND HUNGER (Concentration, Atari 2600) – "Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger." – a quote from the golfer Arnold Palmer, who apparently knows about such things.

• NO FLAG, NO COUNTRY, THAT'S THE RULES (Flag Capture, Atari 2600) – I'll just link this to you and you'll work it out.

• SMALLER SALTY MEAT (Micro-Gammon SB, Atari 5200) – Gammon is a type of salty meat, so therefore it stands to reason that micro-gammon is smaller salty meat.

• CATCH THAT CHURCH (Steeplechase, Atari 2600) – Many churches have steeples, so if you're chasing a church you are clearly engaging in a…

• DAS BOOT WAS MADE FOR SHOOTING (Submarine Commander, Atari 2600) – And that's just what it'll do. One of these days das boot is gonna shoot all over yo– wait, that sounds a bit wrong.

I know I'm not big and I'm not clever, but like I say, they make me happy. Plenty more where that came from.