Category Archives: Personal Life

Scottish Borders

I spent the weekend in a tiny village in the Scottish countryside with Ronja and 12 best friends. It was a bit rough for a spoiled city brat like myself, but I managed.

The highlight of the trip was a bunch of us bathing in a freezing river, and trying to mount an unstable unicorn float while battling against the current. Fun stuff.

There was also a field of donkeys next to our house, which provided some amusement as they stared at us and made silly donkey sounds.

I think the most striking realisation from the trip was how much healthier life is without internet and hundreds of distractions. Whenever I had a moment to spare, I’d either take a walk, clean up a bit, or find some silly traditional game to play with my friends. Much better use of time than checking my phone constantly like an addict. There was much less on my mind, which I think is something many people need these days.

I need to incorporate more of that feeling into my regular city life.
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RIP System Drive

So I’m starting my day as usual, having coffee and watching a few YouTube videos, when suddenly the internet disconnects, programs stop responding, and then I get an unusual error message: “Microsoft Windows:  The application is not responding. ”

That’s strange, never seen that before. Usually it’s just Windows Explorer that crashes. After that the computer restarted and my system hard drive was dead. I spent a day waiting for a new one (Thankful for Amazon prime), and then another day reinstalling all of my programs.

During my break I read Terrible Old Games You’ve Probably Never Heard Of by Ashens, and the Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alistair Smith. Books are cool when I get a chance to read them.

It’s been a while since I did any work on my hardware, and I needed a bigger system drive anyway, so this was a good excuse I suppose. The 60GB SSD was too small, and I’ve replaced it with a second Samsung 250GB 850 Pro. These one’s are supposed to last at least 10 years? That’ll be impressive, the dead one lasted 6.

I don’t think I lost anything important.

Also I destroyed the dead hard drive, for security, of course:
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Collecting Useless Junk

Lately I’ve started some new collections, and I’m wondering how long I’ll have fun with them before they turn into problems. A year ago I got back into Lego, but I’ve already gotten bored of the new stuff, and have specifically started collecting 90s sci-fi Lego. I got a few Aquazone subs, and I’ll probably continue with those. But all this Lego is taking up shelf space, and I know my love for it won’t last forever.  (I’ve already totally forgotten about my Amiibos, after collecting around 50 of them…)
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I also picked up the Samorost 3 Vinyl, since the art is so pretty. I haven’t played the game yet, but I’ll get round to that soon. Earlier this year Ronja got me the Hello Internet podcast vinyl, so this is turning into a bit of a collection too.

I’ve got this weird relationship with stuff, where collecting it gives me massive pleasure, but I also know that at some point it’ll just be wasting space and collecting dust. I tell myself I’ll give it to some deserving kids later, but chances are it’ll just go into storage because I don’t want to let go completely. That’s life I guess.
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I played games all week

Hey guys, I’m back from my gaming binge. I cleared out a lot of games that were on my playlist, and tried to relax a bit in general. It’s been a long time since I played so many video games in a week.

I started off with Shadows of Adam, which is a SNES-like JRPG that had quite a strong nostalgic impact on me. I spent so much of my teenage years playing Final Fantasy, Golden Sun, Chrono Trigger and all that, but it’s been a very long time since I’ve played a traditional JRPG. The newer stuff doesn’t grip me at all, and I haven’t replayed the old games cause I’m sick of random battles and the huge time sink. Maybe I should give the Final Fantasy re-releases a try, since they seem to have some nice convenience features. Final Fantasy 9 in particular, that’s my favourite. Anyway, Shadows of Adam was a mediocre game I guess, but it got me thinking about JRPGs again, which was nice.

I finally got round to finishing The Witness… well, the regular stuff anyway. I’ll probably keep working on the optional puzzles over time, as I’ve already done quite a lot of them. I think this is my favourite puzzle game ever. I’ve never been so captivated by a puzzle game before, I usually get bored of them quite quickly. I’ve played it for 30 hours and I’m still into it, even though it’s a very slow and often frustrating experience. The game just keeps calling me to explore and try to figure everything out. I think it’s the complete lack of instructions that does it for me. It just leaves me alone to wander around and curiously poke things at my own pace. Also, Ronja challenged me to beat the game without taking any notes. I’m quite proud of myself for achieving that, I think it stretched my memory a bit.

And finally, I got into the Shantae games. The music and character animations are so good. I was a bit surprised at how sexual the games are. I thought it was just going to be a sexy main character, but it goes a lot further than that, with tons of innuendo and weird fetish material. Not complaining at all. I started off playing Pirate’s Curse, which I enjoyed a lot until the later levels. It turns out I sabotaged my enjoyment of the game because I didn’t realize you could buy permanent attack upgrades, and all of the enemies had crazy amounts of health as a result. So that sucked. I played it through again on pirate mode, going for most of the achievements and getting 100% of the items. The levels designs are soooo good for speed running. You don’t even realize until you return to the earlier levels with all of your new abilities. So that game made me a fan of the series instantly. I played Half Genie Hero next, which in terms of gameplay and story I think was actually inferior to the previous game. It just wasn’t as gripping. But it was still a good game overall, and totally recommend the series.

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