In part 1 of my review of XCOM: Chimera Squad, I talked about my experience of playing the game to completion for the first time and looked at the general strokes of how the game was different to its predecessors. In this version, I want to focus more on the actual mechanics of the game.
Category: Miscellany
Blog posts relating to non-standard topics (i.e. not gaming or photography related).
I Am Your Father – Part 14: Baby finds his Voice
It’s getting harder to find the time to keep this blog up to date, but I’m going to do my best to summarise the key points from the last few weeks in this shorter-than-usual update.
Welcome to My Blog
Hello and welcome to my blog. Here you will find musings on various topics from video games to mental health to fatherhood.
These thoughts are my own and I should probably warn you that not all posts are totally safe for work!
‘Happy’ by Derren Brown
A while back, I reviewed Sarah Millican’s brilliant book “How To Be Champion“, which was part autobiography, part joke collection and part self-help book. On a similar theme, I’d like to discuss another book I’ve been reading recently; “Happy” by mentalist, illusionist and warlock Derren Brown. Or, to give it it’s full title: “Happy: Why More Or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine”.
A Sense of Perspective
Now seems like as good a time as any to discuss a key realisation that has helped me to make sense of the world. I’ve noticed that people don’t always seem to distinguish between ‘The General’ and ‘The Specific’. So what? Well, it can be an important distinction. Let me try to explain. (more…)
Working from Home: Tips
A lot of you will have started working from home as the coronavirus pandemic continues and many of you won’t have had to do this before and may not be used to it. It takes some time to adapt and to find a balance of happiness and productivity, but it can be done.
As someone who’s done a PhD and works from home a lot, I thought I would share some tips. A lot of this is ‘common’ sense, but I still have to force myself to follow some of this advice and I’m usually better for it. Hopefully, at least some of these tips will be useful.
David Tennant is my favourite Doctor Who, but he is not ‘the best’ Doctor Who.
This may seem like a pretty frivolous thing to say, but I actually have a point to make about the way that we use language and why it matters.
(more…)How to be Champion
One of the things that I wanted to talk about on this blog is mental health. Specifically, I want to share my own experiences and some of the things that helped me with my recovery and continue to help me to be in my day-to-day life. In this post, I want to talk about one handy piece of advice from British comedian Sarah Millican…
A New Direction…
I haven’t posted on here for a while now. I used to write a lot about gaming, as that was my main hobby and chosen profession, but now I have a new job (and have left the games industry), which means I can’t keep up with the latest titles and write full reviews (not that I was ever much good at doing that anyway!).
I considered abandoning the blog, but I have instead decided to take things in a new direction. In this post, I discuss the plans that I have for the blog over the upcoming months.
The EU Referendum
Normally I try not to get involved in this sort of thing, but what I am about to say is really important to me…
It may surprise you to know that I don’t particularly mind which way people vote in the Referendum. Despite all of the rhetoric, fear-mongering, lies and hatred flying around at the moment, there are some pretty reasonable arguments on both sides (they just aren’t getting any media attention!).
Personally, I’ve decided to Vote Remain because although the EU has its flaws, I think that Britain has an important part to play on the world stage and that we are better off in the EU than trying to make it on our own. Also, I am 29 years old and thinking about buying a house and starting a family, and no one can promise that leaving won’t make it a lot more difficult for me to do those things. I am also a researcher, and I know that my job and much of Britain’s world-leading research depends on the EU. Then there’s the fact that the ‘big issues’ of the debate – immigration and ‘Brussels bureaucracy’ – are distractions from the real issues, like the fact that most of our problems would be solved if the likes of Amazon, Google and Starbucks were made to pay their taxes, or if rich MP’s stopped claiming obscene amounts in expenses while calling disabled citizens and poor, taxpaying families ‘parasites’… but I digress!
As I said, I don’t mind WHAT you chose. What really matters is WHY you make that choice. You should do it because you believe it’s the right thing to do, or because it is the best choice for our nation or humanity as a whole. This is probably one of the most important decisions that Britain will make in most of our lifetimes. Please don’t let it be a decision born out of fear, prejudice or hatred. We are better than that!