Blog - 2020 December
2020 December 31st - New Year’s Eve
It’s New Year’s Eve! No more 2020! Will this improve anything? Probably not, but you can always hope. Honestly, this year has been an improvement on the last one, but seeing as 2019 was possibly one of the worst years of my life, that’s not really saying much. Looking back at how much I’ve written this year, I’m pretty pleased, but I really want to do better next year. Who knows, maybe I’ll manage to make it a full year of continuous creating without burning out?
Speaking of creating, today brings not one, but two new pieces from yours truly. First, we have probably the longest piece ever written on the topic of Playstation faceplates, as apparently I’m the only one that cared for them at all, including Sony themselves.
Second, we have the first in what I’m sure is to be a new series for me, Dumb Ideas. I’m forever having ideas for silly things I’d love to do one day, if only I had the time, the budget, or the talent, and I figure, why not ut them out there, see if anyone thinks they’re any good? This first dumb idea stems from what I previously wrote about CDs being the best music format, and is the idea of a perpetually refining album. I wonder if anyone will ever give it a try?
Well, that’s me signing off for the year. I’m going to spend this last night in a not-dissimilar fashion to the rest of the year, drinking, listening to music, and probably gaming. See you all next year!
2020 December 27th - Post Christmas CD ramblings
Hope everyone had a good Christmas!
I drank some beers, ate some turkey, and got some amazing gifts, but the one I’m going to ramble on about at length right now is my new CD player/stereo setup, which I love. Some people from my work have queried why I still listen to CDs when streaming is a thing, so I have made CDs are the best way to buy music in response.
But to expand on that, said new stereo not only plays CDs (and MP3 cds) but also functions as a blue-tooth speaker, radio, AND accepts a USB drive, so my next task is putting together a drive of all my favourites to plug into that. There doesn’t seem to be a way of pre-programming in certain play-lists or filtering music by artist or genre, which is a bit of a pisser, and the sort of thing I’d really like in the future, but I suppose I’ll stick to running playlists off my phone till then.
I’m really happy to be able to play CDs again though, as I’ve not had a dedicated device set up since I moved a few years ago. The PS4 doesn’t play CDs (cause Sony are greedy bastards and want you to sign up for their premium streaming service) and ripping everything to my laptop is a bit of a pain, especially as it involves digging out my external CD drive. And there’s something enjoyable about picking a disc out of the rack, sometimes an old classic that just caught your eye, and just popping it into the player.
Plus, I do enjoy collecting/listening to a lot of 80/90s alternative/industrial albums, and most of them aren’t available on Spotify, and a few haven’t even been uploaded onto Youtube, so for me, CD is always going to be something I’m buying, even if I do end up ripping it to another device.
I could probably go on, but I’d probably give this a rest.
2020 December 22nd - Blame Keanu
I started my Christmas holiday over a week ago now, and this is the only thing I’ve finished in that time, which I suppose can be blamed heavily on Cyberpunk 2077, which I’ve been playing pretty solidly. I know there’s a lot of complaints about the game’s performance (and yeah, seeing the framerate approach single-digits when you try and take on a gang in melee combat is an absolute pain) but the game is at least running, or on my PS4 Pro at least, and I’ve been having fewer hard crashes since I disabled motion-blur. I’m looking forward to a second playthrough sometime in February once they’ve gotten all the bugs out (fingers crossed). Everyone is talking about how this has tanked their reputation, yet people still let Bethesda get away with re-releasing Skyrim again and again with the same bugs intact, and I have faith that CDPR is at least going to try and fix it up as best they can.
That’s not the only thing that’s been occupying me, however. I’ve gotten a few other bits-and-pieces almost written up (look out for those hopefully by the end of the month), also been having some work done on the house (actual ceiling put on, whoo!) and also spent a day binge-watching a Korean horror-series, Sweet Home, which was absolutely nutty. It took the George R R Martin approach to character preservation, with more than two thirds of the cast bumped off by the end. Ended with multiple plot threads still hanging and new plot elements introduced, so presumably there’s going to be a second season, which I doubt anyone is going to survive. Can’t wait!
