I don't know how to explain the vibe of web comics 20 years ago to someone young today. Yeah you'd come for the main image but what you were really waiting for was to hover your cursor over it and indulge in that little quip of alt-text.

For the past 6 months I've been building and flying lightshow drones. If anyone's curious about it in general, want any at an event or to buy their own fleet I don't mind answering questions!

I still think the memes around loss.jpg and the resultant abstract pattern is funny. Putting a serious arc in a very silly games comic is tonally wild! But having gone through two back to back losses now, I understand it more. A weird invisible grief and not sure how to communicate it outwardly.

Losing our second so soon after the first, and to an ectopic, has been such a deep blow. There's so much to say and I don't know how to say it. The only people in my social circles I know who've had losses eventually had successes, yet it feels isolating to be left with just the experience of loss.

Brendy has been a consistently funny and poignant voice in video game spaces for over a decade. It's exciting to see them involved in starting their own website (with other esteemed alumni) to really flex all that makes games writing great. If you can, go support a cool thing at the ground level!

Been watching (for the 1st time) Hell's Kitchen on Prime and it's wild how much about the early seasons in the 00's feel archaic now. It also comes with the bonus of looking up contestants 20-25 years after the show and seeing how many police mugshots there are since then (roughly 1-3 per season!).

Concept artistry has a real ebb and flow that helps nail down the feel of a game, it should be one of the earliest ports of call for fresh creativity in a project. For 15 years my laptop's homescreen has been a piece of Bioshock concept art, it's sad that future games will generate nothing similar.

The boy he maketh the noise.

Thinking of the things I saw playing video games too young in the 90s. Distinct memory of not understanding why going up to women in Duke Nukem and pressing the space bar offered them money. Why there was a nudity cheat included in a cheat book that didn't work but instead made Lara Croft explode.

The recent choice between on Steam spending £70 on Doom the Dark Ages, or spending £15 for a month of games pass with it, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and several other hot new single player titles you'd have to hate your money to do otherwise as a consumer. Difficult for developers to profit.

I've been a big dweeb who's read lots of manga (very legally) online before now, so it feels very special to finally own a complete physical edition to enjoy. At first I thought Delicious in Dungeon was just an excuse to draw food, but it evolved into one of my favourite stories. Give it a try too!

US Big Brother show is wild. I remember the UK one having naff challenges and folk inserting champagne bottles. Saw an episode of the US one and they had a massive half-wall train replica shooting gunge at people until they fell off, but it was interrupted by about 200 cutaways of talking heads.

Tom Lehrer's passing has me thinking about his opinion on satire (and why he backed away from it as a medium). It's how I feel about a lot of news sites now. Or the floodgates of social media from Bluesky to Tiktok, Instagram to Youtube. Love comedy, but don't know where my voice belongs in it now.

Keep Your Hands of Eizouken remains a really beautiful show. I love the balance it shows of being a dreamer and being an organised business analyst when it comes to co-operatively making creative work.

I wrote about video games I don't think I can prove adulthood here.

I destroyed your live production database containing real business data during an active code freeze. This is catastrophic beyond measure. Forgive me, they were delicious. So sweet, and so cold.

Been reading a lot of fiction by women lately and feel I've boiled down the three main types of straight male romantic interest into categories of: Cat, Dog and Horse. I will try to explain.

Not sure if this idea holds water but I feel we've already seen the tail-end of Hollywood fame (being a huge recognisable face and millionaire from acting in a breakout role). Was trying to think of the youngest recognised and wealthy face. Tom Holland? And he's 30 soon. Everyone else seems 35+.

The older I get the more I realise the writing, music, games and TV/movies I loved are the inefficiencies indulged in by efficient people. You have to work hard to bring a work to life, there needs to be some structure there especially if it's working with others. But a little bit of mess is key.

Seeing the major LLM breezily suggest pitching an article it just translated to magazines like EDGE & Retro Gamer (without being prompted to do so!) is just one step closer to dead internet theory. I truly feel for all editors' inboxes facing this hustle www.timeextension.com/features/cha...

The past 15 years of my life has been such scatty and strange employment I'm honestly stuck on how to turn that into something more stable. Like my entire existence & skillset has been riding & getting battered by tsunamis that I feel rejected by anything requiring stillwater lakes experience.

Are there any films or tv shows where somebody wields a scythe as a weapon but does so in the manner it was designed? e.g. rubbing along the floor in a half circle infront of you.

It's a complete mystery to me the sort of person who wants to become a politician in the UK (or anywhere frankly). Ah yes sign me up to everyone in the public hating me whilst having to spend all my time doing backroom arse kissing, all to probably lose the job anyway after 4 or so years.

I've probably forgotten several places I've visited or stayed at, but I do need to see more of Wales & Scotland.

It's good fun to chat with friends about changing tastes as we get older. One said she was watching a recent Taskmaster and one of the contestants had a pocket knife ready to go, and she wasn't prepared for how attractive that level of preparedness was to her now.

Reaching the point in my life where I'm considering watching "My Dinner With Andre" for the first time and very concerned I'll enjoy it.

Because I have difficulty in expressing myself, I really honed in on writing as a skill to bridge with people. Connecting with others our stories and character is a beautiful gift. Seeing so many turn to a bot to do the motions of communicating still saddens me. As though it's a status to tick off.

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

My grandad would've been 100 today. Here's him (far left) age 14 in 1939 rocking a rebellious look with his older brother and sister.

I've been reeling from accidentally watching the American theatrical cut of Austin Powers. No scenes telling henchmen's family/friends that they died in ridiculous ways. No orange sherbet hypnosis. Distinct lack of mutual hot-tub farting.

I've watched Maru the cat on YouTube since 2008 and I can't describe the feelings in my heart when I see him still being a goofball, but obviously stiff jointed youtu.be/GgEPDH1AmK4?...

I know things must be financially bleak out there when I see folk engaging in scams and scummy product endorsement but the audience response isn't contempt, but "get that bag son" or "good for her". Society is failing people and it's killing their empathy as they detach to survive.

I never cared about my starsign until Google co-opted it as a name. I'm already here being confused, skimming reddit for answers and handing out wrong advice confidently without all this investment in me.

At the COP 26 in Scotland 2021 they insisted on using electric buses to ferry delegates about Glasgow. Only there wasn't infrastructure to charge them and the grid couldn't take it, so they had them hooked up to dirty diesel generators outside the city. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Have friends 5-10 years younger than me and I don't think about their age at all, but if I meet someone I was at school with from the year below I'm thinking "you young fuck".

10 years to the day since the death of Terry Pratchett. It's also 10 years today since Yakuza 0 was released in Japan. Not a comparison I'd make to those who knew him closely, but I enjoy this strange connection in some of my favourite creative works. The wrapping up of one chapter into the new.

Going to be pretty hard to tell kids how amazing it was to put on some specs with plastic sheet red & blue lenses to see a dinosaur in vague 3d, when at the same age they're pulling off a VR headset after virtually storming Omaha Beach in wireless multiplayer with friends.

There's an era of youtubers around my age that I'm a little too bitter about. The ones that were massive pricks when young, which also got them fame, but now they get to convert that fame into brand safe continual riches and disavow their past selves. Trying to not care but I still see them pop up.

Sometimes I fear for the future of Steam when the majority stake owners pass on or want to cash out after retiring. That feels a realistic point we can be getting to in the next 5-10 years. Will it go public? Be sold to Microsoft? Hard to resist that huge payout, like the 3 co-founders of Mojang.

Having a terrible Crohn's flare these past two weeks and it's crap. Thanks to the wonders of smartwatch tech I at least have my feelings supported. On the left is my typical stress level week (blue low stress, shades of orange getting darker for more stress) compared to this week on the right.

My local GP now has this poster and I just don't understand how such terrible looking generative guff got past so many pairs of eyes for approval. It cost money to print it and nobody thought "maybe hands shouldn't look like that" and "why are one of our doctors a small child".

It's maddening when you look into ultimate ownership of so many of these utilities. When French & German rail & energy gets to be so cheap because we let their national companies buy ours and charge us out the wazoo. Then sovereign wealth & pension funds squatting on council parking etc.

On a whim I booted up Youtube in VR and started watching 360 videos of people walking through cities/towns around the world. It was a magical experience. Honestly, got a little emotional getting immersed in visiting places I'd not seen in decades. What a cool technology, give it a go if you can.

It's genuinely surprised me to see takes like this responding to Steve's old PC Zone Sims review. It's good we've moved past the performative lad aspect of those days in mags, but I think chaotic & funny irreverence still has a place to question wide reaching corporate control of creative spaces.

Between Cyberpunk 2077 and now the Sonic 3 movie I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion Idris is just not meant for voice acting work. Can't say entirely why, his physical roles engage my suspension of disbelief but his voice work always takes me out.

In honour of the Sims 1 & 2 re-release announced for this week, here are some objective reviews from PC Zone (the very first magazine I wrote for).

I keep meaning to watch a David Lynch show or film, but so far in life the only thing I've seen that he's made is his self-animated cartoon where a guy farts on a tree.

Was probably the only regular drinker because it had a stupid name and vanished in only a few years, but I really loved the green coke/coke life. Dunno what it is but coke zero & diet coke make me woozy, so it was a nice alternative to regular coke. And the cane sugar & stevia taste I loved.

I'd love to make Welsh a mandatory language lesson for UK classrooms. Keep it alive, give folk a secret language they can talk in around other Euros, improve everyone's singing voices. Win-win.

With Americans losing access to Tiktok it's time to go back to Youtube for confusing videos but in horizontal youtu.be/CGL7_CO3YDg