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.

• I reckon that the USA will have it's first ever female president, after Biden is assassinated by a complete MAGA lunatic.
• New Nintendo Switch will be released
• The UK's last lockdown will end in August, though vaccinations will not be complete by the end of the year
• Birmingham will become a desolate wasteland, devoid of intelligent life

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.

This was going to be a bit of an amble about how various games have marked key points in my life...a bit of nostalgia brought about by playing the Final Fantasy VII Remake (a mere 21 years after playing the original), however as part of the research for that I came across something really quite fascinating.

I think this is the first time I've worked from home for a prolonged period of time, without having serious medical issues. Since Tuesday, Yell have been remote working all employees that are able to, and that includes all of IT.

2020 Manifesto

An attempt to reclaim a much-maligned word. A better fit than "resolutions" for these...

1 - Regain 2nd Cat Race License

In theory I should have already started the campaign on this, however as I type this while the 2020 race season has begun, there have been no races organised locally. I haven't raced since June 2018, so as of the 1st December 2019 I lost my 2nd cat race license...so I'll need 40 points to get back up there before the end of November. Ideally I'll get it done way before that.

I was reading this article on the BBC this morning, which reminded me in part of a morning I spent number-crunching waaaay back in 2016 to try and work out how much is cost me personally for the UK to be a member of the EU.