Me, recognising the actor who played Rico in Hannah Montana: "oh it's the guy from Monos"

In spite of the fact that I absolutely love to go fast in cars, and I have a car that makes the most lovely noises when you rev it hard, I don't speed on the road. I got 3 points on my license about 2 months after passing my test and, since then, I've stuck to the rules of the road pretty closely.

There's a 30mph road by us that is so long and boring to drive all the way down at 30mph, but I do it every time because I don't want to risk points again. You would not believe the number of times I get overtaken, or flashed at, or honked at driving down that road. I would say 30% of the time this happens, and I hate it, and I don't know what to do about it. I'm not going to risk my license because someone is following me bored, but it bugs me so much every time something like this happens and I can't get it out of my head for days. I can't just quit using this stretch of road - it accounts for a third of the roads leading out of this village!

Netflix's version of 3 Body Problem solves probably my biggest gripe with the books, and that is its characters. They've done a brilliant interpretation of everyone from the book; even when names and roles have been adapted. Significant characters are still there from a plot perspective, but they're a lot deeper and more realistic. The Panama Canal scene is so satisfying and gross. You should watch it just for that bit because it's awesome. Surprised at how much I'm enjoying it.

Today I learned that Excel thinks it can handle XML, and I'm here to tell you, if someone offers to clean up some XML data for you, make sure they're not going to use Excel to do it because it mangles it like crazy and will make some datasets basically unusable.

I'm getting so sick of reading about how the EU is messing with Apple and iOS. I'm no Apple fanboy (shut up I'm not), but I am incredibly skeptical of forcing Apple to allow third party app stores, untethered installs etc.

This is the same EU that has made the web borderline unbearable with cookie popups that protect end users from absolutely nothing. Just because a person or institution's heart is in the right place (or solar system), doesn't mean we should let them dictate what far smarter people do with their platform. I don't want iOS to become Android. That's one of the main reasons I use iOS. I don't want to have to run antivirus on my phone, and I hope all this stuff doesn't end up impacting people who don't absolutely need to be able to play Fortnite at any given moment.

Look at the companies getting behind the DMA to push Apple: Epic and Spotify. Two of the scummiest, most-bottom-feeder-iest companies of the twenty-first century. Telling Apple that they're overreaching when it comes to profit share?! How much does Spotify pay musicians, again? All these companies are the absolute worst.

Granted, Apple is behaving like a petulant child in banning Epic (which is either a 4D chess move I don't get, or throwing-toys-out-of-the-pram of the highest order) and blocking homescreen web-apps in the EU, but I feel like I'd probably be grumpy if a council of luddites were telling me how I needed to run my platform. Especially when the way I run my platform is systematically designed to circumvent certain issues. Sure it's nice for Apple that they also built a walled garden, but I don't think they would have done that if it didn't result in the best product and the most profitable one.

I'm not even anti-EU but they need to keep their noses out of tech, or take better advice because they clearly don't know what they're doing.

I feel like I'm done with gaming and it's weird. It's like I'm trying to decide to end a relationship I've been in since I was eight years old, and I'm scared of the hole it's going to leave in my life when I admit to myself that it's over.

I think I already know that it's over, but I'm struggling against my own denial.

80% of my YouTube video recommendations are gaming-related. I've modded Game Boys, and I've hacked a PS Vita inside out, I've swapped joysticks on my Switch. I enjoy the process of tinkering with gaming devices, more than I enjoy playing games at this point.

I really never thought I'd grow out of gaming, but I think that's because I've always seen that as a patronising concept in general. It's not "growing"; I'm not an adult now, and if you're still gaming you're a child. I don't like that attitude in general; it's elitist at best, and elitism is for the insecure.

I think what's happened is I've just changed, but it's arbitrary. When I play games, I'm acutely aware that I'm purely consuming something. There's no creativity. I'm not expanding my mind by playing a game. I'm not getting inspired to make my own game. If I throw myself at something for three hours in Elden Ring, and finally get past it, I haven't done anything other than progress in a video game. That skill isn't transferrable. It hasn't improved my reflexes or ability to read situations under pressure; at least, not in a way that's useful outside playing games. I should just spend three hours reading (if I have to explain why this isn't purely passive consumption then you've probably already wasted the time you've spent getting to this sentence!), or playing guitar (either being creative or learning to be creative), or playing badminton, or committing my confused and meandering internal struggles to parchment.

And I think I'm going to do that from now. I've struggled for the past few weeks with "what shall I do? / I know I'll play a game / what shall I play? / play for 6 minutes / OK I'm over this now / what shall I do? / scroll my Steam library for 10 minutes / go and do something else" and I just need to accept that, at the very least, I need a significant break from gaming to determine whether there's still space for it in my life.

I've had some really nice contact through this site recently. I've put mailto links on a bunch of stuff, just because I never want to have comments again, but that doesn't mean I don't want to talk to people about what I've written here. I don't think I've ever posted anything that I'm closed off to talking about.

I'm glad blogging's coming back, and I hope it continues to grow. I still open Twitter (I will never call it X) occasionally, and I never last more than five minutes. It's so vile how people are on that site now. I see some lovely people still posting on there, but I genuinely don't know how they can bear it. It's weird to think I used to spend a significant portion of my day on that site.

I've seen a lot of criticism about people creating their own echo chambers, but I think people forget that you don't willingly hang out with people you dislike, or disagree with to the point that conversation is impossible, so why would you tolerate that on your social media? I like my echo chamber.