Still can't hear anything! GP surgery rings me at 10:30 while I was at work, said appointment is at a different GP surgery, in 30 mins time. I said I couldn't make that. They said ok, next available appointment is 3pm on Monday!

And that was all they could offer me. Receptionist implied it was my own fault because I turned down the 11am one.

YAY

@3goodthings

A day of doing not much at all as it's been cold and very windy, and I'm still having trouble with my hearing.

🛌 Lie-ins
🟦 Cosy blanket
🌃 Watching the sun going down and the sky getting dark

Currently reading: The Fold by Peter Clines 📚

Finished reading: A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers 📚

I liked The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet the first time I read it, then I wasn’t as keen the second time. It just seemed too overly-wholesome and “quirky” the second time.

Having just finished the sequel I think maybe for me there’s a time and a place for these books. They don’t have fast-paced plots or danger on every page, they’re just nice people doing what they’re doing, and generally getting along with each other. At the moment I think that type of gentleness is just what I needed, so I enjoyed this a lot.

If you’re feeling cynical, I might suggest not picking up this series at that moment. When you’re in the mood for some cosy sci-fi loveliness, then give it a go.

@3goodthings it's been a while, let's have a go.

📆 Weekends
🔥Oodies
🥃 Baileys

Ha, guess what I mostly did today

Ear infections are still undefeated. I still cant hear anything. I got new drops yesterday so hopefully they work but today seems the same as yesterday. I’m actually really surprised at myself how much I’m missing listening to music

I’m posting this again because I remembered about it today, watched it and I still think it’s amazing and hilarious https://https://yewtu.be/watch?v=ZmxLja-DRIw

Currently reading: Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff 📚

OK, I think this is one of the actually good self-help books! I’m following the exercises and learning a little more, and I don’t know if it’s just good timing (it’s been about 6 weeks since I went up to 100mg Sertraline) or what but… yes. I am feeling a difference.

My nitpick is that as a book I feel like it could be much shorter. Each chapter starts with the topic and then goes onto an exercise which is brilliant, but then ends with a couple of pages of how life-changing self-compassion can be. I don’t think this is needed in every chapter. I would have preferred if that was kept in the opening chapter and let the rest of the book speak for itself.

New Oodie today! I'm basically living in my old one at this point and would do well to wash it at some point so I need two on the go.

Old one is plain navy blue from Kuddly. New one is purple with planets and space stuff on it, and is Oodie-branded. They are both super cosy so I'm happy 😊

They're both about the same length but the Oodie one is a bit wider (I was wondering as I think both brands claim to be longer than the competition)

Wordle

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Sorry for Wordle-tooting but look at how Tetris-y I did today! (also I’m furious that it took 4 guesses 😂)

Wordle 943 4/6

🟩🟩⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Discovered PokeDoku https://pokedoku.com, a daily Pokemon-based puzzle, while watching Northerlion. Today wasn't *too* bad but OMG I can't believe how little I know about Pokemon! (I've played **most** of them since the original Red Version on the Game Boy)

Had an ear infection for over a week now ☹️. I miss my airpods! My hearing is affected and I can’t wait to be able to to listen to things again.

On the plus side, nice walk to the GPs in the crisp cold weather to drop a swab off I suppose…

I ordered a folding bike last week. The local Halfords don’t have it in stock but it’s due on Friday. They build it up for free too. I do technically have a bike at the moment, an Apollo mountain bike that I think I got for my birthday when I was about 12 or so. My sister got an identical one at the same time. I haven’t been actually on a bike pretty much since I was a teenager.

I think I want to just have another method of being outside. I like going for walks and I think having a nice slow bike ride somewhere will also be nice. It will be a good challenge getting over the anxiety of getting out of the house and going somewhere like that on my own too. I’ll think I will take it super slow to start - I mean I’ll probably have to anyway because I’m pretty unfit - and just potter around the street and things, and work up to going places a mile or two away. It should be fun!

If you're trying to do #DryJanuary but you're also poorly, does whisky count as medicine?

blog post: #Factorio review / ramble https://jaymy.micro.blog/2024/01/12/factorio-review-ramble.html

Someone at work asked me what Factorio was about once, and I said something like ‘it’s this game where you’re a space engineer who crash lands on an alien planet. There’s not much there except raw resources that are randomly placed, and you build a factory to collect those resources and turn them into other things, to eventually make a rocket and get off the planet. It’s quite chill though, you build stuff and then you can just watch it go, and you can design the whole thing the way you want.

And he said ‘oh so it’s a bit like Animal Crossing then?’

And I instantly wanted to say no because, of course they’re totally different games but actually when I paused for a second, it isn’t a bad comparison in some ways.

To be clear, whether you like Animal Crossing or not will have absolutely no bearing on whether you like Factorio or not. They are two totally different games. Factorio is a fairly drab-looking, top-down 2D game that will stretch your brain while you try to figure out how you’re going to get your coal over to where your oil is being extracted, because you’ve just discovered how to make plastic, which you want to be able to make robots, but all of your iron is being used up making steel elsewhere. Or something like that, there’s always something you will have in mind to make one part of your base more efficient or just generally bigger and better, and once you’ve got that done you’ll set your sights on another part. It’s easy to build and to remove items, so you’re never stressing about making mistakes when you’re building. The feeling of seeing your factory (and yourself as you use your factory to make armour) get better over time is really satisfying. Heck even just watching it do its thing for a little while is quite hypnotic at times too.

As you build your base it generates pollution, and this affects the alien bug creatures (called Biters) that also live on the planet. These Biters will attack you and your base as you try expand into their territory, and so you might also need to factor in the need for walls and gates, and gun turrets and flamethrowers to defend yourself until you’re ready to go out and take out their nests. To be honest, thing aspect of the game isn’t really for me, as I don’t like the idea of having to drop what I’m doing to deal with Biters, or having that bit of time pressure to get things done before you make too much pollution and they start attacking. There are a ton of settings you can modify before you create your world though and turning off the Biters is one of the settings, and I like that there’s a lot of customisation here so that you can play at your own pace in whichever way suits you.

So yeah, it’s Animal Crossing I suppose, except instead of building a museum and a coffee shop you’re building a dirty great factory, and your neighbours aren’t quite so friendly. You’ve got time to slowly and steadily turn the land into something of your own design, which you’ll end up being pretty proud of.

I won’t lie though, it took me about 7 tries to get into Factorio after I first bought it. There seems to be a lot of keys to remember, but it’s actually very well thought out and once you get the hang of it you really minimise the amount of time you spend in menus and in your inventory and things because there’s hotkeys for everything. Until you get to that stage, it feels a bit like you’re learning Excel hotkeys or something. But it’s worth sticking with.

The other thing that put me off was the general look of the game, until I read a post on Reddit that got me thinking about it completely differently. At the very beginning you land on this not-quite uninhabited land, full of trees and rocks and lakes. You get to work building your factory, which is all noise and smoke and dirty rusty metal. You create pollution which over time kills the trees, turning them from colourful and leafy into dead sticks. The grass turns brown and so does the water. You’ll probably start paving the place so that you can move around faster, and that will add a little splash of grey to the brown landscape. I thought it all looked a little bit drab to be honest and I wasn’t keen. But here’s the thing: you’re the bad guy here. You have turned up on this unspoilt planet where the Biters are really just chilling out and living their lives. And you start wrecking the place, mining out all of the resources, belching out a ton of smoke from your power plants and assembly machines, and just generally make a mess of the place. The biters quite rightly want to protect their homes and so they come for you and the machinery that’s making such a mess. Eventually you escape the planet, hooray for you, but you destroyed the place, turned it into desolate wasteland with just your dirty rusty factory to see. I still don’t think it’s a pretty game but with that bit of understanding I really appreciate how the look of the game conveys that selfishness of what shaping things the way you want does to the land.

One other thing that I really like about Factorio is the way the game itself changes over time. At the start it’s all about having your guy run back and forth keeping things topped up with resources. Soon enough, you’ll have conveyor belts that help to automate that. Then you’ll want to build some extra bits and you’ll have the puzzle of how you’re going to lay the conveyor belts out so that everything gets what it needs. Once you’ve figured that out, you migth notice that some of your ore patches are nearly depleted, so you’re going to have to start mining ore from further afield. So you’re going to want to build a railway system to be able to shuttle materials back to your main base. Enjoy figuring out how to automate those trains! Soon after this, you’ll realise that things are getting a bit too big to build yourself, so you’ll want a robot network to come and help you out. Enjoy learning how that works, and have fun setting it up so that you can just stamp down a blueprint and watch the little guys go! It’s great, the interface barely changes throughout the whole game but the way you play the itself game itself evolves as your factory gets bigger and bigger. I really like the way this is done.

There’s an expansion coming out for Factorio in 2024 and it looks like it’s going to be great, adding in more planets and loads more things to research and build. I’m really looking forward to it. I wonder if it will be released on the Switch too?

Here’s my one and only screenshot from my 200 hours worth of playing: the one save that I actually managed to launch a rocket on:

Currently reading: A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers 📚

About halfway through and I’m enjoying this the same way I liked The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet the first time I read that. Books about people being generally nice to each other! Maybe there’s a time and place for them but it’s working for me at the moment

Messing around in Procreate to try and get more familiar with using it, and maybe use it to draw a little more in future.

Week 1 of #DryJanuary accomplished! I went to my sister's yesterday and she offered me a glass of wine and I said no. That was alright.

Currently reading: Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff 📚

I am trying out this self-kindness thing and have been for the last couple of weeks. I have started talking out loud to myself sometimes even, saying things that are a bit reassuring or encouraging when I’m feeling a bit of a mess. It is sort of nice.

I’m still not convinced that it will sink all the way in and help me accept myself and actually believe that I am a worthwhile person but… I dunno… it costs nothing to try?

I can sort of understand how you might be able to learn to ‘reprogramme’ yourself a bit to think that you can rely on yourself, and then that might give you a bit more confidence and stuff and things would improve from there. But there’s that assumption right at the start that you can reprogramme yourself like that, and I’m not super convinced. If thirty-something years of experience has led to the impression that I can’t trust people and that I don’t belong, it seems a bit of a stretch that a few months of work could undo all that. Like it’s a bit wishful thinking, you know?