Sinead Harold

Recap | September 2025

8 October 2025 / Sinead / 2 Comments

Not the most interesting of months – my journal notes are mostly about errands, life-admin, and feeling a bit under the weather.

Fun

Games

For a couple of days I fell down a rabbit hole with Stonks-9800, and had much better luck than in the demo. My character is currently making ¥1 billion per month just on the dividends from their own company, plus hundreds of millions from rental income. So I’m throwing hundreds of millions at risky investments just because of their potential for 1000% returns, in a way that I feel morally weird about even though I’m entirely aware its fictional.

I started Borderlands 4 both in solo and co-op. For my co-op run with Danny, I’ve chosen Vex the Siren, mostly for her pet tiger. To explore solo, I’ve chosen Harlowe. I’m not expecting to finish my solo run, as I usually have a lot of trouble navigating around the maps in Borderlands. However, I have found the starting area of Kairos much easier to travel around than the starting areas of other games in the series, partly thanks to the green and sunny biome and partly thanks to being able to call up a glowing trail that points towards your pinned objective.

Destiny 2′s Ash and Iron update was … disappointing. The new activity, Reclaim, defaults to being a solo activity when launched directly from the quest, which is the worst way to play the activity. When me, Si, and Josh tried 4 of the “new” missions added into the default mission playlist, the “Portal”, only one of them worked well; the other missions had missing collectibles or time-limits that were impossibly short. The activities aren’t even new – they’re a mixture of recycled past missions and carved-out elements of old dungeons – so how can they come back broken?

Finally, I remembered that Splitgate had gone offline, so I launched it to check if anything was still left. Splitgate is less dead than most games that have their servers shut down, as the developers worked on ensuring create peer-to-peer matchmaking could run. (The article here about the server shutdown explicitly mentions the Stop Killing Games movement, which is cool). The core of the game is still there, stripped of the store, achievements, and any unlock criteria for items, and will be playable for as long as there are people who want to play.

Other

I’ve moved this site away from WordPress.com and onto BlueHost’s WordPress hosting. Eventually I’d like to have my own site in a more independent form, but I don’t know enough yet about how to do that, so my intention is to use WordPress-on-BlueHost as a transitional step.

Recap | August 2025

8 September 2025 / Sinead / 1 Comment

Fun

Music

The band that resurfaced in my brain this month was The Spill Canvas. Two of their albums – “Sunsets and Car Crashes” and “Gestalt” – are in a strange place for me: while I really like both albums, they were also part of the soundtrack to a very complicated time of my life. Most of the time they are just good albums that I enjoy listening to, but occasionally they become a stronger reminder of that time and catch me off guard. Luckily “One Fell Swoop” was not in the dysfunction-soundtrack and so is always enjoyable.

My only new album this month was the new Three Days Grace album, Alienation. Having both singers working together seems to be going well for them, and I prefer the new album to their last few releases. (One-X is still my favourite though.)

Other

At the start of August I went to UWE with Danny so that he could say goodbye to it and I could have a nostalgia-trip. While there were a lot of new buildings, and we explored areas that I had never seen before, such as the cottage-styled music-building with its own orchard, much of UWE was still familiar to me. Our visit led to some thought-provoking conversations and gave us both a lot to think about afterwards.

Finally, this isn’t really “fun”, but I hadn’t prepared a heading for it, so it can live here. At the start of August I wrote a letter to my MP with my concerns about how the age-verification aspect of the Online Safety Act is being implemented. I’m not sure if it will achieve anything, or will even be read, but I might as well try. (As of a month later, I’ve not had a reply except for the automatic confirmation).

Recap | July 2025

13 August 2025 / Sinead / 0 Comments

The middle of this month was more difficult than expected for me, as I became caught up in work-project-land and got too worried about things I couldn’t control and wasn’t supposed to be responsible for. This meant I spent a little too much time in my own head and so disconnected from the world a bit. For me that disconnection means my bad sense of time gets even worse, to the point of losing track of what day it is, or of what time I start/finish work even during that day. Giving reasonable estimates about tasks and deadlines around that is a bit of a challenge!.

Fun

Music

After thinking about it last month, I decided to order a CD player for more offline music listening, and chose a Discman (D131) due to my loyalty to Sony Walkman MP3 players. I had hoped to use it both with earphones and with my desktop speakers, but was concerned that it might make weird noises or lose volume control when plugged into my speakers. However, the Discman has the opposite problem; it works well with the speakers, but I cannot use it with earphones as the minimum possible volume is too loud.(Thanks, over-sensitive ears).

eBay also finally had a copy of a CD I had been looking for – Elva, by Unwritten Law. This album is not available digitally on Bandcamp or 7Digital, and every other time I’ve checked eBay there have been no UK-based copies available. My CD collection has now outgrown its storage in a slightly gravity-defying way, so I need to rethink where to store them, but that’s a problem for future-me.

Books

This month I re-read We Learn Nothing by Tim Krieder, and read The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green.
My favourite essay from We Learn Nothing is probably still the one which prompted me to buy the book in the first place, “The Busy Trap“, which talks about the way that many of us use being busy as a shield to guard against existential dread.

Explaining the premise of “The Anthropocene Reviewed” – author reviews various aspects of life and society on a 5-star scale – makes it sound like it will be shallow or flippant. That is not the case. Green’s essays are comforting and humanity-affirming, with the kind of warmth that reminds you that, despite everything, the world is full of pockets of beauty.

Pokémon Go-odbye

26 July 2025 / Sinead / 0 Comments

After 9 years of playing Pokémon Go at varying intensities, it is now Pokémon gone (the pun is obvious, but I had to take it!). While I enjoyed the game a lot during its early years, over time its frustrating or overly-monetised aspects overtook its enjoyable ones enough that playing it no longer made much sense.

Writing out my thoughts on deleting the game made me think more about “forever games”, and how weird it is that you can now measure the active life of major games beyond just “years” and instead into “meaningful fractions of a person’s lifespan”. I do wonder how that time-maths affects people’s decisions about what games they choose to keep playing, and whether it allows games to hold on to players through the sunk-cost-fallacy or through inertia to a greater extent than in the past.

But for now, here are more words than I expected about my many years playing PoGo, and about deciding to stop playing it.

Starting Out

When I started writing this post, it was a couple of days after the 9th anniversary of PoGo’s release. Although I first opened the game, and so technically started playing, on day one, the only device I could use was my Nexus 7, which did not have working location access. So I couldn’t actually catch any Pokemon until I revived a spare rooted Android phone about two weeks later. (That’s just reminded me of how much I liked the Nokia Lumia I’d had at the time, and that the main reason I stopped rooting my phones was because Niantic started barring rooted devices from PoGo).

My delayed real introduction to the game had one advantage; because I hadn’t been able to catch any of the default starters on day one, I had seen the secret starter Pikachu spawn. Once I could play, I was able to choose Pikachu as my starter.

Recap | June 2025

11 July 2025 / Sinead

This month I spent more time in work-related rabbit-holes than I wanted to, thanks to working on projects that were … confusingly managed. On the plus side, I enjoyed playing some new games and listening to new music, and I spent more time reading books again rather than just articles.

Fun

Music

As I had recently found a couple of corrupted/glitchy songs in my music library, I decided to re-digitise my CD collection using the incredibly nerdy software that is Exact Audio Copy. EAC is a CD audio grabber that focuses on getting the most accurate possible audio from the CD, even when there are errors or scratches on the disc. While I don’t need its more advanced options, I like using EAC because of its more old-school design; it feels very logical and like it will only change things when I ask them to be changed.

I considered getting a CD player but was unsure of whether to go with a portable player and deal with extra cables/batteries, or whether to find a small desktop player which would have to balance on top of/ underneath my speakers. I impulsively bid on a Fiio DM13 on eBay, but luckily didn’t win, as I haven’t decided what the best option for me would be yet.

Other

I had more Magic-with-friends sessions this month. Danny had bought all four of the Final Fantasy commander decks (before they dramatically rose in price, thankfully for him), so on one evening we abandoned our usual decks to test them out. I tried the Terra deck, which focused on sending creatures to my graveyard and bringing them back from both my and my opponents’ graveyards. I came second in both of our matches, which is better than usual. Given the cards I had, I could have won the first match, but I failed at tactically choosing where my attacks should go and so threw my lead away.

Games

I spent one afternoon playing the 20th Anniversary edition of Beyond Good and Evil. When I played the HD version years ago, I got completely stuck somewhere after defeating the first boss-type enemy and so gave up. However, I’ve had a much better experience this time! (From what I remember, I don’t think I found the room with the first electricity puzzle first time around, which explains why I wouldn’t have been able to progress.)

Mini-Reviews | May 2025 Demos

30 June 2025 / Sinead

Spilled! (PC, Steam)

Spilled! is a very small game about making the world a nicer place. You pilot a boat, armed with a water cannon and a big scoop, through polluted, oil-filled water to clean up the gunk, sweep all of the debris away, and rescue stuck animals. Returning the mess and debris to a recyling centre gives you coins which you can then spend on upgrades for the boat, such as faster speed, a larger holding tank, or an even bigger scoop.

It aims to be relaxing, rather than intensely fun – the reward for cleaning up each area is seeing the formerly brown and murky waters returning to beautiful blue ones teeming with coral, tropical fish and plants, and rescuing its creatures from being trapped in muck, rather than acheivements or loud fanfares.

The controls are simple: RB/RT to accelerate, LB/LT to slow down, B to stop, and the left stick to turn. (Just note that the turning is relative to the screen, not the boat, so holding the stick left will make the boat turn towards the left of the screen regardless of direction). The water cannon and magnetic scoop are assigned to the face buttons, which the settings menu describes as “button north/south/east/west” – I’m not sure if this is a programming/translation efficiency thing, or just a quirk, but either way I quite liked it.

The UI is also very minimal, as the small size of each sub-area, and the choice to have a recycling center and upgrade stations in each sub-area, means that information such as your coin count and the number of coins needed for upgrades can be stored on these buildings and not require any HUD space. The instructions are wordless, which I often dislike, but it this case it is done well – the pictures and icons used are very clear, as are the video prompts that show how to activate an upgrade station when you drive into it.

The pixel-art graphics are very pleasant and detailed in the environments I saw during the demo, and they demonstrate the relaxing nature of the game well. The gentle piano-led soundtrack also supports this. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of the “slurp” noise of sucking up the oil from the water, that’s just my dysfunctional ears – the sound does work well in the conext of the game. (It can also be turned off separately from the music.).

When I finished the demo section after about 20 minutes, the ending screen said that there was “about 45 minutes of game left after this point”. Spilled! is made by one developer, Lente, with another person assisting with graphics, and its clear that they are aiming to share a small but finished and polished game, rather than overpromising and having to compromise.

Am I buying this one? Yes. £4.49 for what will be an enjoyable 1-1.5 hours, and which supports the indie-est kind of indie dev, is a fair trade for me. Spilled! is a definite recommend if you like games such as Unpacking or Powerwash Simulator. As a bonus, 10 cents from every sale goes to a whale and dolphin conservation charity.

Recap | May 2025

6 June 2025 / Sinead

May was much busier than April, partly for fun reasons – going to more events and seeing friends more – but partly for unexpected work busy-ness and family illness.

Fun

Music

When trying to pre-order the upcoming GoGo Penguin album from Rough Trade, I found that Totorro would be playing there on May 23rd. I quickly signed my friend Josh up to attend with me, using our usual “I’ll pay for the tickets if you do the driving” system. (I hate driving to new places but don’t mind paying for things, while he enjoys driving but likes saving money).

I’ve never been to a gig for an instrumental band before, and have been curious about how different it would be from the rock gigs I’m used to. I also wondered where the audience focal point would be for a band without a singer; turns out that my default focus was on the guitarist on the left.

Totorro had a really fun energy on stage, with the band members having non-verbal in-jokes such as miming playing tennis with each other via the headstocks of their guitars while still being note-perfect. The support band, STEALTH CAT, were also good, but only had a 5-song setlist to show off in. We had a great time, especially as it was such a small gig that we had personal space and could go outside between sets to cool down and chat about music. For me, gigs of about 100 people are the perfect size.

Other

I finally had some in-person Magic: The Gathering sessions with friends after months of us not having the time to meet. The others were being responsible adults and, in some cases, parents, so I can’t blame them!

I had forgotten just how long our games tend to last, especially when we are rusty on the timings and effect resolutions. One of the games definitely lasted over 3 hours. In one match I tried to use the Murders at Karlov Manor deck I picked up at EGX last year, but struggled to get the commander’s effect to kick in or to summon any stealth face-down creatures, so ended up conceding. My faithful Chatterfang squirrel-token deck did claim one win, which I was happy with.

Games

The list of games I want to try has increased, as always, but I’ve fallen back down the Two Point Hospital rabbit hole so very little else is being played. However, I did try out some new demos on both Xbox and Steam, and I also wrote mini-reviews of the demos I tried in April.

Mini-Reviews | April 2025 Demos

1 June 2025 / Sinead

Potions: A Curious Tale (Xbox)

Potions: A Curious Tale is an adventure game with a focus on crafting, and a “wits over weapons” approach to combat. This is conveyed clearly from the first interaction with an enemy, which lets you stumble into the right thing to do in a way that feels surprisingly natural. Similarly, the plot is explained through dialogue rather than explicit instruction or popups, but in a non-annoying and quite natural-feeling way.

As protagonist Luna, your aim is to develop your witching skills and potion reportoire by learning from your Granny, the towns potion master. During my play time, the majority of missions could be boiled down to problem-solving via fetch quests and exploring new areas to find ingredients for crafting a large variety of potions. The crafting system is based on blending different amounts of earth, air, water, and fire ingredients, which gives enough structure that you can start experimenting with combinations straight away. Some missions also include combat encounters, which are intended to be managed by using the environment (and even other enemies) to your advantage, rather than by just throwing potions everywhere.

One of my favourite parts of the game was its art style, which is aesthetically pleasant and calming but not boring. Each area has a distinct colour palette, collectibles, and cast of enemies. There are also some graphical quality-of-life features, such as ingredients being highlighted in purple during conversations and some interactable objects being highlighted in yellow. While there are no maps for individual areas, the visual clues provided are fairly easy to understand: for example, paths that lead back to the main map have a different appearance to the regular paths in that area. Also, once you have navigated to a deeper area of a zone, you can then choose to go back to that area. E.g. on reaching the Deep Dark Forest, you can choose to enter at the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th sub-area. This cuts down the backtracking needed for longer quests without removing the locations entirely.

Recap | Apr 2025

3 May 2025 / Sinead

A pretty easy month, with few issues or complicated situations, but also an unfocused month. There were days here that I could have used far better. On the other hand, I did enjoy myself!

Fun

Games

A couple of my friends make custom maps in Halo, and last week we spent a few hours touring their collective maps. Some were old favourites, ported over from older Halo games, while others were recently-created maps that we were looking for bugs in. My favourite of the modes was basically a Titanfall clone with Mantis mechs, which worked really well. Others are great in small doses but too chaotic for repeated matches, such as Thrusterball, where two teams fight for control of a throwable ball while armed with gravity hammers and max-speed thruster packs.

I continued to be stuck into Galacticare – both playing the DLC levels and trying to complete the regular levels on challenge mode.

Finally, I had been looking forward to the Iron Banner event in Destiny 2, but the skill-based matchmaking was not working out well this time – trying to play as a group of 4 resulted in massively unbalanced and hard-to-enjoy matches. So we gave the new community puzzle a try instead. We solved 20 of the 27 chess puzzles by ourselves, but realised we had solved them inefficiently and so had too few moves left to sensibly continue. We returned the next day with a guide, then decided to leave solving the unlocked ARG to the dedicated community!.

Data

Review | Mistakes were made (but not by me)

2 May 2025 / Sinead

Normally I review a book after the first time I finish reading it, but this one is a little different. I’ve read Mistakes were made (but not by me) multiple times in the ~10 years that it has lived on my bookshelf, and I can recommend it almost wholeheartedly. Its writing is clear and accessible, the example and stories involved are chosen well and discussed with compassion, and the sourcing appears sound. Plus, the ideas it discusses are certainly relevant right now!

“These metaphors of memory are popular, reassuring, and wrong. Memories are not buried somewhere in the brain, as if they were bones at an archeological site; nor can we uproot them, as if they were radishes; nor, when they are dug up, are they perfectly preserved. We do not remember everything that happens to us; we select only highlights”.

The book also sets an appropriate scope, as it does not proclaim that its central subject of dissonance theory and self-justification is the sole cause of the world’s ills nor that understanding and correcting our bias towards self-justification will solve all problems. Instead, the authors more reasonably claim that the knowledge of cognitive dissonance will “make sense of dozens of the things that people do that would otherwise seem unfathomable and crazy” and that “understanding is the first step towards finding solutions that lead to change and redemption”. For me, this more measured approach to its potential value makes the book more trustworthy.

However, the main flaw this book has is the field it come from. As a social psychology book written in 2007, this book has more potential than most to be built on flawed foundations. I’m not saying “older research is bad”; I’m referring here to the way that the replication crisis has created a large, justified, doubt in psychology research findings, especially in social psychology findings.