The nice Irish lady who does the VoiceOver for the mindfulness videos on Silvercloud is some good ASMR 😊

I’m going to give One Album A Day - 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die another go. I treated myself to the ebook to go with it cos I think I’ll enjoy browsing that

Any reviews or thoughts may or may not end up here! 🎶

Currently reading: Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett 📚

A re-read because Granny Weatherwax is awesome 😊

Finished Reading: All Systems Red by Martha Wells 📚

Enjoyed this. I’ll be on the lookout for the rest of the series. I usually wait until ebooks are 99p on Amazon before I buy them and I don’t think these have ever changed price, plus they’re pretty short.

But I enjoyed reading it and I want to read more!

Had my first talking therapy session today, then drove to the nearby park for a little walk. I’m quite scared of driving so getting to the appointment was good, going to the park was like a victory lap

🎮 I finally got around to watching the Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase from a week or two ago. Here are my thoughts:

• Grounded - meh
• Ender Magnolia - Vague Hollow Knight vibes. Doesn’t mean I’m excited about it though. Might be worth keeping an eye on
• Arranger - I like puzzle games but this looks kind of annoying
• Unicorn Overlord - don’t think it’s for me
• Monster Hunter Stories - Nah. I do like how it looks though
• Epic Mickey - Never played this when it originally came out. It looks like the old platformer that it is though. Always feels dicey on a Nintendo system next to Mario games
• SMT V - I do fancy trying one of theses games one day. Maybe.
• Star Wars Battlefront - not for me
• South Park: Snow Day - nah
• Sword Art Online - heck no
• Gundam Breaker 4 - I mean I’m not gonna buy it but it does look pretty cool
• Super Monkey Ball - Aaah never got into this game back in the day! Might check it out one day, it does look like fun
• World of Goo 2 - The first World of Goo got me a bit frustrated after the first few levels. I do like this developer though so I’ll keep an eye on it
• Fantasy Life I - AAAAAAAAHHHHHH I NEED THIS. God I loved the one on the 3DS
• Another Crab’s Treasure.- looks very polished… and it’s a Souls-like you say… I feel it’ll either be great or absolute rubbish
• Penny’s Big Breakaway - nah. Too much going on, like Sonic
• Suika Game Multiplay - OMG this is going to consume my parents' lives
• Pepper Grinder - looks very pretty. Can’t gather much more from that trailer though
• Pocket Card Jockey - this is the same as the mobile game based on the DS one, right? I didn’t get my head round it when I tried it on iPad
• The quickfire stuff - nothing grabbed me
• Nintendo Online retro games - nah
• Endless Ocean - seems unique and cool but… I don’t think I get it

In conclusion, I’m going to have to buy the Suika Game multiplayer DLC for my parents. And I’ll continue to be excited about Fantasy Life.

My phone case was intact about a week ago. Now it’s crumbling before my very eyes. I don’t think I’ve done anything to hurt it 🤷‍♀️

Goodness me my first talking therapy appointment is on Monday! That turned up much faster than I was expecting. I wanted to make a decent bit of progress on SilverCloud first and I’ve done like 1.5 modules. So I guess I know what I’m doing this weekend.

Feeling a bit weird about it, especially as it’s face to face. Kind of nervous about driving there (I’m nervous about driving anywhere), but, like, I’ve never done anything like this before. I don’t know what to expect

I don’t know if this is the case in every Ikea but at the one here the display for the scented candles is absolutely spectacular, and I can’t figure out why they’d put so put money and effort into £5 candles 🤷‍♀️

I’m trying out using OneNote at work the way I use Drafts at home. I’ve finally memorised the global hotkey to create a new home (it’s the Windows key + control + N…. I think haha) and any time I want to start writing an email or making the beginnings of a powerpoint or something. I open a new note and start writing.

I really like that I don’t have to think about where I want to start writing, it’s just hit a hotkey and go for it. It even makes a little skinny docked window alongside whatever window I was just using which is handy. I’ve got it set to always add to an ‘Inbox’ section in my notebook. And the general understanding is that every few days I can go through there and check the notes, delete the ones I don’t need any more and file the ones I want to keep elsewhere in my notebook.

Of course I’m missing the big part of Drafts which is being able to send that text anywhere super easily and have it automatically remove the Draft. Copy and paste is a poor substitute here haha. And having to manually delete will probably turn into a pain in the arse and I bet I delete something important some day.

But so far I’m enjoying being able to just type out some words without thinking about where I want to type them first. You know… I wonder if there’s any genius trickery that can be done with AutoHotKey to move the text from one program to another automatically…. 🤔

Currently reading: All Systems Red by Martha Wells 📚

My sister told me about Longdog on Bluey yesterday and we spent the most intense half an hour watching episodes we’ve seen dozens of times before, while my niece chilled out drawing and not playing attention in the slightest. Had to switch the TV off when we both got headaches

The Lion of Gripsholm Castle popped into my head today and I had to go and read about it again so I thought I would share:

The Greatest Castles in Sweden: and the Story of the Gripsholm Lion - Exploring Castles

Went out for another go on my little bike again today. It’s been so long since I’ve been on a bike and considering the fact I fell off the last time I went out, I thought I would just practice the absolute basics. So spent a nice 30 minutes in a quiet part of the street just braking, putting a foot down, getting the pedals in the right place, setting off again, and repeating. I was a bit surprised to find that I wanted to be in a middle-ish gear for all of this - I didn’t think I had the leg muscles for it

🎮 PlateUp! (2022)

I’ve played a bit of this on the PC and bought the Switch version last week. My first thought when I tried it on the Switch was that it looked a bit rough and ready. I’m not sure why but the graphics looked okay on PC, and then just a bit rough and unclear on the Switch (maybe I hold console graphics to a higher standard? 🤷‍♀️)

But the graphics aren’t all that important beyond it sometimes taking a moment to figure out exactly which version of a dish the guest wants you to make. It’s a fun game and I prefer the way you get to re-arrange and evolve your kitchen rather than the static layouts in OverCooked, and I also like that you’ve got the dining room to look after too. It’s overall more fun-feeling and when you’re playing multiplayer there’s more scope for things to get hectic, when you have to be careful with the timings of taking orders, cooking orders and collecting dishes etc.

To be able to finish the game (ie run your restaurant successfully for 15 days) you need to understand and properly use the equipment and upgrades you’re randomly offered, and I don’t think the game explains any of this at all. And maybe this is just me but I didn’t find of it intuitive at all. I have watched some Let’s Plays so I do have a little knowledge of how things work but I think unless you go away and do some reading you’re pretty guaranteed to never get very far. I know it’s a roguelite and as such part of the fun is figuring out how things work and experimenting and stuff, but I think things are too weird to work out, to me.

I still like this game a lot though, I’m glad I now have it on the Switch because I feel like it suits being on a console more than on PC. I also can’t wait to get a couple of family members over and play a bit of multiplayer.

Finished Reading: The Fold by Peter Clines 📚

Enjoyed this quite a lot. I read ‘14’, the previous book in the series years ago and I’m kind of wondering why I waited so long to read this one. If there’s one thing that 14 had over this book it’s the way that the story suddenly took a 90 degree turn and headed off somewhere you weren’t expecting. And because that twist was there in 14, it kind of couldn’t be as powerful in this book. I thought the main character Mike and his souped-up photographic memory was quite a cool idea, and it didn’t feel as though it made him too unbelievably superhuman.

Stinge Watching Is the Opposite of Binge Watching

When I find a new show I really like or I’m digging into the newest season of a favorite series, instead of getting hooked and then blasting through all the available episodes, I’ll slow down or even stop watching so as to prolong the pleasure…or to delay the end.

Binge watching gets a bit much for me, I just find that I’m not properly watching anymore after maybe 3 episodes of anything.

Stinge watching as described in the article above is much better, you get the chance to actually savour the program and things unfold more slowly. For me that means I’ve got time to think about what’s going on in between episodes and I think that’s half the fun. And since I’m not losing focus after a while I’ll actually be able to take the plot etc in properly. So taking my time through a TV series is much better.

I would love if streaming services would add some sort of functionality that allowed us to do this but to still be super lazy and watch a full evening’s worth of TV. It would be like a playlist, and I’d set it up, like, I want to watch an episode of x, then an episode of y, then an episode of z. Then I’d be able to just sit back and let all three programmes play. You would get the first unwatched episode of each series automatically play. I suppose if I get to the end of a season on one of the programmes then it could suggest something to swap it out for, or just remove it from the playlist.

Like, I like being able to stream TV but I also used to like the old Friday evenings on Channel 4 back in the late 90s. It’d start with a couple of episodes of the Simpsons, then Friends, then Buffy, then Frasier, then South Park (this probably isn’t accurate by the way!) and I used to look forward to them. I don’t feel like we can really do that kind of thing anymore with Netflix etc

Had my talking therapy assessment appointment this morning. I was feeling a bit unsure about it because mostly I’ve been feeling alright recently, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. The lady was really nice though, went through some questions and things, and now I’m set up with SilverCloud and I’m on the list for some talking therapy. I little bit wonder what most of the point of the questions were because I think I was going to get recommended the same thing regardless? I dunno

I like being part of the 3GoodThings group and hashtag on Mastodon. It’s a little bit of my self-care routine, my version of keeping a gratitude log I suppose. I’ve been thinking recently that I would like a way to be able to post to that group (and to the hashtag), but also to have the three things be added to a running list, something that I could look back on now and again.

I also try to play a bit of a game with myself where I’m not allowed to post the same thing twice so having a big list of previous things would be handy for this too

I’ve recently downloaded Drafts and I’ve been messing around in it, and I think I’ve come up with an Action that does the job. Here’s a link to the Action from the Drafts directory if you wanted to try it out. Note that you would need to be using Ivory and Bear for this Action to work

You need to do one thing to set it up: tell it which note within Bear you want to be adding to. Set up a new note in Bear that we’ll use for your running list of good things, add whatever title, tags etc you would like, and then copy it’s Note Identifier

It will be a long string of letters and numbers

In Drafts, right-click on the newly-installed action and click Edit, and paste the note identifier in the Template box:

You can then close this window and everything will be set up. When you run this Action, it will automatically add the contents of your Draft to the end of the note in Bear, and it’ll then open an Ivory window with your post ready-made, complete with mention and hashtag. You can then just need to hit post to send this.

This is my first try making my own Drafts action, it was pretty fun.

…and shortly after that last post I figure it out: you need to have ‘wait for response’ ticked to bring the focus back to Drafts ready for the next step