I've already written at length about how the modern concept of "streaks" is inherently unhealthy and encourages people to just game the system rather than actually properly developing good habits, but this is a whole new level of stupid. I was curious as to exactly what a "streak freeze" entailed, so I clicked through on the notification and found the following explanation:

So let me get this straight: WordPress (or Jetpack, I think, specifically) has a "streak" mechanic built in to encourage you to engage with… something every day. (Note that the explanation above counts "liking, commenting or following" as "activity", not just "posting something on your site".) But after 7 days, you can just go "ah, fuck this" for a day and still keep your "streak" intact?

Now, I've hopefully already made my feelings on "streaks" clear (and yes, I know it might seem a tad hypocritical given that I'm posting daily, counting how many days I have done that for and have even done extra posts some days to "catch up" on days I missed but… shut up) but to me the concept of a "streak freeze" just feels like… cheating? And, more to the point, it's a completely pointless form of cheating in which the only person you are actually cheating is yourself. (Yes, I am familiar with the copypasta.)

It's not just me seeing this, right? Given that your "streak" in WordPress or Jetpack or whatever is visible to no-one but you — there are no "Share" buttons on these stupid "achievements" it has apparently started giving you — there is absolutely no point whatsoever in cheating the system for any reason other than to deny to yourself, and no-one else, that you failed to do something as simple as click "Like" on a thing every day for [x] days.

As I say, I acknowledge completely that all of the above might be a bit rich coming from someone who has occasionally missed a day on his "daily" blog and then "caught up" the following day, but I do always acknowledge when I've done that, and I'm not giving myself any "awards" or anything besides counting how many days have elapsed between June 8, 2024 and today. (And yes, I did just use the opportunity to check that my post numbering is correct. It is.)

The way this is implemented as platform "achievements" just feels like they wanted to completely gamify the posting experience, then got cold feet partway through and thought but what about all the people who care about their streak and just don't have time to click Like on something every day?! — as if they were afraid that they would get complaints from people who thought it was "unfair" that they broke their streak just for not… maintaining that streak.

I dunno. I am very aware that this is all a completely pointless thing to get riled up about, but it is very hot, I am very tired and stressed, and just wanted something easy to write about today. So that's what you're getting. Now I'm off to go and swallow an entire iceberg or something. And not the kind that freezes streaks.

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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The post #oneaday Day 719: Get out of here with your "streak freeze" appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I don't know if I'm just in a bad mood right now or if there really has been a rise in clickbait headlines of late, but I feel like I'm noticing it a lot more of late. I'm talking about stuff like this:

That's a piece from Kotaku about LGR building himself a warehouse. I find it very difficult to believe that anyone reading Kotaku on a semi-regular basis does not know who LGR is, so to deliberately obfuscate his identity in the headline just feels like it's being annoying on purpose.

One could argue that this headline has been written appropriately, however; it gets the broader point across in a way that is accessible to all, regardless of whether or not they know who LGR is. So I will begrudgingly give it a pass.

I do not give the following (from GameSpot) a pass, particularly because they "spoil" it in the accompanying image:

Just say Hercules. We can see it's Hercules. Also I'm not 100% sure Hercules counts as one of Disney's more "iconic" movies. I guess it was in Kingdom Hearts.

GameSpot is very fond of this sort of shit right now:

Yeah, fuck off with that. Just tell me what it is.

Double fuck off for this being based on a "rumour", something which I was always discouraged from reporting on when I was working the news beat in the games press. If your headline has "could" in it, just stop.

But let's not pick exclusively on GameSpot.

Let's also pick on GameRant, which, to be fair, is part of the odious Valnet group. This headline can get right in the fucking bin. (It's Elder Scrolls Blades, if you gave a shit.)

This one can, too. (Horizon Chase Turbo in this case.)

Look, I get it. If you're on the endless churn and trying to juice your site's SEO results in order to maximise your KPIs for men in suits who don't know what video games actually are, it's easy to feel like it's necessary to pull this shit in order to "get people curious enough to click". But people are savvy to it now, to such a degree that it's a practice that gets routinely mocked.

Just say what the article is actually about rather than this bullshit playground teasing ("I know something you don't!") and if the story has any merit, people will click through to it anyway to find out more details. Those "more details" someone clicks through to find out more about should not, repeat, not be the name of the subject of the story.

This sort of thing is rarely the fault of the individual reporters — although I'm sure there are a few out there who love pulling this little stunt. No, it's inevitably an edict from on high for the reasons just stated. With the general health of video games media being deep within the "critical danger" territory, the suits want quick solutions that, in theory, get results.

Only I'm not convinced this sort of practice does get results any more. Like I say, people are wise to it now. I refuse to believe that I am the only one who simply won't click on an article whose headline is a deliberate cocktease.

Look at it this way: why should I give a shit that "a Switch game is being delisted on June 1"? There are thousands of the fucking things, many of which I don't care about. "The eShop is full of crap" is a meme for a reason. I do, however, own a copy of Horizon Chase Turbo, and thus would be interested in hearing why that specific game is being delisted. (It's stupid, by the way. And you can blame Epic for it.)

Anyway, that has been your nightly grump. Please write meaningful headlines, especially if you want the few remaining dregs of the video games press to be taken even a little bit seriously.

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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The post #oneaday Day 660: This one particular type of headline is very annoying appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Anyway, that process is all done now, so things should hopefully return to normal — and there is now a bunch more Stuff for you to read on this site, should you feel so inclined. It's all conveniently categorised under the Patreon category — or, if you want to jump straight to the beginning of that particular "season" of #oneaday blogging, you can click here or use the link in the site menu.

The reason I wanted to bring that stuff across is because there was a lot more of it than I realised! I'd forgotten that I'd done another 1,000+ days of daily blogging as a Patrons-exclusive "perk" (if you can call it that), and having it all locked away in an unlaunched Patreon page seemed a bit wasteful. Not that I think I wrote anything of particular importance in those pages, mind.

No; the main reason I wanted to get those posts across is to fill a bit of a "gap" on this blog. There were a couple of years where I didn't really post anything on here because I was using Patreon instead, and that always bugged me a bit. Now, if you will be so good as to check the Archives section in the sidebar (it's right at the bottom of the page if you're on mobile), you'll see I now have a nice run of posts running from 2008 all the way up to today. Not all of that has been daily blogging and not every year has posts every month, even, but it is satisfying to look back over all that stuff and think "I did that".

Why did I do that? I don't really know, other than the fact I've always enjoyed it. There's just something about blogging about any old bullshit that I've always found immensely enjoyable; for me, it's always been much more fun to bash out a blog post than use social media, because you can go into as much detail as you want to hyperfixate on, and anyone who has a problem with that can just bally well bugger off because it's your site, dammit, and that means you make the gosh-darn-diddly rules.

The other reason I was interested to bring these posts over is because they cover the COVID years, and I think that was an important moment in history that we all lived through, for better or worse (mostly worse), and I'm interested to look back over what my brain was doing at that time.

Obligatory disclaimer: as I say, I have little to no memory of what I might have written during the Patreon years. I don't think I posted anything egregiously offensive — I still had to work within the rules of Patreon, after all — but I will say I can't guarantee I didn't say anything that 2026 Pete might regret in retrospect. But hey. If you're reading this, you've probably been with me through the exceedingly rough and the occasionally smooth, so little that dribbles out of my brain and onto the page will probably surprise you at this point. I just thought I'd mention that just in case, y'know.

Anyway, that is that. I hope you enjoy looking back through the archives — I'm certainly planning to — and normal business will now resume. Apologies again for flooding your inboxes!

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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The post #oneaday Day 610: Sorry again, and an explanation appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm doing this because there's a whole bunch of blogging that has been trapped on my Patreon for a long time. There's nothing of any particular Earth-shattering importance there, but I felt like it would be nice to have access to that all in one place, rather than relying on a third-party service.

Annoyingly, Patreon doesn't have a simple "export everything" option — you have to go via their WordPress plugin, which is a little bewildering in terms of how it sets things up, and its default settings are, as we've already seen, kind of dumb. Am I likely to want to republish something from 2016 as if it was now, Patreon? Am I? No? Then maybe don't do that.

Anyway. Hopefully what this will mean once it's all been taken care of is a bunch more pointless meanderings for you to explore at your leisure in the archives, and I'll have more things to reminisce over while sitting on the toilet.

I've considered reopening my Patreon on a few occasions, but I just don't think it's worth it. The inordinate amount of pressure I felt like it put on me to "fulfil obligations" made doing pretty much anything Not Fun, so I ditched it in order to be able to focus on just creating stuff as a hobby. That's what all this has always been; at various points I've thought it would be nice to be able to make a full-time career out of it all, but honestly I'd rather have the security of a job like my current one.

I have kept my Ko-Fi and PayPal donation pages open, though. Not that anyone uses them — and this isn't a passive-aggressive way to suggest that you might want to slip me some cash — but I think it's nice to keep a little "tip jar" open for when people feel generous or particularly appreciative for something you've done. Plus there are some regular readers/viewers who drop me a bit of pocket change when it's my birthday, which is always nice and heartwarming. But other than that, I'm not in any of this to "monetise" it — I write because I enjoy it, I write about games because I'm passionate about them, I make videos because I think it's a good medium to show and talk about the things I'm interested in, and perhaps share those things with others. That's all.

Anyway, sorry again if you got a flurry of emails! It shouldn't happen again, but feel free to yell at me if it does.

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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The post #oneaday Day 609: Sorry about that appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

A while back, I disabled comments for old posts, because I was getting a few unpleasant people trawling through past posts and being kind of a dick. Now that appears to mostly be a thing of the past, I have, on multiple occasions, attempted to re-enable comments on old posts, only to find myself running into a brick wall.

I tried turning off the "automatically close comments on posts older than [x] days" setting in the WordPress dashboard. I tried turning off the same setting in the Bluehost plugin (which, while I'm no longer using Bluehost, was still active on my site to do stuff like caching and auto-updates). I tried batch processing all my old posts in the WordPress Dashboard and checking "Allow Comments" on them. I tried doing posts individually. Nothing seemed to work — posts older than a month were getting their comments closed, even though I had, seemingly, turned off everything that should be doing that.

I spent a bit of time tinkering in the Dashboard earlier today in an attempt to try and fix this once and for all. And the only thing I found that worked was to set the "close comments older than [x] days" figure in WordPress' settings to 999999 days, or just shy of 2,740 years. A smaller figure would have probably worked, but I wanted to use one that I wouldn't have to update in my lifetime. I will note that changing this setting is what worked despite the "close comments older than [x] days" checkbox being unticked. So apparently something, somewhere, had got its knickers in a twist and was still closing comments after 28 days, even though all the relevant settings on the back end had been set firmly to "no, please do not do that".

So there you go. If you want to go back through my old posts and leave comments on them, you can now do that. The only thing I would say about that is to please remember that this blog has been up and running in one form or another (though not always at this URL) for 17 years, and I am not the same person now that I was when I first started it, nor am I the same person I might have been at the time you take offence at something I wrote at some point in the last 17 years. Times change, attitudes change, opinions change. I don't think I have changed all that much in my core beliefs — I've always been left-leaning and sex-positive with little patience for bullying — but my willingness to wade into the mud of the Internet and actually fight is seriously diminished these days. Today, I just want a quiet life, to be perfectly honest.

If you have wanted to leave a comment on something older than the last 28 days and have found yourself unable to do so — sorry! I have been trying to fix the problem and it wasn't until the above last-ditch "I wonder if this works" attempt actually worked that I've been able to sort it out good and proper!

So yeah. Come say hello in the comments if you feel like it. Or not. I'll be here either way.

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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The post #oneaday Day 434: The battle to re-enable comments appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Yes, it appears I have been doing this nonsense (again) for a whole year. And with it, I feel a curious sense of… well, not a lot at all, really. The world, both online and offline, has changed a great deal since the first time I did a daily blogging project, and the purpose of this blog has, by extension — and not necessarily deliberately — changed somewhat, too.

When I started doing #oneaday first time around, it was an attempt to be part of a community. The people who kicked off the "challenge", as it were, were people who I wanted to get to know a bit better, mostly from in and around the games press. Unfortunately, that never really happened, as most of them dropped out pretty early, and some of them actually got rather abusive towards the entire #oneaday project at various points. So that was unfortunate.

I persisted, though. There were other people who decided to get involved that I did enjoy reading the posts of. Several people who I got to know through their posts, and enjoyed interacting with through their comments sections. Out of all of them, I'm not sure any of them even still have their blogs that they started back in the 2010s — I know I've been looking for several of them, and they're just not there any more. I hope they're doing well; it saddens me a little to think that they'd take something they'd created and just cast it aside for one reason or another, but I also understand that today, you often can't be too careful about your "Internet footprint" lest something that seemed innocuous at the time ends up getting dug up to be used against you maliciously.

That's not all, though. There are also a number of people from the anime, manga and video game enthusiast communities who I got to know a few years after I stopped doing #oneaday on a regular basis, and most of them have abandoned their blogs, too. There are a few still knocking around, to be sure, but a lot of the ones I most enjoyed reading and chatting in the comments sections of are simply no longer online at all. Again, that's a real shame; I miss those people, and since our only real point of contact was our blogs, chances are I won't hear from them ever again.

I've spoken before elsewhere about how viewing figures for personal websites are in the absolute toilet these days. I'm lucky to break double figures in views on this site these days, whereas ten years ago I'd maybe get a couple of hundred. Not particularly impressive compared to a commercial site, no, but considering all I do here is waffle on about whatever pops into my head on a given day, I thought it was quite a noteworthy achievement. MoeGamer, as a site with a tighter focus, still gets a decent number of views per day, but most of them are confined to just a few pages and articles, many of which I wrote several years ago and thus successfully acquired the SEO juice for.

As I've also said before, this blog has never been "for" anyone other than myself. I write here because I enjoy writing, because I've always enjoyed keeping a journal, and because I find it a valuable means of expressing myself. The fact that hardly anyone is reading it any more is a shame, sure, but getting people to read this site has never been a priority. If it was, I'd be sharing posts every day on social media, and I just can't be arsed with that.

You see, a post "gaining traction", as Internet vernacular has it, is a bit of a double-edged sword. Yes, it's nice to see people reading your stuff, but it also means that you're likely to run into that particular type of person online who does nothing other than arbitrarily disagree with everything you write. In many instances, one gets the impression that they don't even particularly care what they're arguing about — just that they're arguing. And when something you post online gets viewing figures outside of the circles it normally moves in, you get an exponentially greater number of people like this. And it can be exhausting.

So that's why I'm not too bothered about no-one reading this except me. I derive value from this site from being able to look back at my entries from various different times, and see how I was dealing with particular situations. I enjoy looking back over this semi-permanent record of my own memories, both good and bad. And I feel like I occasionally learn something from reflecting on things that I wrote in the past — both things that I'm proud of, and things that I regret. All of those things helped make me the person I am today, and they're all here on this one site, as a complete reference guide to Pete.

So yeah. I've been doing this daily for the second time, for a year. And I have no intention of stopping just yet. If you happen to be following along, thanks for being a member of an increasingly exclusive club. If you're new here, hi, if you have any questions chances are many of them have been answered at some point in the last three thousand posts. And if you're one of those lapsed bloggers I mentioned earlier, do say hi — it would be great to hear from some of 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.

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The post #oneaday Day 365: A year of this appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I've had a few right weirdoes in the comments section of MoeGamer of late, and they are a prime example of why I adopt a fairly strict moderation policy: anyone who hasn't commented before has to have their first comment approved before any of their comments will appear on the site. If I don't approve that initial comment, the words they hammered into their crusty keyboard will not appear on the site.

I think by far the strangest so far was the one who started off talking about nostalgia, but then started banging on about the "globalist agenda" and how modern video games were all basically in service to this. By "globalist agenda", by the way, this person absolutely meant "the Jews", and as such their comment didn't get anywhere even a little bit close to being published on my site. I did mock it a bit on social media, though.

Today I had a guy who got really uppity about me writing about the Game Boy game The Sword of Hope and thinking that it was actually quite worthwhile and interesting. He absolutely could not fathom the idea of someone from well after a creative work had been published not judging it by the standards of its time. He also almost immediately started banging on about "censorship" due to the combination of my anti-spam filter and my aforementioned comments policy, so he did not get let through either.

I have a fairly flawless sense these days of when someone is going to be a pain in the arse in the comments. There's just a certain way that some people come across in text that lets you know they're a dickhead and probably a racist, and thus I have absolutely no hesitation in banishing them to the shadow realm when they happen to stagger into my comments section.

I do the same on YouTube; for all its faults, YouTube has one of the absolute best moderation tools in existence, which is the "Hide User From Channel" option. For the unfamiliar, what this does is effectively "shadowbanning" the commenter from your channel, so their comments don't appear under your videos and you don't get notifications about them… but to their eyes, they're still able to comment as normal. There's a perverse satisfaction in doing this, because you know some of these absolute cretins will be typing out long, obnoxious diatribes about whatever has offended their delicate sensibilities this week, and no-one will ever see them. Again, I have zero hesitation in doing this; if someone bursts into the comments section and the first thing they do is act like a twat, they're going straight in the sin bin.

Life is too short to deal with dickheads on the Internet. Of course, we'd all rather they didn't exist at all, but at least there are plenty of tools with which we can frustrate and repel them. Make good use of them; it's worth the effort.

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.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

The post #oneaday Day 359: Commenter policy appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

There was a good piece over on Aftermath today titled "Video game blogs from the 2000s were fast, reckless and very bad at news". The gist of the piece was that video game websites that adopted a continuously updating "blog" format, in contrast to the "magazine" approach many earlier gaming sites had used, inadvertently set in place a format for games journalism that isn't particularly helpful for readers, and is definitely not good for the writers.

The piece goes on to note that the pressure to have [x] number of articles per day, or the fact that many writers were paid (a pittance) by the article placed a great deal of pressure on the site's writers to make even the most mundane, pointless bullshit somehow "newsworthy". It is this, among other things, that led numerous websites to continuously and uncritically quote Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter whenever he spouted off something that was either immensely obvious (the new Grand Theft Auto will probably sell well!) or so utterly vague as to be completely useless.

I wasn't involved in the biz at the start of this, but I definitely felt its effects. When I joined GamePro in 2011, the site was just starting to experiment with a new format for its news coverage. At the start of my shift each day, I was to dig up a bunch of stories and post them as just headlines and a brief summary on a front-page forum as a sort of "news briefing". Then, later in my shift, after the stories had all had a bit of time to percolate, I would write one or two up in further detail based on which of the posts had seemingly been the most popular, judged primarily by comments.

GamePro's readers initially fucking hated it, because the way it was implemented cluttered up the front page of the site's main forums, and I wasn't a huge fan of it, either, because it felt like the time I spent digging up those initial stories — which, more often than not, took the form of either another site having reported on something first, or a press release we'd received that morning — could have almost certainly been better used finding bigger stories to explore, or writing features, or reviews, or anything other than desperately, vainly scrabbling for just a scrap of news, please, guvnor.

That said, over time it did seem to settle down a bit, I broke a few genuine exclusives and provided some good editorial commentary on other stories that were happening, and I was told on multiple occasions that the work I was doing was playing a big role in giving the site a nice uptick in traffic.

Of course, even that uptick was all for naught when IDG Media unceremoniously closed the site and the magazine just before Christmas that year, meaning I woke up one morning all set to do work, only to find that not only was there no job to work any more, all the stuff I had written was about to become absolutely impossible to find due to the inexplicable decision to fold some (not all) of GamePro's material into the unrelated publication PC World. Good stuff. (If you dig deep enough into PC World's atrocious search function, you can still find the odd bit of my stuff, but it's not easy to find, which was great for building a portfolio, I can tell you.)

Something similar happened at USgamer, also. When we started the site, the intention was for the whole thing to be a return to something like the 1up.com days: a primarily personality-driven site, where each of the writers would have their own specialisms, and they would be free to write about whatever they wanted, developing their own little sub-communities in the process.

That went great for a while! I wrote about anime RPGs and visual novels, another chap wrote about racing sims, and all the other people on staff each had their own Things, too. Comments from the community were positive; I can't speak specifics to the other folks' work as I didn't tend to delve into their comment sections, but on my pieces, there was always a great deal of appreciation for my work making USgamer a site that was welcoming and inclusive to a portion of gaming that didn't always get a lot of love and respect from the mainstream sites. This was all pre-Gamergate, I'll add, so there was no culture war bullshit going on; it was just folks who liked anime-style games, including those with mildly provocative content (as there was a fair amount of in the mid-2010s) having an appreciation for a site that didn't just write their favourite games off as being for perverts or whatever.

That lasted for a few months, but then an edict came down from On High (in this case, USgamer's parent company Gamer Network) that we needed to juice the numbers. In other words, abandon everything we'd done to make the site unique and start the daily churn of news and guides that is so painfully familiar to this day. I went from being able to post whatever I wanted to having to get manual approval for each and every news story I wanted to post, and I was outright forbidden from covering certain games.

Eventually, when I was laid off from the site — again, through waking up one morning only to discover I didn't have a job any more — I was forced into spending the majority of my days rejigging and reposting "guide content" from Prima Games, which was also under the Gamer Network umbrella at the time. Out of spite, I stuck with several of my regular weekly columns even with this SEO-juicing bullshit I had been lumbered with, and it was that degree of spite for what the site had become that eventually led me to create MoeGamer: a site where I could play by my rule and cover whatever the fuck I wanted, and fuck traffic numbers.

MoeGamer itself has had a few evolutions over the years. Initially, it was an occasional blog where I basically continued writing my JPgamer column from USgamer — I'd just write about things that interested me, or which I'd happened to play recently, or which had been on my mind. Eventually, when I was working a series of very boring office jobs that had nothing to do with the games press, I launched my "Cover Game" feature, with a mind to giving underappreciated, oft-overlooked titles the level of detailed coverage that your average traffic-baiting triple-A title did. At the height of my boredom in the office, I was posting stuff on MoeGamer daily, including episodes in each multi-part Cover Game feature, plus shorter one-off articles about things that I found interesting, or had happened to collect back when CEX did free shipping (ahh, those heady days), or that I had always loved but never written about.

Today, I actually like my day job, so MoeGamer has had to take a bit of a back seat, but I'm still writing over there sporadically. It's nice to have a space that is for a specific subject, and a contrast from this general-purpose thought-dumping ground that is this blog. I don't have any intention of making MoeGamer "big" or "famous" or trying to make money from it; it's just my site about games I like, and over the last 10+ years I've filled it with a lot of work I'm very proud of. Today, I think I'm more proud of what I've built with MoeGamer than my all-too-brief time as part of the professional games press.

I've pretty much taken the MoeGamer approach with YouTube, too, albeit with more of a focus on retro games than RPGs and visual novels. And y'know what? While my channel hasn't exploded in terms of growth since I launched it (or since I started using it a bit more actively around 2018 or so), it has seen steady growth without me putting any effort whatsoever into either algorithm-baiting or SEO juicing. I have over three and a half thousand subscribers over there right now, and while that's a drop in the ocean compared to the Mr Beasts of this world, I feel creatively fulfilled and proud of what I've done, and am not an awful human being.

So much about the modern Internet sucks, and as Ed Zitron frequently notes, so much of it is about the growth-at-all-costs mindset. It's not just business that this "rot economy" infests; it's creative pursuits, hobbies, specialist fields. So many people are desperate to monetise everything they put online that the actual value for the people looking at the articles, videos and suchlike is diminishing — and the conditions for those producing the work are becoming increasingly intolerable. Throw AI garbage into the mix — and the fuckers who are now flooding YouTube and social media apps with AI-generated bilge that they pump out all day every day — and you have a real melting pot of absolutely rancid filth.

It's definitely a good idea for people who are Into Things to retreat into their own little specialised corners of the Internet, rather than the whole Internet being treated as some great Marketplace of Shit. This is happening to a certain degree, with many communities forming on Discord these days — though Discord itself isn't immune to enshittification, and I suspect we'll all have to find a new home before long — but I do miss the glory days of forums. I really do. I know a few forums still exist, but the 1up.com Radio Boards days are long gone, and every day I miss them a little more.

This has been quite the ramble, and I'm not sure I made a specific point along the way, but hopefully you understand what I was waffling on about. I am grateful to Past Me for setting up spaces like this blog and MoeGamer for me to continue to express myself, and as time goes on I feel personal spaces like these are going to once again become an important part of life online. Because the alternative is wading out into the mires of advertising-laden shit that is the rest of the Internet, and that gets less appealing day after day.

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.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

The post #oneaday Day 314: The news churn appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I missed yesterday, but in my defence I also wrote over 2,000 words about EXPELLED!, so it's not as if I didn't write anything. I just forgot to write anything here before I went to bed. Oh well, not the first time it's happened and it almost certainly won't be the last time, either.

Anyway, today I thought I'd write something about a blog post I read yesterday from Norm of My Bad Take Space. The thrust of Norm's piece is that blogs played an important role in the development of the Internet, and their apparent decline is a significant loss for self-expression, because social media just isn't the same. Blogs are useful not only for connecting to other people, but also for connecting with oneself. I, as is probably abundantly clear already if you've spent any time over here whatsoever, agree heartily with this assessment.

One of the things that pisses me off about supposed modern "best practice" on the Internet is the assumption that people won't read anything too long, won't watch anything too long and don't have the attention span to devote to one thing for more than about 30 seconds at most. It pisses me off not because it's true, which it, regrettably, is, but because this is a problem entirely of our own creation. We spent so long assuming that this is how people behave that we normalised it. And now we're stuck in a rut where the only (supposedly) palatable content for people to consume is short, snappy videos of someone yelling at the camera.

Except… no. I cannot be the only person out there who detests attention-deficit content culture. I really like it when I discover something interesting and thoughtful to read online — like Norm's blog, for example — and I find myself getting annoyed when I read a piece from a news site and it just sort of seems to fizzle out before it gets to any sort of point, which seems to be an increasingly common occurrence these days.

There is a place for this sort of thing, and the apparent popularity of things like Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At? newsletter/blog on the shittiness of modern tech and the "rot economy" gives me a certain amount of hope, but it's still not quite where we were. We're not quite back to a point where someone can just start a blog, use it to post their long-form thoughts about life, the universe and everything, and people will read it. If you start a "newsletter" these days, it needs to be about something.

Now, I've said numerous times before that this blog isn't here for any reason other than because I like writing on it; it's certainly not here as an engagement farm or a means of earning ad revenue. (You will, hopefully, notice that there are no ads.) But I still find it a little strange to consider that a few years back (probably closer to a decade at this point, upsettingly) I was getting maybe three figures' worth of visitors a day here, while today I'm lucky to break 10.

While I don't really care about the figures, what that lack of views means is that this blog doesn't act very well as a means of starting conversations any more. When I was getting a couple of hundred people a day visiting, chances are that at least one of those viewers (many of whom were regulars) would read what I'd written and have something to say about it, and from there we could have a nice little chat in the comments.

Alternatively, someone I know enough to have on an instant messaging service might pop up and say "hey man, I read your blog, let's talk about that". That doesn't really happen any more, outside of a few notable occasions. And even in the case of that link, that really only got people talking because I made a specific effort to get it in front of certain people that I actually wanted to read it.

To put it another way, while this blog remains great for connecting with myself, the connecting with others part has become significantly more challenging.

I don't really know what can be done about this, if anything. One of the things I used to like about writing this blog… well, no. One of the things I still do like writing about this blog is expressing things that I find difficult or outright impossible to say "out loud" to someone's face. The "expressing myself" part hasn't changed, but with the lack of readers, those things that I confess or express simply aren't getting to the eyes of the people I might actually want to confess or express those things to, thereby making the whole thing a little less useful as a means of communication than it used to be.

But times change, I guess, and I just haven't kept up with them. And I don't really have any desire to. I find TikTok and YouTube Shorts distasteful, distracting and uncomfortable to watch, and feel actively repulsed any time I see a vertical video thumbnail that is just someone with their nose pressed up against their phone camera yelling something. That's not how I want to express myself, and I don't feel that we should abandon an entire medium such as long-form writing just because something else is popular.

When I trained to be a teacher, one of the things that was impressed on us repeatedly was the fact that different people learn in different ways. Some folks learn visually, by looking at things. Some folks learn aurally, by having things told to them. Some folks learn kinaesthetically, by doing things. And some folks learn best when given a book and told to study it themselves. The same is completely true for communication and self-expression. While some folks doubtless think the short-form video revolution is the best thing ever for their personal preferred form of self-expression, those of us who, like me, have always preferred writing our thoughts down in long form are left a bit out in the cold. The two (along with any other forms of communication and self-expression) should be able to coexist and thrive, and it's frustrating that they don't.

I don't know what else I can really do at this point, honestly, other than continuing to write here because I still find it valuable to do so, and perhaps sharing what I've written on the one form of social media I actually use a little bit: Bluesky.

Anyway, that's that for today. I'm off to go have a nice relaxing weekend, and hopefully remember to write something for "today" a little later! Have a pleasant Saturday.

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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The post #oneaday Day 280: Connecting to oneself appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Time moves on, and things change. I didn't really notice the gradual disintegration of the "blogosphere" because it was just that — gradual. But with social media taking its place as many folks' primary means of self-expression online, it's hard to deny that, now, the age of the personal blog would, at first glance, appear to be over.

I look at my WordPress reader and it's a bit sad; folks that I used to enjoy reading the posts of on a near-daily basis haven't updated for a year or more, and since their blog was the primary means through which I kept up with them, I don't know what they're up to now, or even if they're okay.

Sure, there are a few still happily going about their business — particular shoutouts to Infernal Monkey's thoroughly NSFW but hilarious wanking blog, Kresnik258gaming's retro Sony games site and Ernst Krogtoft's excellent in-depth explorations of retro gaming for just a few sites I've been following for years that are still actively updating at least semi-regularly — but my Reader is no longer the active community hub that it once was.

I miss seeing folks like Irina of I Drink and Watch Anime, Leth of Lethargic Ramblings (which appears to no longer be online) and the whole #oneaday crew; various others that I once knew by name and considered friends, but who, in many cases, appear to have vanished into the ether. That's their choice, of course, and I don't blame them for wanting to just quietly retreat with the way the Internet is these days, but I still miss them.

Going along with that is the fact that people just don't seem to be reading blogs any more. This place used to get a few hundred views a day, which is obviously peanuts in the grand scheme of the Internet, but it always felt like a noteworthy number of people who were interested in the daily life of a relative nobody like me, particularly when I was never making a particular effort to SEO optimise this place or write about trending topics.

D'you wanna know how many page views I had yesterday? Five. This isn't really a complaint, because the only reason I'm writing here is more as a journalling exercise than anything else, and that's how it's always been — but those figures are a stark contrast from when I started daily posts first time around here, when #oneaday was a community effort.

And the more I think about this, the more I wonder why this has happened. Sure, social media is good for a quick dopamine hit if a post does numbers, but you are, by design, limited in what you can say — and the sites that are still the biggest in the world despite both having gone down the right-wing toilet are both algorithmically driven to an abusive degree, making it near-impossible to actually see something you might be interested in rather than something which is "suggested".

Blogs, meanwhile, are completely freeform. There's no algorithm at play. You follow a person's blog, you get that person's blog. When they update that blog, you get that post. When you want to respond to what they said, you can comment right on that post, assuming they've left comments turned on. Over time, you can really get to know the person who owns that blog, even if, in the case of larger sites, you never become "friends" with them as such.

But even then, there's a personal touch that social media simply doesn't match. I remember years back I wrote a post about how inspirational I found Allie Brosh's hilarious (and, at the time, enormously popular) Hyperbole and a Half blog, and the lady herself came and commented on my blog to say thank you.

That was amazing to me at the time, but nowadays, I suspect that sadly, relatively few people know who Allie Brosh is; her one lasting legacy on the Internet is the "[x] all the things!" meme, which began its life in an innocuous post from 2010 about how hard it was to be a functional adult with depression and ADHD, but which I suspect is not known by a lot of people using the funny cartoon of the gremlin with the broom to make some sort of "hilarious" point online.

One strange development I've witnessed recently is that blogs have sort of come back, except folks don't call them "blogs" any more. They call them "newsletters", based on the assumption that most folks will subscribe to them via email. And while there are some excellent examples of those — my favourite is Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At?, which is a sole voice of sanity in a tech world that seems to be going increasingly insane — I kind of don't like the name change. "Newsletter" implies something of some importance; something that you follow in order to keep up with important things. And as such, it feels kind of silly to sign up for a "newsletter" from some random person online that you don't know. Newsletters are things you get from the local church, or that one place you bought PC parts from that one time, or a software company you like. They're something that organisations send out, not people.

And I think it's important to make that distinction. Because if you're positioning your work as a "newsletter", you're automatically placing a certain amount of pressure on yourself to make everything you write "newsworthy". Your newsletter needs to be about something, and you need to stick to that subject, lest you lose those all important subscribers and Number No Longer Go Up.

A blog, meanwhile, is just a public diary. Sure, it can be more than that, and yes, of course you can specialise its topic — that's what I've done with my other site MoeGamer — but at its heart, it's a public diary: you write something, you date-stamp it, you post it out into the void. That thing you write doesn't have to be important, it doesn't have to be thought-provoking, it doesn't have to be funny, it doesn't have to be anything. But the one thing it will always be is personal. Anyone reading it is getting a glimpse into your mind, your personality, your soul.

Newsletters are not replacements for blogs. Social media is not a replacement for blogs. And fucking Discord absolutely is definitely not a replacement for blogs.

I miss your blogs. And you're missing out by not reading more blogs. So if you have a blog — or indeed if you are, for some inexplicable reason, inspired to start one after everything I've written above — please let me know. I'll happily add it to my subscriptions. Because heaven knows social media hasn't been fun for a long time, and while Bluesky is definitely an improvement over Twitter for the most part, it still lacks the magic that blogs once had.

So c'mon, let's hear it. Let's build up a kickass blogroll and party like it's 15 years ago.

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.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

The post #oneaday Day 274: You should have a blog. And you should read more blogs. And you should share your blogs with me appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Hello. Sorry about yesterday, I just had a bit of an internal explosion of existential dread and needed to express all that, although I was gratified to note that precisely no-one reached out to me to see if I was all right. Not that I'm particularly surprised or was expecting anyone to reach out and see if I was all right, because I'm under no illusions that anyone other than me is reading this blog, but still, y'know. Sometimes it's nice to know someone is looking out for you, and keeping an eye on the means you've been using to express the things you find difficult to say out loud for nearly 20 years.

But like I say, absolutely not blaming anyone. Really, I honestly mean that, no sarcasm. I posted yesterday's screed not because I particularly needed anyone to tell me things are going to be all right — and not just because I'd know they're lying — but because sometimes it just helps to get negative feelings out of your head and onto a page. It doesn't necessarily help you come to any conclusions about how to deal with them, but sometimes simply expressing them is all you need.

This, honestly, was the reason I kept a diary for much of my teenage years. I've talked a bit about this before, as with most subjects on this blog, but it sprung to mind today as I contemplate precisely why I'm still doing this: why I'm typing words into the virtual void for no-one to read, and why I'm still finding it a worthwhile exercise to do so.

I forget exactly what age I was when I started keeping a diary. I'd estimate maybe around 13 or 14 or so. I had recently read The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾, which I believe my mother had recommended to me as "worth reading" considering the age I was. I absolutely adored that book and its follow-up The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, and am long overdue a re-read of it all. I recognised that Adrian was a bit of a twat — and this only gets worse in the later installments as he moves into his adult life — but I also recognised parts of myself in him.

So I decided to do as he did, and start a diary. While I forget how old I was when I eventually started, I do remember the circumstances. We had been on a visit to, of all places, the National Stone Centre in Derbyshire, and had gone along with, if I remember rightly, my parents' friends Margaret and Mick. This detail isn't particularly important, but it adds a nugget of context, which was how I was young enough to still go along on visits like that to My Parents' Friends and not just be left at home.

Anyway, the reason I specifically remember that we went to visit the National Stone Centre is because while we were there, I ended up purchasing (or having purchased for me) a lovely hardback journal. It had nice quality paper, it had really nice material on the cover and binding, it was just a lovely book. My parents had encouraged me to use it as a scrapbook of sorts — a book for keepsakes from trips such as the one we'd just been on, as dull as it might have been. And so I did, for a while.

Then, one day, after I had not used it for the above purpose for quite some time (primarily due to having not really done anything worth scrapbooking) I thought that I might start using it to write down… things. I didn't have anything particularly specific in mind when I first started writing in it, I just felt like the experience of writing diary entries had seemed valuable to Adrian Mole in the books I loved so much, and thus I decided to give it a go for myself.

It didn't take long before I started using that diary to express things I found difficult to talk about "out loud", as it were, primarily relating to matters of emotions and feelings towards other people. As noted in my tales of The Rough Book, as a hormonal teenager I fell in love with a lot of girls over the course of my time at secondary school. And I found it difficult enough to admit my feelings about all this to my closest friends at the time, let alone my family. So I told the diary.

I told the diary a lot of things. One of my favourite things to do in the diary was to have "fantasy conversations", where I'd imagine how, in an ideal world, my confessing of my feelings to whatever the object of my affections was that week might go. I'd write these non-existent interactions (because they never actually happened) as a script, because I'd been enjoying looking at plays during English lessons at school, and, later in my school career, had parts in our productions of The Wizard of Oz and Twelfth Night.

I realise this might sound a bit creepy, and it probably is. But what you have to understand is, as an autistic teenager who didn't know he was autistic, social interactions, particularly with someone for whom you didn't really know where you stood and lacked the self-confidence to ever believe they might be interested in you, were very difficult. I wrote those "conversations" down because I knew I'd never be able to pull them off in reality. They were a comforting fiction, in a way; they allowed me to indulge my imagination and think about something which I believed to be impossible in reality.

There was one exception, as I recall. On one of the numerous occasions I had plucked up the courage to declare to my friends that I fancied a girl named Nikki, my friends practically forced me to tell her how I felt. They got me and her out onto the school field, essentially pushed us together and left me to get onto it. And, to my credit, I successfully managed to confess my feelings to Nikki, who, bless her heart, at least let me down exceedingly gently and pleasantly.

That evening, I decided to "analyse" the situation. I wrote a script based on what had actually happened. I drew diagrams, with a little picture of a lightbulb representing how much I was blushing through the whole experience. I attempted to determine if there was anything I might have been able to do differently and, of course, came up short; no means no, as it were, and that is something I have always respected.

As that lovely little journal started to fill up with my innermost feelings, I started to become uneasy. I'd taken to placing it in a position on the desk in my bedroom where it was inconspicuous and unlikely to be picked up and read by someone coming in, but something in the back of my mind was still gnawing away at me, worrying that my Mum or Dad would pick it up, read it all and… well, take the piss, frankly, because there was a lot in there that one could probably take the piss about.

So one day I snapped. I took the journal and I threw it away. I took care not to throw it away in the kitchen bin, where it might have been noticed, but rather to throw it away in the outside bin, concealed in a bag beneath a large black bag of rubbish: somewhere no-one would even think to consider taking it out and rifling through it.

I regret that, now. I think it would be interesting to go back and look over those journal entries my teenage self made, as embarrassing and weird as some of them might have been. I don't know that it would have been helpful to do so, but thinking back, my school days (or, specifically, my time at secondary school and sixth form) are a time in my life I look back on with great fondness, where I was, retrospectively, very happy and satisfied with my lot in life, even if I had very little in the way of luck with women.

Thinking back on that diary is one of the reasons I've kept this blog around for so long. There's things I look back on that I'm not so proud of having written, and there's things I'm glad I wrote about. The one constant is that this blog is completely, honestly, unabashedly me, and it always will be.

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.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

The post #oneaday Day 225: The Secret Diary of Pete Davison, Age 43 3/4 appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

There are, as I type this, 2,850 posts on this blog. 2,851 including this one. As such, I've almost certainly written things multiple times. Yesterday's story about The Rough Book is one I've told before, for example, and even found myself using some of the same turns of phrase to describe various incidents.

But I think it's interesting to reflect back on things multiple times, many years apart, because doing so can cause you to look at those situations from a new perspective, perhaps with different life experiences under your belt. In the case of The Rough Book, I last wrote about it in 2012, when I didn't know I was autistic. Or, perhaps, when I hadn't been diagnosed as autistic. Because even in those innocent, pre-COVID days, I think I always knew that something was "up", as it were.

Hell, I mean, even COVID. Life has not been the same on Planet Earth since the pandemic hit, and many folks (including, I suspect, me and my wife) are still feeling the aftereffects (or perhaps it's more accurate to say ongoing effects) of the situation, thanks to the lack of understanding around things like "Long COVID" and suchlike.

It's hard to say if my life has got better or worse as time has gone on, looking back at these old posts and realising all the topics I've previously written about. I think, on the whole, I'm in a much better situation than I ever have been in every regard except for my physical health; I've had lower lows of mental health in particular (catastrophically low lows on multiple occasions) and I certainly have very little to complain about with my present employment situation.

I have found a niche and I'm damn well staying there as long as possible; I have no desire to ever go back to the periods of joblessness I've endured over the years. Even with the experience I've built up over the course of the past few years, I still feel like if I was suddenly out of work that I would struggle to cope in today's volatile, competitive job market. I have been very fortunate with the situation I've ended up in from that perspective. I took some risks to get here, in some ways it took an uncharacteristic amount of persistence, and I actually think the pandemic helped me secure the position I'm in now thanks to how it made remote working feasible for everyone.

I like having this blog, and being able to look back over the posts, particularly with the "Random Post" button at the top, then following a rabbit hole of "related posts". Of course, I have a big gap between the end of my first #oneaday stint and this one, but other things online — like MoeGamer and YouTube, for example — fill that gap to some degree. This is why I was so upset when WordPress.com pulled their whole "your blog has been deleted, teehee" shit a while back. This site isn't useful from a perspective of… well, anything, really, other than giving me a semi-private outlet to muse on whatever subjects I feel like writing about. But, goddammit, it's mine, and it's not beholden to any platform holders who can arbitrarily take it away from me. Not any more, anyway.

I don't get anywhere near the readership I used to with this blog. I don't even think my family and friends read it any more. I don't think anyone reads blogs any more, because they're too busy doomscrolling on social media or shit like TikTok. And while I hate that personally, I can't really tell other people what they "should" be doing, when the stuff I'm posting here is probably just as vapid as all the people yelling at the camera on TikTok.

Or is it? There's probably a whole discussion for another post in this, but I can say with complete honesty that what I've written here over the years has been an accurate reflection of me. I've always made a point of being honest — to myself as much as anyone who might be reading — while TikTok, from my admittedly limited experience to it, feels obnoxiously performative. Oddly, despite TikTok in theory being more "personal" thanks to being video-based — you see and hear the person — I still feel much more like I'm getting to know someone when I read what they write, rather than seeing them yelling breathlessly into their phone camera like the world's least scary follow-up to The Blair Witch Project.

It saddens me a bit that blogs aren't what they used to be. Hell, most people don't even call them "blogs" any more; these days they tend to be described as "newsletters", and most of them seem to be read via email rather than actually on their websites. But I'm still resolutely old-school in how I do things; this is my blog, and has been since (checks) 2008. And there's no real point changing up how I do things now, is there?

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.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

The post #oneaday Day 216: I've probably written all of this before appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Why am I still doing this? Or, perhaps to the point, why did I start doing this again? This article from Aftermath does a good job of explaining why.

Since the rise of social media, I feel like it's significantly less likely for someone to have a "personal website", because everyone is concerned about their "reach" and "engagement", and if you want both of those things, you want to be on a well-established social media site.

But if you're more concerned with self-expression and having a space to truly call your own, having your own website is hard to beat. And I think as people become more and more disillusioned with social media — Twitter and Facebook in particular — I think personal websites are going to become more and more important to a wider range of people.

Times have changed a bit, though. The word "blog" seems to have fallen out of wide usage, to be replaced with "newsletter", this being a result of the assumption that people will sign up to get your posts delivered to them via email, rather than going out of their way to visit your site. However, most of the "newsletters" out there are actually just blogs: people having a space to call their own, writing whatever they feel like at any given moment.

The best blogs… sorry, newsletters… of course have a distinct focus. One of my favourites is Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At?, which is one of the few sites out there continually taking the garbage of the AI industry and other enshittified parts of the Internet to account for their making life worse for everyone.

And, of course, if you've been following me for a while, you'll know about my own MoeGamer, which is my main video game blog. MoeGamer has now outlived all of the professional, commercial sites I have ever written for, which is a nice feeling. Sure, I don't update it every day or indeed regularly, but there's a ton of stuff to read on there, and I've made sure all of it is hopefully relevant and interesting, regardless of when you come to it. No racing to get "news" out the door; no rushing games to meet embargoes; just in-depth articles about games that, for one reason or another, I have found it worthwhile to spend some time, effort and words talking about.

This site, though, this is mostly for me. This site is my virtual replacement for the personal diaries I used to write as a teenager, only at no point have I become embarrassed enough about something I've written to want to throw the whole thing in the outside bin so it would never be found by anyone, except maybe the dustmen, who I hope had a good laugh about how much I fancied Nikki Rose before flinging the book into landfill. This site is my reminder of at least part of my time on this planet which, for sure, has had some hefty ups and downs over the course of the last 15-20 years or so.

Does it have many people reading it? No. But I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for myself — and if anyone happens to stumble across this little corner of the Internet and gets something out of something I've written, that's just a happy bonus.

If you've never given this sort of thing a try and you find yourself frustrated at social media, I can highly recommend giving it a go. It's dead easy to get started with a platform like WordPress or its numerous imitators; in many cases, you can get up and running for free, too.

However you choose to do it, I can assure you of one thing: having a space to truly call your own, in which you can express yourself completely freely, is something that I've started to find increasingly important with each passing year. It's a good thing to have an outlet, for both the good feelings and the bad, and banging out 500-1000 words every so often just about whatever's on your mind is a healthy habit to get into.

That's why I'm still doing this. Not to be famous, not to make money, not to get engagement and followers. But because it's just something I want to do, and which I find is of great benefit to my overall wellbeing. Give it a 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.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

The post #oneaday Day 174: Why am I still doing this? appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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.

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The post #oneaday Day 139: Non-specific ramblings appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'll do all the randomising, don't worry. If you want to read the full post, just click the title.

#oneaday Day 145: Wotcher, Witcher

This is a post from 2011, when I was playing The Witcher. The first one, albeit in its "Enhanced Edition" form. This was back when you could still get physical copies of PC games; I remember buying a copy of this from Game and being excited to give it a try, then somewhat disappointed that my PC at the time wasn't really up to the job of running it very well. I kept hold of it, though, and gave it a proper go when I upgraded my PC, and enjoyed the experience very much.

It's kind of funny to think that back then, CD Projekt Red was a little scrappy Polish developer, and this, their magnum opus at the time, was equally scrappy to a charming degree. Sure, it was technically quite impressive — I recall comparing its visuals favourably to Xbox 360 games that were around at the time — but it also had its fair share of jank, such as heavily repeated NPC models, questionable animations and a dodgy interface.

What really shone through even back then, though, was the quality of the writing, and the fact it felt properly like a game for adults — and not just because of the collectible boobylicious "sex cards" you were awarded for bedding the various ladies of the game world. It was a game with proper consequences, not just "press A for the good answer, B for the evil answer", and that carried through into its two successors.

Overall, my enjoyment for the series tapered off a bit after the first Witcher game; the second one felt like it was tuned too hard, and the third one's open world aspect was, to my mind, completely needless. But I have fond memories of the series, and they started right here.

2022: Video Star

Here's a post from 2015, in which I was having a play with the PlayStation 4's ShareFactory app, which I suspect is mostly forgotten today. This is back when I was first experimenting with YouTube, and before I really got into making videos. I found, having experimented with both formats a bit, I enjoyed making pre-scripted videos a little more than freeform "Let's Play"-style ones, because at the time, in the latter case, I worried about running out of things to say.

I'm still not 100% sure which style of video I actually prefer to this day, as both have their benefits. But if you're curious, here's a very early attempt at a pre-scripted video, created using ShareFactory on the PS4 and recorded using a distinctly shittier microphone than I have now. (If I recall, it was actually the Guitar Hero microphone!) I have better equipment and a better workflow now, but I was still quite pleased with this when I first published it.

#oneaday Day 890: Glorification

This was a 2012 progress report on my journey through Sierra's Quest for Glory series, which I'd never played prior to this runthrough, but had always been curious about. Quest for Glory IV in particular was one I was really looking forward to, as it's a full "talkie", featuring the legendary John Rhys-Davies on narration duties.

I compared Quest for Glory IV to the Elder Scrolls series, using its similar "use it to improve it" skill systems as a point of comparison. I had already started falling off the Elder Scrolls bandwagon by this point, and games like Quest for Glory reminded me why; I simply preferred a much smaller, well-crafted environment with things to do rather than a vast open world with not much of actual interest in it.

Quest for Glory and The Elder Scrolls are very different series, of course — if you've never come across the former, I recommend exploring it; the blend of role-playing game and point-and-click adventure is still unique and fresh-feeling — but I find it a bit of a shame that one approach very much became "the norm", particularly in the PC space, while the other languishes in gaming history. In fact, I bemoaned this very fact in this post; why haven't there been more attempts to recreate the Quest for Glory formula?

2485: The Value of Short Experiences

Off to 2016 for this next post, and a reminder of something that I like to try and remember every so often: sometimes it's nice to cleanse one's gaming palate with a game you can finish in an evening or a weekend. At the time, I had just come off the horror game Outlast (which I didn't like all that much) and the visual novel Negligee (which I liked very much) and come to the conclusion that Not All Games Need To Be A Thousand Hours Long.

This is something that today's games industry is still struggling with. The triple-A space is still obsessed with making us all grind through epic amounts of Content rather than just providing a neat 10-hour experience that doesn't outstay its welcome. This has only become worse with the rise of live service games — and, worse, single-player games that appear to want to be live service games.

Thankfully, short-form games do still also exist. And I recommend you spend some time with some. Because you might find that they offer a lot of value.

1473: Ruined

Back to 2014 now, and a look at EA's desecration of Dungeon Keeper by turning it into a tap-and-wait free-to-play piece of shit for mobile phones. Back then I said "it pretty much is reasonable to brand free-to-play mobile games a universally bad thing… I can't think of any good free-to-play mobile games offhand". This situation has changed a bit since then, most notably in the "gacha games" space, because they actually have a bit of a game attached to them now, but I still swore off free-to-play mobile games a while back and haven't missed them.

Dungeon Keeper was an absolute monstrosity though. It was one of those games that was posing as a strategy game, but which actually required no strategy whatsoever; only deep pockets. Crazy to think this was ten years ago now, and EA hasn't learned a fucking thing since.

Board Gamery

This post from 2008 makes me a bit sad, because it represents an age of my life that seems to have come to an end, and not through my choice. It's a rundown of some board games I particularly enjoyed playing, posted during the time when we were having regular (weekly-ish) board game sessions and trying out a wide variety of weird and wonderful games.

Sadly, the folks I played those games with have mostly become boring grown-ups with families since then and never want to do anything any more, so I have a cupboard full of board games that don't get played. Which is a shame, but oh well. That is what happens as we all grow old.

Anyway, on that melancholy note, probably time to call it a night. If you're new 'round here, feel free to hit that Random button and check out some posts from years gone by; just remember to check the date on any posts you read, though, before you get mad at me about something I said 15 years ago!

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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The post #oneaday Day 112: Best(?) of the Blog appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

And that is: not everything you enjoy has to become "content". Not everything you do has to turn into a video or an article or a blog post or even something on social media.

I am saying this primarily to myself, because I've definitely felt myself veering in that direction at times. Indeed, a significant portion of my game collection consists of stuff I picked up because I thought it would be fun and/or interesting to write about at some point — though this was back when I was working an incredibly boring job pre-COVID and had both the time and mental energy to be able to post something substantial about video games nearly every day.

The trouble with thinking that "everything has to be content" (and I'm using that phrase as a shorthand, not as approval of the term) is that it gradually makes it more and more difficult to just enjoy yourself — to such a degree that it can lead to a form of analysis paralysis where you end up discarding certain experiences on the grounds that they won't be "meaningful" enough. And by "you" in that sentence, I mean "I".

I am proud of what I have created online: there's this blog, which might be of interest to someone; there's MoeGamer, which features a wealth of in-depth articles about games that don't get much attention anywhere else; and there's my YouTube channel, which focuses primarily on retro platforms that don't get as much love as others.

But my brain is always going. It's always thinking "oh, yeah, wouldn't it be cool to make an in-depth video about Disco Elysium?" or "go for it! You absolutely can write one article for every single game on Evercade!" or "don't start playing something else until you've finished what you're playing, because you might not be able to write about it otherwise".

These of the words of someone who is at risk of turning his hobby into work, and I have become increasingly conscious of it over the last few years. The trouble is, I am increasingly aware of how I'm growing older, and thinking about what sort of "legacy" I want to leave behind. My wife and I aren't having children — by choice, I should probably add — but that doesn't mean I don't want to leave anything behind. I would love it if some of my writing and videos were useful to someone down the road, even if they only have something of a niche interest audience now.

But that doesn't mean I should spread myself too thin and try to cover everything. That's simply unrealistic. So I think I should probably try and impose some restrictions on myself to keep my "ambitions" under control, because otherwise I risk 1) overwhelming and burning myself out, and 2) never being able to "just enjoy" something ever again.

So for now I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to keep my YouTube channel focused near-exclusively on Atari stuff: primarily 8-bit and ST, perhaps with some 2600 stuff thrown in here and there if I can be bothered. MoeGamer I'd like to get back to doing some stuff a little more regularly with, so I think I will continue to use that as a means of posting in-depth thoughts on games I've actually finished in the case of narrative-heavy games, or spent enough time with to be able to comment on in the case of gameplay-centric titles. That may mean updates are sporadic, but there's nowt wrong with that. It's not a professional site, and I'm not in a position where I need or want to use it as a "portfolio" of sorts right now.

Evercade stuff is my day job, so any time I'm tempted to write something or make a video about Evercade stuff in my free time, I should instead channel that energy into doing something about it during working hours, particularly if I hit a period of "downtime" between major time-sensitive jobs. Of course, there are things I can't do or say when doing things from a "professional" perspective, but honestly it doesn't really matter too much; if I was doing Evercade stuff privately, I'd be wanting to explain why each and every game (yes, even the "bad" ones) is interesting and worth exploring rather than tearing it apart, and that's not much different from taking a slightly more "marketing" approach. (Incidentally, if you want to see some of the stuff I've done professionally for Evercade, check out the official Evercade blog, and particularly the Evercade Game Spotlight, Evercade Cartridge Preview and Top 5s sections.)

Everything else? I should just enjoy it. Sit back, enjoy without guilt. Write about it or make a video if I feel like it, but don't place undue pressure on myself to make everything into a video or an article. Sometimes a good time is just a good time and doesn't need writing about. Sometimes a good time is something best kept to yourself. Sometimes it's nice to try and forget that the Internet exists, and get yourself back into the '80s mindset of just enjoying things because.

Anyway, that's my ramble for today. I'm off to go put it into practice.

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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The post #oneaday Day 60: Not everything has to be "CONTENT" appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Back in those days, I posted sporadically. I wasn't really sure what to do with a blog at the time, I just felt like I wanted one. It actually wasn't the first blog I'd had, either, although it's the only one that's survived this long.

I did, at one point, post an anonymous "Tales from the Staffroom" blog on BlogSpot that recounted my experiences as a classroom teacher, but there appears to be no trace of that left on the current Internet. There is an archive of it from as recently as 2023, but Google appears to have gone on a "Blogger purge" at some point in the last year, so the address no longer works on the current Web. This is a shame, but at least archive.org caught it before it disappeared.

At the time I started this blog, I was still working at the Apple Store as a "Creative" — that is to say, I was one of the people whose job it was to provide training sessions for Mac users on the use of creative software. Technically our job was supposed to be confined to lessons on Apple software only, but we inevitably found ourselves having to deal with customers using all manner of weird and wonderful pieces of software for their very specific needs.

This was partly our own fault — one guy on the Creative team was a Photoshop expert, so him happily covering that set the expectation with customers that we should all be able to cover Photoshop, even though several of us had specialisms in other areas — but also it just felt a bit mean to have someone just turn up, ask for help (which, nine times out of ten, was pretty simple, given that most folks who signed up for the "One to One" programme were new Mac users and often elderly) and tell them "no".

I enjoyed that job for quite a while. I had a nice group of friends and I was good at it. The pay was… all right, considering it was a retail position, and the freebies and staff discounts were excellent. Unfortunately it ended badly when the management of the store inexplicably went into something of a decline and started being unnecessarily harsh on the folks working for them. I ended up losing my job after standing up for a colleague of mine who absolutely was unfairly dismissed, but given that both management and the folks above them closed ranks, he was never going to get fair treatment. And, as it turned out, I didn't, either. Thankfully, I resigned before they could fire me, but it left an extremely bitter taste in my mouth with regards to all things Apple.

Anyway, I don't want to dwell on that too much because that's probably a whole other story I can tell another day. That was the context in which I was writing those first posts, though: I was, for a time, genuinely quite happy and satisfied with the way things were going. My life perhaps wasn't proceeding in the direction I had initially intended — after a nervous breakdown, I decided that classroom teaching really wasn't for me — but it was proceeding, at least. And having a blog was a nice breezy way to ponder on all sorts of things without any sort of real "pressure". I can't even remember if I'd joined Facebook or Twitter in 2008; I think I probably had, but social media certainly wasn't the all-encompassing force of shittiness that it is today back then.

It's interesting to look back and see things that no longer exist, such as PMOG, the Passively Multiplayer Online Game, where you earned experience points and other RPG-style benefits for simply browsing the Web. And it's also gratifying to see that so far as my tastes are concerned, some things never change.

You are, of course, always welcome to browse back into the archives via the dropdown in the sidebar. (I'm not sure where it is on mobile, probably at the bottom?) I'm not the same person I was back then — but every experience I've had, everything I've written about, has helped make me who I am today, for better or worse.

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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The post #oneaday Day 45: Happy Wordiversary appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Now and again I like to hit the "Random Post" button on this site to jump to one of the myriad posts in the archives. I often find myself surprised how often it throws up the same things, given how many of them there are, but computerised randomisation is, as we hopefully all know by now, imperfect.

That gives me an idea for today's post. I'll hit Random a few times and see what I think of what shows up. Are you ready? Then let's begin.

First up, Day 693 from first time around, and a post named Endings. In it, I contemplated the fact that I had just finished L.A. Noire, a game that I enjoyed a lot at the time but which I have forgotten almost everything about since. I pontificated on particularly effective endings that had stuck with me over the years — particularly downer endings. And Conker's Bad Fur Day was one that stuck with me, due to it coming after all the foul-mouthed ridiculousness that had come before.

I still agree with this. Conker's Bad Fur Day ends absolutely perfectly. It's a huge bummer in a lot of ways, of course, what with our hero losing his true love, but it also provides something of a sense of "reality catching up with him". The strange journey that Conker goes on over the course of Conker's Bad Fur Day starts silly and cartoonish, but gets darker and darker as you progress through things. By the last few sequences in the game, things are still silly, but there's a definite sobering undercurrent. The World War II-inspired sequence may have you fighting against teddy bears, but it's still World War II, and a lot of people get hurt and die.

The ending of Conker's Bad Fur Day is as much a signal to the player as it is to Conker. "Wake up," it says. "The time for play is over. Now it's time to get back to the grim reality of life." Sobering, to be sure.

Next up, post 850 from first time around, entitled Diablolical [sic]. In it, I lay out how I'd been having a good time with the then-newly released Diablo III, and that I didn't have as much of a problem with it being "always online" as the rest of the Internet seemed to. And that's because I recognised that Diablo III, far more than its predecessors, was actually an MMO. A well-disguised one, yes, but still an MMO.

I actually stand by this assessment, though my opinion on Diablo III itself has soured somewhat for a variety of reasons. Firstly, after playing it a bunch, I realised that its setting and unrelenting grimness was just plain boring to me. The world of Diablo is a world in which there is no hope; one in which you defeat the Big Bad of the hour and there's inevitably an even bigger bad lurking just around the corner. And once you've beaten all the Big Bads, they all come back, because that's what Big Bads do in Diablo-land.

Secondly, it's hard to get the various revelations about working conditions at Blizzard Entertainment out of my head. I'm not about to go on a big crusade about it or anything, but given that the Diablo series is already one I'd been feeling a bit "ehhh" about since the very beginning, knowing that some of the staff at the developer are shitheads makes it a lot easier to just go "fuck it" and never play anything from them again… particularly as all of their last few releases have some combination of loot boxes, battle passes or predatory "free-to-play" monetisation. So yeah, fuck Blizzard and fuck Diablo. Diablo III is still an MMO, though.

Next up, an earlier post: number 303, from 2010, in which I ponder the nature of Panic Stations. Specifically, through some exceedingly heavy-handed masking, I outline the things that cause me a sense of irrational anxiety, even when I know they're not anything really worth getting het up about. 2010 was before I'd really sought any sort of help for mental health, and well before I'd been diagnosed with either anxiety or Asperger's, but I still recognised anxious feelings in myself — and my brain's tendency to blow things out of proportion.

This post is one I should probably return to now and again to remind myself not to get so wound up about stupid things.

Finally for today, an even earlier post from 2010: number 57, Look into the Eyes, in which I talk about the Derren Brown show my ex-wife (who was, at that point, just my wife) and I had been to see at the Mayflower theatre in Southampton. I really enjoyed that show, and both of us had a lot of time for Derren Brown. I feel like we don't see much of him these days; I wonder what happened to him? Looking on Wikipedia, it seems he's still active, but I guess the changing nature of how we look at media these days makes him less visible — I don't watch "TV" any more, for example, and that tended to be where I saw him the most.

All right, that's enough looking back for one day. My cat has just been sick and the other cat is eating it. I think that's as good a cue as any to just go to bed.

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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The post #oneaday Day 30: A Milestone? appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Today has been a pretty uneventful day all round. Work was quiet, as it's likely to be for a little while, and I spent a bit of time this evening playing some Steam Next Fest demos. That's a subject for MoeGamer though, so check over there in the next few days for some thoughts.

I've been spending my late evenings before bed watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which my brother kindly bought me a box set of for my birthday. I've never watched this right through to the end, so I'm looking forward to finally doing that. While it was tempting to try and watch all the Star Trek series chronologically, that's a mammoth undertaking that I'm not entirely sure is desirable anyway. I do want to at least see Deep Space Nine and Voyager all the way through, though, so I'm going to tackle those one at a time.

No header image today as I've left the Kindle Scribe downstairs and I'm typing this from bed. The post editor in the Jetpack app is actually surprisingly good, though I still prefer typing on a proper keyboard. Good to know I can do some decent posting from mobile, though; the WordPress app used to be kind of pump.

Anyway, that'll probably do for now. It's quarter past midnight and I am tired. Tomorrow is another day, and there is work to be done, so to sleep I go.

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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The post #oneaday Day 4: Upward Slope appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Good evening. If the header looks familiar, you've doubtless been following this blog for quite some time and will remember that time, starting in January of 2010, where I decided to participate in a loosely organised blogging project. Dubbed "One A Day" or, more commonly, "#oneaday" due to its origins on Twitter, it was a collective effort by all the participants to write something — anything — every single day for a year.

I joined the project a little late, but ended up going the distance considerably more than some of the other people who started alongside me — including the original organisers, several of whom gave up after less than a month. I eventually managed 2,541 posts, eventually calling it a day on December 31, 2016.

Sometimes I think about that project and the value it had for me. Ultimately, I don't think I really got a great deal out of the "community" side of things — on the contrary, when I decided to step forward and encourage a group of bloggers to do a year of #oneaday in aid of charity, I got a fair chunk of abuse from the original organisers, who still felt some weird sense of "ownership" over the concept of daily blogging, despite having dropped out of the whole process very early. But what I did get out of it was a sense of… I guess "therapy" is probably the best word for it.

My starting #oneaday first time around coincided with one of the absolute worst times of my life, during which I suffered bullying at work, culminating in me being dismissed from a job I loved because I stood up for a colleague who was also being bullied; a period during which my first marriage broke down irreparably and left me alone, without an income and staring down what I saw back then as the humiliating possibility of having to return home to stay with my parents; a time when my anxiety and depression were enjoying a particular "peak" (or is that a trough?), to say the least.

One of the things that got me through that period mostly intact was making the time each evening to sit down and write something. It didn't necessarily have to be about what had happened that day or even how I was feeling at that point; just the act of being creative was somehow comforting. It seems that the human mind is often at its most creative when it is suffering, and I was most definitely suffering around that time. And indeed on several other occasions during those 2,541 posts.

It's not an exaggeration to say that daily blogging helped get me through that time. It's not an exaggeration to say that daily blogging is a significant part of why I am still here to write this right now. Because believe me, things inside my head were bleak for quite some time on several separate occasions.

Today, on the 8th of June, 2024, I'm not in anywhere near as bad a situation as any of those previous instances, but my mental health most certainly has been dipping down into a bit of a trough for quite some time. So I thought it was time to kick the tyres on this here ol' blog, which is still humming away, and make a commitment to writing something every day in the hopes that it might help, even a little.

I will hasten to add that my sudden inclination to write something on here is nothing to do with the events of today specifically, which were actually rather pleasant; some friends who I haven't seen for some time were all finally available to come and have a day of playing video games and chatting. We haven't done this for a long time — I've tried to make it an annual tradition of sorts, since our respective lives make it difficult to do anything more regularly — and it was nice. But some of the conversations we had got me thinking, and that indirectly led me back here to the "Compose" page.

So anyway. That's what this is. I've rambled on for long enough for today, so perhaps we'll talk a little bit more about my present situation and what I really hope to get out of all this another time. For now, let's just say it's good to be back, and I'll see you again tomorrow.

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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The post #oneaday Day 1: Blogging Therapy appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Those who have been following the saga of social media for a while will know that Twitter is a right old mess right now. Between Elon Musk's incredible ego and a series of bizarre policy changes and introductions (most of which are likely related to Musk's ego in some form or another) it's certainly been interesting to watch the world's most popular social media platform (for how much longer?) go through some trials and tribulations.

But those of you who have been following me for a while will know that Twitter hasn't been much fun for a long time now. When I first joined (which must have been around 2007 or so, maybe?) it was a great place to make new friends, enjoy good conversation and just generally have a good time. But as the years have gone on — and particularly since the significant online upheavals that can be at least partly attributed to the "Gamergate" mess of 2014 — it's become a less and less desirable hangout, for a variety of reasons.

Chief among them for me is the combative, confrontational tone the site as a whole has taken on. While it is still possible to have civil conversations there, it feels like it's much more likely that if you post an opinion of your own someone will come along and shout it down before long. Even if your opinion is not, in the grand scheme of things, particularly important or worth getting upset over.

Anger seems to be the default state for many posters on Twitter, and this is often expressed through some seriously unpleasant behaviour. Anyone who is into Japanese games, for example, will doubtless have seen the disgusting vitriol that gets thrown the way of localisation staff (more specifically, female localisation staff) on a fairly regular basis, regardless of whether or not any "mistakes" have been made. And the same is true in all fields; the quote-tweet dunk is a universal constant, and it does not make for a friendly environment where one wants to hang out.

But alongside all this, Twitter itself has been changing in functional, mechanical terms. The rise of "The Algorithm" on all manner of social sites — with the most notorious being YouTube, of course — has meant that no longer can you count on your social media experience being your own, if indeed it ever was. Rather than showing you the things that your friends have been posting in the order that they were posted, you now get shit you didn't sign up for pushed into your feed as "recommendations", based on the ill-defined assumptions that Twitter makes about "quality content".

I never signed up to Twitter for "quality content". I signed up to chat with folks from a forum we all used to frequent that we weren't able to use any more due to the site's closure. That's all I really wanted. And that's emphatically not what the site provides these days.

So between the change in atmosphere, the change in the way the whole site works and the whole Musk fiasco, I've come to the conclusion that it's simply not worth wasting time pissing around on Twitter any more — if indeed it ever was. Rather, I think it's high time that I brought this blog back, since it's a much better means for me to express myself — plus the comments section is a much nicer way to hold a conversation in most cases. (Unless those people find their way here, but you know how it is.)

So that's what I'm going to do. I'll be keeping my Twitter account open because it's still useful for things like news aggregation and PR contacts, but pretty much all I'll be posting on there is links to stuff I've done, either for work or for pleasure. When I want to actually talk about something, I'll do it here, like in the good old days.

I'm not making any grand promises about posting frequency or anything like that, this is just going to be an "as and when I feel like it" sort of thing. I'm also not going to commit to doing silly comics or anything, even though I know one particular reader (whom I hope is doing well, given that I haven't heard from her for a while) is a big fan! This is my scratch pad, my brain dump and my place to express myself. No "algorithm" rules the roost here, and as such it's a much better means of getting to know me than the toxic bird site.

So see you around here, I hope!

The post My Twitter replacement appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

A fine morning to you, everyone. I've decided to come back to this blog on an occasional basis, as writing here always used to provide good "therapy" when I really needed it — and after the last couple of years we've all had I don't think anyone in the world would deny the need for some sort of outlet for all the stresses we've been having to deal with.

I'm not going to make any bold commitments about posting every day or anything like that — largely because my day job over at Rice Digital means that I'm writing every day anyway, so the whole "keeping in practice" thing isn't really necessary. Instead, I'm just going to write here when I feel like it, just for the sake of expressing myself and perhaps sharing something of myself with those of you reading.

This might also be an opportunity to rekindle some friendships that kind of fell by the wayside when I moved away from posting regularly on this blog in favour of my other projects such as MoeGamer and my YouTube channel. So if you're seeing this in your inbox or feed reader for the first time in a while, be sure to say hi — it'd be lovely to hear from some of you.

I'm not going to go straight into babbling on too much about the living nightmare that is life in 2022; we'll save that for another day. For today, I just wanted to say hello, remind you all that I exist — and let you know that you'll once again be seeing a bit of me around here now and again. That'll probably do for now — but expect more soon!

The post Homecoming appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

And I'm talking about more than just stepping away from Twitter and Facebook like I have done a few times in the past, as positive as those experiences turned out to be for me. I'm talking about a pretty thorough purge, and a return to a simpler, quieter life with fewer external stressors.

You see, the allure of the Internet and its ability to connect people from all over the world has kind of worn off somewhat for me. The last few years have demonstrated that there are a significant number of people out there who are more interested in conflict, oneupmanship and narcissism than actual meaningful interaction. The fall from grace of the games press — and many game journalists' pretty much unveiled hatred of their audiences — is just one of many examples of this, but the overall negativity that infuses what feels like the vast majority of online communications these days is just proving to be more trouble than it's worth.

I don't need that. It's not adding anything to my life — nothing good, anyway — so, I figure, why continue to put up with it? There's no need to.

As such, starting on New Year's Day, I'm going to begin a process of unplugging as much as I possibly can. Twitter and Facebook are both going completely, since the annoyance both of those bring to my life far outweighs the benefits of both of them. More significantly, I'm planning on ditching the smartphone age in favour of an older, simpler phone that doesn't bug me every five minutes with updates and notifications. At this point, I'm strongly considering picking up a second-hand N-Gage I've seen on Amazon, since that has the added benefit of being an underappreciated and increasingly rare gaming platform as well as a phone I very much enjoyed using when I originally had one.

I'm also going to draw my time with this blog to a close. I'm satisfied with what I've achieved here since I started, but the time has come to move on. I'm not going to give up regular writing, mind you; I'm still going to post weekly articles over on MoeGamer, since those have a clear focus, and I'm also intending to start a weekly TinyLetter as a more private, more personal substitute for my daily updates here. I'll post details on how to sign up for that towards the end of the year, so those of you who want to continue to follow what I'm up to can do so.

I'll be keeping more personal means of communication open. My email address and Google Hangouts accounts will still be active, as will my gaming accounts on Steam, Xbox Live and PSN. But the shouting into the void that is public social media will, hopefully, become a thing of the past. It's no longer enjoyable, useful or fun, so I have no need for it.

I'm not going to put my personal email, Google Hangouts and gaming account addresses in this post for obvious reasons, but if you are interested in staying in touch via any of these means, please feel free to drop me a line via my Contact page explaining who you are and how you know me. If we've chatted before in the past, great, no problem; if we've never spoken before, however, please do include a bit about yourself in your message.

That's the plan, then. And I anticipate that it will lead to a happier, more peaceful and less stressful 2017 for me. At least I hope it does, anyway!

The post 2531: Planning to Unplug appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This post is a response to WordPress' "Daily Post" writing prompt for today.

My immediate reaction to the word "disappointment" when seeing today's writing prompt was… well, disappointment in The Daily Post's prompts of late.

Longtime readers may recall my occasional use of The Daily Post's writing prompts and the fact that they led to some interesting explorations of topics I might not normally explore on this blog. My default go-to topics for writing about are video games, games journalism and mental health issues, but the prompts from The Daily Post gave me a nudge to consider other topics now and again, whether they be nostalgic, hypothetical or just plain weird.

Lately, though, the prompts on the site have just been single words, and these don't inspire me nearly as much as the questions or phrases that used to make up The Daily Post's bank of writing prompts. I'm trying to pin down exactly why the change to this style of prompt fills me with such disappointment, and I think it's because it provides the opportunity for too broad a range of things to write about; single-word prompts are too flexible.

Let me explain what I mean. When I decide to make use of a writing prompt for a day's post, I like it being in the form of a question or an exam-style "Phrase. Discuss." prompt because it provides some sort of direction to the writing. Creativity is, to me, at its most interesting when you work within some sort of constraint, because you then have to not only use your creativity to produce the work itself, but you also have to use your creativity to perhaps bend the rules of the constraint in question, too. A single word doesn't constrain me at all; I can still pretty much write about anything tangentially related to, say, "disappointment", and I've technically fulfilled the brief. That, to me, isn't a helpful writing prompt. That, to me, makes me feel like I should have just started writing any old thing off the top of my head rather than looking for a prompt.

I'm aware that my experiences and feelings about this aren't going to be the same as everyone else's, and that there are doubtless plenty of bloggers out there who relish the chance to tackle the challenge of a single-word prompt and make it interesting. But for me, I always found The Daily Post much more enjoyable when it provided much clearer briefs and prompts on what to write about — and much more interesting to see how other people interpreted these briefs, too.

Hopefully we'll see a return to form for The Daily Post at some point in the near future. If not, well, I may have to contemplate setting up something of my own. I can't be the only one feeling disappointment in this way!

The post 2286: Disappointment appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

"Go to your Stats page and check your top 3-5 posts. Why do you think they’ve been successful? Find the connection between them, and write about it."

Daily Post, February 9, 2016

All right. Let's have a look, then. Since we're not that far into 2016 and WordPress doesn't appear to have an "all time" function to search top posts, I'll provide the top five posts (excluding the homepage, which makes up the majority of pageviews but doesn't tell me much) for both 2016 so far and 2015. In other words, these are posts that people saw the title of (probably on social media or via a search engine) and directly clicked through to, rather than simply checking my front page each day.

Here's 2016 so far:

And here's 2015:

All right. So let's get analysing.

Since I write about a wide variety of topics on this blog — regular readers will know that it's my personal outlet for venting about whatever is on my mind on any given day rather than any attempt to provide a coherent editorial experience — it's perhaps not surprising that not all of the entries in these two lists have something in common, but there are a few common themes along the way.

How to Do Stuff

Let's look at 2016, first. Both How to Win at Omega Quintet and Helping your Squad in Xenoblade X were written in 2015 (indicated by them not having the orange bar next to them), yet have remained consistently popular since I wrote them. The reason for this is that they are instructional content: guides for video games. Instructions or guides are consistent traffic magnets, regardless of the subject matter of your site, because one of the most common things people search the Internet for is how to do something. Video games sites often use guide content for current popular games to attract visitors to their site and guarantee a baseline of ad revenue, then cross their fingers that readers will click through to other, less "baity" content. It doesn't always work like that, of course, which is why we've seen a rise in deliberately provocative "clickbait" content across the board, not just in games journalism.

Anyway. The reason that my guide content for both Omega Quintet and Xenoblade X proved popular is that these were both games that had a specific audience, but neither of them were "big" enough for a commercial site to want to devote time and column inches to them. In other words, those searching for help when playing Omega Quintet and/or Xenoblade X would be out of luck when searching the big video games sites, but a cursory Google search would doubtless throw up my posts here fairly early on — indeed, at the time of writing, my post on Omega Quintet appears sixth in my (admittedly personalised) Google search results, embarrassingly with a typo in the preview text which I have now corrected:

It's for this reason that a couple of my other previous posts have proven popular over time: my post on How to Play Pocket Academy, for example, detailing the baffling and frankly illogical mechanics of Kairosoft's mobile-based school sim, rode high in my rankings for quite some time. I tell you: if you want traffic, write posts that tell people how to do stuff, and preferably how to do stuff that mainstream sites haven't covered.

The Power of Sharing

My most popular posts are always several orders of magnitude more popular than their nearest rivals, with perhaps the most impressive example being 2015's An Open Letter to Paul Glass, Slimming World Consultant, Upper Shirley. This post was pretty far from my more regular subject matter on popular media, particularly video games, and yet it was my most popular individual post for 2015. Why? Because it had the absolute shit shared out of it.

Paul Glass was the consultant at our local Slimming World group when I first joined, and his enthusiasm and belief in the programme was and is a big part of why I've stuck with it and had so much success over the course of the last year — I've lost six stone in a year, hopefully with more still to come off. When he revealed that he would be leaving the group to spend more time with his family in far-off climes, I felt it important to express my feelings about what he had helped me accomplish in such a way that I could be clearly understood. I'm shy and socially anxious by nature, and at the time I wrote this I'm not sure how confident I would have felt saying all those words in person, but writing them down on paper is no big deal: I can "fire and forget" that way.

Something told me that I should probably share this post a little wider than just my Twitter followers, though, and so I decided to make one of my extremely irregular visits to Facebook to post a link to the letter on the Facebook group for the Slimming World group in question. That one simple action caused that one single post to absolutely explode in popularity, as it was shared by group members, Paul himself, and subsequently by other people I'd never met involved with Slimming World in various capacities, either as group members or staff.

You never can quite tell what the next big viral sensation is going to be, but there is one thing that all my popular posts do tend to have in common:

The Passion of the Post

It is, I feel, no coincidence that my most widely shared, most popular posts are those in which I feel most passionate about the things that I am writing about. I am a person who, I feel, can express their passion for something pretty clearly through my writing. And indeed, due to the aforementioned shyness and social anxiety mentioned above, I find writing to be the easiest means through which I can express that passion to an audience that can — hopefully — appreciate what I'm saying, or at least respect it.

2015's most popular posts were all about passion, from my letter to Paul to Perhaps We Should Stop Insulting Fans of Japanese Games. Four out of the five posts above were about video games — four out of the five posts were pretty much about the same thing, in fact, which was critics' regular dismissive and unfair treatment of both Japanese game developers and the fans of the games they make — but these posts all resonated deeply both with myself and with the circle of friends I've cultivated on social media, most of whom share the same interests as me.

Consequently, much as my letter to Paul got shared far and wide, so too did The Joyless Wankers of the Games Press (actually written the year before in response to an absolutely atrocious review of Fairy Fencer F on my former stomping grounds of USgamer), Some Thoughts for Critics (a response to Jim Sterling's dreadful and ill-informed review of Senran Kagura 2), Hi Games Journalism, It's Time We Had Another Chat (a response to Mike Diver's equally dreadful and ill-informed review of Senran Kagura 2, a game which is a ton of fun but which proved to be a whipping boy for self-described "progressive" types on the grounds of the female characters' big jiggly breasts) and the aforementioned Perhaps We Should Stop Insulting Fans of Japanese Games (a response to an extraordinarily narrow-minded editorial on USgamer by a former editor, and almost certainly the reason he has me blocked on Twitter). I saw these posts get shared and reshared, not only on Twitter, but also on Facebook and Reddit, the latter of which I don't really use myself.

The things I had written had clearly got the strength of my feelings across, and other people felt like they could relate to them in some way — either agreeing or disagreeing — and this caused them to explode in popularity, at least in terms of numbers. The same, too, can be said for 2016's Why It Would Be A Mistake to Not Localise Valkyrie Drive Bhikkuni, an impassioned plea for the progressive loudmouths not to stop Senran Kagura creator Kenichiro Takaki's new game making it over to Western shores.

Bovril?

I'll be honest, I have no idea why a post from 2013 about beef-and-yeast-extract black sticky substance Bovril is my third most popular post this year so far, but oddly enough this post has been consistently popular: it finished 2015 in sixth place, just after my various rants at the games journalism industry and also ranked sixth in 2014, but only managed 19th place in its original year of publication.

It's not even a particularly exciting post: it simply describes what Bovril is and how I feel about it. It doesn't even appear on the front page of Google results for Bovril. But I guess it meant something to someone somewhere. Perhaps not many people write about Bovril on the Internet, and my post offered a safe space for Bovril fans to convene and share in silent contemplation of salty beef drinks. Or perhaps it's just one of those things that can't quite be explained.

So what can we learn from this?

There are a few things you can probably see my most popular posts have in common. To my eye, these things are:

• A clear, conversational title that makes it clear what the post is about — i.e. a simple subject line rather than a "title" that tries to be clever or funny
• Passion for the subject — clear emotion, either positive or negative, is infectious and relatable
• Scope for sharing — be it a topic that a lot of people feel strongly about, or something that is written in such a way that presents a strong argument in favour of or against something
• Complete honesty — even at the expense of a few "bridges" if necessary
• Instructions on how to do stuff — particularly if nowhere else has published instructions on how to do that stuff

Not all of my most popular posts have all of the above elements — although I do make a specific effort to apply the "complete honesty" element to everything I write — but these are, by far, the most common factors that all of my most popular posts have between them.

I hope that's proved as enlightening for you as it has for me: it's certainly given me some food for thought with regard to what to write about going forward from here, so I'd say both as a writing exercise and an analytical investigation, this post has been a great success.

Thanks, Daily Post!

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In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "Million-Dollar Question."

"Why do you blog?"

I've answered this question before numerous times on these very pages, but it certainly doesn't hurt to contemplate it again, particularly for the benefit of those who have only found me recently and are disinclined to trawl through over 2,100 previous posts to find previous answers.

I blog for numerous reasons. Mostly habit, to be perfectly honest; after 2,114 days of writing something each and every day, it is very much part of my daily routine now, even if I do habitually leave it until the "last minute", as I have done once again today, writing this at 1:10 in the morning when I have work at 9am.

The reason why I started, though, was to be part of something that sounded interesting. A few people I followed on Twitter at the time started talking about the hashtag #oneaday, which I investigated further and discovered was an attempt to write something each and every day for a year. The intention was not necessarily to write something good each and every day for a year, but more to get into the habit of writing something on a daily basis. The more you do something, the more you develop your craft, after all, and in something inherently creative like writing, the more you do something, the more you develop your own personal style, too. Since most of the people participating in the hashtag were games journalists to varying degrees, keeping their writing skills fresh was obviously a good idea.

I jumped on board — a little later than some of my comrades, but still within January. I kept an eye on what others were up to and sometimes drew ideas and inspiration from their work, but I was somewhat surprised to discover that a goodly proportion of the people who started in that January decided to abandon the project remarkably quickly. One of these people who jumped ship quickly was the person who appeared to have started the whole shebang in the first place. I decided that I was going to be stubborn, though, and I was going to stick it out until the end of the year.

So I did, along with a few others with a similarly stubborn streak. Then I kept going. Some of those others continued on with me; others joined the cause; others still abandoned the idea altogether. I continued for another year and kept going and going and going. Now, to my knowledge, I'm the only member of the original crew who is still writing something every day, though I have stayed in touch with quite a few of the people I met over the course of the first couple of years of this project.

Writing something every day is challenging. Not because the act of writing is itself particularly difficult, but because it can be a real challenge to come up with something to write about every day. I don't like to spend too many days in a row writing about the same thing — those who follow me regularly will know that I could probably rabbit on about Final Fantasy XIV for months non-stop at a time — but rather spread my wings a bit and write about other topics, be they things that have happened that day, things that I've seen on social media, frustrations I've felt or successes I want to celebrate.

Finding those topics has encouraged me to use writing as an outlet for the things that occasionally swirl around inside my head and are in need of expressing, but which I find difficulty expressing out loud to another person face-to-face. Writing allows me to put things across I am unable to — or unwilling to — talk to people about in person, in other words. Interestingly, though, the more I write about things, the more I feel I am able to actually talk about them too; perhaps because I know that some people have read the things I've written and thus know all the most pertinent details before I start actually addressing them directly.

It's been a helpful form of quasi-therapy, in other words; it allows me to work through things that might feel like they were unresolvable or frustrating if I left them inside my head. Sometimes the things I want to talk about really are unresolvable, but the simple act of communicating them in some way relieves some of the "pressure" because I've been able to express how I'm feeling — and indirectly help other people understand what it is I'm thinking.

So, as long as I have an Internet connection, a keyboard and working fingers, I have no intention of stopping just yet. I do occasionally ask myself why I keep bothering when my regular reader numbers are so (relatively) low, but my answer is pretty much always the same: I'm writing for me first and foremost; if other people derive some entertainment, comfort or understanding from it, so much the better, but my first priority when I write is always expressing my own thoughts and feelings.

The post 2114: Million-Dollar Question appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "Singular Sensation."

"If one experience or life change results from you writing your blog, what would you like it to be?"

I've talked about how this blog is helpful to me personally on a number of occasions in the past. It's an outlet, mostly, albeit one I've chosen to make public as a means of sharing "who I am" with the rest of the world. You may like what I say, you may hate it, you may judge me harshly or you may empathise with the things I'm saying, but you can be certain that everything I write here is the honest truth at all times, warts and all.

And, to be honest, I've already had experiences and life-changing results from writing this blog, though I didn't necessarily know what effect I was having at the time. My particularly tough year back in 2010 is something I keep coming back to, but I don't mind admitting that sitting down and getting some thoughts down on "paper" on this very site each day helped me through the worst of a terrible situation. It didn't immediately resolve anything, but it at least gave me the chance to feel like I was able to express the many, many conflicting feelings swirling around in my head at the time.

And this is something I still keep in mind when I write something here every day now. I write from the heart, without particularly planning things out or attempting to compose something with good structure; instead, this is a scratch pad for random thoughts, a place to jot down memories so I don't forget them, a place to enthuse about the things I love and a place to rant about the things I hate. I do try not to stick to the same topic all the time, but you know what people are like — everyone likes what they like, so even with the best of intentions, I know that I inevitably find myself drifting back towards the things I enjoy writing about the most.

Actually, my occasional adoption of these writing prompts from The Daily Post is an attempt to mix things up a bit; the prompts aren't always particularly appealing or relevant to me, but when they are, they can providing a good starting point for something to write about. Plus I've found that posting a pingback to The Daily Post via the link at the top of one of these posts brings in some new people who perhaps wouldn't have found me normally. Sometimes those people stick around; at other times, they may linger for just one or two posts before disappearing into the darkness of the Internet once again. Either way, it's nice to come across new people now and again, and know that I've touched their lives, even in a minor sort of way.

So, then, I don't think I have any particular grand plans for something I want to achieve using this blog. By this point, it's something I just keep around because I've been doing it for so long — and, well, I kind of enjoy coming up with something to write about each day, too. It's part of my routine now; so much so that whenever I'm away from home I always make sure I have some means of posting while I'm away. After 2,091, it's a hard habit to break — and I don't particularly want to, either.

So whether you're a longtime reader or someone who's just dropped by after seeing a pingback on The Daily Post, thank you, once again, for listening to my nonsense, and I hope you got something out of it, even it was just the hint of a smile for whatever reason.

The post 2091: Singular Sensation appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

These blog "award" things are posting prompts that I've seen before, but never really participated in. They can be fun, though, so when Nick of The Skycorps Blog mentioned The Infinity Dreams Award on Twitter yesterday and was looking for people to pass it on to, I volunteered. So thanks, Nick! Me stepping up may not be quite the same thing as someone nominating me without prompting, but I'm grateful for you following through (and the links!) nonetheless.

So what is The Infinity Dreams Award? Well, unlike other blog awards that do the rounds, this isn't a list of questions to answer followed by the opportunity to send on some of your own questions. Instead, it's much simpler: all you have to do is list seven dreams — as in ambitions, not night-time dreams — that you have, and be as personal as you want about it. Well, you all know I have no problem in laying myself out there on this here blog, so let's get intimate.

In no particular order, then, here are my seven dreams.

Dream 1: Finish and publish one of my stories

Shamelessly stealing this from Nick here, but since his first couple of dreams resonated strongly with me, too, I thought I'd give my own thoughts on a similar situation.

I absolutely love writing, particularly creative writing, and so it would be fantastic to actually finish a complete novel-length story and publish it somehow. As long-standing readers will know, I have actually finished several stories in blog format on this here site, but those are largely improvisational and unplanned in nature, and as such would require some heavy editing in order to be publishable.

I do, however, have a number of different stories floating around in my head, some of which I've started writing and others of which are just an interesting idea. The main barrier to me actually knuckling down and finishing one is the fact that I can do Beginnings, and I can do Endings, but it's the middle bit that leads from one to the other that I find myself struggling with a bit. My absolute favourite story that I've been writing for years now has a very clear beginning and a very clear end, but I have absolutely no idea how to join them up together.

Dream 2: Find a good job

Nick's second dream also very much applies to me, as regular readers will know. I'm currently in a situation where I know that "conventional" employment is not a particularly good fit for me, but where freelance work isn't enormously forthcoming for one reason or another. As I noted the other day, there's the possibility of going into business by myself as a Slimming World consultant, and that's something that very much appeals — though the start-up costs for that are significant, and that, frankly, frightens me a bit. As the days go by, though, I'm starting to think more and more that I need to face that fear and just jump in; the job itself, I feel, is something I could do well at and be happy with, so I'm inclined to pursue it and see what happens.

This is, of course, assuming that they interview me and want me in the first place, which remains to be seen, so all of the above may be a moot point.

Dream 3: Publish a successful magazine

Matt at Digitally Downloaded and I have been working hard on our first edition of our magazine, which we're aiming to try and get out of the door at the end of this month. I'm really pleased with what we've developed so far, and I'm very, very excited about the future.

I believe there's absolutely a market for what we're doing, because it's very distinct from what websites offer. I much prefer the sort of thing we're doing — in-depth readings and criticism rather than questionable journalism — and I feel the whole "make the sort of thing you want to see" philosophy is a good basis for creating something. Because chances are you aren't the only one to feel the way you do, as lonely as opinions outside the "norm" can feel sometimes.

Dream 4: Build up my music teaching client base

I already have two piano pupils, with a possible third and fourth coming later in the year. That earns me a few quid each week, but by no means enough to actually survive on. I would love to have more pupils, though in order to do that I know I need to make more of an effort with promotion — it's figuring out where to start with all that. This is one area where the Slimming World job could potentially help me out — a big part of that job is promotion, so it would give me some great ideas on how to get noticed.

Dream 5: Become fluent in Japanese

This is a long-term one, but I'm making the effort. Since my evening classes are no longer running, I have to self-study, which at times can be challenging, but I've found the online courses at YesJapan.com work well with the way my brain works and offer a variety of activities to learn in different ways, so I'm going to continue with those as long as possible. The natural realisation of this dream is the point where I can import a game from Japan and be able to understand everything that is going on in it at the same speed I can do with an English game. In the short-term, I'll just be happy with getting my head around both hiragana and katakana, the former of which I'm getting reasonably confident with, the latter of which is still a mystery.

Dream 6: Reach my target weight and continue losing

I'm still a few stone off the "target" I set for myself when I joined Slimming World, but I've already lost over four stone since February and am continuing to lose, on average, at least a pound every week. I already feel way better about myself than I have done in years, and I can't even imagine how much more self-confidence I will have with a few more stone off my body.

Dream 7: Conquer my depression and anxiety

I don't know if this one will ever come to fruition, but in many ways it's the one I most hope will come true. Depression and anxiety have absolutely crippled and almost destroyed my life up until this point, and I despise them for it. I am better than I was, but my horrible experiences with my last job set me back a good year or two in the "recovery" process — a fact for which I will never forgive those responsible. One day, I would like to be free; for the moment, however, I'll be happy with the odd day of contentment.

I'm supposed to nominate some people now, who will then run with this and continue in their own way — or perhaps ignore it completely. Either way, then, I nominate the following people and blogs:

Pete Skerritt of Consoleation
awesomecurry of カレーまみれ勇者の冒険 Curry Chronicles
Chris Schilling of rudderless
Jud House of Jud's Game Reviews and Jud's Jottings

Not sure quite how many people I'm supposed to nominate, but four is probably fine for now. Drop me a comment or pingback if you decide to participate in this; I'll be very interested to read what you have to say.

The post 2023: The Infinity Dreams Award appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Initially, as those who have been following since the beginning will know, it was a community effort. The #oneaday hashtag on Twitter brought together a small group of people of varying levels of commitment who decided to try and post something every day without worrying too much about "quality" — instead, simply helping to flex the creative muscles a bit by getting in the habit of writing every day, even if it was complete tosh or stream-of-consciousness nonsense.

As more and more people dropped out — the person I originally saw the hashtag via dropped out after less than a month, as I recall — it became a matter of pride for those of us still going to make it to the full year. Some of us decided to continue beyond that point, others didn't. I helped to get together a group of people who were interested in participating to form the One A Day Project, a somewhat more organised collective of bloggers with slightly relaxed "rules": participants didn't necessarily have to commit to daily posts — though many did — they simply had to commit to posting regularly, and at least attempt to make it through the whole year. (Professional floppy-haired twat Matt Lees took great umbrage to this clause and posted a lengthy rant expressing his disapproval about how it diluted the original meaning of #oneaday, but then he didn't stick it out for very long in its first year, so he wasn't really in a position to complain. Said rant has, however, seemingly been deleted since. What a pity.) There was also a charitable component; we invited people to sponsor us to motivate our efforts. We made a bit of money — not a huge amount, but some, at least — so we did some good in the process.

This particular year was quite interesting, as it exposed me to a wide range of people, many of whom I probably wouldn't have come across otherwise. Some I've stayed in touch with, others I haven't, but I was happy to have encountered them, even if it was only briefly, and interested to read their perspectives on their life, loves and passions, which ranged from arts and crafts to amateur radio via archery. (And some other things that didn't begin with "A".) It was an interesting and enjoyable experiment, all told, but it was a surprising amount of work that I'm somewhat inclined to believe was a little more trouble than it was worth — particularly as other people were somewhat reluctant to step forward and help me with some of the responsibilities and expectations I'd set in the beginning. I didn't mind, though; it just might have been able to go on a little longer and be a little more successful, high profile and beneficial to the charities if there were a few more people willing to work behind the scenes. But oh well.

After that petered out, I continued to write on here every day. Why? Difficult to say; I think it's largely just become habit now, more than anything. Plus, I've always found it helpful and cathartic; in the early days, this proved particularly helpful as I was going through my separation from my first wife, one of the most traumatic experiences I have ever suffered though. Much like writing a diary allows you to empty your head of wayward thoughts and express things you might not have anyone to talk to about, so too has this blog performed that function for me.

The only difference, of course, is the fact that this blog is public and therefore open for people to look at and comment upon. Sometimes, when I have written on controversial topics that I have strong feelings about, this has attracted the ire of people who want to lay into me for my opinions — though this has only really happened on a couple of occasions, and I've only ever had to close comments on a post completely once. It's easy to focus on this negative side of publishing your thoughts online, though; it's much more beneficial to focus on the more important, positive and almost infinitely more frequent occurrence of people coming along, finding my blog, discovering a like-minded individual and striking up a conversation or even a friendship over something I've written.

None of that is my priority, I have to say; the original point of #oneaday was not to write "for" anyone but yourself, and I've continued with that credo since day one. This blog has always been and always will be a completely honest, open and (mostly) unashamed look at the real person I am inside; the person who may not always be entirely comfortable expressing himself in person, but the person who is there nonetheless. Ultimately you, the reader, can take or leave me based on that, but it's the person I truly am.

As the number at the top of these posts advances towards 2,000 — a significant milestone by anyone's calculations — I find myself contemplating what the future holds, too. Will I continue after 2,000? Highly likely. Will this blog still continue to look the way it does today? Probably not; I revamped the "look" at post 1,000 and will probably do so again at 2,000. Will I continue to post occasionally coherent ramblings about everything from video games to music to pretty anime girls to board games to how people should really stop being such shitheads to one another? Almost definitely.

It's been a long and sometimes difficult ride. And I don't think I'm ready to get off any time soon.

The post 1949: My Continuing Mission appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Of course, given that my day job involves writing lots of things every day, it's perhaps arguable whether or not having written a single post on here every day for the last 1,461 days is as impressive as it once was, but I like to think it still shows a certain degree of dedication and commitment on my part. And, given that I'm not the sort of person who spends a lot of time thinking particularly good things about themselves, that's one thing with concrete evidence that I can specifically point to and say "yes, that's good; that's something I can be pleased with."

I feel doubly pleased when I think back to how this all started. For those who have joined me recently, the basic gist was this: a few UK-based writers got together and decided to write something every day, initially for a year. I joined quite late in January in that first year, and haven't stopped since. Interestingly, a significant number of the people who started that first year also gave up very quickly — the person I regard as the "founder" simply bowed out with a tweet that said "fuck #oneaday" one day and never picked it up again — but others stuck it out for most or even all of that first year.

Following that, I managed to organise a ragtag group of bloggers into a group who helped motivate each other somewhat, and in the process we raised a bit of money for charity. Again, though, relatively few people made it through the whole year, but I stood firm. Now, to my knowledge, I'm the only one of the original participants from either of those first couple of years to still be blogging on a daily basis and while I may not always have a lot of meaningful things to say, I still sit down and write every day, regardless.

Because it wasn't necessarily about writing something meaningful or useful. It was just about writing. As with any creative endeavour, regardless of how ambitious it is, the only way to get better and refine your craft is to continue doing it as often as possible. You might just discover a few things about yourself in the process.

For my part, I've discovered — well, confirmed, really — that writing is a good outlet for me. If stress and anxiety is starting to build up in my head, as it often does, writing this post each day is a good means of venting some of that steam. I don't even necessarily have to write specifically about what I'm stressed or anxious about; if you look back to the period on this blog where my marriage was falling apart and I was in a seriously bad place mental health-wise, you'll notice that a lot of the posts are considerably more creative than they perhaps are now. I don't think this is coincidental at all; misery appears to beget creativity, which may account for the whole "tortured artist" stereotype.

Note: I do not advocate the seeking out of misery purely to get your own creative juices flowing, but if, for whatever reason, you're not in a good place, use that negative energy to make something. It doesn't have to be good. But it can help.

Anyway. I think that's enough blabbering on for now. Just another day in the increasingly long list.

The post 1461: Day After Day appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Of course, I'm well aware that I'm not the first person to reach a thousand days — as I mentioned a few days back, Mr Ian Dransfield got there first due to… well, starting before me. I joined the initial #oneaday crowd a little late, on January 19, 2010, whereas the people who actually started the whole thing off began closer to New Year's Day. As I noted in that post I just linked to, however, I am officially the Last Man Standing and I don't mind admitting that I feel more than a little proud of that fact. Through thick and thin, I've stuck by this self-imposed project with no end and no goal, and I have enjoyed the experience immensely.

And, more importantly, I plan to continue enjoying it from this point onwards. Post number 1,000 — that's this one — is most certainly not a fond farewell and a hanging up of the… whatever implement best exemplifies blogging. (My computer keyboard, I guess.) No; it's a significant milestone, for sure, but I see no reason to stop. There are plenty of things to write about. And while they may not always be the most interesting or universally appealing, as I've noted on this blog a number of times before, the original intention of #oneaday was not to be interesting or universally appealing. It was simply a kick up the bum to get those of us who enjoyed writing to do more writing. Writing for ourselves, rather than for someone else. Writing without limits, without the necessity of sticking to a style (though those of us in it for the long haul naturally developed our own personal styles), without word counts, without anyone deciding whether or not the thing we were writing about was worth writing about. And, of course writing without editing.

Yes, these are the pure, unexpurgated contents of my brain you're reading every day. Unfiltered, uncensored, completely truthful. (Well, okay, regarding the latter, I might omit to mention a few things, but that's not exactly the same as lying.) A couple of people have commented to me over the course of the past thousand days that they're impressed by my ability to just lay my soul bare on the page like that, to confess to things that others might find difficult to talk about. For me, though, it's actually something of a relief to be able to talk about a lot of these things, be it my depression and social anxiety or my enjoyment of visual novels that, in many cases, have bonking in them. This blog has been a good "friend", as it were, providing me with a place to empty my brain of all the thoughts that have been floating around with it over the course of each day, and in the process I have made a few actual friends who have either related to the things I've written or just found them interesting. Which is, you know, nice.

More after the jump — it's a long one. (That's what she said, etc.)

____

I had a request the other day from Alton Hazelworth III that I give a rundown of my top 5 funniest dreams for my thousandth post. I'm not sure I can remember five dreams in enough detail to do that, unfortunately, but I can reshare a couple of rather strange posts from the past for those who are interested to know how my (apparently deranged) mind works. First of all, there is From the Depths of the Subconscious, referred to by Hazelworth as his "favourite post to date" and "the poo dream post". Then there was Into Dreams, in which I described a selection of peculiar things that had flown out of my subconscious at various times in my life. Then there was earlier post Dream On, which isn't nearly as interesting but does feature a comic strip with pictures of both Christina Hendricks and Brian Blessed.

So while we're at this, let's delve back into the annals of this blog's history and pick out a few other posts that are noteworthy. I have done this on a couple of occasions in the past, and it's been fun to revisit them. (It's also quite fun to hit that "Random Post" button at the top of the page and see where it takes you. At least if you're me.) Consequently, I make no apologies if I link you to posts I have already linked to in the past. Apparently they stuck in my memory as "noteworthy", so… yeah.

I will probably regret this as I spend longer and longer (and more and more words) digging up old posts that I'm probably the only person who cares about, but here we go.

Ugh. Now I have no idea where to start. All right, let's start with posts that have proven the most consistently popular, based on what WordPress' stat counters believe are my Most Viewed Posts of All Time. If it ever loads. (It's not loading.) Now it's loaded. All right, here we go.

Apparently, my most-viewed page is my homepage. 22,848 views since some time back in 2008. I have no idea if that's good or not. Ultimately irrelevant. Moving on.

My top individual post is Mini-Memes and Offensive GIFs (NSFW), which has had a mighty 3,251 views since it was posted on May 10, 2010. This is a post in which I first of all participate in a fake "Inside the Actor's Studio" interview, prompted by a fellow #oneaday blogger, and find myself unable to hear the name "Bernard Pivot" without thinking of a piece of software called Pivot which allowed you to animate stickmen. Said piece of software was, naturally, put to nefarious use with a variety of offensive animations collected together under the banner "Battle of the Sexes".

How to Play Pocket Academy is the next most popular post, with 1,592 views, though I think this is largely more due to the fact that no-one understands how to play Pocket Academy than due to it being a particularly comprehensive guide. So we'll skip over that one and go straight to the next most popular one, which is Why Teaching Sucks (1,217 views).

For those of you who aren't aware, I used to be a teacher. I worked for three years in secondary school before suffering a nervous breakdown and quitting, then I worked for a term on a maternity cover contract at a primary school. It's fair to say that I did not enjoy the experience.

Actually, that's not entirely fair. There were aspects of it that I enjoyed. There were a number of kids I genuinely looked forward to seeing each week. And school productions were always a massive amount of fun. Unfortunately, the negative aspects of the profession — outlined in the above post — outweighed the positives for me by a considerable margin.

I was still working in that primary school when I starting posting daily on this blog. It provided a good outlet, but the amount of time I was spending complaining about my job gave me the push I needed to actually quit before I found myself collapsing. I did so, went to PAX East and eventually, after a lot of struggling, found myself with a career in Writing About Games, where I still am today. (It's fair to say that The Shit Hit The Fan in the middle of all that, but we'll leave that aside for now unless any posts come up.)

Continuing down the top list, Charities Have No Use For Your Avatar (969 views) is still just as relevant today as it was then. The post stemmed from one of those stupid Facebook memes that comes up every so often, where someone believes that changing their avatar to a cartoon character means that they're "joining the fight against child abuse". I put forward the notion that the whole "but it's to raise awareness!" argument was, in fact, bollocks, and those who actually gave a shit about stopping child abuse enough to want to take action should put their money where their mouth is and donate rather than attributing a stupid Facebook meme to a charity who had nothing to do with it. I took a little flak for that post, which got shared quite widely at the time, but on the whole there was more support for my viewpoint than people yelling at me, which gave me at least a little faith in humanity.

Emi's Inspiration is the next most popular post, with 683 views. It was a post about bettering oneself, inspired by visual novel Katawa Shoujo and the character Emi therein. Specifically, it was about the Couch 2 5K running programme, which is well worth a look if you can't run for shit but would like to learn. I have successfully made it through that programme once and got most of the way through on a couple of other occasions, but have stalled somewhat recently due to a loss of enthusiasm and time. Perhaps I should re-read that post and pick it up again.

Next up is my post on The Sims FreePlay (635 views) but that's boring and I don't like EA very much right now so I won't say any more about that.

The next most popular one, however, is one I feel everyone can benefit from, and that is The Only Art Lesson You Will Ever Need, a comprehensive guide to the fine art of drawing stickmen that has benefited over 585 people to date.. This is from the time on this blog between where I started using crudely-drawn Paintbrush pictures to illustrate the posts and when I started doing the comic, for those interested in the Official Pete Timeline.

Following that, my About page is the next most popular page. Which is nice, I guess, though I'm not sure if I should read anything into the fact that people are apparently considerably more interested in stickmen fucking each other than in me. Oh well. 'Twas ever thus. (Possibly.)

Interestingly, Chinese Whispers, a follow-up post to Charities Have No Use For Your Avatar, is the next most popular post, with 449 views. In this, I examine the fallout from the whole "charity avatar" debacle and encourage everyone to not be a dick.

That covers the ten most popular posts on this stie of all time. Not necessarily my best work, but that which, for whatever reason, encouraged people to come along and read.

Now for a few of my personal favourites.

Post-Mortem is my favourite post of all time on this blog, not because it's particularly good, but because of the entertaining memories attached to it. It is an extensive review of The Morning After, in which I go through and investigate exactly what incriminating evidence had been left on my phone after a night out on which I got extremely drunk with friends. This is a post said friends and I still laugh about today, and it always makes me think fondly of them. I was going through A Difficult Time when all that was going on, and they helped take me away from that for a little while, which was exactly what I needed.

My Life With Des was a post in which I explored my experiences with depression and social anxiety over the years. It was rather harrowing to write, but also quite therapeutic. I also think it may have helped a few people to understand me a bit better. If you haven't already read it, you may wish to do so, and you might find it explains a few things. (I've followed up on this post a few times, most recently in Some Words on Social Anxiety. Telephobia is also tangentially related.)

Cheering things up a bit, I was quite pleased with my English-American Dictionary, which is fairly self-explanatory.

I was also quite pleased with Character Sheet, my attempt to quantify my own skills and abilities as if I was a character in Final Fantasy XIII. (Regarding the text at the start of the piece, I can no longer remember how I calculated my EXP, HP and MP. It was something to do with days and dates, I think.)

I've done a bunch of creative writing on this site, too. You can check it all out here, including a few posts on the creative process. Of particular note (in my opinion, anyway) is my month-long improvised tale Wasteland Diaries, which starts here; Midnight, which exemplifies the apparent fascination I have with death and the ethereal; Improv Theatre, which is actually a transcript of a chat session I had with Andie before we lived together; Welcome Home, which was an experiment in sci-fi; Wordplay, in which I attempted to write something vaguely coherent given prompt words from people on Twitter; and Sandwich, which I wrote shortly after my whole life fell apart.

I think that's probably enough for you to be getting on with for now. I hope you've been enjoying (or at least appreciating and/or nodding thoughtfully at) my random meanderings on occasion, and rest assured you can look forward to hopefully many more as time proceeds ever-onwards. For now, though, I'm off to bed for a well-earned rest.

The post This is my 1,000th daily post on this blog appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Since I'm coming up behind Ian and closing in on that elusive post number 1,000 as the last man standing, this has naturally got me thinking about the whole business, too. Specifically, it has me thinking to myself "is it worth still doing this? Am I actually enjoying it?"

And, I have to conclude once again — this isn't the first time I've asked myself this question — that "yes" is the answer to both of those questions. In the last 991 days, I don't think there's been a single time that I've resented my self-imposed obligation to write this blog. There have been days where it's been difficult to think of something to write, sure, and there have been days where other distractions have meant I haven't written it until a ridiculous hour in the morning (I think 4am was the latest after having watched several episodes of Firefly while in conversation with someone over the Internet) but I've certainly never felt like it was an unwelcome obligation. Quite the opposite, in fact — although it usually ends up being the last thing I do each day, it's something I often find myself thinking about over the course of the day's activities and looking forward to actually sitting down and writing. It is, as I've said many times before, a cathartic means of self-expression for me, with the happy bonus that I've got to know a number of thoroughly pleasant people in the process. Moreover, a number of people who already knew me have got to know things about me that they might not have done otherwise.

Like Ian, my life has changed immeasurably since I started writing this blog. I have changed jobs several times — going from primary school teacher to unemployed bum to part-time, low-paid games journalist to legitimate, properly-paid games journalist. My relationship status has changed several times — my wife and I split, signalling the start of the darkest period I've ever been through in my life; I met someone, that didn't work out; I met Andie, that did work out (right? Hopefully. OH GOD WHAT IF— [*slap* — the Rational Part of Pete's Brain]). I went to America several times for various reasons (PAX East, family time). I've moved several times — from Southampton back to my childhood home in Cambridgeshire, then onward to my current situation in Wiltshire (and hopefully back to Southampton at some point in the near future). I've re-established contact with some friends; lost touch with others. And I've discovered anime.

Alongside all these various upheavals, the one constant in my life has been this silly little corner of the Internet that I call my own, with the tens of thousands of words I've tapped onto it at ungodly hours in the morning, usually from my own computer, but sometimes from my phone, sometimes my tablet, sometimes my netbook. This blog has been someone I can always "talk to", to offload thoughts and memories both pleasant and painful, and to share those things with anyone who will listen. It's been an immeasurably valuable experience for me, and thus I have absolutely no intention of stopping right now.

I realise that by saying all these things now I am effectively sabotaging my own "YAY 1,000 POSTS" post, but eh, whatever. With Ian's departure from the journey, it felt timely to say them now. Doubtless inspiration will hit me at about 2am on Day 1,000 and I'll have something amazing to share with you.

Until then, though, it's business as usual, I'm afraid. Thanks for continuing to read, like and comment, and I'll see you again tomorrow!

The post #oneaday Day 991: Last Man Standing appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm not saying there aren't 968 different things in the world to write about, obviously, it's whether or not I can say anything coherent about them — and whether or not I can actually think of any of them when it comes to time to write this blog, since I almost inevitably end up doing it as one of the last things I do each day. (Today is an exception — I've specifically decided to write this before I settle down to a bit of pre-bedtime My Girlfriend is the President). Sometimes when you have to write something, your mind just goes blank and the absolute last thing you want to do is write. I get it sometimes during my day job, when I play a game so unbearably tedious or awful that the mere prospect of writing about how tedious and awful it is fills me with a sense of deep melancholy. (Other times, however, it's fun to rip something that has clearly been crafted with no care or attention whatsoever a new one — or indeed to praise something that is worthy of praise.)

And yet despite occasional dalliances with writer's block, here I am, day after day, posting my inane ramblings to anyone who will listen. To my surprise, I have built up something of a small but apparently dedicated audience over the last few years I've been writing this. My distaste for the Facebook "Like" button is well-documented, but the WordPress "Like" button is another matter — it gives me the opportunity to see when new (or familiar) visitors have stopped by and felt the need to show their presence, which is genuinely nice to see. (WordPress' overly-positive emails make out that someone clicking the Like button is an absolutely massive deal on a par with being whisked away on a romantic getaway and proposed to in front of a sunset, but we both know you're just clicking a button.)

Believe it or not, as self-indulgent as this blog is more often than not, I'm very grateful to those of you who stop by and read/like/comment. I've said on numerous occasions that this blog isn't "for" anyone — the original remit of the #oneaday project was simply to get all the participants writing every day for the sake of writing, not for the sake of building an audience — but it is pretty awesome to see that, on occasion, something I post resonates with someone else somewhere else in the world. Ships in the night and all that.

Speaking of the #oneaday project, I have to toot my own horn a bit here — I'm pretty proud of myself for sticking with this for so long. Granted, with the number of words I've written across the last 968 posts I could probably have penned at least two or three novels, but that's not quite the same as having an "outlet". On more than one occasion I've been grateful for this blog as a means to share things I'm thinking or feeling with anyone who will listen — it's not always easy to do that face-to-face or over the phone, but bizarrely, announcing it to the entire world via the Internet is absolutely no problem whatsoever, largely because in that case you can simply express yourself and walk away without having to have any of those difficult "conversation" things.

But I digress. To my knowledge, the only other original participant of #oneaday's first year who is still going is the inimitable Mr Ian Dransfield of Play Magazine fame. Meanwhile, it looks entirely possible that the most pleasant Gemma Critchley is also about to start blogging again, which is nice to see. It's been a bumpy ride for daily bloggers, though — in the first year, a huge number of participants (including the "founder") dropped out within a week or two of starting; in the second year, I made a bold attempt to try and organise everyone via this "hub" site, relaxing the "rules" a little in order to (successfully) attract more people, and inviting readers to sponsor our efforts for charity. (In the process, I apparently pissed off one of the original participants who had not taken part since January of the previous year, who promptly posted an incoherent ranty post about how he was going to do things their own way, only going to prove my suspicions about said person. No, I am not saying who it was or what my suspicions were.)

This is now my third year of daily blogging and while the "community" feeling of blogging together with others is all but gone (for now, at least) it's still satisfying to know that I can look back on the last 968 days and know that at least some of this waffle is worth reading again. It may be narcissistic to do so, but I do sometimes enjoy just hitting the "Random Post" button and seeing what comes up. More than enjoying rereading my past posts, it's sometimes fun, sometimes sad, always interesting to think back on where I was in my life at that point — and where I might be another 968 days from now.

I guess I should start planning my 1,000 post party. Who can make a good cake?

The post #oneaday Day 968: Silence to 1K appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Every so often, I like to look back over my old blog entries and ruminate on everything that's come to pass in the time since writing them. Since starting this site back in 2009, and particularly since starting daily posting early in 2010, I think it's fair to say that a lot has changed. And, pleasingly, mostly for the better.

My early #oneaday posts largely focused on how miserable I was working as a teacher. I had a feeling before I even started that position at that primary school that it was going to be a difficult time — my previous stint as a secondary school teacher had ended with me suffering a nervous breakdown, after all, and I wasn't keen to return to that place in my mind.

I had thought I should give primary teaching a shot, however, as several family members and friends had said they thought I'd make a good primary school teacher. (I have since forgiven them for saying these things.) Given the amount of unnecessary fighting and workplace bullying I had to put up with to get a foot in the door of primary teaching, I also wasn't about to give up easily.

But give up I did. Not for lack of trying, but because I recognised the signs of my own decline from last time and wanted to escape before my brain collapsed again. That and I had the opportunity to go to PAX East in Boston, which was something I desperately wanted to do and proved to be, to date, probably the happiest, most fun time of my life.

Subsequently came the chaos that was the end of my marriage. This, in stark contrast to PAX East, was the most difficult, unpleasant experience I have ever been through. The way I felt after breaking down at school that first time was absolutely nothing compared to the sense of guilt, rejection, anger, stupidity, frustration, sadness, regret and all manner of other feels I felt during this dark period of my life. I felt like I was going under, and that this time I'd never make it back up again.

Ironically, I think some of my best writing was done during this period. I guess it's true what they say: inner pain fuels art.

Make it back I did, though, thanks to support from family and friends. I moved away from the city I'd called home for nearly ten years (even during the periods when I didn't actually live there) and moved back in to my childhood home.

I was in two minds about this. On the one hand, to be pushing thirty and back living with my parents felt kind of pathetic, like I'd failed at life. On the other hand, I was and am grateful to them for supporting me at that difficult time. I felt hugely depressed for much of the time I lived there as I desperately tried to rebuild my life, struggling to find a job when the only thing I was really qualified was teaching — the career that had nearly killed me.

By a stroke of good fortune, I eventually found myself working for GamePro, initially on a fairly casual basis, then gradually building up my contributions until I was effectively a remote full-time employee, responsible for the majority of the site's news output. I had a noticeable impact, too — the traffic figures showed that my work was attracting lots of new visitors to the site, and I was developing a good reputation as the face of GamePro's news posts.

By a further stroke of good luck, I found myself in a new relationship with someone who understood me and my likes a whole lot better than my wife ever did. This developed quickly and eventually gave me the means and the opportunity to fly the nest once again. This, coupled with my work for GamePro, made me feel my life was finally getting back on track.

To date, I think GamePro was my favourite job I've ever had. Which is what made it all the more upsetting when GamePro met its unceremonious demise late last year. I saw a variety of panicked-looking emails from other members of staff but since I wasn't physically present in the office, I'd obviously missed out on some sort of important news. I hoped against hope that it wasn't what I thought it was, but it was.

I thought for a horrible moment that it was all over again, that things had come to a disastrous close thanks to my reliance on a volatile industry for my career. It had been going so well, though, and right up until the plug was pulled, GamePro's traffic figures were skyrocketing. But it wasn't enough.

Now I find myself writing regularly for specialist business sites Inside Social Games and Inside Mobile Apps. I find myself using terms like "monetization" (a word for whom I have expressed considerable disdain in the past) and "user acquisition". I compile reviews and a weekly business-to-business report on trends in the social and mobile gaming industries.

And y'know what, I'm enjoying it. It's satisfying work of a different kind to that which I did on GamePro, and not as high profile to the public, but that's okay — it means less likelihood of being denounced as a paedophile by psychotic commenters simply because I posted a news story about an academic institute's game exploring LGBT issues, after all. (Yes, that really happened.)

Life is pretty good right now. I'm in an awesome relationship, I have a job I enjoy where I learn new stuff regularly, I live in a nice place and for the first time in quite a long while I'm reasonably financially stable.

It's been a long road to this point, and there's plenty more steps on my life's journey (unless I get hit by a bus tomorrow, obviously, and even then I might survive), but things are looking pretty sort of kind of okay right now. Long may it continue.

If you've been following this nonsense for years, another hearty thank you for sticking by me through all the past angst. I hope my catalogue of misfortunes, my fall and rise has been entertaining, enlightening and/or helpful to at least some of you.

And if you're a new follower, uh, welcome. You caught me at a good time.

The post #oneaday Day 754: Hindsight appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For what, though? What is it achieving? I'm certainly not making any great effort to ponce around with anything like search engine optimisation and the limit of my attempts to "drive traffic" consist of auto-posting each entry to Facebook and Twitter as a link for people to click through to. And yet, here I am, day after day, writing something for anywhere between — most weeks — 20 and 100 people. 24 of you readers are subscribed by email, meaning you get a daily dose of nonsense posted direct to your inbox (and possibly don't count against my views count, you bastards, unless you actually do, in which case you're not bastards, and I don't really care anyway) and I have no idea how many more might be subscribed via RSS.

As I've said on a few other occasions, though, the main reason I'm writing all this gobbledegook day after day is for myself. I'm not sure if I'll be looking back on this content in a few years time and figuring out something profound about myself or not, but I certainly like having it all there — and knowing that there are 629 daily posts before this one (and a few more irregular ones prior to that) is quite satisfying.

I like reading back old things that I've written. I don't keep all old pieces of writing that I do, but I have some knocking around that date back to my school days, which are a good few years ago now. It's sometimes interesting to look back and read your work and consider what might have been going through your mind at the time — or what inspired you to write a particular work.

I think the oldest piece of writing I've still hung onto is the Woolworths notebook that my friend Edd and I took on holiday to Gran Canaria. It was 1992, and we were in Year 7. That holiday was memorable for all sorts of reasons — the cockroach attack in the middle of the night, the discovery of Mortal Kombat and X-Men in the local arcade, our first experiences snorkelling. And most of it is entertainingly chronicled in the dodgy handwriting of the 11-12 year old me.

The way you write changes over the years, even if you're not a writer and if you don't do it often. Old people using computers forget how to use capital letters and punctuation (except the exclamation mark, which they use with gay abandon) while some develop a clear sense of style and voice according to who they're writing to. When you're twelve, however, most of your writing is written in the same register, however many English lessons on formal and informal letters you might have had. My old notebook is a fine example of this, sharing details of stupid in-jokes that Edd and I had at the time, the context of which has been mostly lost to the mists of time save for the written record of the fact that we did indeed compose a short song called "I'm an egg-timer" together and that we found it inexplicably amusing to hum the theme tune from the Whiskas cat food advert while descending a water slide.

Don't ask. I have no idea.

I wonder if in twenty years' time — firstly, will this site still be around or will we all have switched to something like the OASIS platform in Ready Player One? — I'll still be writing in the same manner. Perhaps I will — in some senses, even though I'm (painfully) aware that I'm thirty years old, in others I feel like I haven't grown up a whole lot. There's still a ton of things about the world that I don't know or don't understand, and a lot of people seem to have a firmer grasp on them than me — or, more likely, simply do a better job of hiding the fact that they're overwhelmed by everything out there.

Arguably part of this feeling of "immaturity", for want of a better word, is writing this every day. When I'm writing some nonsense here, I can just sort of "let go" and channel that twelve year old kid who felt the need to chronicle everything on a holiday with a friend. I'm under no obligations to write in a particular style or follow the AP Style Guide or whatever (though you'll notice I do make an effort to spell and punctuate correctly, typos aside) so I can just sit back (well, forward, otherwise I can't reach the keyboard) and type whatever is in my head onto the virtual page in front of me.

This is a nice feeling, and that's why I do this day after day. I appreciate those of you who keep coming back to read my ramblings, I really do. But the act of writing, of self-expressions, of, in some cases, being able to write things that are difficult to talk about out loud — that's why I do it. It makes me feel good, makes me feel like I have an outlet and am free to express myself however I see fit. And sure, anyone reading can and will judge me based on the things I write. And that's fine, because after all, I'm posting all this for public consumption. But more than that, this is something for me. This is me. And if you've come along for the ride here and read the last six hundred and whatever posts, you probably know me pretty damn well by now.

If, however, you're new, the archives are on the right hand side. I'll see you in a few months.

The post #oneaday Day 630: Over My Shoulder appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Kalam plans on using his shiny new blog as a form of free therapy — and that, to me, sounds like an excellent idea. After all, at times, it's what I do here. Talking about stuff is good. If you don't have anyone to talk to, though — or no-one you feel comfortable talking to, or if you don't necessarily need to "talk", more just "get things off your chest" — then writing is an excellent outlet. I know that the last 614 days of writing something every day — though it's been a struggle sometimes — have provided me with a means to vent my inner frustrations into something vaguely productive rather than sitting around moping, being upset, crying, punching sofas (apparently) or stabbing badgers. This is good.

Self-proclaimed social media experts and people who read Mashable would probably come along right now and say that blogging's not about the individual person, it should be about your audience, your community, the blogosphere and other pretentious-sounding phrases. You know what I say to those people? Sod off. Your own personal space on the Web is yours to do with as you please. You can vent your frustrations, or you can attempt to provide a "service". You can express yourself, or you can inform. You can even do all of the above. You don't necessarily have to have a particular "structure" or theme in mind (though it sometimes helps) — sometimes all you need to do is write.

If I had to pigeonhole this blog, I'd be pretty hard-pushed to do so. The most frequently-occurring topic is likely video games, of course, and that's probably unsurprising. It's something that's in my blood and that I've been involved with for almost as long as I can remember — and it's something I'm involved with professionally now, too. But I certainly wouldn't describe this place as a video games blog. There's all manner of other nonsense amidst the rampant enthusings regarding Xenoblade Chronicles and Deadly Premonition. There's honest stuff, creative stuff, weird stuff, experimental stuff, stuff that didn't quite work, stuff that I'm incredibly pleased with and stuff that makes me sad to think back on. All of it's important, and, particularly since I started this daily posting business, all of it reminds me where I've come from and — maybe, anyway — where I'm going.

I can certainly say for a fact that this time last year I wouldn't have imagined that I'd be sitting here right now — though it's probably fair to say that this time the year before I wouldn't have imagined that I'd have been sitting where I was this time last year, if you see what I mean. Sometimes things that you take for granted are more fragile than you think — but sometimes the reverse is true, too.

I'm in a reasonably good place right now. I can't complain too much. There are things I want to achieve and things that I could do better, but after surviving a year best described as "traumatic", I'm happy to take things a bit at a time and let this place track my progress — either directly or indirectly.

As for Kalam, well, buddy, I hope your site helps you find the same sort of inner calm that writing here has done for me. And if not, don't hold back. Everyone loves a good rant.

The post #oneaday Day 614: Joining the Fold appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm not that old — I'm thirty and, if not proud then certainly "grudgingly accepting" — but I still find the amount of progress since I was a kid to be fairly astonishing when you think about it. Take what I'm doing right now — writing a blog post — and rewind it some fifteen-plus years. I vividly recall as a youngling, early-ish in my secondary school career, writing a secret diary, inspired by Adrian Mole. Said diary was in a really nice part leather-bound volume that said "journal" on the spine and had nice paper. My first entry was about my family's visit to the National Stone Centre, in retrospect possibly the dullest way I could have possibly started a secret diary.

Over time, though, my writing evolved. I wasn't writing for anyone in particular, but more just to get thoughts out of my head when there wasn't anyone handy to share and discuss them with — or if they were thoughts that I didn't particularly want to share and discuss with people. In some senses it was like a form of therapy, where I could discuss anything I wanted with someone who wouldn't judge what I was saying, and would simply respond with an unspoken "tell me more" for as long as it had empty pages. My journal became less about "Today I went to the National Stone Centre and we saw lots of stones" and more about "I've been thinking about [girls/school/bullies/life] and this is what I feel about it".

I took to scripting fantasy conversations for a while, particularly when it came to talking to girls, because at least in the pages of my diary I stood a chance with Nikki, the girl with the finest boobs and legs in the whole school orchestra. In reality — well, I never quite found out whether or not I stood a chance with her, but given the general standard of guys she went out with, I'm not sure my greasy-and-crap-haired zit-faced teenage self would have stood up particularly well, however much better at playing the clarinet I was than her other boyfriends.

On one memorable occasion, I recall doing a lengthy post-mortem of an encounter with a girl I liked when my friends pretty much forced me to tell her that I liked her. She turned me down, of course, but the fact I'd actually gone through with it was immensely satisfying — so much so that I recall drawing diagrams of how the event had actually gone — where I was, where my friends were (doubtless watching and laughing at me making a tit of myself) and where she was.

In retrospect, it was perhaps a bit creepy, which is probably why one day I took a look at everything I had written, became hideously embarrassed by the whole thing and discreetly threw the by then half-full book out into the trash, never to be seen again. I often wonder what happened to it, and occasionally wondered if a bin man might have come across it and had a good giggle at my teenage lameness.

The world's different now, though, and the closest people come to a "secret" these days is posting passive-aggressive tweets and Facebook statuses. I still write — every day, as you've doubtless noticed. Sometimes the things I write are still therapeutic and a way of getting thoughts out of my head that are difficult to vocalise, and sometimes it's just stupid shit that I feel like rambling on about.

The difference now is that after 535 days, I'm not ashamed of a bit of it. Sure, some of it probably only has any meaning to me and me alone, but everything I've written here has some sort of meaning and memory attached to it. Which is why you won't find me ever throwing this blog out in the trash like my teenage secret diary. We are the sum of our memories and experiences, for better or worse, and sometimes it's good to look back and see how you got to where you are now — and where you might be headed in the future.

The future's not yet written, as everyone knows. But day by day it'll reveal itself, leading us ever onward to the end of one chapter and the start of the next.

The post #oneaday Day 535: Updated My Journal appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

A discussion I participated in earlier today on Twitter regarding grammatical usage of hashtags got me thinking, though. Is the concept of "traditional writing" dead?

When considering this, though, it's first important to determine what you mean by "traditional writing". And it's not an easy thing to define. Is this blog "traditional writing"? It mostly follows grammatical conventions (except when I'm being deliberately obtuse or conversational) and uses paragraphs. But no; I'd argue that it isn't writing in the traditional sense. Blogs are designed as a platform upon which people can share their thoughts on a subject and invite responses from other people. That last bit—the invitation for other people to respond, whether or not it's taken up by commenters—is the important part of blogging for many people. The best blogs are "conversations"—or at the very least, pieces which start discussions amongst other people.

You could argue, of course, that persuasive writing, philosophy and the like has had this sort of thing covered for many years, and you'd be right—people still debate Nietzsche down the pub, right? (I don't go to the pub that often.) But the key thing is that with blogs and their commenters, everyone has a voice of (relatively) equal power. Ironically, though, the popular blogs diminish the power of their own commenters by having so many that people are unlikely to read them all. But at least some of them get read, unlike a weighty tome on all matters philosophical, in which those pub conversations rarely go any further than the pub.

Then there's Twitter, the reason I got thinking about this in the first place. Here's the kind of tweet that got me wondering:

We'll leave @tanaymodi1's absent apostrophe and misspelling of "myself" aside for a moment, and look at those hashtags. Being someone brought up on "traditional" writing and grammar rules, those hashtags in the middle of a sentence are somewhat jarring to me and interrupt the flow of what's being said somewhat. Now, in theory, the use of those hashtags allows anyone reading that tweet to click on either #AngryBirds or #Mac and read what other people are saying on those topics. A sensible idea for hot topics under discussion. But I've seen people do it with more vague concepts, such as "I'm writing a #novel" or "Is Sasha Grey a model of fashionable female #sexuality?" that could be taken in all manner of different contexts. Are they still useful?

Apparently so; a number of people came forward in response to my query and said that they find it useful to have the facility to find out what other people are saying on the subject. The only fly in the ointment, however, is that not everyone uses them. If I'm writing a tweet about my Mac, for example, I'll use the word "Mac" and have never, ever hashtagged it, if only for the fact it saves one of Twitter's precious 140 characters. The only time I use hashtags are if I'm participating in a discussion about something (like, say, a TV show that's on at the time) and appending the hashtag on the end of the tweet, for these blog posts or for #lamehashtaghumourthatifindquitefunnysometimes.

This is obviously a different use of writing to how it's used here on my blog, how I use it when writing for GamePro, how I use it when writing an email and how I'd use it if I were writing a book. But it doesn't mean that any of these forms of writing are "dead" or "dying". Increasingly what's happening over time is that things that were once on a relatively linear path, such as the evolution of language, are splitting off into separate branches with their own contexts and purposes. Some people stick resolutely to one path and thus find it rather jarring when something from one of the other paths invades their consciousness. Other people can happily jump back and forth between the different strands, adapting their language to the situation as they see fit.

So no. I don't believe that traditional writing is dead, nor is it a niche interest that only a few dedicated souls are continuing with. It's simply one branch of an increasingly-complicated tree. As we find ourselves with more and more different means of communication available to us, language adapts, changes, broadens. And it will continue to do so for some time.

Where does it stop? Will (English-speaking) people on Twitter end up speaking their own language that looks a bit like English but isn't? Perhaps not. But it's something to ponder.

The post #oneaday Day 66: Is Traditional Writing Dead? appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Go on, applaud. (You don't have to applaud. But good on you if you genuinely started applauding there.)

I have absolutely no hesitation in my mind when someone asks me what my best quality is. Without a doubt, it's my dedication. If I start something, by God I'm going to finish it come hell or high water. It may take a long time, it may take lots of swearing, but I am going to do it.

This blog is perhaps the most immediate example of this, now a year and ten days of daily posts strong, but there's plenty of other instances in which this characteristic of myself shows itself. Let's take today, for example, I woke up in a foul mood and decided after a bit of moping around, a bacon sandwich and two cups of coffee that I was going to go out for a walk in an attempt to clear my head a bit. And it was going to be a "long" walk.

I didn't have a particular route in mind, nor did I have a particular distance planned. I just set off, pointed in a particular direction and started walking. I reached the next village over from where I live—always a strangely satisfying thing to do, like you've made some sort of epic journey—and turned back. I eventually came to a crossroads where I had three choices; go back the way I came (the "short" way), turn right and do a big "loop" around the other next village over (the "moderate" way) or turn left and do an unnecessarily massive "loop" (the "long" way). Guess which way I picked?

That's right. The long way. I realised shortly into my journey up the long way that the long way was, in fact, considerably longer than I had anticipated, and the fact that I was wearing twice the number of layers on my top half than on my bottom half meant that my torso and head were lovely and toasty, while my testicles were slowly turning into ice blocks. It would have been easy to turn back from the long way and head back via the short way—I hadn't got that far. But no; I decided I was going to stick out this journey however long it eventually ended up being. (A total of 12.5km altogether, if you were wondering.)

Some may call that stubbornness. Some may call it bloody-mindedness. Some may call it stupidity. I call it dedication to see something through once you start it. And it's something that's a regular part of my life. I like that about myself, and it's not often I get to say that.

The post #oneaday, Day 29: Dedicated to Dedication appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

So why do it?

Because I enjoy it.

Shit, that sounds like far too simple an answer, and at the end of this sentence that's only 93 words. That's not enough for the arbitrary minimum I set myself back when I started.

But it's the truth. The reason I write this blog is because I enjoy it. Sure, it's great that some people come and read it. Some people are even subscribed to it (that's dedication for you). Other readers have undoubtedly come and gone. Some are recent additions to my little family of readers (oh, you, I love you all) but, you know, the only reason I'm writing this is because I enjoy it. The fact that you lot out there in readerland seem to enjoy some of the things I write is a happy bonus that I wouldn't exchange for anything.

I can tell when something I post is going to be a big hit, though. When I posted about Kevin Smith's unfortunate experiences with Southwest Airlines, I saw a big spike in people reading. Similarly, when I bitched about that ridiculous campaign on Facebook where everyone changed their avatar to a childhood cartoon, I had, I think, the most daily hits I've ever had. Which, given that the daily cartoon for that particular post featured someone masturbating furiously, was something of a bittersweet success. So to speak.

The thing is, though, I don't deliberately court readers. The notion of "hit-chasing" is seen as a necessary evil in the world of online journalism, which is why we get so many games sites lowering the tone with "OMG BEWBZ" articles, because that will get the clicks from the horny teenage boys who supposedly populate the Internet. Unfortunately, it seems to work, leading to something of a self-perpetuating cycle. Similarly, the Daily Mail undoubtedly enjoys a massive spike in traffic by posting something completely cuntish like they did the other day. Go find it yourself, I'm not linking to those bastards again.

But this site? No. This is for me. It's selfish but it's true. I'm very lucky to have some friends who enjoy reading my work and appreciate my stupid cack-handed cartoons—and occasionally some random strangers, too. Writing this blog every day is something fun to do that I look forward to. It's helped me work my way through some difficult times. And it's helped my writing as a result.

Basically, I don't play the game in the same way Mark describes. At least not consciously. But one thing I do enjoy is being an active part of the One A Day Project community—one of the reasons I decided to step up and try and organise the whole thing this year was based on one of the most common complaints last year: there was no sense of community. There was no "centralised" place for people to come together, and some of the participants weren't even aware of each others' existence. This led to the situation where there were only six people left at the end of the year. (Ironically, of course, this led to us becoming friends, as six blogs are much easier to keep up with than 160.)

This year, though, we're already seeing people posting some cool responses to each others' posts as standalone entries in their own right, some discussion and banter on Twitter, and I know of at least a couple of awesome friendships that have already formed as a direct result of all this.

So while I primarily still write for my own amusement, catharsis and/or personal development, I feel it's important to say that I do appreciate the community of other bloggers out there, some of whom might be reading this right now.

Kissy kissy. Wuv yooo.

The post #oneaday, Day 18: Why Blog? appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Which is why I've kind of surprised myself with stepping up to the plate for next year's One A Day Project. And also why I'm even more surprised that people—some of whom I don't even know directly (yet)—appear to be flocking to the cause. Apparently either my word carries some degree of influence, or people think it's actually a good idea.

I think it's a good idea. Yes, some may argue that the more relaxed rules of next year aren't strictly "one a day" in the most literal sense. And to that I say, "I agree". But it's a compromise. Those who do want to go the whole hog and commit to a post every day, I applaud you. (And yes, I am applauding myself right now.) Those who don't feel they can commit to a post every single day, that's absolutely fine too. Personally, while I am a fan of writing something every day and believe that both I and this blog have got something out of it, it's not for everyone, depending on work, family commitments and all manner of other things. So it makes sense to relax the rules a bit in order to allow as many people as possible to participate.

And that, I guess, is what heading up some sort of project is all about—listening to a variety of viewpoints, weighing up the pros and cons and coming to some sort of compromise that makes as many people as possible happy.

I'm really pleased with the amount of interest people have shown in the new project so far, and I promise I won't keep banging on about it over here too much. But I thought I'd just share the fact that we're up to 24 participants (with a few more sign-ups in my inbox that I'll be putting on the site once I've flown back from the US to the UK… boo) and we have had our first monetary donation to Cancer Research. We've also earned 153 minutes of crisis and suicide prevention services on behalf of To Write Love On Her Arms via ad clickthroughs.

It may not sound like a lot until you consider the fact that we haven't started yet. (Those of us who are starting on January 1st, that is.) Hopefully once everyone starts contributing, there'll be a wealth of content for people to enjoy, and said people will be happy to contribute their time or their money to the charities we're supporting to show their appreciation.

So yes; I know that "#oneaday" doesn't mean one a day next year. But that's fine; it's going to bring a bunch of people together to do something awesome. And it feels pretty good to be an important part of that.

The post #oneaday, Day 345: Leader of Men appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I will be continuing with daily blogging next year, whether you (yes, YOU) like it or not.

However, a couple of people pointed out that it's worth putting some kind of "incentive" in place for those who want to take part. I'm not talking about monetary gain for the participants (though if you want to fling a few quid and/or Steam/GOG games my way in appreciation for my hard work, I certainly wouldn't say no) — rather, as the fine, gorgeous and well-endowed Mr Daniel Lipscombe suggested, we should get sponsored. For charity, like.

With that in mind, I've set up a few things today. The first is this. I envisage this page being a central hub for our collective, where we can post all of our entries together and end up with a delicious archive of everything we've done together. This can also double as a jumping-off point for people to visit our individual sites, and contains the all-important donation buttons. I took an executive decision and signed up to benefit Cancer Research UK via JustGiving, and To Write Love On Her Arms via SocialVibe. Most people out there know someone or have been personally affected by cancer, so that seemed like a safe option. To Write Love On Her Arms is an organisation which helps those with depression, anxiety, crises and suicidal thoughts. Being someone who has suffered considerably with depression for many years now, this particular group held some personal resonance for me, and it's one of the more popular options to support via SocialVibe.

Here's what I need anyone reading this to do, and it's very simple:

Tell people. Get them to follow us on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Read the updates on the blog. And, for those who are interested in joining the party, signing up on this page.

Once things are up and running, I can co-ordinate everyone's work (and by that, I mean post their entries onto the Project's main page, not hassle people if they don't have time to write something) and we can all work on promoting blogging for a good cause.

Sound good? It sounds good to me, and as a co-operative effort I think it will work well. The fact that we're being sponsored for charity will give some people the push to carry on, and despite the name, I figured we can relax the rules on posting frequency a little bit.

By the end of another year, we'll have a huge body of work to look back on with pride and hopefully will have raised at least a little money for a couple of charities that are worth supporting. Plus it's certainly a more proactive approach than simply changing your bloody Facebook avatar.

The post #oneaday, Day 339: Looking Forward appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Now: to the point. I have tagged @shoinan in this post because he was specifically asking about it on Twitter at some indeterminate point in time that I'm confused about due to intercontinental time zone drift and watching Scott Pilgrim until 1:30 in the morning, then getting up at 7am to record a podcast. But this post is directed at anyone who wants to be Awesome Like Us.

#oneaday is something I intend to keep going with once my year is up. The others may feel differently. For some it feels more like work, for others it's a good habit that they've got into. Some are persisting out of sheer bloody-mindedness, some are passionate about the whole thing and want to succeed in it as a creative endeavour. In fact, most of us have fallen into some or all of the above categories at different times. And those who dropped the project partway through the year all did so for completely valid reasons, too.

It's a challenge, make no mistake, but it's one you largely set the rules for yourself. The only rule that everyone needs to abide by is this:

Post something—anything—at least once a day for a whole year.

Exactly what "something" means to you can be anything at all. It can be a photo-based post (I've done a few of those in the past). You can set yourself a minimum of at least a paragraph. Personally, I try to write at least 500 words a day, and in the last *mumble* days I've also been doing my comic daily, too. (All right, I couldn't be bothered to check. But I know it's over a hundred days now.)

But there's no hard and fast rules about how much you need to write, how good it needs to be or even what it needs to be about. The whole point of the exercise is to get you (yes, YOU) writing. Writing anything. Posting anything. Getting into the habit of being creative regularly. Creativity is something you need to exercise, just like your muscles. Spend your time not being creative and you'll stagnate, but it doesn't take long to get back on track. And there's no better way to exercise the creative bits of your mind than coming up with something—anything—every single day.

The other side effect that you might find is that it's a good outlet. I've had a shit year, by all accounts, and I know that one thing that has really helped me deal with said shit is writing about it, getting my thoughts out of my head (where they'd fester and eventually explode) onto the page. Saying things and knowing people are reading them—even if the things I've written aren't specifically aimed at anyone (or are, in some cases)—helps. It's a form of therapy.

I'm not saying you need to have something going on in your head to enjoy success at #oneaday blogging. But it certainly gives you something to write about, and I believe it's a healthy thing to do, too.

So for those of you interested in participating next year, I'm fully intending on continuing to take part and helping to co-ordinate everyone's efforts, too. Keep an eye on these pages for further details, and in the meantime feel free to get started whenever you like. If you do, be sure to let me know that you're on the case and I'll be sure to throw up some links.

Not in a vomity way. That would be weird. You know what I meant.

Anyway. Now it is time for pancakes. I hope those of you reading this who have a creative itch that is proving difficult to scratch will certainly consider joining me on another year of #oneaday blogging next year. Good luck to those of you who are in for the ride.

The post #oneaday, Day 336: Being For The Benefit Of Mr. @shoinan (And Any Other Prospective #oneaday-ers) appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This blog thing, for example. It's become part of my daily routine now. I love writing something every day. And it's interesting to look back at how the year (a pretty shitty one, by all accounts) has gone, how it's changed and, more to the point, how it's changed me. I'm a different person to the one I was five months ago. I'm a different person again to the one I was eleven months ago. I'd like to think that these changes are mostly for the better, and there are a few people out there who can probably back me up on this one. That's not a request for ego-massaging comments, incidentally, though those are, as ever, welcome.

And then there's the running thing, too. Tonight I completed Week 6 of the 9-week Couch To 5K programme. Tonight's run was 25 minutes of non-stop running, bookended by 5-minute walks for warm-up and cool-down purposes. And it was… I hesitate to say "easy", but certainly well within my abilities. I feel like my speed is increasing, too, though my average speed readout from RunKeeper (awesome app, by the way, and free for iOS and Android)  seems fairly constant at just under 4mph. Not very fast, I know, but considering that nearly seven weeks ago I was struggling to run for a minute at a time, I think it's pretty clear that I've made awesome progress. And I feel good about that and have absolutely no problem publicly displaying a bit of pride about it. So there.

I have blown the right headphone earbud on my iPhone though. Guess the thumping bass and drums of the Split/Second soundtrack finally proved too much for them. That or Apple make shitty headphones. Given that exactly the same also happened to the right earbud of the headphones on my old 20GB iPod, I'm inclined to think it's the latter. Fuck you, Apple, and your shitty headphones. But not too much. I like the iPhone just fine, thanks.

So here are the "deadlines", for want of a better word: By the 25th of November, I should be running for 30 minutes at a time comfortably, and presumably able to run the titular 5K in that time. And by the 19th of January 2011, I'll have completed a year of continuous non-stop blogging. Will I have a decent job by then? Given that I have an exciting and mysterious job interview next Thursday, I might.

Will I be in a position to say "yes, this is where I want my life to be" by then? Possibly not. But things are definitely on that upwards slope. Time passes. Things happen. And when you look back, it's difficult to imagine being where you are now, then. If that makes sense.

I know what I mean, even if you don't.

The post #oneaday, Day 291: Final Lap appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The most recent mind-blowing moment I had was during this last week when I had my little expedition to the woods. I was standing in the middle of a forest with absolutely no trace of civilisation except a little crude wooden bench by the side of the muddy path. And somehow I had better mobile signal than I do in the house I'm sitting right now. So, without thinking, I popped out my iPhone and fired up eBuddy to say hello to my buddy Chris in California. He responded back and we had a nice discussion about music.

Let's just think about that a minute. I was in the middle of a wood in Cambridgeshire, England. Chris was somewhere in sunny California. And yet there we were, chatting away like this was a perfectly normal thing to do. That's awesome.

One of my favourite gadget moments, though, was a good few years back now. I was up in Edinburgh at the Fringe with the Southampton University Theatre Group, or "Rattlesnake!" as we'd inexplicably decided to call ourselves. At the time, I had somehow managed to end up with the responsibility of keeping the Theatre Group website up to date. I'd prepared a special Edinburgh page and everything, and I decided that it would be pretty awesome to keep an online diary. The concept of "blogging" was but a pipe dream for all but the biggest nerds (even bigger than me) at this point. And doing so via a mobile device was absolutely out of the question.

I did, however, have my Palm Tungsten with me, to date my second-favourite gadget after my iPhone. You could play Shining Force on it, for heaven's sake. That's awesome, if beside the point. No, the reason my Palm came in handy was that I could type up my diary entries into the Notes application on it and then use the handily-provided SD card (32MB!) to transfer said material to a computer in the conveniently-located Internet café we found one day.

One may ask why I didn't just type said diary entries straight into the computers. Well, the advantage of doing it on the Palm was that I could write things as they happened. I could write a rehearsal report. I could write what we were up to in the park. I could write about flyering the Royal Mile. The Frankenstein pub. (AMAZING) Being on top of Arthur's Seat drinking sake as the sun rose. (DOUBLEPLUSAMAZING)

Sure, I could have written about these things after the fact. But the immediacy of being able to write about it there and then was pretty damn cool. Each new generation of gadgets makes this sort of thing easier and easier to do. And while it has its downsides—the sea of people filming concerts on their mobile phones instead of actually watching the damn things being one—on the whole I think it's really great to be able to share life's exciting little moments (or, in the case of some of you out there, the details of your latest bowel movements) with people that you care about it. Of course some of this is vanity. But the other side of it is being able to share things with people that you don't get to hang out with as often as you like.

So gadgets are awesome. For everyone. Not just nerds.

The post #oneaday, Day 270: Go Go Gadget, uhh, Gadget appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Having an argument is a great way to ruin an otherwise perfectly lovely day. The argument could be over anything. It could be over whether or not you think the latest changes that Facebook have made to their site are good or not. It could be whether or not you think raspberry ripple is the best flavour of ice-cream. It could be over whether or not you think the Pope is a massive douchebag. And, if it's on the Internet, it's probably over something utterly irrelevant and useless.

So here's a few steps on how to do it better.

Step 1: State your hypothesis

"PS3 sucks!"

Step 2: Offer convincing evidence for your hypothesis

"Because Xbox 360 rulez!"

Step 3: Offer a source for your evidence

"My mate Joe said so, too."

Step 4: Await response

"PS3 doesn't suck!"

Step 5: Respond to response

"Yes it does!" (Return to Step 4 until both sides have been made abundantly clear. This should take approximately 30 minutes, or five pages of forum posts.)

Step 6: Make up a statistic and quote it

"80% of people who tried both consoles said that PS3 sucks!"

Step 7: Await response

"Well I think Xbox 360 sucks!"

Step 8: Quote Nietzsche

"Admiration for a quality, art or rival games console can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it."

Step 9: Await response

"You're a douche, do you know that?"

Step 10: Respond to response

"Your face is a douche."

Step 11: Await response to response

"Your mom is a douche."

Step 12: Respond with nonsensical, illogical response

"That's not what she said last night."

Step 13: Await confusion

"What?"

Step 14: Take advantage of confusion

"So it's settled then!"

Step 15: Gloat

"I win. Douche."

And so it goes. One of the strange things about this always-connected, everyone-has-a-voice society is that everyone feels the need to have a contentious opinion on something. This happens (albeit not always to the degree described above) on all manner of topics, from the most irrelevant of fanboy conflicts to far-reaching opinions on matters such as racism. And no-one will ever back down, because there's always another website that "proves" their point, always another statistic from some made-up society somewhere.

It baffles me sometimes, because all this time that gets wasted arguing could be far better used enjoying both things that are being argued over. Of course, part of the issue in some cases revolves around people defending the camp they placed their flag in first. In many cases, people can't afford to buy both, say, a PS3 and a 360. So they stake their claim to one or the other and then justify their choice to anyone who will listen, and a bunch of people who won't also. That way, by branding the thing they haven't got "crap", they feel better about not owning it, even if they're secretly bitter that they can't make use of its exclusive features, software or delicious strawberry flavour.

Of course, some people are just asses and feel the need to disagree with everyone and everything. And those people are called assholes.

(If you're wondering about the inexplicable German in the cartoon above, you can blame both me and RothDog. Drawing nonsensical cartoons involving German stickmen arguing was always an excellent way to pass the time in tedious German lessons back at school. This strip is a recreation of the first ever one we drew.)

The post #oneaday, Day 222: I'm Right, You're Wrong appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Although nowhere near as many people—if any—will make it to the end of 365 days as started, I know that speaking personally I'm very pleased to have made the acquaintance of some amazing people through this whole business. And I'm sorry that there are still more whose work I didn't have a chance to enjoy while they were still involved, too.

I feel particular mention here should go to Andy "Ultrabrilliant" Kelly, who started the whole thing off and Lauren "Atheistium" Wainwright, whose tweet about the whole thing got me interested in the first place. While neither of them are still taking part, they're still active on Twitter and on their own blogs and doing proper worky stuff too, so do pay them a visit.

I've made it 221 days so far. That's quite a lot—over half a year, in fact. I'm pretty pleased with myself, but if anything I'm more determined than ever to make it to the end of this year. I nearly typed "unscathed" there, but those who have followed me from the beginning will know that I am anything but "unscathed" after the events of the last 18 months. Scathing is very much in attendance.

But those who have been following me for this period will also know that this whole process has provided an excellent sense of release. There have been times when I've wanted to say things that were stuck in my head, and this was as good a place as any to say them. And there have been other times when I've been able to channel that energy into something creative or "funny". Whether or not you've found my attempts at being humorous to be, well, humorous is beside the point, really. (No offence. Though obviously I appreciate it a great deal if you do enjoy things I've done.) It's given me the opportunity to try out all sorts of things and to find different ways to express myself.

You only have to look at the way the presentation of my blog has changed to see that. From pure text, to text with a quickly-located and vaguely relevant stock image, to clumsily-drawn cartoons that are shamelessly inspired by Allie Brosh's work on Hyperbole and a Half, to daily forays into Comic Life; I feel that the opportunity to experiment with and develop my craft has been a particularly valuable one.

And the self-discipline required in order to keep this going has been immense. As I wrote about yesterday, I feel this is a skill that I've partly learned from the things I enjoy. As "Don Woods" (*cough*) pointed out in the comments, though, perhaps it's an innate skill, also. I couldn't say. I know that this whole process has helped a lot, though.

So a huge thanks to everyone who's ever been involved with #oneaday, whether I've had the chance to speak with you directly or not. Thanks to those who inspired me to write something—anything—every day. Thanks to those who have read every single one of these entries (I know there's a couple of you at least). Thanks to those who comment. Thanks to those who lurk. Thanks to those who have clicked onto just a couple of these entries out of curiosity. Thanks to those who have helped me through the toughest time I've ever gone through in my whole life. Thanks to those who enjoy my stupid drawings. And you, reading this right now, too? Thanks to you, too.

Ah, that was disgustingly profound, wasn't it? Whatever. I mean it.

While you're on, pay the fellow Survivors a visit and support them. And if I've missed anyone out, please feel free to harangue me in the comments or on Twitter.

• Halycopter by Jennifer Allen
• Mat Murray
• The Mirrorball by Mike Grant
• Game Design Scrapbook by Krystian Majewski
• Worthless Prattle Makes The World Go Round by Ian Dransfield
• Mr. Writer by Ian Richardson
• I Should Be Writing Something Else by Phillipe Bosher

The post #oneaday, Day 221: Remember The Fallen Bloggers appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I am writing to you to express my concern about several people who spend their time on you. Not in a sexual way. Actually, sometimes in a sexual way, but that's beside the point. The fact is, there are people out there who do annoying things. I am aware that this is not your fault, nor are they doing it specifically to wind me and only me up. However, the fact is, I am wound up by them and I would like you to stop them, please.

People who comment first on things should be applauded for their tenacity. Assuming they have anything worthwhile to say. However, unfortunately, the sort of person who enjoys pointing out the fact they are the first to comment on something rarely has anything useful to say. This then has the knock-on effect of causing the following commenters to assume that the thing that has been posted is the sort of thing only enjoyed by twats and, by extension, is not something over which a reasonable, thought-provoking or entertaining discussion might take place. Please see what you can do to stop this happening.

The immediacy with which information is available on you is astounding. During the last paragraph, I was able to quickly look up the word "tenacity" to ensure it was, in fact, the correct word I was thinking of. (It was.) However, this does not mean that more lengthy prose no longer has a place in society. Whether on a message board, a blog post, an online news article or a Wikipedia article, the saying "less is more" is not always true. Consider these two sentences: "Pete is a dude." and "Pete is an awesome dude who likes video games and music, and has also recently taken to punctuating his blog posts with MS Paint stickmen representations of himself and numerous other anonymous people." Which of the two sentences tells you more about Pete?

As an aside, however, this does not mean you should ever allow your denizens to use text-speak in order to cram more information into less space.

Laughter is the best medicine, but it is not punctuation. We already have some perfectly good punctuation marks to use. Here is one: a colon. And a full stop. And oh look – a dash! And an exclamation mark. But what about a question mark? Or some sort of slash/"quotation marks" combination? All of these things are fine and serve to make our written communication more clear.

"LOL" is not a punctuation mark. It means "laughing out loud", something I genuinely doubt people are actually doing every time they type "LOL". I've heard a lot about privacy concerns around you, so could you make use of some of these loopholes to watch people through their webcams and squirt deodorant in their faces if they type "LOL" and they're not actually laughing, please?

I've bought things in the past. I once bought a copy of Oasis' first album Definitely Maybe the day before their second album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? came out. I didn't know any better at the time, as I was just getting into popular music, but I wasn't annoyed, because Definitely Maybe is a good album too. I was quite impressed that my friends at the time didn't feel the need to take the piss out of me for this, because they too knew that Definitely Maybe was still a worthwhile purchase even though the next album was on the way.

So if I buy something these days, could you see if it's possible to stop people saying what I've bought is not very good and suggesting something better instead? I happen to like the thing I bought. That's why I chose to buy it over the thing they're recommending. Maybe I spent a little more. I'm fine with that – I can deal with the consequences. I'm sure their thing is really good too, which is why I'm not suggesting that they buy the thing I bought instead of the thing they bought. Do you see?

Finally, Internet, I believe that one of your most exciting features that you told everyone about when you first appeared on the scene was the ability to bring the whole world closer together. Terms like "information superhighway" and "global village" were coined for us to all imagine one big happy family holding hands and enjoying things together.

I like this idea. Happy families are nice. We can enjoy things together. So would you mind doing something about the people who feel the constant need to say something sucks because the thing they think sucks does almost the same as the thing they think doesn't suck but maybe not quite as well in their opinion? Because that just invites other people to show up and say the thing that the other person thinks sucks actually doesn't suck because they think it doesn't suck and the thing that the other person actually thought didn't suck really sucks instead because the other person is a douchebag and their mother is a homosexual?

I have all the things that some people think suck and others think don't suck, and I don't think any of them suck. Could you spread a little bit of this love around please?

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, Internet. I'm sure it will provide you with some helpful feedback on how to make yourself work better. You might need to fire a few people, though.

Yours sincerely,

Pete Davison

The post #oneaday Day 116: Dear The Internet appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

If you're wondering who the girl on the right is, this is Allie Brosh. Allie, a self-confessed "sexy lion", is 24, lives in Montana and has a Boyfriend with a capital B. She also has ADHD, a copy of Paintbrush and a gift for writing things so utterly charming that you can't help but want to follow the chaotic saga that is her life. Her blog, Hyperbole and a Half, ping-pongs around between heartfelt lucidity, infectious childlike enthusiasm and some of the funniest, most surreal imaginings you'll ever come across in your travels around the Internet. She also invented the term "mandatory sex party", which went from being a three-word Googlewhack (so not a true Googlewhack, but I'm not picky) to having 28,800 pages mentioning it in the space of a year. And she apologises for saying fuck a lot.

I have no idea how I found Allie in the first place. I was looking in my Bookmarks Bar in Google Chrome and saw that mysterious » symbol mocking me at the end as if to say "ORGANISE YOUR BOOKMARKS, YOU TOOL!" I clicked on it just to see what forgotten secrets it was hiding and saw a peculiar-looking entry in the pop-up menu that appeared.

"Hyperbole and a Half," it said. "Come and look. That's an intriguing title, isn't it?"

It didn't actually speak. That would be weird. But anyway, I clicked on the entry to see what it was and was confronted with this post. It made me laugh. A lot. Particularly because of the drawings. Well-done bad MS Paint drawings are always amusing, but Allie has a real talent for drawing hugely expressive faces with the simplest of shapes. This, coupled with the prose, made me know immediately that this was something I wanted to keep reading. So I checked out the featured posts she had in her sidebar.

After reading the first paragraph of this post and looking at the picture, I was literally crying with laughter for a good five minutes. That's not an exaggeration. Any time I look at the "BAP!" picture (in fact, any time I even imagine the picture) I start giggling uncontrollably. It was perfect – even more so because I know that I've done something similar before. The word "COCK!" became a useful, if moderately offensive, shortcut to fill dead air in a conversation for my friends and I some years back, and even as I creep closer to 30 I don't see that situation changing any time soon. (I'm in touch with my inner child. Sue me. I am rubber, you are glue and all that.)

Also, this.

Once the giggles had subsided, I decided to delve back into Allie's archives and read her posts from the beginning, which turned out to be the middle of last year. Her blog has evidently changed a lot over time, with it starting out as an opportunity for her to get the things that are seemingly racing around her head out onto a page and shared with the world as quickly as possible. She writes like I imagine her talking – quickly, enthusiastically, jumping from one subject to another and often getting distracted by something, veering off onto a complete tangent and oh look a squirrel that's nice isn't it? And she writes about everyday things people get excited about. Destroying snow. Getting drunk and going down a slide, only to find yourself giggling on the floor for a good few minutes afterwards. Grammar pedantry. Imagining monsters in the ice.

Okay, so some of the things she writes about aren't exactly "everyday" things. But at times, there's a beautiful, childlike innocence to the way she writes and at others, there's a wonderful sense of heartfelt sincerity and honesty. There'll be at least one story she tells on the pages of her blog that everyone can relate to, whether it's the description of her shower being incapable of anything except "lava water" or "liquid ice", the tales of her weird neighbour who always collars her for "therapy-time" or her account of the mission she went on to hijack someone's Wi-Fi just so she could post.

Peppered throughout the blog are more of her hugely expressive MS Paint creations, always there to support one of her stories in a hilariously visual manner. I haven't yet caught up with the "present day", but I guess (judging from the recent posts) at some point she started to move more towards the "humour" angle and further away from the "personal stories" angle. In some ways, this is a shame, as the stories she tells about herself are always incredibly entertaining, but fortunately she has a wonderful sense of comedy, too.

So if you're at a loose end, looking for something to read or want cheering up in a hurry, I strongly encourage you to go and check out Hyperbole and a Half. Be warned, though, once that sexy lion has her claws into you you won't want to let her go!

The post #oneaday, Day 112: Hyperbole Squared appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Turtles in Time Reshelled

I wrote one post about this. One post about this game and it's been consistently in the top search results for my blog ever since. You really want to read it? Knock yourself out – it's here. Actually, you know what? I remember being quite pleased with that post. I guess I should be flattered that so many people are looking for it. Thank you for your support, everyone.

Pete Davison

My name! Amazing. I was genuinely surprised to see that the second-to-top search result was actually my name. Apparently people are looking for me. Given that I am looking for work, I assume that this is a good thing. That or my mother is taking an over-active interest in Googling me.

Divine Divinity

I was something of an evangelist for this excellent PC RPG a while back. It's excellent. Read more here. And then go buy it on Good Old Games. Avoid its sequel though, which is less good.

no.one.lives.forever

I don't know why the searcher put dots in the name. But this game is another that I wrote a few posts about a while back, and the term has stayed in my search results in various forms ever since. Also a great game, and a reminder of when first-person shooters had remembered what "fun" meant.

divine communication tumblr

Now this one I have genuinely no idea about. It's a kind of hideous cross-breed of several different posts – most likely this one, this one and this one. But quite why someone felt the need to search for those three words together is anyone's guess. Maybe they thought God keeps a Tumblr. Probably called "fuckyeahomniscience.tumblr.com". I wouldn't be surprised if that actually existed.

The next three are search terms just from yesterday. These are much more interesting.

doctor who spitfires won't work in space

Of course they won't. That doesn't stop it being awesome.

farmville co-op what happens if you let

No! Don't stop there! I want to know what the rest of that question was. Don't be shy. "What happens if you let…" what? Your sheep run amok? Your crops wither and die? Your child have easy access to your credit card for the purchasing of premium items?

highest lvl in borderlands

50. You're welcome.

Right. Enough. Good night!

The post #oneaday, Day 85: The Artist Formerly Known as Top Searches appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

So the blogging's going well, at least. I'm approaching the end of my week off now, though, and my body is starting to let me know this fact. I hadn't been directly thinking about my return to work, but still I've developed a cough and a horrible nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomac

[The remainder of this post disappeared into WordPress oblivion – only noticed today. Apologies!]

The post One A Day, Day 34: Progress Update appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

In an effort to write more on this site, I've decided to change tack a little from past entries. This blog started as a purely personal blog and gradually morphed into mostly games-related stuff. And fair enough, it's a principal hobby of mine. But I have all these unused categories going free at the top of the page so I thought I'd branch out and try to write a bit more on some other topics to give all of you lovely readers the opportunity to get to know me a bit better in some other areas. Plus, you never know, I might even pick up some more readers along the way – this was clearly demonstrated a while back when I reviewed Haunted Stereo live at the Hobbit (cue Pingback on myself… 'cause no-one else ever links to me :)) and I met a whole bunch of fine new folks as a result.

So from this week forwards, this blog will be… a blog, as opposed to a games blog. You'll still find games writing here, of course, but there are plenty of other things I'd like to talk about. My last few video games articles have also been posted over on Bitmob, so do go check me out (and comment!) over there if you like what you see. You'll also see a couple of my articles on Good Old Games, which should be your first destination for picking up… well, good old games. Check out my articles on Rise of the Triad and Simon the Sorcerer.

Right. On to other matters.

My Dan and Charlie project that I discussed in my last post has been proceeding nicely. It's been fun to "roleplay" these two characters and imagine the situations they have been getting into and how they interact. In practice, it has also been an interesting experiment in separating out various facets of my own personality into two separate people. Those who know me well will have already spotted this, but I also think it's a potentially interesting way of telling a story from different perspectives. My research on the subject is admittedly limited, but does anyone know if anything similar has been done before, outside of ARGs such as Perplex City? (Perplex City is, I confess, where I got the idea from in the first place, although those characters' stories were rather less mundane) I'd be intrigued to see how other people have approached it.

That's it for now. Like I say, this change in approach is largely an excuse to get me writing more on a broader variety of different topics, so assuming I have a bit of self-discipline about this I'm sure I can find something interesting to say on a semi-regular basis. I hope I don't disappoint.

The post Changing Course appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I present to you Daniel Harris and Charlotte Bristow, two twentysomethings who live in the glamorous city of Southampton. Daniel and Charlotte have the same birthday (29th August) and both studied English at the University of Southampton. In fact, they sat next to each other on a number of occasions. But they don't know each other. They don't even know the other one exists. Not yet, anyway.

They don't have a lot in common. Dan is depressed, lonely and increasingly turning to drink. Charlotte is happy, hopeful and uses the word "party" as a verb. However, both of them enjoyed their study of English and are pedantic to a fault, and they do have a few interests in common. Both of them are struggling to work out what to do with their lives now university is over, and are temping to pay the rent.

This project, which I haven't given a name to yet (working title "Dan and Charlie") is an exercise in improvisatory blogging. I will be playing the role of both Dan and Charlie and improvising their fictional lives, perhaps with a little fact interspersed here and there for local colour. After all, I too live in Southampton and studied English (along with Music) at the University of Southampton, so after all we have a bit in common… conveniently. It will be an interesting exercise in "method acting" (for want of a better description) for me, and an exercise in self-discovery for Dan and Charlie, who are both new to blogging.

If anyone actually reads the blogs, thinks they're real people (so no-one who knows me directly, then) and feels the need to comment or interact with Dan and Charlie (who have their own email addresses and eventually will find their way to at least Twitter and possibly other social networking sites if I can be bothered to "network" that much on behalf of both of them), that may well inspire their independent storylines to develop in particular directions. I have a few "events" in mind for the pair of them and, of course, they will come across each other at some point. What happens from there remains to be seen.

I intend to blog on behalf of the pair of them fairly often. It'll be an interesting exercise in creative characterisation and allow me to keep myself in practice of writing stream-of-consciousness first-person narrative if nothing else – maybe it won't go anywhere, maybe it'll develop in interesting and unexpected directions. Who knows? We shall see.

One rule for those of you reading this: don't let on, at least not on their sites. As far as readers of their sites are concerned, Dan and Charlie are real people, and it'd be cool to have them interacting with strangers and see how that develops their own personal stories. Comments will be moderated and anything "out of character" won't be approved by either Dan or Charlie.

Well, this will either be an interesting exercise or I'll end up with Multiple Personality Disorder. We'll see. I hope you enjoy the mundanity of their everyday lives.

The post Meet Dan and Charlotte appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.