That means you can use their text any way you like, including commercially, as long you attribute it to me, Sinead Harold, and include a link to sineadaharold.com.
Quotes and images are not included in this license, as they belong to their original copyright holders.
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!.
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 crisishas created a large, justified, doubt in psychology research findings, especially in social psychology findings.
This month went much better overall, despite a few empty days where I don’t think I did anything of use.
Fun
Games
I’ve mostly played Two Point Museum or Solitaire Expeditions when solo this month then Destiny 2 when with friends, as the friends that I spend most time gaming with have been more available than normal. Two Point Museum is engaging in a “…oops, its now 1am” kind of way, despite it not being particularly difficult. Destiny 2 had its “Guardian Games”; a yearly event about completing a checklist of game experiences known as “Moments of Triumph”. While I completed some of these challenges naturally through playing, and others only required minor adjustments like making sure to bring certain types of weapons to activities, I specifically chose to not try to complete the set. I get caught up in feeling like I need to complete the full list and tick off everything in events like this, even when I won’t use the rewards at the end, so being able to say “no, I won’t get any practical use or fun from doing this” and stick to that statement was a relief.
Music/Podcasts
I’ve not discovered any new music this month but have spent time listening to a new podcast;Let’s Learn Everything!. I found this one through enjoying the many episodes of Lateral which have featured the presenters of Let’s Learn Everything! as contestants. In their own show, the trio’s chemistry and enthusiasm is even stronger than in their guest appearances: I expected to find this annoying, but their exuberance about everything they are learning is so genuine and sincere that it is endearing rather than obnoxious.
Other
I spent some time tinkering with a Fiio X1 that I bought on eBay. I’ve wanted to play with one of these for ages for hardware reasons, as they are basically the non-apple version of a classic spinny-wheel iPod. While it could never be my main take-to-work DAP – as 1) it doesn’t have bluetooth and 2) it apparently gets confused and slows down if more than 5,000 songs are on it – this one was advertised as having firmware issues, so I wondered if reinstalling the firmware might be enough. Then I could resell it after getting my gadget fix.
At first, I thought the confusing, inconsistent-seeming controls, which involved two buttons that seemed to never do anything, and one button that alternated between meaning “select” and “back”, were a result of the firmware issues. Then, after installing the right firmware and getting the X1 to load both with and without an SD card in place, it turned out that no, the UI is just that bad!
As you can tell from the publishing date, I’m still working on the “being on time” part of monthly recaps. February was mostly a good month except for the final few days, which were dysfunctional enough that I’m not going to talk about them on the internet. Let’s get on to the fun aspects instead!
Fun
Games
4th Feb – I’m still playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I now have the tailor’s shop and the expanded version of Nook’s Cranny, and I’m working on the quest for getting K.K Slider to visit the island. I’m starting to lose enthusiasm for the game though, especially after my experience of testing out the “dream” mechanic and getting surprisingly creeped out by being in a simulacrum-within-a-simulacrum full of appliances and objects that were purely for the impression of community and couldn’t actually be interacted with.
10th Feb – I’m trying out Inscryption on the strong recommendation of my friend Josh, who rated it as one of his favourite games of all time within a few hours of play. I’m less into both deckbuilders and horror than he is, so I wasn’t expecting to have a similar experience, but so far I am finding Inscryption compelling and intriguing. Given that my main card game is Yu-Gi-Oh!, the mechanics of the actual card game are obviously much simpler, and this really works in its favour. The constraints of the card game make it make sense in the game’s universe. Also, the count of times I have stopped to say “what the hell“? out loud as a result of something in the game is already 3, and I imagine many more times are on the way! The only thing I dislike about the game so far is the way the character moves in jumps and 90-degree camera snaps rather than freely – it’s kind of like how some VR games handle movement, and I find it quite disorienting.
18th Feb – I’ve hit the really interesting part of Inscryption, and the “what the hell” count has been upgraded to a “what the fuck” count. I want to write a full review of it, but don’t know how to do that without spoiling what makes it so interesting and effective.
I’m not organised enough for New Year’s Resolutions, but I do have the vague goals of both writing more often and writing more casually this year. I keep re-learning, and forgetting, how much I rely on writing things out to make sense of them, and how easy it is for chunks of time to vanish unremembered when they aren’t documented.
The specificity of Weeknotes didn’t work out for me consistently when I tried it before, so this time I’m going to try a monthly recap instead.
Fun
I’ve returned to Merge and Blade – an autobattler where you build your army using match-3 mechanics – after leaving it for a few weeks when I became repeatedly stuck on the last chapter of the campaign. After finally finishing the campaign, I’m now trying out the roguelike and roguelite modes, though I do keep mixing the two up.
I started playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons on New Year’s Eve, and I’ve now reached the quest to raise the island rating high enough for K.K Slider to visit. This is tricky for me as I have very little spacial-planning ability, so I can’t map out what the parts of my island contain relative to each other. I would really appreciate a zoomed-out top-down view here! So far I’ve been having a pretty good time, though I was expecting the villagers to be a little more independent and for my character to have a bit less power over their lives. I wanted to be part of the community, not its god!
In terms of offline activities, I’ve found that doing puzzles in the Murdle book is an enjoyable way to unwind before going to bed. It’s nice to spend time in a logical system where all of the rules and pieces of information needed are contained within the problem, and there is no second-guessing or ambiguity. I’m currently on the third difficulty tier of puzzles, where there are 4 variables and 4 factors for each variable. For me these are actually easier than the second (Medium) difficulty of puzzle, though I do like that the author tried something new with having one source of information be a liar in the medium-tier puzzles.
I also bought these albums in January:
Totorro – Home Alone Totorro are probably the happiest math-rock band in existence. Something about their sound is incredibly friendly and cheerful; the audio equivalent of a sunny day.
Unwritten Law – The Hum I love their earlier albums Elva (2002) and Here’s To The Mourning (2005) but I haven’t listened to any more recent ones. I wasn’t sure if the nearly 20-year gap since HTTM would mean hearing a very different band. Luckily for me, this wasn’t the case – The Hum shows off an evolved version of the band rather than an entirely different version.
Elephant Gym – world This album is more jazz-influenced than my usual taste, and than the previous Elephant Gym albums I’ve heard, but I have enjoyed listening to it. Its a generally calm and intricate album, which makes the moments of high-energy like the chorus of “Happy Prince” stand out even more sharply.
This is a follow-up from my previous post about the read-it-later app Omnivore, and why its existence and shutdown shows off the good and bad of open-source projects. Diving into the world of self-hosting software isn’t for me yet, which means it’s time to search for a replacement hosted service. After reading a variety of lists and reviews of recommended read-it-later apps, and learning from what others in the Discord found to be useful, I decided that writing down a checklist of what I was looking for in a replacement service would probably be the best way to test the options.
What I needed a replacement read-it-later app to have/ not have.
A priority on web browser features/settings (i.e. that its not using the “app-first with a limited web version” approach)
A Firefox extension that would let me easily save links/pages.
An Android app that reliably saves links from web browsing and other apps e.g. Discord messages.
A paid hosted syncing service.
A focus on reading text, not on audio.
No sponsored content or advertising mixed in with my saved links.
What I would prefer the replacement to have/not have:
No AI features (or at least the ability to fully disable and ignore any AI features)
Preference for a yearly subscription over a monthly subscription.
Payment with money rather than data.
Preference for developers using open source software and/or a nonprofit structure.
With the checklist in place, I started trying out some of the recommended alternatives to see which might be the best fit.
Reader was already in the “probably not” pile as it aims to be a much larger program than I need. It aspires to be a read-it-later app, a note-taking app, and a full productivity system that integrates with other systems. For me, that would probably lead me to turn leisure reading into work, which would not be a good idea.
While I was impressed at Reader’s polished and coherent design, I did find that its everything-app nature felt like “too much” as a replacement; for me it felt intended to be a system that needed active maintenance rather than a tool. I have nothing against systems (case in point: this blog series!), but I didn’t want to replace something that had been simple with something much more complex.
The dealbreaker for me was that Reader automatically summarised imported articles with their AI “ghostreader”. This meant that when looking at my list of articles/feed items, I wasn’t actually seeing the start of the article as written by the author, but the AI summary instead. Worse, there doesn’t seem to be a way to disable it. The fact I couldn’t turn the AI off instantly sent Reader to the “hell, no” pile. A read-it-later app that wants to “ghostread” things for me is not where I want to be!
It’s probably not surprising that I’m often particular about which apps and programs I use. While most of the time apps can be relatively interchangeable, I have three favourite programs/apps. For me, that’s defined as programs/apps that a) I have chosen as the sole way for me to do a specific task after a lot of research, and b) I would be genuinely upset about not being able to use any more.
The apps/services are MusicBee (where I manage and back up my music and podcast library and sync it to my phone and mp3 players), Omnivore (where I save articles from my phone, laptop, or desktop to read later and archive), and Listenbrainz (an open-source listen tracker).
Of the three, MusicBee would be the biggest loss. It’s also the main reason I still own a Windows PC. Finding anything that could equal MusicBee would require intensive research, but its local-first nature means that I could continue to use my installed copy even if the program was no longer actively maintained, making it hard to truly lose access to.
Omnivore, on the other hand, is a service rather than a program. It is also now a dead service: on November 30th, the hosted service was shut off and all user data was deleted.
On paper, the aim of Galacticare seems straightforward: grow your chain of hospitals by taking on bigger and bigger challenges – ranging from space-trains to music festivals, to an entire planet – while juggling patients, pests, natural disasters, and a rival chain. But any expectations of Galacticare being a staid or overly-serious game can be thrown out from entering the tutorial, where HEAL, your AI assistant, introduces you to the Objectives panel by stating that “Your Objectives should be displayed now. If they’re not, then everything is broken, and it may be simpler for you to resign”.
HEAL’s sarcastic wit is not the only source of humour – in fact, every member of the cast provides humour both by themselves and in the way they play off other characters. Robot-janitor Medi’s character springs fully-formed from his first line: “It’s me, Medi! HEAL says I’m a toaster, and that I might actually be useful if I was dropped in someone’s bathtub”. Medi’s eager kid-sidekick nature is sympathetic on its own but then becomes comedic as a foil to HEAL; the pair bicker like a robotic equivalent of JD and Dr Cox from Scrubs.
CEO and gadget-creator Kora is the comparative voice of reason, but she is still fleshed out with a streak of mad-scientist enthusiasm for the unknown and a tendency to briefly lose rationality when talking to (or about) the adorable engineer species, the Tenki. In her defence, the Tenki are very fuzzy. Finally, antagonist Salazar’s blend of slick CEO charm with contempt for the player’s hospital-running skills, such as the player’s decision to actually pay their staff, makes him an enjoyable villain both to listen to and to win against.
Galacticare‘s writing is full of humour in many forms, from sharp wit to surreal non-sequiturs –“It began with crop circles and cow abductions, and ended up in appropriating the most problematic parts of 1950s Earth culture – surf rock and traditional gender roles”. Cultural references also play their part – a recurring patient named Klem Banzig frequently needs rehab from his energy drink addiction, while another introduces themselves as Xirleslienielssennoria but then says “and you may call me Shirley“.
Sounds Fake But Okay is a friendly exploration of the “rules” of romance, sexuality and dating, and what society might be like if those “rules” were broken. It is written by Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca, the hosts of the podcast of the same name.
The podcast initially started as an offshoot of the two hosts’ attempts to make sense of dating, romance and sexuality, and (for one host) figure themselves out along the way. In the book, having had time and space to make sense of the world (and make ~300 podcast episodes) the authors are now encouraging people of all orientations to try asking the kind of questions that they ask each other. Their aim here is to show that most of the rules humans have about dating, romance, and partnership – and even wider topics like families and gender – are not unchangeable requirements of life but are instead patterns and habits that societies have collectively locked themselves into.
This process of setting the defaults aside and asking questions about the rules of romance/dating/society is phrased as putting on the “purple aspec glasses”, an analogy which to me effectively conveys the authors’ aim of encouraging readers to explore in a controllable, temporary, non-binding way. (Note: “aspec” is an existing slang term for the “asexual spectrum“; the range of different orientations under the wider umbrella of asexuality). The authors make clear that they are not using the book to say “one way of living in the world is right and another way is wrong” but instead to say “any way you choose to live is good, as long as you’re consciously thinking about and choosing it for yourself”, a standpoint that I greatly respect.
This is a companion to my more general post about alternatives to headsets, as I wanted to write about both the options available for people and about my own experience and the solution that worked for my particular preferences and caveats. Splitting the two aspects into two posts seemed like a better option than creating a giant wall of text.
Due to everything on the limitations/caveats list below, finding a comfortable communication option for gaming is quite tricky for me. Given that gaming is my main way of socialising, a faulty choice here can be very annoying. This meant that taking the time to dive into researching more options was worthwhile, especially if it resulted in a more comfortable gaming-party experience.
I’m aware that this is irrational, and that it’s very much a first world problem, but trying to find a working alternative to wearing a typical headset was annoying not only because I had to try (and return) a lot of audio products, but because I felt stupid for not being able to just do things in the “proper” way.
Limitations / Caveats
I’m very sensitive to noise; the “immersion” of hearing all of the background noise and detail inside the game that people often desire can instead feel like a sensory overload for me because there are so many sounds going on.
Filtering out chat audio from the background of game audio is also tricky for me, so I need to have the option to hear only chat audio.
Sometimes, direct audio from earbuds/ headphones can feel physically painful even at very low volumes, so I need to have the option to send all audio (game and chat) out from the TV.
I get headaches from wearing most headphones for longer than an hour. The only exception to this to this I’ve found is the Bose QC 35ii because of how light they are and how little force they apply. Wearing headphones or a headset can also put uncomfortable pressure on my ears and jaw when my TMJ is playing up.
Lots of earphones and IEMs just don’t fit my ears.
I need to wear either earplugs or my noise-cancelling headphones for a large part of the day when I’m at work, and would prefer not to have to shove more things in/on my ears when I’m at home.
I’m not very good at talking loudly, so I need an actual mic rather than an inline mic to be audible to my friends.
Anti-Caveats (aka factors I don’t need to worry about)
I live with someone who is severely hearing impaired, and my neighbours are hearing impaired too, so being overheard or disturbing others is not something I have to think about.
I have an old flatscreen TV with surprisingly high-quality speakers: both game audio and music sound good and don’t have that scratchy “laptop speaker” sound. This means a complex setup with recievers/ surround-sound speakers isn’t necessary, as hearing party and game audio through my TV is actually my preferred option.
