I didn't set myself my usual raft of Resolutions this year, simply as back in January we had no real idea of what was going to happen. Eight months later and there is still a huge chunk of un-certainty, and many aspects of my life have changed.
My "daily driver" machine is up for a refresh, my XPS 13 is almost 3 years old. Since I got it the world has changed significantly. When I got it I was;
So we got a dog. Been a long time coming.
A few things happened in the latter part of last year, and those, combined with confirmation that both our companies were going to be adpoting some sort of flexible working policy meant we finally able to make the move.
All round 2020 was a good year for gaming, however during the traditional "Game of the Year" phase of publications it turned into a close battle between "The Last of Us Part 2" and "Hades", with Hades posibly edging it. It had been on my radar since September when it released, as it ticked pretty much every box for me;
OK, so 2020 was properly fucked up. Let's have a quick game of "what's going to happen in 2021"?
Heres some for starters.
Reckon one of those is a sitter...
A part of my mini-project to fill up my in-house media server, I've been hunting down some older stuff I liked. One of the rareties that I found on Youtube was someone had uploaded some really low quality VHS rips of The Mary Whitehouse Experience and Newman and Baddiel in Pieces.
I've been using Google Music for years...I spent about a week while in Glenrosa ripping and uploading all my CD's across about 4 PC's, having all the CD drives whirring full-time, and I have/had a gloriously curated ~6,000 song/50Gb library of music. I've made a lot of use of the hybrid downloaded/streamed data model on my phone (I spend a fair bit of time out of network connectivity...be it holidays or cycling in the middle of nowhere).
I've previously look at Stadia, which impressed me technically, but I don't really like the business model (pay for service+pay for games on top). GeForce Now is a competitor with a better model (pay for games, and pay for additional features), with the added bonus that (in theory) games you've already purchased from other services can be brought in.
After a fairly stressful week I needed a bit of escapism, so went hunting through the (really rather awful) Switch eStore. One series of games that has popped up on several recommendation lists is the Steamworld series. I've seen them before, but was never really sure what they were about...and the artwork (in stills) looks a little forced.
Like a lot of people, I've spent the last 3 months doing a lot of video calls/presentations/meetings etc. I'm quite lucky that I have a decent setup already (including a HD webcam, a Logitech C920)...however I've found that running OBS alongside multiple apps can give my laptop a hard time. What I'd like to do is run a second machine (I have a spare laptop), and then use that for the video compositing/output, and use my main laptop for doing actual work.