callmeolive

I'll never be satisfied with my blog

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 19:00:00 +0100

The annoying thing about having a blog is that when I see anyone else’s blog, one thought comes to mind: I wish my blog was like this.

It could be anything. I see it, I appreciate it, and I want to crib it. Often it’s contradictory: in a single day I could see blogs with a modern sans-serif font, a serif font, or something akin to Comic Sans, and I’d want to steal all of them. Hell, this blog is practically we have Bear Blog at home!

It’s not just limited to design choices. My RSS feed reader has recently been flooded in posts from Sal’s Place (not a complaint, I’m loving it!). My takeaway from this? I should relax and be more casual with what I post. God, I even want to steal posting behaviours.

Look, my blog’s alright. It’s amateur, but it gets the job done. Text is readable, the site is fairly responsive, you can navigate it, and there’s an RSS feed. Yet despite all of this, I often feel like I could do more to make my blog better. Kind of.

When I decide to change something on this blog, it generally has to meet the following criteria: Is it valuable, can I easily do it, and does it require maintenance?

There’s a few more caveats to this, but the main one is can I be arsed?

Bye-bye banners

In this case, no, I can’t be arsed.
When I started this blog, I stumbled upon Invisibleup’s blog. I immediately fell in love with their banner images and knew I had to have my own.

Of all the banners I’ve made, I think these are the best.

When I started out, I loved making them. But with each passing year they felt more like a chore. On the days where I didn’t feel creative, making one was a massive roadblock that got the way posting, especially if I was in a rush. By the end a good chunk of them were phoned in, and I wasn’t proud of them.

After deliberation, I’ve decided to get rid of them to make life easier. It’s not a choice I’m particularly happy about – they certainly added to my blog’s identity – but I couldn’t guarantee a decent level of quality. At least I’ve removed a massive barrier to posting.

Maybe at some point I’ll figure out how to re-enable banners for the posts that had them. I know if I see another blog with banner images, I’ll be pining to bring them back!

Notes?

When thinking about removing banners, I considered having a separate section for simpler posts and notes – then I’d only have to make images for proper blogposts.

It’s a nice thought, having a space to throw trivial stuff at, and I’ve seen it before on another blog (I can’t remember the name, sorry!). But that still presents its own issues: would it get in the way of my normal blog posts? Would it clog up the RSS feed? Would it be ridiculous to have a second RSS feed?

It’s one of those funny life things. I follow people’s feeds because I like what they put out, even the trivial stuff. But if _I_ put out anything trivial..?

Thoughts on the future

The feeling of never being satisfied with my blog is just a fact of life. The hedonic treadmill and social comparison comes for us all. If I never felt it, my blog would still be manually written in HTML and look like an artefact from 2002.

Despite the want to change my blog, I know it’s fine as-is. The core blog-y bits work and all that’s left are visual tweaks, optional features, and maybe some behind-the-scenes things to make posting even simpler. I can abide.

Halfway through writing this post, Case Duckworth said it best: Your sites are fine!
Hey look, his blog post has an afternote! I should start doing afternotes–

Being enraptured by media as a child

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Mon, 25 May 2026 19:30:00 +0100

If there’s one thing I miss about being a kid, it’s the sheer fervour I had for the media I consumed. Being an adult’s alright, but it kinda sucks knowing that I can’t experience media with the curiosity, wonder, and ability to form wild attachments that I used to have.

You get what I mean? Emotional immersion, perhaps? And while I certainly miss the utter joy of characters overcoming their struggles, what oddly miss is the fear.

Okay I still feel fear and I struggle with anything horror, but childhood fear is different: it’s transformative, fuelled by imagination, and it lingers, that overly empathetic feeling of wot if that happened to me that you look back and laugh at for how ridiculous it is.

As you grow up, you gain an amazing appreciation for artistry, writing, direction, etc, but you lose the magic. Is it really a fair trade?

I don’t have much else to say on the matter itself, but I’d like to share some things that have stuck in my mind since I was young. Spoiler-free, of course.

Jungle Run

Part of ITV’s children’s programming, Jungle Run was an amazing action-packed game show. Each episode would see 3 kids in the tropical wild (in reality: meticulously made sets) facing daring challenges. It was actually a conversation about Jungle Run what started this blog post, a bunch of us were talking about it and watching clips¹ (it still holds up as an adult), and we all had the same thought as kids:

The show had a few maze challenges where a contestant could be TRAPPED FOREVER (and in the final task, all of them could be trapped). Obviously the show didn’t kill the contestants, but you try telling that to a kid,

I’d also be amiss not to mention Raven, which was the BBC’s foil to Jungle Run. It had familiar challenges, but with a medieval fantasy theme, and the kids were slowly eliminated over the course of a series. One challenge in particular, The Way of the Warrior had us at the edge of our seats every time. God, being a kid was fun.

Doctor Who

If there’s anything that thrives on fuelling wonder & fear of children, it’s Doctor Who. The 2005 revival came out when I was still in primary school, and back then every episode was this big daring adventure. On one hand you had all the wonders of time and space. On the other hand, there’d be a deadly monster or situation that’d leave its mark on you.

When you see a single Dalek wipe out an entire complex, you can’t help but wonder what you’d do in that situation. When Cybermen invade your home, how could you escape? Wot if the Prime Minister was an alien sociopath? So many scenarios filled my head as a young’un.

Final Fantasy X

The only Final Fantasy I’ve ever played, and it’s a classic. The game follows Tidus, a young pro water-footballer whose dreamlike futuristic home is devastated by an ancient evil. Waking up after the attack, he finds himself in a completely different world, hopping between island nations as he attempts to find his way back home.

I would’ve been around 8 years old. It was my first JRPG, and it radically different from anything else I had played. It was plot-heavy, and had me hooked. While I ultimately didn’t get far, my brain was constantly racked with the thought of what if I was in Tidus’ shoes? Doubly so when you hit the game’s first major plot twist.

20-odd years later, I’ve been replaying it at a piecemeal pace. It’s a beautiful, superb game with a rich story which I can appreciate a lot more. As an adult I’m surprised at how heartfelt & emotional it is, and while I’ve lost something since growing up, I think I prefer playing/viewing it through an adult lens.

The Matrix

When I was 9, I caught my first glimpse of The Matrix on some random Freeview channel – the start of a lifetime obsession. If you ever watched it as a kid, I’m sure you also touched the back of your neck during a certain moment expecting to feel something, and later went on to develop bouts of solipsism due to the film.

Ace Attorney

I played the Ace Attorney trilogy on the DS when I was 13. It was the first Visual Novel I ever played, and like FFX, it was different to everything else. You’d expect a game about lawyers would be a bore, but the games are far from it. It’s probably the closest we have to a Columbo game.

Now the games’ main strength? Character writing. The core cast of characters are delightful, and I got attached to them all as a teen. I’d be elated with each triumph, and there’s one character in particular who pops up in key parts of the game – and it always felt amazing to see her each time.

Truth be told, I never finished the trilogy. I got all the way up to the third game’s final case, then stopped. I tried replaying it as an adult, and to be mopey, it didn’t really click. Adult me just can’t get as excited about the game, and my lessened patience & free time doesn’t help.

The World Ends with You

I was 14, and this was probably the last thing I had that childlike wonder for. Another DS game, a weird action RPG where you fight using both screens at once. It’s a tad mind-bending. The game follows Neku, a moody loner teenager who finds himself dead, stuck in a weird limbo where he and others must fight for another shot at life. Forced to partner up with a teenage girl, can they overcome a series of challenges to return to the living?

It’s a beautiful game in every way, but again, I was so emotionally hooked to the synopsis and the characters when I was young. You fall in love with the cast, you feel for Neku as he’s forced to open himself up to others, and the tension ratchets up when you discover what’s really at stake. Each twist had me gobsmacked and grrr I wish I could experience this for the first time as a teen again.

It was also another game I got right to the end of yet never finished. I returned to it a few years ago as an adult, beat it, and… I think it was the first time I fully acknowledged what I had lost. How much I was once fuelled by imagination, being able to lose myself in the thought of what if I was in this world?

With that being said, it’s still an amazing game and worth checking out². It still holds up, and it’s just beautiful. It was lovely to see how the game ended, and it had me on the verge of tears when all was said and done.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Not to suddenly upend this entire blog post at the end, but there’s something about the PotC trilogy (even if the third film is a tad weak) which sparks that childhood magic again.

Is it the meticulous character writing? The action setpieces? The bombastic score? Or is it just because I wanted to be a pirate as a kid? Whatever it is, those films heal my inner child, and they’re always a thrill to re-watch.

There’s an episode where a bunch of Olympic athletes take on Jungle Run and completely ace it. It’s hilarious! ↩︎
I’ve only ever played the DS version, but I’d recommend that. The way you control one character with the buttons and the other with the touchscreen is weird, but it reinforces how different they are, especially with… Well. I won’t spoil anything. There’s also a brief anime adaptation that’s alright, but you lose out on the immersion of it all. ↩︎

Doom (2016) – 10 years later

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Wed, 13 May 2026 21:50:00 +0100

Yep, Doom 2016 is a decade old now. Time flies. Click here if you want to skip to my thoughts. Also I spoil the game a lot.

Doom, retro shooters, and me

I mean, it’s Doom, id Software’s seminal title from 1993 that influenced everything else. What’s more to be said?

I was born a few years after the original Doom released. I never had the chance to play it as a young’un, nor would I know anyone who did. But with the internet being a thing, and growing up on [now-dead] gaming forums, I’d become accustomed with the classic shooter.

I first played Doom sometime in 2010, and I loved it. Compared to all the other first-person shooters I played, this was different. There’s no narrative faff, no tutorials. Just you, guns, and a bunch of enemies in the each room. The levels were confusingly labyrinthine, but it was still fun to trawl about like a rat in a maze. And then in the second game you get a bigger, badder shotgun to melt demons with. What’s not to love?

… Also it was that small & lightweight that I could put it on a USB stick and play it on the busted school computers. Somehow I passed GCSE ICT!

Ultimately it was Doom that introduced me to the world of retro FPS games and how carefree they felt; their arsenal of distinct weapons, arcade-like health & armour pickups, scattered secrets, and of course each one’s roster of freaks and enemies to blast through. Thanks Doom.

Setting the stage for 2016

Of all the games to set the stage with, it’s 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Its cinematic take on the contemporary war on terror – with all its moral murkiness – took the world by storm. And of course, everyone wanted to copy its success.

As the 2010s rolled around, you couldn’t escape the Modern Military Shooter. The market was inundated with the same US Special Forces vs vague Middle-Eastern terrorists, the same deserts, and the same gameplay mechanics: regenerating health, two-weapon limits, aiming down sights, and limited sprinting. Scripted sequences were rife, and you’d be lucky if they had any colour outside of brown & grey.

Amidst the malaise of late stage Modern Warfare clones, something was brewing in opposition: the Retro FPS Revival, which arrived in two fronts.

The first was ports; re-releases of old games, often with quality-of-life features like widescreen support. The rise of digital distribution platforms allowed publishers to reissue their back catalogue to a wider audience without the faff of physical retail costs, and it did wonders for re-establishing classic titles.

“Ahhhhhhhh yourself”

If not for digital re-releases, I never would’ve played Serious Sam!

The second front was, well, new games. What better way to get eyes on an old franchise than to make a new game for it?

It took some time for these to find their footing, a lot of old FPS design – namely the labyrinthine levels – just wouldn’t work today. There was a balancing act between retro practices, modern shooter standards, and trying something new altogether. Too retro and only old-time nerds world play it, too modern and it’d lose its appeal, too new and it runs the risk of losing its identity.

“Ahhhhhhhh, put a sock in it”

And here’s Serious Sam 3. Look how muted the colours are!

2011’s Serious Sam 3 and Duke Nukem Forever took multiple cues from modern shooters in their hopes to be the best of both words. Neither of them were better for it. 2013’s Rise of the Triad was appreciated for being like its classic incarnation, but didn’t get far.

Ultimately it was 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order which made it big. Releasing to critical acclaim, and somehow merging a heartfelt narrative with chaotic Nazi-slaughtering, it struck the perfect balance – and was the final proof that retro FPS series could make it big.

For the record, the last Doom game – Doom 3 – released all the way back in 2004. While it kept the iconography of the series and was a technical marvel, its focus on horror made it the black sheep of the series. Fans were yearning for a return for form, and the retro FPS revival had hopes riding high.

If there’s one final thing to note here, it’s that Doom managed to stay relevant due to its community, who worked wonders with keeping the game alive. From custom source ports which allowed users to play the games on modern systems, to its wide array of modders creating custom content, life was constantly pumped into classic Doom while so many other games faded into obscurity.

The Doom we never got

In mid 2008, id Software made a surprised, yet subdued announcement: Doom 4 was in development. This was followed by complete radio silence. The most we got in this period were leaked environment screenshots and character models in 2012.

In 2013, Jason Schreier broke the news: behind the scenes at id Software, Doom 4 was a wreck. Internal mismanagement and miscommunication was rife, and the project had ground to a halt amidst creative indecision, before being rebooted.

The version of Doom 4 that was cancelled was… Not what fans would’ve wanted. From the little we know of it – most of it from a stellar /noclip documentary – it would’ve panned out like the many Modern Warfare clones, with a heavier focus on cinematic scripted sequences than actual raw gameplay. It got to the point where the devs teasingly referred to it as Call of Doom.

Screenshot from the mentioned /noclip documentary. © Zenimax

Looking at the footage we have available, a leaked trailer, a few gameplay cuts, and some animation tests, this iteration of Doom looks… Bland. While the idea of a fully realised, down to earth take on a demon invasion – Hell on Earth, if you will – could’ve been captivating, the gameplay wouldn’t have been Doom.

The project was scrapped in 2011, and after some internal rejigging, id Software put all their efforts working on the Doom we know today.

The big reveal

Actually, it starts with a small reveal. In 2014 we got the first teaser, a vague synopsis with a haunting narration, alongside beauty shots of the new Cyberdemon. It wasn’t much, but it was proof they were cooking.

That July, they previewed the game to a private audience at Quakecon, all while keeping the rest of us in the dark¹. id announced that they’d showcase the game publicly at next year’s E3, so while we waited we chewed on reports of what was shown,

After a painfully long year… We got another tiny reveal: three seconds showing off both the Super Shotgun, and the new Revenant. It was a nice jolt, and it got us excited for E3.

Then it happened. The big reveal. E3 2015. We saw the the guns, the explosions, and demon-tearing glory. We saw finishing moves reduce demons to a puddle of viscera. Localised enemy gibs. The black humour – removing a corpses’ arm and using the hand to bypass a security lock. An ancient decrepit hell seeped in sulphurous atmosphere. THE BFG. It was glorious,and the game looked beautiful. All of us watching at home were cheering on alongside the crowd.

And that was just the singleplayer. We also got to see the new arena multiplayer, as well as SnapMap – a new level making tool. Doom was back, reborn for the modern age. It was what we were waiting for.

Marketing hell, doomed to fail

You’d think that with what I said about the E3 reveal that we were hyped for the new Doom. Sure there was excitement and buzz, but it died down nigh-instantly. For all the talk of the game being “really, really fast”, the demo was anything but that. It was awkward, stilted, slow – played by someone struggling to aim with a controller.

And then there’s the enemies. They looked amazing, and reducing them to a bloody mist seemed fun… But there were obvious moments where the AI was dumbed down: either they stopped attacking, froze in place, or aimed everywhere but the player.

These seem like minor slights, every E3 presentation is faked & scripted to a degree, but it painted a concerning picture. It felt like they didn’t have confidence in their own game, and instead of using the rest of the year before release to clear things up, we entered the slough of despair. We wouldn’t see any more footage of the singleplayer for 8 months.

It’s February 2016. We’re three months away from launch. Instead of another reveal that would boost hype, we got Conan O’Brien (and some American Footballers) awkwardly stumbling through the game. It was painful.

Oh yeah, at this point they gave the game the most generic looking box art. To try and cover it up they presented two alternate covers used on the inside sleeve, and put them to a vote on Twitter. Everyone rallied around the sick homage version, but the damage was still done, Doom’s main box art was still naff.

With the fans being concerned about the state of the game, do you know what we had next? A streamed multiplayer tournament with gamers teaming up with athletes. Really. At least the amazing ‘Fight Like Hell’ trailer released a few days later.

April saw two beta multiplayer tests, with one of them only for those who pre-ordered Wolfenstein: The New Order². The second was open to everyone – but it didn’t answer the one question we all had: would the singleplayer be good?

It’s the end of April. Spirits are low. The game was two weeks away and we resigned to the fact that Doom was going to be bad. Why else would they put so much focus on the multiplayer mode instead of revealing more of the singleplayer?

And then it happened.

MUST WATCH DOOM 4 LEAKED TRAILER

Zenimax had fumbled the game’s marketing so hard that a half-finished leaked trailer produced more excitement for the game than anything else. Even if it was incomplete, this trailer had one thing behind it that was evident: raw passion³.

A week later we’d get the actual launch trailer, which had some differences. Namely where did the big robot dude with the laser sword go? But still, there was only a week to go, and the hype train was back on track.

When I look back on the long wait for Doom, I only have one thought: it felt like Zenimax were sabotaging the game with their poor advertising. When the only footage of the main game we saw was poorly played, and the rest of the reveals went to an awkwardly-received multiplayer mode, what else were we to think? The fact a leaked trailer produced more excitement than anything else was mental.

Welcome to Hell

After a long wait, Doom finally released. It was different, it was fun, and while it was a far cry from the original 1993 game, it still felt like Doom. And 10 years down the line, it still feels like a worthy successor. And sitting here writing this, I have no idea where to start.

The original Doom is ridiculous. Born out of Aliens, thrash metal album covers, and released in the midst of the Satanic Panic; it’s premise is as much of a hotchpotch as its inspiration: you’re a space marine stranded on mars forced to fight demons after megacorp UAC opens a portal to Hell. In the first 5 minutes of the new Doom, you find out nothing’s changed:

A perfect prologue

I won’t detail everything about the game, but you have to know how the first 5 minutes of the game nails it, and sets the expectations for the game ahead.

The game starts with a black screen, a glowing sigil forming in the darkness. An eery echoing voice lays it out plain:

They are rage, brutal without mercy. But you. You will be worse. Rip and Tear⁴, until it is done.

8 seconds later, you’ve broken out of a stone sarcophagus and are now shooting zombies. The room you’re in is futuristic & angled, with a blood-soaked floor and gothic candles. The contrast makes it clear: this is Doom.

We also get our first glimpse of a narrative (overt narrative in a Doom game? Shock! Horror!). A hologram recording fills the room, UAC researcher & demonic cultist Olivia Pierce – our antagonist – stands by your sarcophagus, remarking how you must be contained.

Next room. Suit up and check the monitor next to you: DEMONIC INVASION IN PROGRESS. It’s absurd, and made better by the fact the game is treating it 100% seriously. You know you’re in for a treat.

A gravelly, modulated voice cuts through the monitor. Head honcho Dr. Samuel Hayden minimises the demon threat. You minimise the conversation by throwing the monitor across the room.

Boring conversation anyway.

Down the corridor. Here you get introduced to the glory kill mechanic – this game’s signature. If you damage an enemy enough to stun them, you can perform a grisly finishing move to recover health. Your first proper combat challenge is in the next room, grab the shotgun from a nearby corpse, and go shoot up some Imps.

You notice that the game is a tad more sequential than classic Doom. You’ll roam through areas with some loose enemies, then be funnelled into a closed arena where they spawn in. There’s also a surprising amount of verticality in this game, and enemies are no slouch. Imps are now fast little buggers, climbing and clambering all over the walls. When they’re not lobbing fireballs at range, they’re digging their claws right into you.

After your first taste of combat, you head to the elevator. Another Olivia hologram utters how you must never break free. The first 5 minutes of this game and it all comes of naturally.

On your way to the Martian surface, Hayden chimes in through the intercom. He makes claims that interfering in Hell was “for the betterment of mankind”. The corpse at your feet begs to differ. The E1M1 riff ratchets up. As he tries to justify it all. Fist meets intercom. Cue title.

It’s an exquisite introduction to a game. In 5 minutes alone you know everything about how it plays, each characters’ goals, and the general vibes. It’s tightly packed, and lets you get to the action of the game immediately with little fuss. You get a feel for how story is delivered, how exploration is handled, and how frantic combat gets.

If there’s something I need to iterate, it’s Doomguy’s characterisation. Despite being a mute FPS protagonist, you get a clear sense of who he is from his actions alone. Throwing the monitor, destroying the intercom. He holds Hayden in contempt for interfering with Hell, and his justifications only frustrate him. It’s beautifully done, and his lack of care for UAC property becomes a running theme.

Wot I think

Doom 2016 is hectic, challenging, and overall fun. It fantastically merges what we loved about the classics with 20+ years worth of tech enhancement and gaming standards built up since then. It’s fresh, confidently stands on its own legs, and feels like a worthy successor to Doom.

When Doom launched a decade ago, I was ecstatic. After a year of both hype and expecting failure, the game blew me away. I thoroughly devoured it in two sittings, labelled it game of the year 2016, and kept it in my head as an all-time favourite. But a decade down the line my impression of the game has faltered.

Doom is still great, I’d give it a solid 8/10 any day of the week. It’s frantic, beautiful, and fun. Removed from the excitement of oh my god a new Doom game and it’s awesome, the games flaws become more apparent to me.

Armoury

It’s Doom. Combat is intense, and every element about the game is built up to make it fun. You’ve got your full arsenal of Doom weapons, and much like the classic game each weapon performs a distinct role in combat.

I’ll note that the Chainsaw takes on a different role. Functionally it’s acts the same as a glory kill, locking you in place and showing a vicious demon-killing animation. Whilst glory kills restore health, the chainsaw restores ammo, which is useful in a pinch. It does have limited ammo itself, mind.

This game features crazy piñatas!

The BFG is back, and it’s glorious. Even has it’s own panic button assigned to it. Mechanically it’s the same as Quake 2’s BFG, and that’s not a complaint at all. If you’re in a tight spot, just press T and reduce everything in the room to a red mist.

“Lo. I have found the Holy Grail of firepower!”

There are also two new additions to the roster too, both of which fill a missing niche:

The Heavy Assault Rifle deals consistent chip damage regardless of range, whittling down enemies health. With the Chaingun now requiring an extensive spinup before firing, the rifle works as a lighter alternative in a pinch.
The Gauss Cannon is this game’s answer to Quake 2’s Railgun. It’s big, meaty, and fires a devastating precise beam. It also knocks you back with each shot – that’s how powerful it is.

On top of that, all weapons (barring the BFG) feature unlockable upgrades. These upgrades add alternate firing modes and extra functionality; things like grenade launchers, stun blasts, and tracking missiles. They add so much more to these weapons, and open up what you can do.

It’s not just weapons you can upgrade, you also get two extra ways to upgrade your armour: occasionally you get the chance to boost your max Health/Armour/Ammo, and frequently you get points to extend your armour’s functionality.

And also as a final upgrade, you have Runes, equipable modifiers for combat – like improving jump movement, quicker glory kills, etc. You’ve got to explore and discover where these runes are, and as the game progresses you can equip up to three of them.

Oh, and I can’t forget the equipment. It’s not much, but over the course of the game you get additional items with unlimited use, but a recharge between each use. A frag grenade, hologram decoy for distracting enemies, and a siphon grenade which steals health. It’s not much, but these additions perfectly round off your weapons.

Also because I can’t put this anywhere else: the glory kill system is neat. It gives you a few seconds of respite from combat, and the health rewards incentivizes you to push forward in combat for more.

When your dog starts eating something it shouldn’t.

Do power-ups count for as part of your armoury? Not only do they return from classic Doom, but they also added a few new ones to spice things up. You can find them scattered around certain arenas, and they often come in handy.

Invulnerability – Does exactly what it says on the tin.
Beserk – Returning from classic Doom, this iteration is a lot more devastating. Performs swift, punchy glory kills.
Haste – Move fast, jump fast, shoot fast.
Quad Damage – hailing from the Quake games, you deal 4x more damage. Melt enemies in a single shot, just watch for splash damage!

But despite everything, I struggle with how weapons feel. They often seem underwhelming. The only one that has any punch to its firing sound is the Gauss Cannon. On top of that, it’s hard to quantify how much damage you’re actually doing; sure the Rocket Launcher obliterates lesser demons, but anything larger than an Imp feels like a bullet sponge. Your weapons feel weak.

It’s a problem that the classic Dooms have to a degree, but with their simpler combat, you get used to things quicker. You quickly figure out that six shotgun blasts take down a Cacodemon, you know?

And then there’s the upgrades. Yeah they’re all cool, but the sheer amount of them – and how you get them – often distracts from the game itself.

Combat Support Drones – Weapon unlocks
Completing mission challenges & killing enemies – Weapon points to upgrade weapon unlocks
Dead UAC Elite Guards – Praetor Suit upgrade points
Argent Cells – Increase your Health/Armour/Ammo caps
Rune trials – Unlock gameplay modifiers
Rune challenges – Accomplish specific actions with a rune equipped to increase their effects

While you can get a decent amount of upgrades & points by just playing the game, these unlocks require you to actively explore the map for secrets (I wouldn’t find it that bad, but these upgrades are permanent). And completing random challenges for weapon points isn’t something I’m a fan of. Both of these take me out of the game, and stop me from being able to play comfortably.

I get it though, they add so much depth to the game. If you had it all from the start you wouldn’t feel an progression, and if it was omitted completely the game would get stale for most folk. And to be fair, mixing and matching all the upgrades makes the game feel as fresh on a replay.

Thankfully, the game offers an arcade mode. You start the game with all upgrades, and the goal is to kill everything quickly and as cool as possible. It would be a nice antidote, but its focus on accruing points with each kill is something else that takes me out of the game.

Glory kills present another issue. Because they reward you with more health for performing them, you’re incentivized to do them all the time. Combined with the runes that 1) make glory kills easier, 2) increase the glory kill range, and 3) give you a speed boost, you find yourself running about constantly spamming F rather than strategising about what to do in combat.

Runes also provide ways of becoming ridiculously, borderline unfairly overpowered with certain upgrades. For instance, the triple-barrelled Turret Mode for the Chaingun can be upgraded so it doesn’t need cooling down – combined with a Rune that gives infinite ammo when you have 100 armour, you melt everything in your path.

Monsters & fighting

Combat is wild. I surprisingly have little to say about it, but I’ll mention this. Levels & arenas have a remarkable amount of verticality. Ledges, platforms, tunnels. Later levels add jump pads and teleports into the mix too. Combat’s a frenzy of challenging the high ground and then chasing demons below.

And again with verticality, you’ve got the movement to match. You’ve got a decent amount of speed, double-jumping (unlocked in the first third of the game), and the ability to climb ledges.

Speaking of demons, I love Doom’s enemy roster. You’ve got most the ones from classic Doom (thankfully barring the Chaingun Zombie & Archvile!), and they’ve been adapted well. Imps are mobile fireball lobbing gits, Barons of Hell are absolute wrecking balls, and the Pinky acts like a raging bull. Lost Souls make a remarkable return, and are surprisingly deadly on harder difficulties.

The new enemies are alright. Freaky looking Hell Razers chip at your health with long-range beams, a decent threat if you don’t take them out first. Summoners apparently spawn in enemies, but I never noticed it – I was more focused on taking out their teleporting asses before their ranged blasts tore me to shreds.

It’s also worth mentioning that none of the demons have instant hitscan attacks. Theoretically you could beat the game without taking any damage if you were good enough!

Shout-out to the Hell Knight in particular. While it all it does is chase you down and engage in melee, I love how it uses its Doom 3 design – its Alien inspired look makes it positively distinct from other demons.

Now if you ask any Doom fan what the best monster is – hell, the best moment of the classic games – you’ll get one response: The Cyberdemon. This behemoth’s a walking tank with a rocket launcher for an arm, and it makes quite the impression.

PROTIP: To defeat the Cyberdemon, shoot at it until it dies.

Mechanically it’s not much different than another enemy. But it’s hulking size, devastating rockets, guttural roar, and acting as the second chapter’s final encounter, elevated it above anything else. It’s the highlight of classic Doom, and I can thankfully say the same about the new one:

PROTIP: To defeat the new Cyberdemon, shoot at it until it dies.

2016’s Cyberdemon is a treat. A full-on boss fight, health bar and everything. It rapidly switches between different attacks, missile barrages, laser beams, charges. Some of its attacks require you to jump or duck to avoid projectiles, and it’s just FUN. It was the first time in eons an FPS felt game-y, and fell in love with it. The boss fight, of course. Though a big hulking monster is neat as well.

If you’ve ever played the Ratchet and Clank games, you’ll find that the Cyberdemon would make for a great boss there too.

The Cyberdemon is the first of game’s three bosses, and all of them are exquisite. Each one tests the player’s skills, reactions, and gamesense. They all have you juggling between throwing damage and avoiding attacks, and they’re all remarkably fun.

My issue is monsters is that they… Mechanically blend together in my mind. In classic Doom they all had specific roles which sometimes overlapped, but here, where they’re mostly equally agile, I feel like you lose something. I can’t really put it into words. It’s like they have a little less focus.

There’s also the issue of enemies seemingly disappearing in the environment. There’s not much in the way of making enemies stand out, and they have a habit of blending in with their environment and completely disappearing down flank routes. There shouldn’t be moments in combat where you’re running in circles looking for a single demon.

In regards to the Cyberdemon, I have a minor complaint. At that part of the game you’re on Mars and trying to get back to Hell. Samuel Hayden informs you that there’s an archaeological specimen which contains the way back to hell, chuckling to himself for some unknown reason.

This thing with a way back into Hell? It’s the Cyberdemon. It would’ve made for a better reveal had Hayden not randomly mentioned oh yeah it’s the Cyberdemon mate two minutes before the fight. That, and the trailers spoiling the massive doors it breaks through.

Story & writing

In regards to the original Doom, there’s an iconic quote from id co-founder & tech wizard John Carmack:

Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not important.⁵

The classic Doom did have a story, loosely told in the instruction manual, and text blurbs at the end of each chapter. You could infer bits and bobs from the environment of levels, but let’s be real: it’s only really set dressing.

Doom 2016 takes a familiar approach. Yeah the story is there and it provides context for wherever you go, but it’s not the be-all and end-all, shooting takes priority. It’s mostly delivered in voice calls while exploring & fighting, with the occasional cutscene break.

The game also has a whole of hidden lore & story, locked away in secret notes & encyclopaedias. They’re not important, but they make for great flavour text. I’ve only ever skimmed over a few bits. If I don’t care about the story to actually talk about what happens, what can I say about notes I can’t care to read?

My only big issue with the story and how it’s delivered comes down to the moments where the game stops. I remember many excruciating moments where one of two physical characters monologues for eons. In reality, there are three moments, and they only last for 2 minutes tops.

I think it’s a shame how Doomguy’s reaction to Hayden’s justifications were to shut him up in the beginning. I wish there was an option to just turn around and storm out of the room – and be delivered a brief voice message about what to do instead of sit about and do nothing.

Oh. Only realising I’ve neglected to mention he’s named The Doom Slayer. It’s cool. It’s all part of getting you hyped up to be in his shoes. The whole bit in the beginning with Oliva’s hologram being worried about you? Creative Director Hugo Martin took key inspiration from this Robocop moment, wanting you to be hyped up about how strong you are.

Also while I’m here I also haven’t mentioned VEGA. He’s⁶ just a helpful little AI fella who provides flavour text on the world. He’s someone in the world you can attach yourself to who’s a lot less concerned for company property than Hayden. Everyone likes him.

Something to note: this game is steeped in black humour, mostly from the UAC being surprisingly up-front about the whole Hell business. You’ll be going about your business and an information hologram will gladly chime in that they’re opening the gates of Hell with the key to the future.

Don’t really have much to say. I like Doom 2016 because you don’t have to worry about the story.

Old staples

Doom 2016 says sod it to regenerating health, reloading, and all that faff. Again it’s not 1:1 with classic Doom, but it takes all the good stuff. Health packs, armour kits, explosive barrels. It’s nice to see Doom celebrate its heritage.

After 20 years, Dead Simple receives a stunning glow-up!

Artistry

This game looks beautiful. Yeah there’s a bit of texture pop-in and some props have tiny texturemaps, but I wouldn’t knock off any points. There are so many moments where you’re presented with a landscape that looks phenomenal – and even when you’re not, the game’s lighting and materials are amazing. Guns look nice and shiny, particle effects are perfect, and monsters just look perfect.

As far as catastrophes on Mars go, this looks stunning!

I have no idea how the id engineers did it, but id Tech 6 not only looks amazing, but it runs like butter throughout. I still can’t believe how optimised this game is. 10 years ago I had a failing mid-range GPU and even that could run the game on high settings. Mental.

The music

And of course, there’s the music. If this blog post was limited to two words, they’d be the music. If you ask anyone what makes Doom 2016 click, it’s the music. It’s that important that I have to say it again: the music.

Hot off the heels of his oppressive industrial sound for Wolfenstein: The New Order, Mick Gordon absolutely blessed this game with a killer soundtrack. Bass tones throb, guitars shred, and even a chainsaw breaks through the mix. Mick’s work is meticulous, and it breaks my heart that I can’t quantify how much I gush over it in text.

The notable track is obviously BFG Division. A simple riff, a killer hook, backed up with some analogue synths – all set to overdrive. You could throw someone through a guillotine and they’d still have the urge to start headbanging.

Damnation hits you like brick in waves, one minute it’s panicked, next a thudding noise overload, and then out of the blue develops into a hellish choir (see also: Dakhma).

Flesh & Metal is sick. Guitar strikes pierce through jittery synths, striking fear before losing itself in paranoia, breaking out in noise.

Even if you don’t want to go through the faff of playing Doom 2016, do yourself a favour and listen to the soundtrack.

The other stuff

SnapMap

As much as I’ve been replaying Doom in preparation for this, I admittedly didn’t touch SnapMap – the game’s own kinda-level maker, co-developed by Escalation Studios. Actually, I don’t think I touched it after a week of the game’s release.

I think everyone had the same experience with SnapMap. You tried it out and found it frustrating. There wasn’t much you could do with the prefab map/corridor/arena layouts, the enemy limit was too strict (presumably a console limitation), and while there was an interesting and deep logic & scripting sequence… You probably couldn’t wrap your head around it.

I know I’m a bit of a git for writing it off. I’m sure fans have made some interesting & enjoyable levels over the last decade, it’s just that I honestly have no interest in them.

I’ll give them this: it was ambitious. Classic Doom thrived because of its modding & level editing scene, so I can’t fault them for wanting to throw us a bone.

Multiplayer

Did you know that to this day, computer networks still dedicate port 666 to Doom? That’s how big its multiplayer was. And with this game, it was something else they wanted to try and capture.

Co-developed by Certain Affinity 2016’s multiplayer is… Different. It’s Doom, but weirdly merged with Halo and Call of Duty (two titles the devs have experience with).

The core gameplay is built off of Doom 2016’s and at its heart it’s an arena shooter – but your arsenal is limited to two weapons and a single piece of equipment. For whatever reason, the multiplayer features not only a Call of Duty loadout system, but its entire progression is inspired by it too.

Don’t want to use the default loadouts? Level up to unlock custom loadouts. Want to use a new weapon in your custom loadout? Level up to unlock it. Want your avatar to have cool armour with different colours? Level up to unlock them – or complete challenges.

The gameplay is simple: you scour the map, pick up armour and health, and get in skirmishes with other players. There’s a fairly long time-to-kill unless you rush in like an idiot.

While you’re limited to two weapons, you get a few more which occasionally spawn in around the map – namely the Gauss Cannon and BFG. Powerups from the main game (and a few new ones!) also spawn in, as well as a powerup that turns you into a demon – stomping about and blasting enemies as the Revenant is a thrill. It’s these respawning boosts which give it that arena shooter edge, and also help to concentrate the chaos in a single area at a time.

Also it’s not just deathmatch. The multiplayer contains a diverse mix of game modes. I have fond memories of Warpath, which plays like a king of the hill mode, but the point moves around the map. It’s a blast, forcing you to learn all the flank routes on each map, and when you’re on the point you’re constantly fighting for it.

Also a cool thing about the multiplayer, it has weapons & equipment not in the base game. The most notable being the Static Rifle – it charges as you move, doing more damage the more it’s charged up. It was bloody lethal. Also the Personal Teleporter saved my arse countless times – throw it somewhere hidden, and if you’re getting beat up, zap yourself back to a safe space.

(If you ask me though, the basic Shotgun was the best weapon. It put out decent consistent damage, and it’s alt-fire grenade was great for finishing someone off!)

Ultimately most people bounced off the multiplayer. It was weird, slow, and just… It’s not Doom! You should be allowed to have more than two weapons at a time. I can’t fault them for that

Personally, I enjoyed the multiplayer mode for what it was. It was no Quake 3, but it was fun enough. I used to regularly top score, and I got to the point where I’d unlocked most of the equipment, but then they did something stupid: they introduced paid DLC packs.

One stupid decision put me off playing the multiplayer again: they introduced paid DLC. This immediately fractured the playerbase as new maps, weapons, and demon transformations were became locked behind a paywall. A year later they apparently unlocked all the DLC content for free, but by then the multiplayer was a distant memory to me.

I did manage to sneak a few games in while writing this post, but I had a few snags. Firstly, they reset everyone’s progress a few years back – so all those weapons and armour pieces I had unlocked were gone. I couldn’t fully enjoy the multiplayer as I had limited time, and I was restricted to the few things I could unlock. It really put a damper on everything.

The second problem is that which plagues every multiplayer game. Over time most people move on, leaving only the die-hards who’ve mastered the game in and out. To be fair I didn’t find this much of a problem, I could hold my own to a degree, but I definitely got a good slapping. If anything, I’m surprised that people still play this at all!

My ultimate conclusion to the multiplayer is that… It’s alright. It’s not amazing, but it’s far from the worst thing you’ll experience. It might not be Doom or Quake 3, but it’s alright for what it is. Just a shame you have to play a ton to unlock everything.

I wouldn’t remotely let it influence my thoughts on the rest of the game… And blimey, I wrote a lot for something I’m telling you not to care about.

Overall

Doom 2016 has a weird spot in my noggin. It’s tied to the hype I had for it on release, and how I felt ten years ago: invulnerable in a world that couldn’t get any worse.

Do I think it’s a great game? Yes, and again it’s a solid 8/10. Do I find it a flawed game which meddles with what ought to be the core experience? Yes. But I have this thing every time I replay Doom:

The first half of the game I find to be a bit of a slog. It’s enjoyable, but it’s missing something. I get bogged down in finding secrets, doing challenges, and getting upgrades. And then I get to the second half.

I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but like clockwork it ticks every time. I start to gel with the game. I start to feel it. What truly elevates this game is when you hit a state of flow, and from that point forward it’s plain sailing. Even though I’m lucid about my criticisms, I don’t care. It’s Doom, it’s here, and it’s fun.

Ten years down the line, would I recommend it? Of course I would. It’s careless demon blasting fun, and that’s all that matters.

Surprisingly, no footage from this event emerged until the /noclip documentary! ↩︎
Someone, somewhere out there must have pre-ordered Wolfenstein: TNO just for the Doom beta, then waited 2 years for a multiplayer playtest that lasted less than a week. ↩︎
I must note here that the 3D slow-mo sections of the trailer come from the game’s credits – itself a last-minute passion project lead by animator Brett Patton. The description in his upload tells the whole story. It was clear how passionate the team was for the game, and that passion bled through in the leaked trailer. ↩︎
I was really hoping to go a single paragraph without a tangent, but here we are. Rip and tear was an oft-ridiculed line from a hilariously bad Doom comic. It was this big dumb in-joke in the community, and its inclusion gave fans a massive laugh. It’s crazy to think that nowadays the line has completely ascended and became part of the modern Doom identity. ↩︎
From David Kushner’s Masters of Doom, pg 128. While people still quote this, it’s worth mentioning that this was back in the early 90s, way before games had extensive narratives. Also check the book out, it’s a fantastic read about the founding & rise of id Software! ↩︎
AMAA – Assigned Male At Activation. ↩︎

Handedness and holding phones

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 22:00:00 +0100

Weird fact about me: I’m cross-dominant (also known as being mixed-handed). Instead of having a dominant hand I use everything with, my hands are… Awkward. There are some tasks which my left hand excels at, and some tasks which my right hand excels at. And I can’t know until I try it.

Oh so you’re ambidextrous?

This is the question I’m asked every time I bring it up, but no.

Ambidextrous people have (mostly) equal ability with both hands, whereas cross-dominant people’s abilities are tied to differing hands; if I write with my right hand and use a hammer with my left, I’d end up with a Cy Twombly and some bent nails.

What does it mean to you?

It’s hard to tell what it means to me. The reality is that anything requiring strength & stability is done by my right hand, whereas¹ my left hand is dedicated to more… Fiddly tasks? Writing, drawing, typing on a phone.

As far as I’m aware the only difference between my hands is that my left thumb has more range, and that my right fingers are a little clunkier. But despite that, my right hand is suited for most tasks.

Cross-dominance also means that if I was stuck in a SAW trap where I had to sacrifice a hand in order to escape, I’d die before I choose which hand to keep.

Cross-dominance sucks

We live in a world where our handedness is a key trait, even if its importance dithers outside of school and sport. When asked about handedness, cross-dominance is overlooked; either from people simply not knowing, or it’s ignored due to it being a hindrance more than anything.

And it is a hindrance. For every new task or tool, I have to spend time faffing with both hands to figure out what works, and with the lack of rigor built up in either hand, often nothing feels right at all.

Here’s an example. In my final year of primary school we had a residential trip at an adventure park. One of the events was archery, and we were given 3 shots each. I asked the ~~teenager on less than minimum wage~~ archery safety officer about my wonky hands and if I could have a trial with each hand to check – he just smiled and said to pull the string with the hand I write with, so I did.

The first 2 arrows fell off-course immediately. Something was obviously wrong, so I switched hands. The next arrow soared and clipped the edge of the target. I got a passive “well the other two would’ve hit” and was promptly shuffled on. Cross-dominance ruined what would’ve been an amazing day.²

Writing with your left hand sucks

Okay this is a tad specific, but it’s worth bringing up:

I don’t blissfully glide the pen with a gentle pull. I have to push it. Depending on the pen³ it results in stilted, scribbly lines.
If I keep my hand straight I can’t see where I’m writing, so I have to pull my hand back like a claw to write. It’s not always comfortable.
Instant smudging. Fountain pens are out, whiteboards are impossible.
If you’re somewhere with tethered pens at a desk, they’re always tethered to the right.

Cross-dominance is neat

Despite everything I said above, I don’t think it’s fair to say being cross-dominant is terrible. And as little of a recourse as it is, I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t cross-dominant. It’s one of those little quirks that makes me who I am.

I’d say there’s a decent advantage: If one of my hands is buggered, I still have a set list of tasks I can easily do with the other.

Why are you Cross-dominant?

This is somehow a question I’ve been asked before. I’m not a biologist, but I guess it’s like most other quirks we have, it’s some weird attempt at an advantage – or my brain had a crossed wire during development.

Looking at how my right hand prefers strength-based tasks, it’s probably that my brain wanted me to be right-handed, but some fluke lead to my left hand being delegated certain tasks to protect my right hand; like some weird back-up in case of harm or overuse.

… Or maybe the first time I picked up a pencil was with my left hand. Who knows. 🤷

Phones

A good writer can effortlessly bridge different topics together. I’m not a good writer.

Using a phone one-handed is cool as hell. Walking down the street with one hand in your pocket, the other gliding over a phone? Sick.

Certified: how it feels to use a phone one-handed

Now look at people who use them with both hands. How obtuse they are, hunched over, hands awkwardly clasping and clawing at their phone. Abhorrent freaks. It’s wrong. And the worst part? I’m now one of them.

You know what spurred this blog post on? Pain. In the little finger on my left hand. For over a decade I used a smartphone one-handed by propping it up on my little finger. A practice I’ve had to stop since replacing my Pixel 4a with something bulkier.⁴

Yes, as we’ve ushered in a new era of larger, heavier phones, I’ve been forced to rely on a second hand to consistently use it. While my newer phone is possible to use one-handed, it’s still a pain for a key reason: comfortable thumb range.

Yes, I can still manoeuvre the position of my phone in my fingers to reach, but it’s at the cost of potentially losing my grip. And yes this whole thing is a first world problem and a half.

Phone apps

This is the point where the rest of this blog post spirals out and ends abruptly, like an intricate rug with a loose thread.

I’m not a phone UI genius. If anything, I’m sorry for those who have to deal with the million ways phones differ and try to accommodate them all. But with that said, it sucks how many app UI elements are now in uncomfortable to reach areas as phones get larger.

And it’s not just apps, core functionality is affected too. The notification bar is way out of reach, and phones are that wide that they now have options to shrink the on-screen keyboard for one-handed use. It’s pretty crazy.

I don’t really have much to add. I like the thought of using a pie menu-centric way of navigating apps so that I can continue to use my phone one-handed, but it’s probably unfeasible. I know Android has an accessibility option to shrink the screen, but that only applies vertically. And if I increased the zoom scale, I’d still have to reach at the edge of my phone.

Desperately resisting the urge to say on the other hand ↩︎
Everyone gets to have a grand childhood injustice which would’ve been totally 100% life-changing had it went another way. This is mine. ↩︎
Lefties, get yourself a quick-drying gel pen. They’re much smoother than your standard biro. ↩︎
Slight caveat in all this, I always use a phone protector/case, and they average out around ~50g. While my newer phone is alright to hold naked, the cumulative weight of it with the case is a little more than my little finger can handle. ↩︎

The best purchase of 2025

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:00:00 +0000

Let’s cut to the chase: it was a wearable blanket.

A wearable blanket?

Yeah. It’s a blanket you wear. Went for a tenner in the middle of Lidl, right next to the welding masks.

A blanket you wear?

So imagine a blanket made of teddy fleece. Give it arm tubes and a large pocket for your feet. Bingo.

… Like the ones in those weird American infomercials?

Yes.

Didn’t we find them ridiculous like 15 years ago?

Yep, but think about how they’re coded nowadays. Back then we laughed because it was presented as a weird catch-all thing for everyone, while now it’s advertised as a personal comfort – a slice of luxury as our lives spiral out with increasing demands and uncertainty.

And to be fair, it’s really warm & cosy. And it’s nice to to keep my arms warm while reading, using a computer, etc.

How do you look in it?

Irresistible. Here’s an artistic depiction:

Wasn’t last year’s best purchase also a blanket?

Maybe.

Have you considered that the cold weather during the end of the year unduly influences your pick for the best purchase?

Perhaps.

The runners-up were a miniature label printer and a reflex LCD writing tablet – and neither of them would be able to keep me warm.

Aren’t you concerned that this series of blog posts are contributing to the dire state of consumerism in society?

A little.

Isn’t March a little too late to post this?

Who cares?

Wouldn’t you be better off adding the purchase of the year to your yearly review posts?

Yeah well it adds to the yearly blog posts made metric dunnit?

Revisiting the Steam Controller

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 18:30:00 +0000

With Valve recently¹ revealing a new Steam Controller as part of their new hardware line-up, I thought I’d dust off my old Steam Controller and check it out a decade after its launch.

If you already know about it and want to skip the faff, here’s what I think about it.

From chair to couch

In the 2010s Valve had an idea. While console gaming has been casually enjoyed from the comforts of the living room, PC gaming has always been the opposite. Could it be possible to liberate PC gaming from the rigid confines of desk and chair?

Their first offering in 2012 was Big Picture mode, an alternate user interface for Steam that could be navigated with a controller. It wasn’t enough; users didn’t want to move their rigs to the living room, and most games players owned didn’t support controllers.

To overcome this hurdle, Valve returned in 2015 with new hardware offerings. The Steam Link let players stream games from their PC to a TV, the Steam Machines were a series of prebuilt PCs for the living room², and of course…

The Steam Controller

Looking at the features, you’ve got two ruddy big trackpads, a thumbstick, and it borrows the Xbox’s face buttons³. You’ve got your standard bumpers & triggers, on the back there are two paddle-like buttons (neatly tucked where your fingers rest), and inside of it is a gyroscope.

It can be connected to a computer via a MicroUSB cable, or if you want to use it wirelessly, you can pop 2 AA batteries in the back and plug its wireless USB dongle into your computer.

For a controller intended for PC games, it looks freaky. Eschewing the traditional D-pad and right thumbstick in favour of the trackpads isn’t helping, and it’s much chunkier than its counterparts. With that in mind you’d expect it to be cumbersome; yet it’s an ergonomic dream. It’s surprisingly lightweight, and the inwards-curving handles perfectly fit my palms while leading my thumbs towards the trackpads. It’s a dream to hold.

What’s up with the trackpads?

There’s no avoiding this one, it’s the controller’s main feature. Not only does it open up the controller for full PC use, but it’s also wot makes it look funky as hell.

The issue with traditional thumbsticks is that they’re not a good replacement for a mouse; you can’t make the same immediate, precise movements with them. Valve knew this from the start and their early prototypes featured a mouse trackball for mouse aim – then later switched to trackpads as they were as easy to work with, and could do even more with software tweaks.

The trackpads themselves feel great. They’re big, responsive, and their inwards curved shape perfectly accommodate your thumbs. From the first minute of using this controller, using a trackpad as a mouse becomes second nature. And it’s not just mouse controls, you can set them to imitate thumbstick inputs, and also to navigate custom menus. More on that later!

Oh and I can’t forget, people have been able to make the trackpads play music via the haptic actuators, it’s crazy.

And gyro?

The other deviation from a bog-standard controller is the inclusion of a gyroscope and accelerometer sensors. Simply put, it tracks the tilt of the controller.

It’s niche, but it has its uses. From using it as a steering wheel, to controlling a plane’s yaw & roll, or emulating a mouse. Again, it feels natural.

Here’s Plants vs Zombies using the controller tilt to emulate a mouse. It’s surprisingly comfortable and accurate.

I find myself using gyro controls the most in FPS games, working in tandem with a trackpad to control the mouse/screen - making large sweeping movements with a trackpad, and using the gyro for miniature aim adjustments. It helps if you set it up so gyro aim is only activated when you’re touching the trackpad.

Here’s Half-Life 2 with the trackpad & gyro controlling the mouse. Again, the trackpad is for large sweeps, and the gyro for finer tracking.

Steam Input

While PC games widely support controllers nowadays, the same couldn’t always be said a decade back. So how could you have a controller for PC games when so many of them demanded a mouse and keyboard?

The answer is Steam Input, Valve’s own input API built for the Steam Controller. Briefly put, it allows you to assign keyboard and mouse inputs (and more!) to the controller, finally bridging the gap between PC controls and couch play. It’s what let me use the gyro and trackpads as a mouse in the video above!

It’s hard to write about Steam Input. Despite the simple explanation above, in reality it’s extremely dense. Not only can you assign keyboard/mouse controls, but you can also:

Set the sensitivity & emulated friction of the trackpads
Set the trackpads to work like thumbsticks
Assign differing commands to the triggers based on a soft/full press
Enable turbo mode for any button
Assign extra commands for a single press, double press, holding/releasing a button
Change the entire controller config & layout by pressing or holding a button

That’s not an exhaustive list. There’s so much you can do with Steam Input. It quickly become complex depending on how many commands a game might require, as well as figuring out what feels right for you.

PC gaming is known for having extensive options & configs, and the Steam Controller at home here - while it’s great for tailoring experiences, the sheer amount of options gets in the way of simply playing. But Valve had that covered…

Sharable controller layouts

If you’re not in the mood to thoroughly set up your controller config, good news: you can borrow someone else’s. Steam Input lets you effortlessly switch between:

Templates - Generic layouts for basic use. Use the trackpads as joysticks, use a track pad as a mouse, etc
Developer layouts - Depending on the game, developers might have created a controller layout perfectly tailored for their game
Community layouts - Other users with the controller can share their own layouts, and the wider community can vote on whether or not it’s good

It’s a simple way to beat the hassle. Though of course, if these layouts aren’t perfect, you’re still free to tweak them yourself!

Desktop mode

Ever wanted to use a computer with a controller? Steam Input lets you do that! It’s sounds weird, but a controller designed for PC games might as well be designed for PC use, and the options available in Steam Input make it a fully realised experience.

Quick example of using the trackpads for mouse movement & scrolling. Check out the sound of the haptic feedback! Controller go brrr

Set one trackpad for scrolling, another for mouse movement, set up buttons for left/right click and to bring up the virtual keyboard, and you’re golden. It’s hard to explain how smooth it feels using a controller to use my PC, but it’s great. It’s to the point where I’ve edited videos from the comfort of my bed solely by using this controller, that’s how good it is!

For those curious, this is what my controller’s desktop layout looks like.

It’s worth mentioning that while Desktop mode is available for all compatible controllers, the Steam Controller was the first to have this feature – and with its massive trackpads being perfect for mouse control, it’s still the best controller for it out there!

Wot I think

It’s hard to sum my thoughts on the Steam Controller. When I mentioned dusting it off in the beginning of this blog post, I meant it quite literally. As much as I’ve gushed over it, it’s my least used controller for a simple reason: the lack of a directional pad and right thumbstick. It’s these omissions which hurt the controller the most.

For controller-based games the lack of core inputs hurts. It’s possible to make up for them with the trackpads, but it’s an uphill struggle. While the left thumbpad features a debossed D-pad design, it’s uncomfortable to use as such, requiring distinct thumbtip presses (rather than rolling the middle of your thumb over it). And using the right trackpad as the right thumbstick doesn’t always feel right – for twin-stick shooters it’s great, but in 3D platformers I just can’t use it to move the camera.

And for PC games… There’s an issue of compressing the whole gamut of controls into a few buttons. Something’s got to give, either you tuck them away in arcane button combinations switches, or omit them altogether – which leads to the following problem:

It wouldn’t be so bad, but ‘good enough’ doesn’t cut it when wrangling with this controller. Add on the insane amount of minute tweaks you can make in Steam Input, and you find yourself modifying every facet of the controller for hours on end.

I also have some minor ergonomic issues with the controller, but YMMV. With the large trackpads, my thumb has to travel a bit between the right pad and the face buttons, and my thumb often slipping the edge of the pad when changing position. Also the shape of the trigger and bumpers force me to hold both with my index and middle fingers – whereas on other controllers, I can swap between them with my index fingers just fine. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it’s awkward to adapt to.

While I think the Steam Controller succeeds in bridging PC gaming and couch play, it’s not perfect. It makes games playable, but there’s frequent compromise. I find it works best in games which heavily require a mouse, or FPS games with minimal controls/mechanics – Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead, Quake, Deep Rock Galactic, etc.

Despite my misgivings, it’s still a nice controller. When you’ve finally perfected your custom layouts, it feels amazing to use… It’s just that for most games, ultimately I’d rather use my keyboard & mouse, or a bog-standard controller.

There’s still one thing I love it for: Desktop mode.

While I was writing this, I had to send my laptop off for repairs. Stuck with my Desktop PC to do everything with, I soon found myself dealing with wrist strain from constantly using my mouse. Being able to connect my controller and use it to navigate my PC seamlessly has been a lifesaver for when I needed to rest my arm – and while I could do it with any controller, the Steam Controller with its responsive trackpads have been perfect for the job.

I think that’s where I’ve used it the most in the decade or so of owning it, as some sort of accessibility tool when my arms need to rest. Although admittedly I’d still recommend using a physical keyboard – using Steam’s virtual keyboard with the trackpads works, but it’s nowhere near as quick as a real thing.

It depends.

If you collect esoteric gaming peripherals, why not? Weird internet musician who wants to use the trackpad motors as an instrument? Go wild. Someone who wants it to consistently play video games with? Maybe hold off.

As Steam Input has matured and expanded to support other devices and add unique ways to map mouse input to thumbsticks, you’re better off using a standard controller. Currently I’d recommend Sony’s Dualsense controller, which features a touchpad and gyro controls.

The Steam Controller is nice, but its unfortunate flaws get in the way of consistent use. It’s the sort of controller you pick up and mess about with for a week before returning to something more conventional. You might find yourself repeatedly using it for a single game that fits its niche, but that’s about it.

If you can tailor your tastes to games with minimal controls, or mouse-heavy strategy games, I’m sure you can find a use for it.

I must also note a sort of… Cheap plastic feel to this controller? It rattles with movement, and it feels thin and fragile; like its a single fall away from completely breaking. I wouldn’t hold it against the controller myself, but I know others who mark points off because of it.

Also considering that it’s been out of production since the end of 2019, you’re going to have to rely on buying second-hand. God help you if something inside breaks, and there’s also no guarantee about how long the controller will be supported in the years to come – if Valve get fed up of supporting it or simply go bust, you might be out of luck.

Still, if you don’t mind dropping £40 on a novelty, I’m sure you can enjoy it. But there are better things to come…

Looking to the future

Like everything else at Valve, the Steam Controller was an experiment. It might not have stuck the landing, but by going all-in, it helped them mature and figure out where to go next.

Still wanting PC gaming to flourish away from the desk, Valve released the Steam Deck in 2022, and it took the world by storm. And from the get-go, you can see what they learned from the Steam Controller.

The trackpads are still around, albeit smaller to fit everything else in. The missing thumbstick and D-pad have returned, and this time around there are four extra buttons on the back. The thumbsticks are also capacitive, allowing you to do things like enable the gyro just by touching the sticks. And much like the controller, it has its own sharable controller layouts!

The Steam Deck is amazing. Not only can it run most PC games, but the full range of inputs make it truly uncompromising – regardless of if a game is designed for a controller or keyboard. Ultimately the Steam Deck has proved you can have the full PC gaming experience with a controller, and that brings us to…

Look at it. Just as awkward as the original, but in its own distinct way. Image credit: Valve

The upcoming Steam Controller shows a lot of promise, frankly because it’s got all the input gizmos of the Deck except the touchscreen and microphone. As an added bonus there’s also capacitive grips on the side which’ll be perfect for toggling gyro controls. And while it looks just as unwieldy as the first controller, I’m certain they’ve iterated a ton on the ergonomics. In the previews we’ve seen of it, the shape of the controller isn’t a problem whatsoever.

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that considering the sheer popularity of the Steam Deck, its amount of quality community controller layouts, and the fact the upcoming controller shares input parity with the Deck… We ought to be able to use all the Deck control layouts with the new controller, which’ll help a lot with both adoption and plug-and-play!

Of all the upcoming hardware Valve announced, it’s the new controller I’m the most excited for. Full uncompromised PC gaming in the palms of my hands? Sign me up!

The new Steam Machine might be a portable PC that pulls no punches, and the Steam Frame might be a VR headset that also plays non-VR games, but the controller simply has everything I’d need… And will be the most affordable of the bunch!

Unfortunately for the time being, my excitement is tempered. It seems that with the compatibility between all their upcoming devices, Valve wanted to release them all at the same time. In November 2025 this wasn’t a problem, but as the months have gone on RAMaggeddon has hit the world in full swing, sending RAM & storage costs skyrocketing as AI companies hoover up as much as they can.

Valve had plans to announce the price of the new hardware by now, but the state of the market has forced them to reconsider. While they say they still plan on releasing everything in the first half of the year, it’s easy to see a world in which it’s delayed further. In the weeks since then, Valve have had issues with Steam Deck stock over the memory & storage shortages.

When I initially started writing this blog post, I was excited for the near future. It’s just a shame that the state of AI hype has put a damper on everything else.

I started writing this 3 days after the reveal. Oops. ↩︎
Ultimately the Steam Machines failed. From the lack of Linux-supported games at the time, to the differing hardware specs between manufacturers, and the simple fact that PC gamers didn’t want to buy a second PC. ↩︎
Modern Windows natively supports Xbox controllers. Due to this, Xbox controllers became the most used & supported controllers on PC, leading to their ABXY button layout becoming dominant. ↩︎

2025 in review

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 21:30:00 +0000

Wot happened this year

2025. What a complete faff.

On the first day a Cybertruck blew up outside a Trump hotel, serving as an omen for the year to come. Nintendo announced the Switch 2, and Elon Musk performed a totally innocuous salute on stage, which just happened to be identical to a Nazi salute.

The Netflix show Adolescence took the UK by storm, bringing another year of politics via telly. The US Gov invited a journalist into a Signal chat, and Trump went bonkers with AI-generated tarriffs.

Yeah, the first year of Trump’s second term makes up a lot of this. Soz.

The Minecraft film released in April – unleashing hordes of TikTok users screaming Chicken jockey. Skype died (🦀), and now there’s an American Pope. Feels weird that there’s a pope you can speak plain English with.

Kids started fires with their Chromebooks, Leeroy Jenkins hit 20 years old, and X’s AI chatbot Grok started replying to every prompt about “white genocide” in South Africa. It’d soon go on a racist bender and call itself ‘MechaHitler’, with X’s CEO retiring a day later. At least we got a nice chuckle out of Orc City while it went down.

Also speaking of chatting AI, Fortnite players got the late James Earl Jones to say fuck.

The viral moment of the year went to Coldplay, who caught a CEO’s awkward affair live on kiss-cam.

In July the Labour party announced they’d give 16 year olds the vote, then disenfranchised them by blocking off net with the Online Safety Act – on the bright side, myself and half the country seemingly moved to Sweden, so it’s no bother.

Remember that War of the Worlds adaptation with Ice Cube? Terrible, but hilarious. Summer tapped off with Labubu dolls and Dubai chocolate reaching peak popularity, and then Silksong finally released!

The Great North Run handed out medals with the wrong city, Trump went mental over paracetamol, and Windows 10 reached EOL.

The global Anglican church split over female bishops & LGBT rights, jewel thieves struck the Louvre, and a certain Windsor became the Andrew formerly known as Prince.

Towards the end of the year we saw a steady release of the Epstein files – overly redacted of course – and… Yeah I’m running out. Does else anyone care that the Doctor Who series 10 soundtrack finally released? Uhhh 6-7????

Notable deaths include Tony Slattery, David Lynch, Val Kilmer, Pope Francis, Kenneth Colley, Felix Baumgartner, Ozzy Osbourne, Drew Struzan, and Rebecca “Burger Becky” Heineman.

On tech and the web

Big tech & Trump

We’ve all seen the shockingly brazen integration of Big Tech and the Trump administration. After “donating” hefty sums to his campaign, all the CEOs were caught cosying up to him either buy favour against antitrust suits, or to simply avoid his furore.

Funny how Facebook removed LGBT pride themes from messenger and rolled back fact-checking a week before the inauguration, and how all these platforms now call it “The Gulf of America” in the States.

We saw Elon Musk get awarded for his sycophancy with his Department of Regulatory Efficiency scheme. It didn’t cut costs, but at least it gave his unaccountable team of outsides a good chunk of sensitive information.

On the bright side, the breakup between Trump & Musk was legendary. 💅

Can we sod off with AI

It’s been a year of AI marketing hell. You can’t go a minute without some AI chatbot popup, marketing bollocks, or a memo asking you to use the latest AI helper your company has spent an eye-watering amount on. It’s frankly ridiculous.

The sheer continued hype by businesses over anything “AI”, despite dubious qualities, is insane.

For the record, this has been a year where “Microsoft is cautiously onboarding Grok 4 following Hitler concerns” was a headline. The words ‘hell future’ spring to mind.

Generative image & video models are able to create uncanny simulacrums. Whilst low effort AI slop drowned our parents’ Facebook feeds last year, now it’s moved on to provocative bollocks and fake animal videos that are becoming harder to discern from reality. Big platforms don’t care as long as it keeps user retention up.

It’s at the point where Instagram – the service dedicated to sharing photos – is swamped under generative AI fakery.

20 years ago it was a faff to upload images to the web, and there were fewer of them. As a result it was easy to tell what images were fake or not. In this hell world of constant easy content, it’s becoming harder under a deluge of generative AI.

Regardless of how much you keep your guard up, there’ll be something that tricks you, even for a moment. And being in a state of constant vigilance is making the web unfun.

Going into the new year, AI proliferation is bringing us hardware shortages and price hikes. AI companies are hoovering up so much hardware that we as consumers will be bearing the brunt of it.

The demand for NAND storage has sent the price of SSDs doubling. OpenAI have made deals to grant them 40% of the world’s DRAM output for the coming years, which has sent RAM prices skyrocketing. Samsung won’t even sell it to Samsung.

To put it into context: two years ago I spent £68 on the RAM in my computer, now that same RAM costs over £250. It’s madness.

It’s not just folks building their own PCs who’ll feel the sting, but whoever buys any device. Game consoles, phones, laptops, those weird smart fridges, you name it.

Web censorship ‘for the kids’

An unfortunate trend among the Western world has been the erosion of digital rights & privacy under the banner of protecting children.

The controversial Online Safety Act came into law over here, regardless of objections raised by tech experts, and it’s been a mess.

The terms for dealing with UK users are so long, draconian, and under the thread of fines that sites have opted to block UK users instead. This matters severely for smaller, niche hobby sites – not so much for the big companies who see fines as the cost of business.
Users are being asked to prove they’re an adult by sending pictures of their ID and having their face scanned by AI. Of course, these systems have faults and are easily bypassed

A lot of this sensitive data is being processed by overseas companies with lax security standards, and it’s only a matter of time before there’s a catastrophic data leak (earlier this year we saw Discord leak submitted IDs). And of course normalising scanning your ID has been a boon for internet scammers.

Is this really about protecting children from seeing “harmful content” online? Not really, the scope of what’s considered harmful is too large, and the risks of storing IDs is endangering everyone. But if you criticise it, you get told you’re on the side of Jimmy Saville.

Combine this with the Government’s plan for a mandatory Digital ID system, and it’s clear that it’s less about keeping the internet safe for kids, and more for keeping track of the content you see online.

Funnily just like everyone predicted a decade back, a simple VPN bypasses everything.

Of course we’re not the only place taking measures like this. Australia introduced measures to ban under-16s from Social Media, France and multiple US states now require photo ID for accessing 18+ sites – and of course, this can easily be expanded to include things like LGBT content.

Is the internet a safe place for kids? Not really, and it certainly feels less safer with the proliferation of online chat and the shift from the shared family computer to camera phones. But is this wave of legislation actually helping? I doubt it.

Silver linings

Okay, I don’t want to keep it all doom and gloom.

Meta finally admitted that their plans for a metaverse were a waste. $77 billion down the drain, and we won’t have to hear them market it ever again 🎉
Again, Skype is dead 🦀
As much as our parents are getting confused by AI slop, the sheer amount of it, as well as warnings from the media, are leading to more of them being cognisant about what might be AI or not
We’re seeing more core internet groups split off from parent companies and mergers to go independent:
- Giant Bomb, a major game reviewing site & streaming group broke free from Fandom
- Digital Foundry, a beloved games tech & hardware review team, left IGN a year after their Eurogamer buyout
- PC game storefront Good Old Games got re-acquired by its original co-founder, allowing it to strike free while CD Projekt Red can now focus solely on their RPGs

Life over here 🇬🇧

The UK’s certainly had better years. When the Labour party won last year’s general election, I was stoked; we finally kicked out the aimless sleazy Conservatives, the adults were finally in the room, and we could have meaningful change.

Unfortunately, the Labour they offered wasn’t the Labour we got.

You can’t undo 15 years of decline in a year, but Starmer has been particularly disappointing. Despite his majority he’s spent half the year u-turning on key policies, and using what little remaining capital on weird authoritarian measures (again, the Online Safety Act and pushing for Digital ID).

The general attitude over here is that we’re in a state of managed decline. Energy prices are still soaring, we’re not building enough houses, and it feels like radical change is impossible.

Not to say it’s all been terrible. The Renters’ Rights Bill seems promising, the Employment Rights Act is a step in the right direction, and subsidised buses means I’m not paying an arm and a leg to get anywhere. Can’t really fault that.

A key moment from this year was the Supreme Court’s ruling on the definition of a woman in the Equality Act in response to transgender women. It was ruled that it was written as to not include trans women, and despite the presiding judge commenting that it shouldn’t be seen as a triumph, the champagne spilt proved those words to be hollow.

What was supposed to clear up a point of confusion with the Equality Act has instead caused more confusion, invalidated gender recognition certificates, and has unfortunately fuelled the hostile attitude towards trans people in this country – to the point now where women are policed on facilities based solely on how they look.

I think it’s safe to say that things are still a mess.

Personal stuff

The stats

Blog posts: 8
6 books read
- Favourite: Enshittification
13 films watched
- Favourite: 28 Years Later
5 TV shows watched:
- Favourite: Pluribus
7 games played
- Favourite: Cave Story
Favourite song I listened to: Glad to Be Gay
Word of the year: Peccadillo

I mentioned last year that I could actually lose weight. Well towards the end of last year I went from 100kg to 90, and this year… Oh dear, I’ve been straddling that ever since!

Things wot I learnt

Neil Diamond sung about being Forever in Blue Jeans - not the Reverend Blue Jeans
- “I’d rather be Reverend Cool Jean’s babe” like this dude was so cool that would love be his wife?!
British watch company Sekonda got their start importing watches from the USSR
Robert Louis Stevenson wanted it to be pronounced Jee-kyll
Suicide Drones have are euphemistically named Loiter Munitions
Extraordinary Rendition is completely different to Extradition
WRT means with regards to

Blog posts wot didn’t make the cut

What I learnt rebuilding* 125 LEGO sets – I spent the first quarter of this year going through my childhood Lego bins in my spare time, trying to recover what sets I could.
- The Brick Separator is your friend
- Identify a set by a visually unique piece first
- Fight the temptation to build as you go along, collate the pieces first
- Know when to cut your losses. I only managed to complete 11 sets from loose parts.
On phones and handedness – I have weird hands, and with the size & weight of phones, it’s becoming increasingly impossible to use one with a single hand without causing considerate strain.
Brexit, 10-ish years on – A decade back we’d be in the midst of the whole referendum campaign, but how on Earth are you supposed to condense everything Brexit in a single blog post?

Highlights from around the web

AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism – New Socialist
My 2 Year Journey to Solve the 30-Year Myth of Faceball 2000 – Stop Skeletons From Fighting
For-Profit (Creative) Software – EndVertex
Square Theory – Adam Aaronson
Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? – VelvetShark
The Timmy Trap – Scott Jenson
The BEST way to watch THE MATRIX… EVER! – Rocco Botte
What are you supposed to write about for an aortaversary? – Edward’s Blog
When Stick Figures Fought – Animation Obsessive
Disney’s living characters: A broken promise – Defunctland
Building the PERFECT Linux PC with Linus Torvalds – Linus Tech Tips

Conclusion

Eugh.

I don’t think much happened to me this year. I don’t want to be too negative, but circumstances have me stuck in a situation I’d rather not be, and right now depression is kicking my arse.

I don’t particularly have hope for the new year, but y’know, there’s a good chance it’ll be better. Last year I was hopeful, I was trying to be better, I didn’t want to give up on health, but… Eesh, trying to get help can be an uphill struggle over here.

A weird thing I tried doing this year was growing my hair out as a last hurrah. I didn’t really go ahead with it, looked too awkward. The longest it got was 1cm, which is fairly long for my tastes!

Also weird: this year my room didn’t get invaded by spiders or crane flies. Probably not a good sign in the long run.

Again, I think my friends have kept me sane throughout this year. That, and the regular forcing myself out the house to get a hot chocolate has helped.

Sorry to be a bit of a downer. Hopefully I read more books in the coming year. Cheers x

Olive

Still yearning for perpetual August

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 20:25:00 +0100

I haven’t been feeling it for the last few weeks. An inability to dedicate myself to anything, a lack of care for the things in my life, and a general malaise about being me. A month into autumn and only now do I recognise and remember this pervasive feeling as depression.

Carrying on from last time, summer was hellish. It was the hottest on record with each month having its own heatwave. August itself was far hotter than the blissful heaven I remember it as, but still I miss it. Like usual it came and went without me really appreciating it, yet I still miss it.

It’s a drab grey October day. Beats having a heatwave.

As much as I want to appreciate the calmer weather and cooler nights, depression returns and aches its way into my bones. Regardless of whether it’s still there during summer or not, it comes back stronger with the darker days. And there’s only so much a Vitamin D tablet can do.

I used to love autumn, and despite everything it’s still my favourite season. Winter’s too cold, spring kills me with hay fever, and I roast in the summer. Autumn is a gentle season. It does nothing wrong in itself, it just happens to bring forward the worst in me.

I walked through a bunch of dried leaves the other day, it made me realise that something was wrong. Something about how I’ve never noticed or cared for the sound of leaves crunching underfoot since I was a kid. How I used to love Autumn, the coolness of it, the festivities, the long nights.

The autumn I used to enjoy is far away from me now, much like the idyllic August I’d happily spend the rest of my life in. There’s a good chance neither of them existed, but there’s certainly no chance of them returning.

I don’t really know what I want to say. I lost track of where I wanted to go with this, but ultimately it sucks when you feel depression reigning in.

Last year I played Disco Elysium. I can’t do the game justice, but it’s perfect. Wrapped up in a dysfunctional detective story is a treaty on what it’s like to be human. Imperfect.

Of all the things that stuck with me, it’s a single track used in the game: Tiger King, by Sea Power. It pops up during key moments; notably the opening of the game, where the main character begs his inner brain mechanisms not to wake him up:

Mother, help me, there’s a head attached to my neck and I’m *in* it.

It’s song I’ve listened to most this year, regardless of where I am or what I’ve been doing. It’s for the bad days, it’s for the cafe days drinking hot chocolate under a beaming sun.

The track is beautiful. It’s haunting. Melancholic. Violins and cellos croon out in waves, leaving yourself floating between each note. It’s the sound of depression, and of all things it makes me wish I could cry for it.

Yearning for perpetual August

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Thu, 01 May 2025 19:19:25 +0100

The last week of April was a bloody scorcher, and today marks the hottest start of May on record. Summer is rapidly approaching, and as someone who shuts off when it gets over 20C… Bugger¹.

I hate summer. Too hot. Too humid. It gets overbearingly muggy outside and going in doesn’t alleviate much either – housing here is designed to keep the heat in; chuck in cramped rooms and the fact I always end up with a south-facing window… Yeah, summer sucks. On top of that, my computer turns my room into a sauna.

You’d think I’d be a winter person instead, but no. At first it’s nice to wrap up in layers and sip a steaming mug of hot chocolate, but the honeymoon swiftly fades. I used to love winter, but recently I’ve found it to be bleak, depressing.

I think winter can be tolerable if you get a load of snow, even when it gets in the way of everything it’s still novel to have.

Well, what about spring? Two words: Hay Fever. For whatever reason I’ve been blessed with the superpower of detecting plant sperm. Spring would be lovely if not for my entire face melting off.

That leaves us with autumn which… It’s alright, better than the other seasons, but it soon suffers the same issues winter has. Despite that, it’s the perfect weather for jackets, and the feeling of walking over crisp leaves in unparalleled – yet it doesn’t hold a candle to what comes right before it.

If you ask me, the month of August is the best time of year. There’s a nice ambient warmth, far removed from the overbearing heat of June & July. The days are long, calm, and you can get away being out in shorts well through the night. You can just live, and be happy.

There’s a stability to August. It’s tranquil, gentle, the reward for putting up with the blistering months beforehand, and each year it’s over before I know it. Purple skies become black, the temperature drops, the good vibes fade away.

Sandwiched between unbearable heat and the long dark is a slice of August. And I’d do anything to have it be around forever.

I don’t like ending blog posts on a negative note, but I worry about the future.

As mentioned prior, today has been the hottest start of May on record. We had June temperatures at the end of April. Each year we seem to break a record on heat, and these records seem more frequent than ever.

I can barely cope with summer as-is; when it gets hot my brain struggles to work, I have to drag my body about, and whatever hopes I have of being efficient are dashed. Each year I get through summer I pray to myself that it won’t ever get hotter than this – but we all know it will.

I’d love to think that a single day at work at 35C is the worst I’ll ever have to go through. But no. Just knowing that summer is around the corner brings on the climate doom spiral thoughts, and for my sanity’s sake I have to flippantly handwave such thoughts away.

It’s a steady death march, and the only way to cope with it is to forget.

And just as I finish this, the heavens have split open. More than a weeks worth of rain to cool us down. Hallelujah. ↩︎

I miss the headphone jack

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 22:25:00 +0100

I’ll let you in on a secret. In my teenage years I nigh-exclusively went to sleep listening to fantasy soundtracks, imagining Tolkienesque characters chasing fame and glory by the sword night after night. It was fun, daft, and dweeby.

It was a practice I kept up into adulthood. Not so much the imagination, but I’d nod off listening to the soundtrack of fierce battles, savvy duels, and the ambience of ancient glades. Each night I’d load the playlist on my phone, then lie back with my earbuds in.

And then I got a phone without a headphone jack.

I know I don’t have the best record with sleep, but come on. The one thing I had that made sleep remotely engaging is gone, and I’m struggling without it.

Every other media device I’ve owned has come with a headphone jack. The 3.5 mm jack has been a tried & tested standard for 70-odd years, and the fact that companies have been getting rid of it on the most popular listening device is insane. All for what, making phones thinner? Because Apple did it first? To rake in more money by selling wireless buds? 🤔

Okay it’s not like I can’t listen to music any more, but it’s not like I’m fond of the alternatives:

USB-C to 3.5 adaptors exist but… They’re naff. They jut out of pockets, wobble awkwardly between your phone & earphones, and the listening experience sucks: the signal cuts out whenever a song gets quiet, and they produce a constant electrical hiss.¹ Oh, and you can’t connect a charger to it while using it.

Wireless earphones are a valid option, but you’re trading in one lot of faff for another: sure you don’t have to deal with untangling wires, but with wired buds I never have to consider there’s a time limit for listening, nor do I have to recharge them.

Get an MP3 player? I mean I could, but then I’m lugging around another device with me at all times, managing another battery, etc.

Again, wired earphones are simple. They’ve been around for ages, are supported everywhere else, and they just work. Removing the 3.5 mm jack from phones is just arbitrary and anti-consumer.

We had a good thing going on. Then they ruined it for a quick buck.

Yes you could put a ground loop isolator and aux cord between the adapter and your earphones to make it sound good, but it’s way too much hassle. ↩︎

My cat has The Scream on his head

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 20:30:00 +0100

I’m writing this while I’m watching Caesar – my cat – partake in his third afternoon kip. Even if he shares his namesake’s arrogance, pettiness, and territorial ambitions, he’s an absolute gem and the light of my life.

I could spend the next 10 paragraphs gushing over how much I love him, but I’ll settle for highlighting something weird about him: he has The Scream on his head.

It’s a definite case of Pareidolia, I perceive the fur pattern on his head to look like a century old painting but… I mean look at it! It has a face, the vertical brush strokes, surely I’m not the only person who sees it.

Weird to think about the series of flukes in human pattern recognition and his genetic makeup that lead to all of this. Wild.

I finally beat Forbidden Memories

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 20:40:00 +0000

Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories has haunted me since I was a kid. I could go on about the vibes of ancient Egypt, the foggy 3D graphics, or the gorgeous synth soundtrack, but what’s really haunted me is that I never beat it. I’ve returned to it multiple times throughout my life, yet I’ve been defeated each time.

So in 2024 I vowed that I’d finally beat the game by the end of the year. In August I finally cracked it, and it only took me…

… 34 hours. Oh.

What’s up with this game?

I’m just going to assume that anyone reading this remembers how Yu-Gi-Oh plays.

Forbidden Memories follows a facsimile of the basic rules and says sod it to the rest. It plays like you did on the school playground.
The game features a story mode and a free play mode. Your cards/deck are shared between these game modes, and in free play you can duel against anyone you’ve beaten in the story mode.
Winning a duel awards you with a card. You also are awarded up to 5 star chips depending on how well you did, which are used to purchase more cards.
The key gimmick of Forbidden Memories is the fusion system. On your turn you can select any of the cards in your hand and fuse them together to create a stronger card.

Wait what–

Yeah, you read that right. You can just select any card and fuse them together. See?

Any card?

Yes. Kinda.

There are rules to fusions based on the card/monster type and how many points it has¹. If the cards are incompatible, only the last card you selected will be played.

I can’t understate how this simple idea turns an otherwise mediocre game into something so captivating. The meta-game of figuring out the best fusions will keep you returning to the game, and nothing beats the feeling of winning a duel because you gambled on a successful fusion. This feature alone helps turn any weak deck into something formidable.

… Although you’ll eventually clock on to the one fusion that matters the most. But I’ll touch on that later.

Anything else worth mentioning?

The game also has this weird rock paper scissors thing. When you play a monster card you assign it a symbol that can give it a 500 point buff/nerf.

Honestly it’s a pain to deal with and not worth remembering as a whole (the game tells you if you have an advantage or not before an attack). But often the 500 point buff is one of the few ways you’ll get past Labyrinth Wall or Millennium Shield’s 3000DEF.

So how did it take 34 hours to beat?

The game is hard and is a complete slog to get through.

The AI cheats. Enemies know what face-down cards are and can change out the cards in their hand for more powerful ones.
At the halfway point, opponents will casually play cards like Meteor B. Dragon (3500ATK).
You only gain up to 5 star chips in a duel. Decent cards cost >100 star chips, good cards >250. Have fun grinding in free play.²
Certain cards only drop if you beat a duel in a certain way, some of which are ultimately arcane.
- For a S-Tec rank (useful for spell cards), your opponent needs to lose by running out of cards.

This game is RNG hell. Even with a stacked deck there’s no guarantee you’ll get good cards in your first hand, and good luck unlocking that one card you want when it has a <0.5% drop rate.

But again, this game’s difficulty and the fact I never beat it is why it cemented itself in my mind. I knew going into this that it’d be an uphill struggle, but at this point the difficulty is just alluring.

And how did you beat it?

Blimey, where to start.

1) That one fusion

Ah yes, what I mentioned earlier. Despite the vast amount of card fusions available, there’s one that’s a cut above the rest: Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon

Hopefully not too excessive.

With its 2800ATK and 2100DEF, it’s a beast. And everyone who’s played this will tell you the same thing: This is the card you need to learn to fuse because of how viable it is.

To fuse it all you need is to fuse a dragon type with ≥1600ATK and a thunder type - remember that you can fuse other dragon cards into one with ≥1600ATK!

Now it’s no Blue Eyes, but mixed with an equip it might as well be. Add on a complimenting field bonus and you’re set… Until Gate Guardian, Ultimate Great Moth, etc show up.

2) Grinding. A lot of grinding.

Really the first half of the game is mostly easy. You’ll have a few roadblocks, getting past Labyrinth Wall and Kaiba’s Blue Eyes White Dragon in particular, but both are manageable with an early deck. It’s everything else afterwards which isn’t

After the fight with Kaiba in the present, you find yourself back in the past. You have to make your way through 5 elemental themed shrines, each containing two duels against mages with a themed deck of cards. This is the casual player filter, the part of the game I could never beat as a kid.

To put it bluntly, you’ll need to grind cards and star points in Free Play for a few hours. Build up a more competent deck. Beat the Meadow Mage, quit out to Free Play, then duel him repeatedly for 200 or so times for him to drop a Meteor B Dragon.

Wh-

Yeah. That’s about 6–10 hours if you’re not speeding things up with an emulator. It took me 214 duels before he finally dropped Meteor Dragon (the lesser version of Meteor B Dragon). Thankfully I already had a Red Eyes Black Dragon from duelling ~~Joey~~ Jono 2nd a lot, so I could fuse Meteor B Dragon with both of those.

And then at 301 duels, I finally nabbed myself the top prize:

So what’s after the mages?

Oh, you know. A measly 7/8 duels in a row against the toughest characters, all decked out with multiple cards with over 3500ATK, no biggie. Hell, the Ancient Egyptian version of Kaiba has 3 Ultimate Blue Eyes (4500ATK).

I could get through the first four or so bosses with some good thinking, but Seto 3rd’s aforementioned Ultimate Blue Eyes..?

More grinding?

More grinding baby.

The multiple Meteor B Dragons were good, but not good enough. If I was going to seriously make it through the final fights I needed spell and equip cards, and that requires a special way of grinding.

When you win a duel you’ll receive a special rank based on how you did. These ranks influence what sort of cards you’ll unlock. For the best spell cards you’ll want to achieve an S-Tec (highest rated Technical win) against Pegasus.

For reference, an S-Tec requires that your opponent loses by drawing all of their cards. You have to wait out each individual turn and try not to lose any life points while your opponent goes through every card in their deck. This process takes at least 10 minutes if not sped up by an emulator.

So is that what you did?

Yeah, for about 15 minutes. Then I spent the next few hours repeating the final 7 duels over and over again expecting different results.

Insanity-maxxing worked.

To cut a boring story short, after some hours I managed to beat Seto’s Ultimate Blue Eyes with a clutch dark hole, then managed to slap 2 booster equips on a Meteor B Dragon.

The game’s final boss? Thankfully a pushover. With a deck of only monsters, all I had to do was be lucky he wouldn’t play Ultimate Blue Eyes or Gate Guardian. And thankfully for me, he didn’t. Victory was swiftly assured.

Knowing that this would be the final time I heard it, the victory theme was heavenly.

And with that, I finally beat Forbidden Memories.

asdfgh, a very inspired name.

Was it worth it?

Honestly? Yeah.

I know that it’s a trivial & useless thing to spend 34 hours of my life on, but with all the effort I poured into the game as a kid and my ultimate belief it was impossible… It was great.

And really it wasn’t all drab as it sounds. I’d only play if I had something else to do as well. Podcasts, YouTube videos, voice chats, etc. Having something to grab my attention while I went through the motions of duelling made it an oddly therapeutic experience.

Is there anything you wish you knew before this?

Oh god yes.

When you start the game, your deck has a 50% chance of having Dark Hole (destroys every card on the field) or Raigeki (destroys all enemy monster cards). The latter is much preferred, and I struggled more because my deck had Dark Hole.
There’s a mod/romhack out there that gives you 15 cards for winning a duel instead of just one. That would’ve saved me so much time.
The strats. I spent so much time mindlessly grinding for certain cards when it turned out I should’ve played in a much different way.

Anything else?

Honestly… I had fun. I’ll probably find myself playing it again in the future, seeing if I can beat my current time, although I’m a long way away from the world record.

It’s also worth mentioning that upon completion, at the end of the credits I was presented with a secret code. According to a friend, it has something to do with its follow-up game, so… Maybe see you all after another 34 hours?

Aside from that? Eh, I’ll never beat Minecraft, and that’s okay.

I remember being ~6 years old, trying out different fusion combinations and writing down the results on a scrap piece of paper. Anything to get ahead of the game. ↩︎
With emulation I had the benefit of being able to speed the game up and it still took forever. Also if a duel looked like it was going bad, I’d reset to before the duel. I couldn’t imagine the patience required to beat this game on original hardware. ↩︎

The best purchase of 2024

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 20:15:00 +0000

I made some solid boring purchases this year. Fingerless gloves, a DualSense controller, and a proper toasty commando sweater. But this year, the best purchase went to a weighted blanket.

Yeah, a blanket. It’s got pouches full of glass beads in it. Simple.

… You ever tried taking a beauty shot of a grey blanket?

I’ve heard a lot about weighted blankets over the last few years, and testimonies from a few friends lead me to keep an eye out for one. When I saw one on sale in Lidl for half the usual price I thought why not?

The first few days were weird to adjust to, being held down, waking up covered in sweat, flip-flopping between having it on and off, etc. But I stuck to it, and within a week I found myself hooked.

It’s comfortable. Comforting. The second I pull the blanket back over me I can relax, I can feel the pressure of the day seep away as I’m lightly compressed into place. I’ve found myself sleeping much deeper, and even when I’m not, I don’t think I could go without this now I’m used to it.

If you’re looking for one, a good rule of thumb is to find one that’s a tenth of your weight.

The good stuff:

It’s exceedingly toasty. I haven’t felt the need to use a duvet all winter.
It’s snug. The extra weight just feels lovely without outright pinning you down.

The bad stuff:

It’s cumbersome. Not so much a problem when you’re lying down, but picking it up and moving it can be a hassle
You’ll feel naked sleeping without it
You really, really won’t want to get out of bed in the morning 😭

And with that being said… God help me when summer comes around and it’s too hot to use it!

It does exactly what I need

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 17:30:00 +0000

I’ve recently been wearing a Casio AE-1200. I had a familiar model in my teens, lost it, then bought this a decade later in the tail end of the pandemic.

It’s a solid digital watch. Subtle, snazzy. But above all else it’s cheap and practical, filled to the brim with more features than a simple digital watch ever needs:

Day & date tracking
5 alarms
Hourly notification toggle
Stopwatch + countdown timer
World time / timezone library
A bonus quasi-analogue display
Dinky little lights

It was nigh-perfect. I later added a screen protector and replaced the arm hair pulling nylon strap with an old spare NATO one and bam, perfection.

The AE-1200 with a NATO strap.

Unfortunately I didn’t use it much. Even with a screen protector I risked damaging it at work, and I always had a phone by my side which had all the functionality of the watch, so I put it away in my big box of trinkets.

And then I recently had a need to track time. Sure my phone could do it, but it was a massive faff to repeatedly set up and check¹. So I dug out my watch and it’s been on me ever since.

And then one day on a whim I look up the watch online to see what others think.

It turns out the AE-1200 is popular for all the reasons I mentioned. It’s dubbed the ‘Casio Royale’ due to its resemblance to the Seiko watch used in… Octopussy? Close enough. And then I fall down a deeper rabbit hole: watch modding.

There’s an entire community, hell an entire industry out there dedicated to modifying watches, and the AE-1200’s cheap price & unique look makes it a prime candidate. It’s neat to see what people turn the watch into, and I find myself pulled deeper…. Some even put tiny compasses on the straps!

I immerse myself in everything watch modding. Coloured films, custom cases, inverted displays. People even fill their watches with oil to improve the clarity of the watch and to make it more water resistant. I find myself fascinated, obsessed, spare time spent watching modding tutorials and scouring the web for spare parts for the perfect build.

I was caught by Hobby Pull. Or at least, that’s what I call it². That nebulous draw towards a random hobby or interest which suddenly infatuates you, a great gravitational mass drawing you closer and closer until you frankly obsess over it.

While I’m no sociologist, I find that this pull is more effective when the hobby/criteria meets the following criteria:

It is related to something you’re already connected to.
It has niche/unique application. Often the smaller it is, the more alluring it is.
It is presented in, and reinforced by a specific dedicated community.

I know this is how acquiring hobbies work, the novelty of it grabs your attention. But I’m on about when it suddenly consumes you - frequently hijacking your thoughts until it’s something you nigh-constantly think about.

Considering the amount of hobbies presented online as “buy and collect as much of this as possible”, how these communities prop up a consumerist in-group with positive feedback loops of acquisition & support, and how there are people with much worse impulse control than me… I find it concerning how easy it is to get drawn in.

For me, my way out was sudden. Neck deep in discussion with a friend about what I could do to spice up my watch, I said that ultimately that “it does exactly what I need”. Yes I could make it look great, but the important part was that the watch performed all its functions, and simply saying that helped it click³.

Really the modifications I made when I was unaware of this subculture were enough. The screen protector and replacement strap served purpose over aesthetics. I didn’t need anything else.

Now I’m not going to say that this epiphany is the perfect fix, nor do I want to discredit those who turn watches into a canvas. I ultimately know that a negative display & green filter would look sick on this bad boy and I still find myself browsing eBay in the evening but… I can do without it. The watch fills my needs, and that’s enough.

Yes digital assistants can make setting timers easy, but if I need to check how long it’s been I’ve got to drop everything, grab my phone, unlock it, pull down the notifications bar, then put it back down. A complete pain compared to a flick of the wrist. ↩︎
I’m not sure if this term has a name. A familiar term used by folks with ADHD is Hobby hopping, which describes a tendency to become infatuated with a different hobbies and jump between them - whereas I’m describing the initial pull. ↩︎
It’s a digital watch so… Saying that helped it beep? ↩︎

Ode to the Pixel 4a

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 21:25:00 +0000

Last night I got an email from Google: My Pixel 4a would be receiving a new update in the coming days.

Bit weird I thought, considering this device has been end-of-life since August 2023.

It turns out that this update is supposed to improve battery life for the Pixel 4a, but for “some” “impacted devices” this update will “reduce your battery’s runtime and charging performance”. ~~And mine’s apparently impacted.~~

Honestly it’s a bummer, and to be frank it feels like planned obsolescence¹. Despite being end-of-life it’s still a good phone and [without a battery-breaking update] I could happily hold onto it. But of course, that doesn’t drive up new sales, and I’m sure Big Goog would find ways to discourage further use.

There is a rather slim silver lining to this. For oopsy daisy we’re breaking your phone teehee :3c, they’re offering one of the following as recourse:

$50
a $100 discount on another Google Pixel
a free battery replacement at a walk-in repair centre (which no-one knows the locations of)

I can’t say any of those particularly excite me, and none of them feel enough for we are knowingly going to disrupt your device, but I’ll probably fold and take that $100 discount. ~~It could bag me a Pixel 8a for the same price I paid for this~~, although it feels like a deal with the devil… I can’t wait for another battery-breaking update in a few years.

Again, feels weird they’re pushing another update despite it being EOL. Even if it’s apparently for beneficial reasons, it still feels sketchy.

Edit 2025/01/08: So it turns out that no-one knows who’s impacted yet, and the page to enter your IMEI number accepts anything (depending on location). There seems to be a ~3 week wait before they will do anything.

In the meantime, they’ve jacked the prices of the other Pixels way up. On the night of this email a Pixel 8a was going for £379, now it’s going for £499. The absolute scum.

The good stuff

To sum up Pixel 4a in a single word, it’s humble.
It’s a medium size budget phone with no visible bells or whistles, but it’s been an absolute beast for me. Not once have I suffered with incessant app crashes, nor have I faced shutdowns and slowdowns. The battery life has been excellent for a phone of its size, and years down the line it still holds strong.

But above everything else is the camera, as vain as it is to admit that. It’s phenomenal for a budget phone. The default camera app was the first I’ve used with an auto-tracking focus (something which I can never go back from), and I couldn’t have asked for a better phone to document my cat’s life with.

Here’s Caesar, making his long overdue blog debut.

Did I mention astrophotography?
Actually I have. It’s impressive what you can get out of it, light pollution be damned.

A lack-of-sun flower, if you will.

On top of this it’s the first phone I’ve owned with an OLED screen, and also the first with NFC/Wallet features – as daft as it sounds I still can’t get over tapping my phone to make payments.

There are some features I’ve missed compared to the phones I owned before it, namely a notification light and IR Blaster, but in the grand scheme these omissions haven’t mattered much.

Now I can’t say it’s all been smooth sailing, the phone is barely visible in sunlight and the update to Android 12 wasn’t fun in the slightest², but as a whole, this budget phone from 2020 absolutely punches above its weight, even to this day.

End of an era

I can’t say I frequently change smartphones, but when I do there’s usually an eagerness to it. The old device is often on its knees, incapable to deal with the increasing requirements of new app updates, or maybe a core part of just breaks. Either way the prospect of upgrading a new one which vastly outperforms the old, alongside a few new gizmos and trinkets, is inherently appealing.

But in this case, it’s not.

The 4a is still standing tall, but an external force will tank it and force me to change it. It’s not the same. Even if I was considering changing it in the next few years, this situation puts a sour taste in my mouth.

It’s not only the phone itself that I’m upset about, but more so what it represents. It released at a key transition period for smartphones; while everything else was gunning to be larger, grander, and sleeker, the 4a was content to keep one foot in the past. From its size to its headphone jack³, the 4a knew its niche and stuck to it.

When I look at the phones on the market today, I can’t see anything that speaks to me. I get why trends change, why phones are monolithic slabs impossible to use with a single hand. I get why we stopped having replaceable batteries, MicroSD slots, etc.

The Pixel 4a hit the sweet spot in the middle of two eras, and I wish there was something like that available now.

I’m sure I’ll be content wherever I go next, but it’s just sad when something like this happens, yknow?

A good question is why doesn’t the update only target non-impacted devices? Surely if they can recognise the impacted device by IMEI, they could figure out a way to not push the update. ↩︎
Eugh. The big bloated round buttons, gross pastel colour schemes, and the distracting stretch effect when scrolling that you couldn’t disable. It felt like the death knell for Android’s history of customisation. But the worst thing by far was the change to split screen apps, it completely killed my productivity and I’m still upset :( ↩︎
Yes, I’m that guy. Wired earphones are quick, easy, and a fraction of the price. Yes they get tangled, but they never run out of charge, have no issues with latency, and they’re a lot harder to lose. ↩︎

2024 in review

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 12:00:00 +0000

2024 felt more like a proper year than the last.

Amol Rajan casually dropped the sickest sample known to man, internet rapper Viper got arrested for kidnapping, then an ITV drama brought the Post Office Horizon scandal to the front of public consciousness making us all wish there were TV dramas about everything else wrong with the country.

Willy’s Chocolate Experience took the world by storm with how hilariously abysmal it was. It taught people to avoid AI-Generated rubbish until they didn’t. Formerly Twitter went wild over a 20-year old advertising gimmick and for a fortnight every video became an ode to a Chilean beer.

Lost Media fans rejoiced as Ulterior Motives was finally discovered in a… Uh. Awkward. On top of that, The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet was finally identified, as well as a sodding Mozart piece of all things.

Also the Northern Lights went wild in May.

At the halfway point, our Prime Minister called a General Election and bottled it, Kien released for the Gameboy Advance, and Cypress Hill finally played with the London Symphony Orchestra. The Crowdstrike failure caused a right kerfuffle and brought a chunk of the world to a standstill, and Donald Trump got an ear piercing. 💅

I don’t really have notes for the rest of the year. Concord released and immediately shut down, a capybara escaped a zoo, Luigi became Nintendo’s most popular character somehow, and there was a new Wallace and Gromit film. That about does it.

Oh, and the felled Sycamore Gap tree shows signs of life. Things can’t be that bad.

In terms of web stuff, there have been better years. Big Tech is still hellbent on enshittification, anything to make a quick buck. AI Slop is inescapable now and has ruined image search. Google are still fighting adblockers, Mozilla is now into advertising, and even NaNoWriMo has jumped on the generative AI bandwagon for some reason.

But despite all of this, it’s worth mentioning that people want the online world to be better.

Cohost unfortunately shut down, but it shown us all that social media can be better for everyone. The indie web is still thriving, community wikis are clawing back at the predatory grip of Fandom, and in response to X going to hell there’s been a mass exodus to Bluesky – whilst I doubt their decentralisation plans and don’t see anything stopping it from becoming Twitter 2.0, it’s certainly a nicer place.

The stats

6 blog posts
11 books read
- Favourite: The Disaster Artist
17 Films watched
- Favourite: Eyes Wide Shut
9 TV shows watched
- Favourite: Ashes to Ashes
13 Games played
- Favourite: Disco Elysium
Favourite song I listened to: Tiger King
8 games I bought on sale then never played
2 hours spent lying on the floor listening to Ultravox’s Vienna
1 time my gay cat caught something
7½ hours spent waiting in A&E only for everything to be okay
Word of the year: Desultory

Blog posts wot didn’t make the cut

Fiction and Vulnerability – I’m not a writer, but I’d occasionally like to try it. Writing fiction and presenting it to the world (even as a trivial challenge for this blog) feels way more daunting & vulnerable than writing about childhood bullying.
The 2024 Election – The Conservatives had nothing to show but decline after 14 years in power and Labour was the only real alternative. Simple as.
What’s up with Skeletons? – Exploring why you can put skeletons into any situation without them being out of place. I was hoping to release it on Halloween but I got preoccupied with porting my blog to Hugo and… Meh.

Conclusion

Right, that’s 2024 done with.

For me it’s been an eventful non eventful year. I finally quit a job I was too scared to leave, but familial commitments have left me in an odd position for the time being. While I don’t have the highest hopes for 2025, if I play my cards right it might be the start of a transitional period for my life. Gotta have hope innit.

While I have faltered, this has been the year where I’ve accepted that I should try to be better. I’ve accepted that I can’t give up on my health. I still get overwhelmed by my thoughts and wish I could just give up, but there’s something inside of me worth caring for. Also it turns out that yes, I can lose weight… Just ignore what I put back on over Christmas.

Is there anything I wish for in the future? ~~For things to stop being so annoying~~ Temperance and fortitude ought to be the big one, building up mental endurance would help a lot with navigating life. Add in some self-love, stop the self-deprecation and hey, maybe I can feel great about myself.

I’ll need help in figuring out things about who I really am, and I’ll need to steady myself to face it all. It’s big, it’s scary, but I think I can take on another year.

I’d like to thank my friends for being there for me this year – you know who you are. Thank you for the comfort through the low periods, and laughs through the highs. You’ve managed to keep me sane throughout all of this.

Please be kind to yourself xx

Olive

I never want to sleep

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 14:50:00 +0000

There’s nothing better than a good night’s sleep. The problem: I don’t want to sleep, never been a fan of it.

The average well-adjusted person’s day looks a little like this:

My (not average, terribly-adjusted person) day however, looks more like this:

Perpetual Sleep Deprivation

Revenge Bedtime Procrastination is the name of the game. My day is unfulfilling, boring, spent doing a lot of things that I don’t really want to do (that’s life!) and I desperately claw back my time when the evening rolls around. As the world heads to sleep, the night is serene. Quiet, peaceful. After waiting an eternity I can finally pursue my interests free from interruption or judgement.

… And then I keep going. Midnight flies by. Anyone responsible would pack everything away and call it a night, but nah. Going to sleep means I’ll have to trudge through an entire day before I can get back to doing what I want.

Even if I know an early & full night’s sleep will restore me and allow me to perform at twice my best, immediate comfort trumps it. If I’m working on something, I won’t want to stop, so I’ll lock in to finish it regardless of when it’ll be done. If I’m relaxing, well there’s always one more video, always another friend to say hello to, anything to put off the next day.

Unfortunately my responsibilities aren’t as flexible as my sleep, and trying to deal with that conundrum is a nightmare in itself. I’ve spent the majority of my adult life a husk, dark circles permanently etched under my eyes, shambling from one day to another. On the good weeks I can scrape back my needed sleep over the weekend, but Monday is inevitable.

Is it immature? Yep. Is it unhealthy? Absolutely. As if the brain fog and grogginess of perpetual sleep deprivation wasn’t bad enough I can assure you I’m walking into an early grave because of it, be it stroke or heart failure. The sad thing is that despite knowing this, I can’t bring myself to actually head to bed at a reasonable time and get enough sleep.

The causes

Excitement and Motivation - I’m not eager to trudge through the boring stuff of the next day before I can do what I want
Ubiquity of the Internet - 20 years ago the web was smaller, slower, and you’d only have your computer connected to it. The internet was an addition to our day-to-day lives, not a core part of it, and we could easily disconnect ourselves from it.
Bloody Americans - ~~Unfortunately~~ I know a lot of Americans. Because they live in a later timezone and have their own responsibilities, often the only time I can talk to them is in the evening… And then I don’t want to stop.
Nighttime is comfy - As if the inherent thrill of being awake while the world sleeps isn’t good enough, add on the peace & quiet and the fact that you’re finally, truly alone… It’s nice.
I’m not tired - I spend my entire day feeling like death but when the sun goes down I could live forever. ~~Possible Vampirism?~~

Possible solutions (which I will ignore)

No more caffeine - Moot point, I’ve been caffeine-free for 4 years now (or at least, only having decaf!). Across the board I feel better without it, and I can usually nod off in 15-30 minutes… The issue is that I don’t want to.
Avoid Blue Light - I kinda try? I have all my devices set to the lowest brightness with warm Night-light settings practically set to max but… It’s more that having said devices means I don’t want to disconnect.
Disconnect - I mean I do so before 1am, but okay. The issue with programs that shut your devices off after a set time is that I could just switch devices or turn things back on.¹
Grow up, be responsible - I realise that this is the answer, but eughhhhhhh
Do more - Fair. The more I do during the day, the more tired I am when the evening rolls around.
Get something to live for - This one is probably too deep for this blog post. Maybe I’d actually sleep if I was with someone who’d make the boring stuff in the day worth it… But knowing me I’d probably attract a fellow internet vampire and it wouldn’t fix anything.

I don’t really have much else to say. The act of sleeping itself is lovely, and getting a healthy amount of it feels great but I keep denying myself it. Occasionally I’ll have a week or two where I sleep on time and get enough of it, but it never lasts and… I don’t know.

If the day had an extra ~4 hours so I could extra time to myself AND get a full night’s sleep… Honestly I’d waste it by still choosing not to sleep. Oops.

Edit 2024/12/30: For the last two weeks I’ve somehow found myself feeling tired when the evening rolls around. I’ve been able (and willing!) to switch my brain off to sleep, and on the days where I haven’t I’ve ended up conking out before it got too late.

I don’t have a concrete reason why, only a suggestion. I know that Winter can take a toll on my mood to the point where things are less engaging. Without me wanting to lose myself in something, the less chance I have at staying up. Also nothing beats curling up in warm cozy bed during the cold winter nights.

Hopefully I can manage to keep this up through the new year and beyond. Things feel so much better when you actually get sleep.

What pushed me to finish this blog post was a power cut a few days back. Turns out that disconnecting does work, just not if you have the ability to reconnect. ↩︎

Blog update pains

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 22:00:00 +0100

This blog post will not be updated to match the site in the future, any mention of how things are will remain that way.

Firstly, I made this blog with two key influences in mind:

Herman Martinus’ Bear Blog for it’s simple & lightweight ethos
InvisibleUp’s unique article banners featured with each post

I mentioned this prior in a now-deleted blog post. With that post now gone, I feel it’s best to publicly credit my influences again and this is the best post to do it in.

I made this blog because Enshittification is ruining all the platforms out there. The only way to escape it is to have my own place online, free from the issues these platforms constantly suffer from.¹

Now there’s a catch, I’m not a genius. My only experience of webdev was using Dreamweaver CS3 back in school. I knew about Static Site Generators, but I couldn’t wrap my head around them. Because of this, I always updated my blog manually with HTML like it’s still 1999, which was a nightmare.

Writing a blog post was easy, but getting it online was such an arduous task that it completely put me off writing. Something had to change. I needed to sit down and learn a Static Site Generator, or suffer.

I chose Hugo for one reason: everyone said it was simple and easy to learn. This was a lie. Hugo is hell to learn for the following reasons:

Documentation exists, but it’s nigh-incomprehensible for a newbie to digest.
Hugo is too versatile – there is no one way to do a task. This leads to each theme accomplishing the same thing with different methods, which doesn’t help new users figure out the best practices
90% of the help out there was on closed forum posts, with the only reply being from a moderator pointing someone to the documentation with no actual explanation

I don’t want to sound like I’m slagging off the people behind Hugo, it’s a great tool but as someone new to SSGs as a whole it’s practically impossible to understand. Every time I tried learning how Hugo worked I’d end up with a debilitating stress headache and exhaust myself from failure. Each time I’d quit on the verge of tears, time and time again.

Zachary Betz has a clear tutorial for making a Hugo blog from scratch, it’s solid, but not for me. I’ve nothing against the tutorial, but I struggle with bottom-up learning with anything hands-on. If you asked me to build a house, I’d learn more from taking one apart first.

What helped me the most was Jan Raasch’s Hugo Bear Blog theme – which cleanly recreates the look of Bear Blog. I meticulously dissected it to see what each building block did. At 2am on Sunday, neck deep in the partial HTML templates, something clicked.

I became The One

Even if I couldn’t explain with words or even comprehend it, I had an innate understanding of how every piece fit together, and I had the power to rewrite everything as I saw fit. There’s no more liberating feeling than the fire of discovery. In a state of pure flow I had to pry myself away from the laptop at 6am lest I wouldn’t sleep at all. All I wanted to do was scream at the world that I finally got it.

Upon waking I spent the entirety the day recreating my site in Hugo, setting it up in a way that all I’d have to do to make a blog post would be to write a Markdown file and make a banner image. If I wanted to change the core layout of the page, all I have to do is change a single HTML file. I can’t state how much time this will save in the future.²

On top of that I made a few changes to how the site looks to [hopefully] make it cleaner and easier to read. I’ve ditched Open Sans for Anek Latin, we have tags now, and the site should be readable for devices which don’t support WebP. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough for now.

But the pain of repeated failure, the countless headaches trying to understand how Hugo works. It’s finally worth it, and I think I’m just going to collapse in bed now.

Again I have to thank Jaan Raasch, whose Hugo theme was easy to understand. And I’ll apologise to him for absolutely butchering it to create this.

Namely login barriers, obnoxious cookie + mailing list banners, absurd page bloat, and advertisements. They’re all intrusive and make an otherwise decent reading experience a nightmare. ↩︎
I can. I made this footnote instantly. Also not having to faff about with the timecodes on the RSS feed is a lifesaver. ↩︎

Sometimes life is good

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Sat, 11 May 2024 03:40:00 +0100

The last time my old man saw the northern lights was 40 years ago. A humbling display that made up for the miles spent trudging through the coast of Norway.

Tonight we got to see it together, for 30 minutes. And all we had to do was look outside.

I didn’t have time to dig out my old camera and figure out how to actually use it, but my phone’s astrophotography feature isn’t too shabby.

It’s not unusual for folk in the north of Scotland to see the northern lights on occasion, but the middle of England? Unbelievable.

Now the pictures paint a lie, it was nowhere near as vivid in person and I’m sure my dad saw it better way back knee-deep in ice, but still, each streak of twilight was captivating in its own right. We just sat there in silence as the shards of light faded into a gentle fuzz.

Sometimes the world throws something at you that makes everything worthwhile.

Jobs, fear, and the precipice

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 14:35:00 +0000

I handed my notice in recently.

Unlike every other blog post which begins with that sentence, everything surrounding it has been amicable and mundane; I simply want to move onto something that’s more applicable to me¹. There’s no juicy tale of workplace treachery to be found here, just musings on my insecurities.

For the last few years the thought of leaving has been bubbling away in my head, but each time it was about to spill over it came up against one simple obstacle: fear. I’m a bloody anxious person, and I’ve stayed here longer than I ought to because after everything, working here was a known – thinking about what I’d do instead quickly became overwhelming.

It’s hard for me not to worry about it. The world’s a big place, unforgiving, and there’s no way to undo whatever choice you make. I’m that terrified of making further mistakes that I’ve ended up stuck in the same place for so long.

Now on the other hand comes stress, which I’m not good with.

I have a low stress tolerance and avoidance has been my strategy of choice all my life – it’s the path of no resistance and by far the most comfortable option. As amazing as it is for living without stress, it’s not viable for life. You get caught up in a vicious cycle as your tolerance to stress lowers with each moment of avoidance, and you quickly end up in an extreme rut where everything is mortifying.

It’s nice to treat yourself to it every now and then, but when things feel overwhelming it’s easy to let it take control of you.

Both of these issues mean that when push comes to shove… Well, I don’t bother pushing. If things are too much I just walk away, ignore them, and do what I can to never think of them again.

Cut back to me, my final day approaching rapidly. For the last year my need to do something better for myself has been stronger than my fears and external events have only solidified that I ought to do something else.

Now I don’t have another job lined up². To be brief I’m not skilled enough to get a great job, I ought to learn something so I have a chance of a decent life. And there’s only one thing which has ever interested me career-wise: working with computers. My biggest regret in life was not pursuing Computer Science at college, but at least I can rectify that now and hopefully find a decent gig with the following plan:

Get IT Certs + training
???
Profit

It’s a vague plan, sure, but it’s the only one I can think of.

Can I do that? Stick the landing and set myself a decent career that I care for? Sure. There’s a lot of things I’ve learned from osmosis from my closest friends and having an interest in the subject will make it easier. But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a chunk of my mind screaming at me to give up and lie in bed for the rest of my life.

I’m asking myself to take a step into the unknown, and to persevere with it no matter how much it worries me and stresses me out. And as excited as I pretend I am some days, deep down I’m scared.

My chest is getting tighter with each word so I’ll end it here. When that final day comes around, I think I’ll treat myself to a brief sabbatical – a few days to clear my head and relax before I take the next step forward.

Wish me luck.

I would say move on to something better, but I hate how it implies the place is terrible. ↩︎
I’ve never understood how can juggle training, certs, and getting a new job while currently working. The act of being at work for most of the day takes it out of me and the second I get home my brain shuts down into comfort mode. ↩︎

The best purchase of 2023

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 10:10:00 +0000

2023 was a good year for purchases (materialism ho!), I picked up a Steam Deck, built a new PC from scratch, and at one point I could nab a bag of sour cream pretzels for 50p. But none of them were as valuable as this:

To be fair, the pretzels were a close second.

This is a Kobo Libra 2, and it’s been serving me well for the last year. I don’t know how it compares to other e-readers, but for what I want – reading my offline e-book collection – it’s great.

For the longest time I thought I hated reading¹. For almost a decade after leaving school I read 5 books – around ½ a book a year. In 2023 alone I read 12, all because of how accessible an e-reader is.

I could blather on about how natural words look on an e-ink screen, etc, but a list will do.

Pros:

Can effortlessly drag & drop e-books from a PC via USB-C²
Matte screen = no blinding sun glare
Backlight not required
Insane battery life
Dark mode (depends on the model)
Built-in dictionary, bookmarks, and highlights
You can access your local library’s collection via OverDrive
Personal Privacy – no longer are you broadcasting what you’re reading to nosy cowowrkers
You don’t get the feeling of dry pulp scratching your fingers

Cons:

E-ink displays aren’t responsive, making tasks like typing a struggle
Anything not formatted as basic text tends to break
PDFs are supported, but the lack of proper controls make them a pain to use
Kobo will force you to make an account to use it, even if all you do is load offline files to it. There are ways to get around this requirement, but really our devices should be free to use from the get go.
Doesn’t smell like a book

Now regardless of the cons, I’ve found reading with my e-reader to be a pleasant experience. And to anyone considering picking one up, just do it. If you’re anything like me you’ll quickly fall in love with it!

Online flamewars don’t count as proper reading. ↩︎
Instead of dragging & dropping you should really use Calibre – it’s an amazing piece of software to organise, edit, and transfer your e-book collection with. Don’t forget to convert books to .KEPUB! ↩︎

Why young people hate phone calls

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 19:15:00 +0000

tl;dr: Having information in text means:

You can edit & refine it before sharing
It provides a clear record of what was said instead of relying on human memory
The information sent is verbatim and unchanged by human & technological filters

I’m what folk call a Zillennial, which means I’m not quite a Millennial and not quite Gen Z. But it gives me a unique position where I can talk on behalf of the ‘young people’ plaguing your workplace.

So I’m going about my day, neck deep in a task which demands continued concentration – concentration that’s broken when a little alarm on the desk starts screeching out, letting me know that someone in the world finally wants me. Regardless of how important the current task is, the pressure put on me to answer calls ASAP means I have to throw everything away to pick up the phone.

I have a few seconds to check who’s calling but despite advances in Caller ID systems, they’re still useless; leaving me with no idea who’s on the other side. It could be a colleague, a boss, some random member of the public with an overinflated idea of what the company does, or a robot. Not even a cool robot.

Usually it’s a colleague, and when the meandering pleasantries are over and done with we get to what this call is all about: information.

For something immediately ‘actionable’ a phone call is fine, but more often than not I’m recited the entirety of War and Peace with the expectation I’ll memorise every line. Unfortunately I don’t have a tape recorder installed in my brain so I have to take notes. But writing takes time, so I have to mentally compress everything so I ca- Christ they’ve managed to change the topic twice now and I’ve only written a single line.

As I scribble away, what little mental energy I have left is focused on mumbling mmh at every moment of silence, just so they know I’m still here. Meanwhile my attention is stretched thin in a mental triathlon, jumping between listening, compressing, writing, and replying. I don’t think I’m actually paying attention to what’s being said, assuming I can actually hear them.

You see (or hear), parsing words over the phone is a bloody nightmare. Despite over a century of technological advancements, phone calls still sound terrible. Cheap microphones and speakers lead to the most tinny voices crackling out from the other end, exacerbated by the spottiest network signals known to man. Understanding such digitised screeches might just be manageable if you work in a quiet office, but as if I’d ever have that luxury.

Unable to hear what they say, I ask them to repeat it. And again. And again. Asking another time is social suicide, so I take a deep breath and pretend I fully understand everything that’s been asked of me. It’s all a little overwhelming and to avoid further awkwardness I end the call as fast as possible.

Oh yeah, you bet I’m allowing social embarrassment to completely trump reason.

When the call is over, what I’m left with is a bastardised copy of the original information – a scrap of paper filled with arcane scribbles resembling the Zodiac letters. It’s a bloody miracle if I can figure out what I’ve wrote down, let alone what was asked of me. Inevitably I take a deep breath, ringing them up again to clarify everything. It’s horribly inefficient.

All of this could’ve been avoided if they just sent me an email instead.

… Oh, and what was I doing before the phone rang?

The issue with phone calls is that what you say goes through multiple technological and human filters to the point where it’s easy for the other person to end up with an incorrect, incomplete, or impermanent record of what was said. All of this could be avoided if information was sent over an email instead.

Having that written record of what you said lets folk view it as intended and refer back to it later. And unlike the sporadic nature of talking, the act of writing/typing gives you time to edit and refine what you want to say clearly before you send it, and also allows you to format it in ways to make it clearer (be it using bold/italic text, lists, etc).

But why do my younger coworkers/relatives/friends/etc hate making phone calls as well? Why do they do everything in their power to not call their coworkers/doctor/bank/[whoever young people are supposed to call]? It’s much the same:

Unlike talking face to face, talking over the phone removes all visual social cues making it more difficult for some people to navigate conversations.
You remove doubt and anxiety when you’re not limited to the words that come out of your mouth in the moment. Being able to refine exactly what you want to say makes for a more comfortable experience.
You don’t have to put everything else aside for a long period of time. Unlike waiting for a phone call or being put on hold (or worse: stuck in an automated phone menu), you can focus on a myriad of other tasks while you wait for an email.
Written communication provides a direct record of what’s been said, allowing us to accurately look back on it in the future.
Not everything is urgent. There are many things people could email about and wait for, but often the chance to do so doesn’t exist.

“But what about online voice chats and video calls?” you might ask. That’s slightly different.

Often the frequency range of online calls is much larger than that of a usual phone call, allowing for voices to come through clearer; furthermore microphones and earphones you can connect to a computer sound miles better than the tiny ones found in phones – and being able to change the volume of each device is a godsend. And for video calls, being able to see the other person and their visual cues can make a massive difference.

On top of that every online voice chat program includes a way to contact someone through text, allowing you to check if they available for a call before organising one. It’s polite, and your brain notices how polite it is when given the option – unfortunately it’s not an option with phone calls. Maybe those young ‘uns are onto something.

At the end of the day we’ve grown up in a world with more ways to communicate, and we’ve simply settled with different means than generations before, filled with our own customs and norms. We’ve settled into ways we believe are more efficient and less stressful to navigate through, and I don’t see us changing our minds in the future.

It’s not that we hate talking, far from it. It’s that we’re living in a world which refuses to catch up.

2023 in review

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 19:15:00 +0000

2023 was certainly a year. Our Prime Minister got fined for not wearing a seatbelt, Paul O’Grady’s passing left millions of dog lovers and radio fans mourning, and shortly after some bloke got crowned king in a ceremony full of high-definition horse manure. The long-running series of Governmental cock-ups continued as they lost more seats and dithered from crisis to crisis, the usual. Also the F-22 got it’s first air-to-air kill against a balloon of all things.

At the halfway point we all became submarine experts, Barbenheimer took the internet by storm until corporations tried to be funny and Hollywood writers went on strike probably in retaliation. The Beatles released their final song until the next one comes along, David Tennant returned briefly to Doctor Who, and I couldn’t think of any news from December to put here (E3 being officially over feels too lacklustre, even for this).

Reddit, after going public, decided to axe it’s free API promise which killed off all the good mobile apps and led to an exodus from the site – but in their hopes to get the coveted digital service cock-up of the year award they were swiftly beaten by Elon Musk. In a dramatic move he finally renamed Twitter to Formerly Twitter, and in a desperate attempt to keep money flowing in told advertisers to go fuck themselves. 🤔

Google, deciding that having the largest market share of internet browsers, search engines, and phone operating systems wasn’t good enough, tried to wrangle more power from the web with a dodgy DRM system they realised nobody actually wanted. They also tried blocking ad blockers on YouTube. Ad blockers just got better.

All throughout this the continued push in AI brought forth major strides in image and text generation, yet as a Language Model I am unable to discuss such a topic in the form of a ‘quirky and engaging blog post’.

Myself? Same old. Started some naff blog, bought a Steam Deck, went through the install Linux on a ThinkPad rite of passage, said goodbye to my old desktop as I built a new one (RIP R9 390). Finally caught Covid, one tooth removed, went on antidepressants twice, GPs proved to be as useless as ever, life goes on xx

The stats

1 new website
14 blog posts
5 years of sobriety
12 books read
20 games I purchased on sale and never played
1 extremely sleep-deprived article pitch to The Guardian which they didn’t respond to because ~~the liberal agenda fears me~~ ~~it had no typos~~ it was bad.
11 times my gay cat caught something (not including fleas)
Word of the year: Meandering
Favourite game: Super Metroid

Blog posts wot didn’t make the cut

Recapturing imagination – Lamenting the loss of my childhood imagination, I went on a journey to seek it back. I fizzled out after a few weeks.
When search engines don’t search [what you want] – A quick dive into search engines being useless on a whim. And advertisements.
Learning to love Linux – Repetitive. A lot of things worked until they didn’t until I tried Kubuntu.
[something about declining political standards] – Everyone thinks they’re a pundit.
Why are lights so bright? – Every device has a retina burning LED, adding resistors costs money, and I simply didn’t get around to fleshing it out
People to send straight to hell – “Satirical” list of minor actions & behaviours that ought to immediately sent people to eternal damnation.

That about wraps it up, ignoring everything I missed. Hopefully 2024 is better xoxo

Olive

What I miss about pandemic life

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 19:10:00 +0000

With the WHO declaring that Covid is no longer a global emergency, we’ve quickly been pushed back to life as it was before the pandemic, with barely a thought given to what things were like for a few years.

Life was in no way a fun jaunty romp, but when I look back I find myself amazed at how we acted back then – and how in some ways we’ve went back.

1) We did away with handshakes for a bit

Does anyone really like handshakes? The awkward dance of meeting eyes, guiding hands without vision with no clue as to how firmly to grasp (and the uncomfortable moment when you squeeze down on the limpest hand known to man). The shaking of hands staining your palm with thick layers of oil and grease and leaving you waiting until it’s socially acceptable to run to the nearest sink to scrub your hands clean… I can’t be doing with it.

With the pandemic came the novel introduction of the Elbow bump, the bumbling alternative that turned you to a drunken duellist, slowly leaning in with a cumbersome thrust. Whilst more time-consuming, it eliminated the problem of oh god I hate touching people’s hands, and the embarrassment of touching elbows was mutual.

For me, the gold standard remains the Fist bump. Quick, efficient, minimal. Keeps respect while acting casual. Perfect.

2) Going the distance (all of 2 metres)

Last week while shopping I noticed something odd by my local’s checkouts – ancient markings 2 metres apart, faded relics from when Covid run rabid guiding us to where to stand. My trance was broken as the bloke behind me coughed on the back of my head. Bit rude. No need to squeeze in so tight mate.

Health aside, the fact that you didn’t have to defend your personal space from some folk was a godsend.

3) The Cleansing of the Ads

For whatever reason, the first year and a half of the pandemic killed all physical advertising in my area, and it was blissful. No longer was I assaulted with a kaleidoscope of jarring colours and bright shapes telling me how my life was shit because I haven’t bought an assortment of products and services – and it’s funny how hunger wasn’t an issue on my commute when massive displays of food suddenly disappeared.

I’d do anything to have that back. Life without advertising is so much calmer on my eyes, and as garish displays returned to plaster every square inch of space I’ve found myself frustrated at how they pry my attention away from the world. We could all do without such visual pollution.

4) Less litter. Littler litter. Words.

There’s nothing as lush as the British outdoors, a grand canvas adorned with every shade of green, adored.

Unfortunately wherever you go there’s a mobs of littering gits who’ll find any excuse to fill hedgerows with whatever they can’t be arsed to put in their pockets. With less of them going out and spoiling the outside world, the state of Britain’s nature pathways were a sight to behold. Who let them know the pandemic was over?

5) All in it together*

Stuck in our fast & fractured worlds, we all run about our daily lives isolated from each other’s struggles. Covid swiftly got in the way of that, and as we were put under lockdown there quickly became one unifying truth about the pandemic: life is shit now, or at least more than usual.

There was no avoiding it, and when the bog roll battle royale simmered down the state of life eventually brought people closer together (safely within 2m of each other). Empathy rode up to new heights as we got past the initial waves of stress, and no longer did people judge one another for the states of their lives or for being behind. You could be living in a tip and it didn’t matter, everyone else might as well have been too.

Unfortunately, not everyone was in it together. But unlike day-to-day life where we’re apathetic towards those in powers flaunting the rules and too burnt out to be outraged, when we found out that prominent politicians were breaking rules (that they themselves had drawn up!), we were rightfully furious. Why should we sacrifice this much if you can’t show the most basic respect for us?

The fury could be heard from the heavens as story after story leaked out to the press, and such cases kicked off the downward spiral of multiple political careers – thinking about those figures sweating like pigs in front of an angry public is still cathartic, but we must be careful. As we’ve returned to normal we’ve slipped back into general apathy at the state of things; and worse, we’ve became complacent at a media industry gifting such disgraced figures free PR via juicy reality TV gigs.

But politicians aside, I’m thankful that the widespread acceptance of mental health issues has managed to stick around.

6) washing hands holy moly

genuine question: how do you forget about washing your hands after doing it for two years straight??? Mental.

Childhood Bullying III - Things Left Unsaid

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 21:05:00 +0000

Part two

When it comes to writing, if I can’t keep things concise, I like to keep them entertaining. Unfortunately childhood bullying doesn’t lend itself well to either of these goals, much more when it remains such a raw topic to me.

Whilst I’ve already dedicated two posts to the topic, I still have a few things which I either failed to mention, or felt didn’t fit in with either post. With it being a few days since I powered through writing those posts, I’ve had some much needed distance to calm down. Hopefully it makes for an easier read.

I will note though, it’s important to talk about it. Even if this serves no practical use in the real world, I still feel a need to put it out there.

In the real world, I struggle with the thought of being known or remembered. As mentioned before, being bullied is a humiliating stain on your existence, and the fact that others must remember what I became because of it… It hurts. I wish I could hide it, and to erase any knowledge of myself. I hold a lot of shame. Every time I curled up crying, every angry outburst. Even though I had little in the way of emotional control back then, I’m still weighed down with regret.

I’m scared of contact from anyone who might have known me. I despise using my actual name, and I fear for a future where it ends up online attached to my current self. The option of changing my name via deed poll is a valid option, but I can’t begin to think of a different name to go by, let alone change my name on every service I use!

This has also affected what I do online. I see so many developers and artists put out the most amazing work under their real name, and I’m shocked. There’s absolutely no way I could ever attach my real name to something I put out there because of my fear of being found – and I forget that it’s not normal to feel this way.

I try not to pine over what ifs, there’s no better way to break a man’s soul than to show him what he could’ve been, but it’s hard not to think about. How can’t you when you’re that anxious about life and you feel inherently wrong about existing?

I find it hard to deal with media that brings back thoughts about bullying. I refuse to listen to songs on certain albums because it might share the name of someone who made my life hell.

And despite my love of the Back to the Future series, it’s only recently that I noticed why I feel so conflicted watching it as an adult: the whole series is about standing up for yourself. It’s hard to watch those films and feel okay afterwards knowing that I never did when I was younger. That I might as well remain a failure because of it.

There is one film that very briefly touches on the subject of bullying and that’s The World’s End (2013), the final film in Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy. Spoilers ahead.

Eddie Marsan plays the role of Peter Page, a meek bloke who upon returning to his hometown comes across someone who bullied him relentlessly throughout childhood. He’s immediately anxious when he notices his old bully, quietly confiding in his friends about it. Much like other aspects of the film, it’s sudden, it’s raw, and it gets to me.

Later on in the film, the bully confronts Peter with a smile, apologising for what he did. Peter is immediately petrified by the encounter, but doesn’t remotely consider accepting the apology before taking the chance to knock the bully to the floor, letting out all of his anger with each blow to the head – and eventually he devolves into mindless screaming as he smacks the bully senseless with a tree branch.

Honestly it’s hilarious, but the tragedy is that such a reaction is far too real. I know that if I was confronted with someone I used to know, I’d freeze as all the feelings would rush back to me. If I lashed out at them I doubt I’d come out on top, but I’m sure that I’d be little more than an incoherent screaming mess.

I wish I could conclude all of this better, but I can’t, it’s that much of a mess. Even though it’s a part of my history, it’s made me who I am today, and I have to carry that weight.

Childhood Bullying II – Aftermath

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 21:25:00 +0000

Part one

With it being a decade since I was last at school, you’d think I’d be over it. Sometimes I think I am.

And then I dream.

I’m suddenly back at school, or a face I had forgotten comes back to me, and it all comes back: the powerlessness, humiliation, the anger that someone could hurt me so much for kicks – and finally the horror that I’m unable to stop them. Everything comes back. Not even waking up removes the fear, as I spend the rest of my day trying to keep my composure together.

All it takes is the smallest reminder and the pain rushes back as if I was there again, and it shows how much it destroyed me. It tells me who I am, reminds me that I’m weak, anxious, and ready to crumble at the slightest struggle.

Everyone’s heard the what doesn’t kill you platitude. It’s not true. If I was strong I wouldn’t be bothered by what happened ages ago, and I wouldn’t be left with this lasting fear of existing in the real world.

I’m a shell of a person. When I was young I found out that the best way to cope with everything was to isolate, and a flickering screen was more inviting than the people out there. That preference became a habit, and to this day I struggle with existing in the real world. Every time I’ve taken steps to regain a semblance of normality or confidence, things would swiftly collapse and leave me off in a worse state – and after a short time this became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When I step out in the world, it’s immediately obvious to others that I’m different – wrong – on some level. Childhood bullying scars you, it paints a target on your back that’s apparent to others and most noticeable to those who can capitalise on it. There’s no escaping it.

If there’s one thing that’s stuck with me over the years, it’s anger. Anger at those who had no right to harm me, at myself for never fighting back, and at adults who neglected their duty of care – especially those who knew was going on yet did nothing.

And finally my anger lands at society, that big amorphous blob which shapes everything around us and how it makes us view bullying. How it’s shameful to have been bullied. How it’s easier to ignore such a problem than deal with it. How we say boys will be boys to cover up, dismiss, and outright excuse pain willingly inflicted on others.

Have you ever stopped and looked at the word bullying?

It’s a silly word. It’s harmless, inane. It doesn’t remotely convey the acts which can constitute it, if anything the word bullying actively ridicules and diminishes the act altogether.

We recognise that assault, threats, stalking, theft, and harassment are extremely harmful acts – we literally have laws against these – yet labelling it as bullying makes it trivial, something minor to be glossed over. If we said that a child committed premeditated assault against a peer, we’d rightly be horrified. Calling it bullying undermines the serious nature of such acts, letting it be swept under the rug.

We trivialise the harms of bullying by calling it that, tacitly telling victims that it’s silly to be in pain over it. It’s the norm to dismiss and humiliate those who who were bullied, and there’s no big push to re-examine this norm.

The effects of childhood bullying are well known: increased rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide. And the effects live long into adult life. Yet there’s no big push to eliminate it or the stigma of being bullied.

When speaking up leads to ridicule, it’s no wonder we choose to suffer in silence.

For the longest time I’ve avoided talking about bullying due to the shame of it. Writing this and putting it up in a public space is daunting, but there’s no other way I can get it out there.

I’m a broken adult, wracked with crushing anxieties about life due to my experiences around others at school. Even if the last years of Secondary got better and College was a blast, it doesn’t make up for an entire childhood where I was never safe around others.

I struggle with existing, with being me, putting myself and my work out there in the wider world. I struggle with being a bloke and fitting around others. I hate having existed and being remembered to the point where I hate to use my real name – the moments where I can forget who I am are bliss. If there was a painless and instant way to give up I would have done it years ago.

At the start of this year, I decided to do something to absolve me from the pain I carry – I mentally forgave everyone who wronged me. It was nice, and a few months I managed to feel comfortable with being me in the world.

And then I dream.

How can I forgive those who hurt me so much?

Part three

Childhood Bullying I – Experiences

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 21:20:00 +0000

This June marked 10 years since I left school.

I was the weird kid. I don’t know if I was innately weird, or if years of bullying turned me that way. Either way growing up wasn’t fun.

When I was 7 years old my family had to move across the country, I landed in a new school at the point where friendships and social dynamics were ironed out – if it wasn’t apparent that there was no room for me, my new classmates would make sure I knew.

I was a sensitive lad, as if being the new kid wasn’t enough to lock me out. It wouldn’t take much for me to cry and when the rest of the class found that out my life was over. Barring two lads, every boy in that class swarmed me in an instant, and daily life became one of punches and bruises – boys goading one another to see who could make me break down the quickest. I’d be lucky if I could go a day without having a small mob actively going out of their way to harass and assault me – I became a valid target of aggression, and nothing was off-limits.

Swiftly it became part of class culture that I wasn’t equal, and the fact I was lesser permeated every aspect of school life. Anything to be shared wasn’t passed on to me, my possessions became anyone’s possessions, and my existence was only acknowledged when I was to be laughed at. There were no qualms about whether it was right to hurt me – to them it was entertainment like any other.

I can’t describe what being in a hostile environment like that does to a young mind, ‘soul-destroying’ doesn’t remotely cover it. Whatever social skills I had were pummelled out of me to the point where during one day of humiliation, all I could scream through confused tears was “Why are you laughing at me?” at a crowd of goading onlookers – that plea as a desperate, damaged boy was mockingly echoed back at me for the rest of my life.

Isolation became my only solace on the playground. The good days consisted of spending my breaks idly pacing with my face pointing down and being left alone – but that would never stop anyone from approaching me to cause harm. There was never a safe moment on the playground, and I don’t have the words to convey what that did to me.

I was only 7 years old. No-one had the right to lay a finger on me.

I was always the kid who followed rules at school, I believed that they were unbreakable tenets of life which would come around to protect me. That, and a fear for getting into trouble meant that when I was told that I shouldn’t get into fights and to tell a teacher if someone was harassing me. As other victims of childhood bullying will tell you, that did nothing solve the problem. On a good day a teacher might get a crowd of lads to pack it in for 10 minutes, but the second backs were turned I’d be kicked to the floor again.

I remember one December day with heavy snow. The staff decided to let us enjoy the magic. A school-wide snowball fight was arranged on the field, and the playground was reserved for those who didn’t want to participate; knowing I’d be chased around and have snow piled in my face and shoved down my clothes, I stayed in the safe zone surrounded by teachers – Not that it stopped anything. One of the teachers had the nerve to say it couldn’t have happened, as if my clothes were bone dry before them.

Staff neglecting their duty of care was common throughout my school life, and I cannot express my pain over it.

I was 9 now. My parents were increasingly distraught over the fresh bruises I’d return home with, and while I can’t remember if I told them what happened, I know that a single dinner lady blew the whistle to them. It wasn’t long before my mum witnessed me one day being punched to the ground moments after dropping me off at the playground – she immediately stormed back in, raising hell at nearby teachers for ignoring it before dragging me back home in tears.

The next day my parents had a meeting with the headmistress, wherein she finally admitted that there was a problem with bullying and said she’d do whatever she could to prevent it – aside from remove those who purposely and repeatedly assaulted me. My parents weren’t buying it, and I was taken out of that school.

I was moved to another primary school a mile away. It would’ve been nice, but I was already a broken, different child. All it took was for a single boy to cotton on to it before it all started again. What didn’t help was that the school was still local, many of the kids knew those from my old school and it wasn’t long before I was asked were you the boy who… Followed by a painful memory.

The bullying here started again. It was smaller in scale, less physical but more social. There was one boy in particular who’d assault me during certain games so that when I’d go to a teacher about what he was doing, the easiest option would be to ban the game altogether – dodgeball in particular. I remember him using that as an excuse to repeatedly pelt me in the face even if I wasn’t part of the game, and he gleeful that he could pin the blame of it being banned on me.

One clear memory is that the new school’s playground was in the shape of a horseshoe around the main building, with a little connecting path off-limits for pupils. One day I was ‘it’ for hide and seek, up against the rest of my class, bar a single girl. It wasn’t long before I spotted them all bundled together – with one of them making eye contact with me – before running off. I gave chase, stopping before the path we were banned to go on. Tracking all the way back around I noticed the same happen, the rest of my class huddling back down the off-limits path, pretending they weren’t spotted. I approached a member of staff about them going down the banned path (again, I was a kid who always followed and respected rules), but they shrugged it off and asked how they could stop so many of them going down that class.

Returning inside and talking to my teacher, he wasn’t having it. He went out of his way to confront the rest of the class when break ended. Funny how their laughs suddenly stopped.

All I can think about was the one girl who was kind enough not to join in.

Secondary school wasn’t fun either. Kids from both the primary schools were part of it, and they spread things about me to the rest of the kids around the school. It wasn’t quick before they all cottoned on. The first few years were hellish.

It was at secondary where I found myself blowing up. I was irritable and quick to anger at the smallest of provocations, and I still hate myself for it.

I find it difficult to talk about what happened. All I’m thankful for was that my head of year changed in year 9, from an English teacher who laughed at my parent’s concerns to a Geography teacher who took my safety seriously. He stuck his head out to get me help, and arranged for in-school counselling and anger management during the rougher times.

Secondary school slowly got better as folks matured and I learned how to cope better. When I moved on to college – far away, with completely new people – I found myself surrounded by other self-prescribed weirdos, many of whom faced the same as I did. They were a wonderful bunch, and for the first time in my life I felt comfortable, safe, and that life could actually be wonderful.

How long did I have to wait for just a moment of peace?

Part two

The Thinning of the Hair

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 17:10:00 +0000

I had a lovely conversation with my mother this week. I can’t remember what on Earth we were blabbering on about, but as I knelt down to give one of the dogs a hug, she shrieked something unforgettable: Your hair is thinning!

I couldn’t tell who was more shocked: my mum at the sight of my head, or myself. Especially when I’ve been buzzing my head for years now. It’s not like I still have the wild mop I had as a teen!

Growing up, baldness was always my very own sword of Damocles. My old man is bald, every male on his side of the family is bald, and as my brothers hit their twenties it became apparent they wouldn’t have their cranial insulation for long, and I was soon to follow.

In 2019¹ I got the clippers out and took the plunge for some daft reasons: I was fed up of maintaining my hair, and going to the barber’s is a pain. A weekly one and done took less effort, was much cheaper, and hey it turns out I look good without hair. Hell, I even picked up a safety razor for when I want to get closer.

Now I get it, baldness is scary. Despite the amount of bald folk out there, there’s still a ton of prejudices against it. It also sucks to have a core part of your identity and the way people perceive you be snatched from you without control. It’s okay to feel vulnerable about your hair, and I know how useless it is for me to say I just buzzed it mate simple.

Despite my hair not getting longer than 4mm these days, there’s still a hint of worry about my hair thinning. While I have no interest in returning to my teen mop, there’s something disconcerting about the fact that eventually I won’t be able to do anything with it, even if I don’t really want to. Could settle for a monk haircut at least.²

At the end of the day I’m not an authority on hair loss, not having to faff about with it is good enough for me. The only downsides I can come up are that my ears are marginally colder in winter and sticking your head out a car window doesn’t feel as satisfying.

And with all that said and done, if the fates wish to take my goatee away they can pry it from my cold, dead ~~hands~~ chin.

For the sake of my ego I have to make it clear that this was January 2019, way before the Covid pandemic. I was so unique, and then everyone else did the same. ↩︎
During the writing of this, I found out that the monk haircut is called a Tonsure.`` ↩︎

The melancholy of file backups

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 15:30:00 +0100

After almost a decade of running my current desktop, I’ve hit the point where I ought to cut my losses and start with a fresh build for my needs rather than attempt upgrading. And with a prospective part list and a new build on the horizon, the bittersweet task of backing up files¹ and choosing what I want to carry on to a new computer rears its head once again.

Normally it’s fun, akin to a deep spring clean without the risk of backache, but this time around I found it a more sombre affair.

My current PC has been with me since my late teens, college, my brief stint at uni, and everything since. That part of life where you go ham with experimenting with new things, believing you know who you are, not knowing who you are, and trying to grasp at a sense of identity (something I still struggle with today). Every little project I worked on, each video, countless documents and silly little images I saved… And here I was determining what I wanted to keep.

During the time of owning this PC however, something else happened. Depression. And once more it reared its ugly head as I put countless old files to the side for keeping. As I manage data reaching back to my primary school days, one single intruding thought kept popping up throughout: why am I backing this up?

And to be frank I wish I had some thesis on why aside from I’ve always done this and it feels right. It’s one thing to back up old photos and videos, windows of the past, but computer files? Sure I didn’t save everything I did, but do I really need this 2D sprite I edited back in 2011..? Probably not. But it conveys a sense of self for the moment, and holds a slice of memory I would’ve otherwise forgotten, so it stays.

It’s weird how depression can grab you and your established principles and try to turn them upside down, but with any depressive thoughts, you can’t help but agree with them. No-one will care about this but you, it roars, if you die no-one will look at these files… And to be frank, yeah. I can trust my tech know-all brother to recover and be in charge of my backups if something ever happened to me, and I’m sure he’d add a small bunch of my files to his own backups, but then what? If anything happened to him, if anyone picked up his backup I doubt they’d keep my files, and by extension, me.

Depression aside, as I type this I can’t help but feel like a diminutive Ozymandias – Look upon my works, ye mighty, and I hope you find them as interesting and valuable as I did. Human nature though innit, wanting to be remembered and honoured after possible death.

Whilst I continue to go through a myriad of files and decide which ones I’ll bring along with me, the one thing that really spurred this dour mood was the art folder.

Younger me always wanted to be a digital creative, or at least he idolised them, or wanted the idolisation they received from others. During the period of owning this PC I got into digital 2D art, with the caveat being I didn’t focus on it – I never viewed myself as an artist, I was just some bloke with a graphics tablet who doodled things that’d make people smile or chuckle, and I was alright with that.

To me, artists create art and constantly refine their craft, I always defused myself by saying I was a fool who scribbled. But now, nothing.

Now as mentioned prior, depression and not having a sense of self isn’t the best thing. My time spent doing art online was spent changing focus and identities trying to figure things out – and inevitably after a certain point, none of them felt like me anymore, whatever me is supposed to feel like. These innate feelings of depression and identity are hard to translate.

Looking at the art folder, with plenty of subfolders based on the penname I was using, the platform I was on, names of people a distant memory who I drew things for… The fact that they’re all nought but digital ashes to the wider web (ironically aside from what others have backed up²) after all the passion I had at the time working on them… I can’t succinctly describe the feeling, but getting a look at these repeated glimpses of passion and hope from the past was heavy.

It’s been 7 months now since I last picked up my graphics tablet. Usually when I’d stop doing art, the calling to get back at it would be there after 2 months off. But since then? Not a peep from my mind. I can’t tell how much of it is me finally admitting I’m not a creative, or unmedicated depression once again getting in the way of things. Some days I miss the meditative hyperfocus art would bring on, but when you haven’t any idea of who you are or what you want to create, it gets a little hard to pick up the pen.

In the end, I did decide to backup all of my art.

Sorry this has been a bit of a downer.

As of writing this, I realise that my backups are far from formal. I can do better than a scattered bunch of files across Google Docs and some USB sticks, but that’s a blog post for another time. ↩︎
Around 5 years ago I doodled my tech-savvy brother while we doing a pub quiz. The scrap of paper didn’t survive the night, but all this time later he still uses a picture of the throwaway doodle as his profile picture, and it means a lot to me. ↩︎

Known to the State of California

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 12:20:00 +0100

I work with a lot of materials and substances which come with a warning saying that they have been found to cause cancer in California.

Thankfully, I don’t live in California.

A question for linguists

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 00:05:00 +0100

I’m not a linguist. I’d like to say I wish I was, but the thought of spending 4 years at university to call myself one isn’t too appealing. Still, I find linguistics interesting, and based on some observations in the last few years I’ve had something on my mind:

Is there a term for when a sudden cultural event highlights a relatively unknown word or term and cements it in everyone’s head – often to the point where the word is synonymous with said event?

My key examples:

Fracas – In March of 2015, Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson punched a producer in a dispute over food arrangements. When initially reporting on the matter, the BBC described the event as a “fracas”, leading to the entire population of the UK searching up a term they’ve never heard before.
Furlough – As the Coronavirus pandemic hit the shores of the UK, the government announced it’d be introducing a furlough scheme to help keep people paid. While thankful, the population still had no idea what it meant.

Lesser examples:

Bootstrap paradox – In a rather novel scene of Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi’s Doctor leans heavily on the fourth wall as he explains the concept of the bootstrap paradox, and outright tells the audience to Google it. They did.
Memes – This is cheating due to the way memes spread online, and it’s also harder to quantify considering how cyberspace doesn’t always influence the meat realm – obviously people exist in both, but LOLcats didn’t hold influence over meat world culture. But maybe it’s more applicable in cases like Among Us, which exploded in popularity in the height of the pandemic, and completely ruined the words sus and imposter¹ for zoomers worldwide.

God, Google Trends must be useful for you lot.

Anyway, I find it funny when a word suddenly becomes super popular, even if it doesn’t get used in regular vernacular. And I really want to know if there’s a term for it.

… And if there isn’t, dibs?

It seems that imposter is the preferred spelling for print media while impostor is preferred by those online. Weird innit? ↩︎

The GP phone call lottery

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 08:23:00 +0100

If you’re in the UK and you need to access medical help, you can do one of two things: for an emergency you call 999 or walk straight into A&E, and for anything else you ring your GP to get a doctors appointment. It’s a simple process, but in the wake of the COVID pandemic, it’s been buggered into a Kafkaesque circus known as the phone call lottery.

It’s a Wednesday, the day that things like to go wrong. You wake up and you feel odd. Different. Something’s not right and you want someone to check it out. Maybe you have difficulties moving your hand, maybe your mental health has taken a massive blow and you need something getting back on track, maybe it’s something you’ve been putting off seeing help for because you didn’t want to be a burden – No matter what, you decide that you need to see a doctor before it becomes a bigger problem.

So you look up your GP surgery online, when you check the contact page on their website a massive banner in all caps assaults you – they can’t sort out any appointments over email, you’ll have to call instead. That’s alright, thankfully you’re not the sort of person who gets anxious about making phone calls, so you grab your phone and punch in the number.

You swiftly get through to a receptionist. They bluntly inform you that all the appointments for the week have been booked, and that they’ll be opening up more on Monday. It’s alright, you think. It’s currently not a problem, I can wait a few days.

So you go through the rest of the week and before you know it Monday’s back again. When you have some free time at work you decide to ring your GP – you get through to the same receptionist who tells you that all the slots have been filled, and to call tomorrow at 08:30. It’s a tad annoying, sure, but waiting another day isn’t an issue.

Tuesday comes along quickly and at 08:30 you dutifully ring up. You’re greeted with a low quality voice recording informing you that you should only ring this early if you have an emergency, and to call at 10:00 if you don’t. You can’t tell if the sound you make is a groan or a sigh, but you guess it must be good that people who need urgent help can get it.

Before you know it you’re on the phone again. The same automatic message from earlier plays before you’re thrust into a mind-numbing phone menu. When pressing the button wot gets you an appointment, you’re promptly put on hold. Some faux-lounge feelgood piano piece crackles down the wire, assaulting your ears as you’re forced to listen out for someone to pick up. Your only saving grace is that it’s not Vivaldi’s Spring.

Eventually you make it through to the receptionist who starts prying into the issue you’re calling about – it’s supposed to be a policy to make sure you’re not a time-waster, but it feels like they’re looking for any excuse to drop you. After a solid interrogation you finally get the chance to ask for an appointment.

Due to the nature of your issue you ask to see a doctor in person, only to be told that they’re only taking appointments over the phone for the time being.

You ask when you’ll be able to see them in person. You’re informed that they don’t work at the practice, but instead bounce between different practices around the region each week – they’ll be back here in 3 weeks time. It’s a bit of a wait, but you ask the sensible thing: can I book an appointment for 3 weeks time?

The receptionist immediately shoots you down. They only open appointments for the next week.

At some point the endless hoops to jump through become exhausting and you simply give up on trying. Eventually you end up in A&E when the minor thing you wanted checking out became something major, leaving you wondering why you were denied access to a doctor in the first place.

It’s a sodding nightmare but it’s the reality of trying to get help nowadays, especially if your GP doesn’t offer a web portal to book appointments on. If I was able to simply email my practice and succinctly note what my issue was (rather than stumble over my words in a rushed phone call) and asked to be seen at any point in the next month, life would be easy.

I’m not a genius who can fix the problem, just someone who’s practically given up on their health because of all of this.

It wasn’t always this way, most of the time you could ring whenever and get an appointment in the next 7 days, but chronic underfunding, COVID, and an increase of workload & patients left a lot of practices on their knees – with a good chunk of doctors figuring they could live a less stressful life if they just quit. I don’t think I can really fault them.

A while ago I stumbled upon a 2005 episode of Question Time wherein Tony Blair (holding my tongue) faced a crowd who were suffering from a Labour policy gone awry: Blair’s government set a target that people shouldn’t have to wait more than 48 hours for a GP appointment, and GPs followed it to the letter. People were complaining that they couldn’t get an appointment a few days away. As someone stuck in this phone call lottery hellscape, it seems insane that it used to be possible to see a doctor so quickly.

While rewriting this, a coworker with a long-lasting issue got a call from his doctor to make an appointment. He rang his GP immediately and like clockwork, was asked to call again at 08:30. You couldn’t make it up.

When 'action roguelike' doesn't fit

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 17:49:04 +0100

Video game genres can be a tad awkward. While basic terms like First-person shooter and Platformer are serviceable for many games, we live in a world where increasingly wilder games are releasing faster than we can apply descriptive genres to them.

If you’ve kept an eye on trending Steam games in the last year, you may have noticed the likes of Vampire Survivors, Brotato, and Boneraiser Minions popping up and immediately capturing a significant audience, and having recently kicked my addiction to them it’s easy to see why: They’re extremely simple to pick up, and they don’t require you to put aside much time or effort to enjoy a round or two.

The crux of these games is that you select a character with a unique weapon or ability, walk around an enclosed space while your character automatically attacks incoming enemies, and along the way you build up an arsenal of additional weapons and abilities to try and survive the increasing swarms. The more you play, the more characters and items you unlock for next time.

Often they are plopped into the genre of ‘Action Roguelike’, with Roguelike referring to games which incorporate aspects of the original Rogue - usually permanent character death, procedurally generated levels, and a roster of unique weapons & items to help you on your journey. It’s a somewhat loose term but looking at the Steam page for Roguelikes will give you the gist of what people constitute as one. But these recent games with automatic attacks, static maps, and semi-Bullet Hell gameplay don’t really fit the genre.

So here’s my alternative:

AAARSE

Automatic Attacks, ARena with Swarming Enemies.

I feel this term is succinct, memorable, and better describes this new genre of games.

Regarding Twitter

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 18:00:00 +0100

You’ve all read long-form posts and threads about Elon Musk’s takeover of and subsequent failures with Twitter, so I’d rather keep this relatively short.

Twitter blew up as a unique and extremely simple microblogging site, its lightweight and casual approach made it a great tool for keeping up with friends and sharing things on a whim. But the thing which propelled Twitter to astronomical heights was the adoption of it by institutions and organisations.

Government departments, news outlets, companies, brands and their associate support teams, museums, charities. That only scratches the surface but such institutions suddenly had an accessible public face to interact with the public. No longer did you have to scour through website pages to find anything new, you just hopped on Twitter, found the verified group you were looking for, and everything was just there.

Looking on, eyes bulging with imagined riches, lied Elon Musk. How prestigious would it be to control a ~400 million user strong platform which world governments flock to. And with no consideration for responsibility or user safety he went ahead with buying it, tried getting out of buying it, and has since started running it to the ground.

But the worst part of all of this?

There was seemingly no oversight.

There was no-one to level with or rein back the new CEO, no continuation plan, the website, service, and most importantly the staff in the company are held hostage to the whims of an impressionable manbaby who won’t take no as an answer. The omnishambles surrounding the removal of the legacy verification tick and introducing the $8/mo Twitter Blue tick is the epitome of his management – with Musk only going back on aspects of it when the rapid wave of impersonation damaged him.

Musk’s entire endeavour wasn’t about improving the platform, or incorporating it into his idea of an “everything app”. Really, this was all in the name of vanity; the world’s richest man wanting to hoard a platform’s success all to himself, to be adored for it. You see it in how he only seems to respond to the Blue Tickers (when not tacitly endorsing limiting democratic rights).

In the offline world, your favourite teenage hangout spot could randomly be removed from you and blocked off, and online we see the same happening (a cold but necessary reminder that things don’t last forever). It’s a bit mopey when it’s some faceless corporate monolith taking that spot and ruining it, but there’s something worse knowing that any driven individual with more money & ego than sense could snatch it up a moment’s notice.

Dear iPhone users – addendum

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 12:31:00 +0100

Original post here.

Rumours, hoaxes, conspiracy theories. Like many other teens who grew up on the internet, that part of the web has always captivated me – the hushed tones, fighting the power, uncovering the REAL truth. The subculture of secrets is hard not to find fascinating. ¹

As I grew up with that seedy underbelly running parallel to everything around me, one thought became lodged my brain: What sort of bollocks could I get people to believe?

And as I stand here, having complained about default iPhone ringtones, I have a question:

Could I create a hoax to make people change their ringtone?

Firstly, how?

I can’t purport to be an expert on hoaxes and conspiracy theories, but I believe you’d need a demographic of believers – you want those who are paranoid, reactive, prone to exploding at perceived sleights, and who’ll do anything to protect friends & family. And there’s one demographic who fits that to a tee:

Facebook mothers.

Oh Facebook mothers, how I love you. The neurotic blob keeping local Facebook communities alive with constant concerns about weird people walking about and odd looking vans.

So the hoax idea? It’d have to hit what gets to them the most: Strangers, lawbreakers, sob stories. And it’d have to be presented in a way that would appear as if came from one of their own:

A doctored image by yours truly. To those outside the UK this is exactly what Facebook mothers are like

I feel like all I’d need to do is post a doctored conversation image like this (stay safe hun xx) to a local group and then wait for it to propagate. If I was dedicated I could post about it to multiple local groups repeatedly under sockpuppet accounts. Then I make fake celebrity social media posts about it, create doctored images of news websites, call in to local radio & daytime TV shows to warn people about it and–

The responsible, adult part of my brain steps in. This is disinformation, plain and truly, and it absolutely goes against my values.

Yet on the other hand, there’s a part of my brain that still thinks I’m 16. Indestructible, untouchable, infallible. It chimes up to remind me that it’s still a totally cool idea, and it’s not that harmful. It’s not like you’re pushing something that’ll generate a hate mob or get kids to drink bleach, and it could actually work!

It’s an odd square to circle. Even if 16yo me brain says wot if it worked and you got to write a mediocre Guardian article about it, we’ve all seen how even with the best intentions lies & hoaxes have spread further beyond their aims and caused more harm than imaginable.

That, and it’s easier to just remind someone repeatedly that changing their ringtone could make life better.

You can relax by the way, I don’t think that bottled water a ploy to control birthrates, or that Martin Clunes is the devil. ↩︎

Dear iPhone users

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 12:30:00 +0100

Dear iPhone users…

What if I told you there was a simple trick that would not just improve your life, but also improve the lives of everyone around you? Something you could do right away, with any mobile phone from the last 30 years.

Well this may be a surprise, but:

CHANGE YOUR DAMN RINGTONE

And while you’re at it, change your notification sound too.

I observe this daily: I’m sitting in the break room at work, then the familiar tones of the default iPhone ringtone blare out. Faces perks up, hands fumble in pockets, and then comes the obligatory utterance:

“Is that mine?”

Surely that says it all.

Cut the confusion and change your ringtone, it takes seconds in the Settings app. ~~Maybe load up your favourite song and set that as a ringtone, just be prepared to discover that Vanilla Ice hasn’t been the thing for 3 decades now~~¹

Or alternatively, keep your phone on vibrate instead.

… One of these days I’m going to hide a bluetooth speaker in the break room and play the default iPhone ringtone at random intervals until everyone sees the light.

This post is dedicated to my old man, who despite constantly having no clue if his phone is ringing or not, stands resolute and unwavering in the face of a solution that’ll clear all the confusion in his day-to-day life.

Addendum.

Apparently this is relies on buying song via iTunes or faffing about in Garageband?? On Android all you need to is an .mp3 file on your device. Mental. ↩︎

Hello world!

olive@callmeo.live (callmeolive) — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 15:29:00 +0100

If you’re reading this, we’re live. Or the rootkit you installed is letting you read this as I type it. Either way, hello!

Let’s see how long we can keep this going before it all comes crumbling down. <3

Alternative title: i am in way over my head

callmeolive

I'll never be satisfied with my blog

Bye-bye banners

Notes?

Thoughts on the future

Being enraptured by media as a child

Jungle Run

Doctor Who

Final Fantasy X

The Matrix

Ace Attorney

The World Ends with You

Pirates of the Caribbean

Doom (2016) – 10 years later

Doom, retro shooters, and me

Setting the stage for 2016

The Doom we never got

The big reveal

Marketing hell, doomed to fail

Welcome to Hell

A perfect prologue

Wot I think

Armoury

Monsters & fighting

Story & writing

Old staples

Artistry

The music

The other stuff

SnapMap

Multiplayer

Overall

Handedness and holding phones

Oh so you’re ambidextrous?

What does it mean to you?

Cross-dominance sucks

Writing with your left hand sucks

Cross-dominance is neat

Why are you Cross-dominant?

Phones

Phone apps

The best purchase of 2025

A wearable blanket?

A blanket you wear?

… Like the ones in those weird American infomercials?

Didn’t we find them ridiculous like 15 years ago?

How do you look in it?

Wasn’t last year’s best purchase also a blanket?

Have you considered that the cold weather during the end of the year unduly influences your pick for the best purchase?

Aren’t you concerned that this series of blog posts are contributing to the dire state of consumerism in society?

Isn’t March a little too late to post this?

Wouldn’t you be better off adding the purchase of the year to your yearly review posts?

Revisiting the Steam Controller

From chair to couch

The Steam Controller

What’s up with the trackpads?

And gyro?

Steam Input

Sharable controller layouts

Desktop mode

Wot I think

Would I recommend it?

Looking to the future

2025 in review

Wot happened this year

On tech and the web

Big tech & Trump

Can we sod off with AI

Web censorship ‘for the kids’

Silver linings

Life over here 🇬🇧

Personal stuff

The stats

Things wot I learnt

Blog posts wot didn’t make the cut

Highlights from around the web

Conclusion

Still yearning for perpetual August

Yearning for perpetual August

I miss the headphone jack