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

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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?

🎮 Knotwords (2022) - ★★★★★

Knotwords is a nice iOS puzzle game. I like that there’s no subscription, you buy it once and that’s it. It’s a kind of crossword combined with anagrams sort of word puzzle. Every day there are 3 new puzzles to solve: Daily Mini which is quick and easy, Daily Classic which starts off quite small and simple on a Monday and gets more difficult as the week goes on, and Daily Twist which gives you an extra set of clues in the form of telling you how many vowels are in each row and column.

There’s also a ‘puzzle book’ section which gives you 60 puzzles each month.

If you use an external keyboard you can use the arrow keys and the tab key to navigate around the board and of course you can type in your answers. I really like this bit as it feels very fast and fluid to enter letters, there’s no fighting with the interface while you’re actually trying to see if your idea is right or not.

Finally the coolest thing is you get an almost Wordle-like animation to share after you’ve solved a puzzle which I think is awesome even though I don’t actually use it:

🎵 My “jam” at the moment is Boris Brejcha. I don't know a damn thing about electronic music but this is awesome for focusing and I actually got stuff done at work while listening to it.

Each track never really goes anywhere and I find it kind of hypnotic

https://songwhip.com/boris-brejcha

I’ve been trying to keep things minimal / useful when it comes to what I carry around in my pockets or bag. Recently I’ve re-done my keys.

I have 3 little command hooks stuck on the wall in my kitchen. The first hook has my front door key attached a Nite Ize Cinch-A-Lot Mini Stretch Strap. If I’m just going for a walk, that’s the only key I would need so I just grab that and put it in my pocket

The next hook has my car key fob on a tiny splitring. The last hook has a slightly bigger split ring with my back door key and keys for my Mam’s and sister’s houses.

So some of the time I just need my house key if I’m just walking somewhere. Sometimes I’ll be driving, so I take the car key and attach it to the little S-carabiner on the Cinch-a-lot. If I need to let myself into a family member’s house for whatever reason, I can add that larger keyring on that odd occasion.

So I get to just carry around the smallest keychain that I need, without making things too complex with regards to swapping things in and out.

The cinch-a-lot has an elastic loop which is big enough to get a couple of fingers through so it’s nice to use to be able to get your keys out of your pocket, or I could potentially fasten it around a belt loop. Because it has the little metal slider I could potentially use it to attach something else to the keys, like my Airpods or something, although I can’t really imagine wanting to do that. Some of the reviews of the cinch-a-lot said that the locking thingy on the s-biner was a bit fiddly to use, I don’t find that to be the case but I have tiny hands so maybe that’s why I don’t have an issue.

I am liking this new setup though. Takes up the minimum amount of space in my pocket and it’s very slim so there’s as little bulk as possible, and it’s easy to swap keys in and out as needed

In the spirit of being more gentle with myself: none of that business with the GPs was my fault. It's annoying but I've done well to keep things going at least. And I went to work afterwards and survived that so that's something too

GP appointment cancelled this morning. Originally called to make appointment in mid-December because I didn't think my Sertraline was working. Rescheduled to the 18th. I tell them my medication will have run out by then. Receptionist says she'll see the GP about it.

I check on the NHS app and the prescription is there but it's dated 01/01/1900. I can't get to the pharmacy until Monday. Will they actually fill it I wonder?🤔

Very helpful to my anxiety on what was also my first day back at work!

Recently been trying to keep things simple and since I bought an iPhone 13 a while back to go with my iPad I’m more and more sold on using Apple stuff so there’s a bit of a theme here!

I think some of this will change soon as I do want to get a bit more into blogging and that will involve trying different things out, and it’s been on my mind for months that I kind of want to buy a macbook. Not exactly pocket money that though, is it?

Music: Apple Music

Podcasts: Apple Podcasts

Password Management: Bitwarden

• If I ever manage to go all-Apple I would interested in moving to Apple’s Keychain

Books: Kindle

• Prefer using my actual Kindle Paperwhile but the Kindle app on my phone sees some use too

Todo: Apple Reminders

• Only if it’s very time-sensitive, otherwise it would just go in the notebook
• Shopping list goes here too. Love having it on my watch as I go around the supermarket

Calendar: Apple Calendar

• Trying this out as a way to remind myself when it’s time to eat and time to unplug and read or journal at the end of the day
• Owaves is an app that’s built for this exact usage but I found it clunky somehow

Mastodon: Ivory

• Unsure if I’ll keep paying for Ivory once the subscription runs out. It IS a very nice app but I should really be limiting the mindless scrolling on my phone

Blogging: Micro.blog and Epilogue for micro.blog

• The default Micro.blog apps seem fairly basic but I’m sure I will find some workflows that help me get stuff onto my blog more effectively with them

Notes: Bear

• Just using the free version at the moment on the iPad but will be happy to subscribe to be able to use across devices

Journaling: DayOne

• I have the ‘Plus’ version which is the grandfathered one, since I guess I bought the app shortly before they moved to the subscription model. I get most of the stuff from the Premium version but not everything. Wouldn’t mind subscribing because it’s just such a nice app and I’ve used it (off an on) for about 10 years I think

Not apps:

Bullet journaling: Scribbles That Matter B6 hardcover dotted notebook.

• I try to keep things short and snappy in the notebook, and if I want to expand on something it can go in DayOne or Bear

Meal planning: whiteboard on my kitchen wall

• I try to update this every weekend with evening meals for the week
• Also try to keep an inventory of frozen meals in the freezer. I live on my own so it’s convenient to cook enough food for four and then freeze individual portions

Going to try and read 25 books this year. One book a fortnight seems to be about right when I'm in a half-decent habit. Want to try tracking and writing a little bit about them on micro.blog too, instead of GoodReads

Tree, decorations and lights all put away. House is back to normal. Don’t get me wrong, I like having the space back and of course you’d be fed up if things didn’t change back but it always feels like New Year just dumps you like ‘that’s it, show’s over’ into the long, cold dark beginning of the year