One of the highlights of my year is Play Expo – a weekend away in Blackpool that has a bunch of retro and modern video games. It’s pretty much the same every year: arcade machines as you walk in, trading hall to the left, pinball machines to the right, home consoles towards the back along with the main stage. Play Expo has a familiarity to it, which makes it a must attend every year for me. If only to see the same faces every year.
The traders hall is often a place I go for a wander. Not straight away, as it’s hectic, but towards the middle afternoon on Saturday it dies down a bit and you get to check out the trading hall, have a bit of a chat and just generally have a better buying experience. You feel less pressured as you check through the boxes on the floor (which – as somebody who has dropped 3 stone in the past year – is a lot more easier experience on the knees).
One such place is The Gaming Newsagent – a long time attendee that started as SegaMags, but branched out into all such other magazines. It was in one of these boxes and a bit of time for exploring I found this magazine. St Format issue 70, from May 1995. An immediate buy. When I said immediate, I meant immediate. I never bothered looking through the rest.
So what was so special? This small PD Game on the cover disk, Chain Reaction. A simple addictive game I played so much and stuck with me for a while. Here whas what was written about it.
Chain Reaction from ST Format Issue 70 (image taken from Atari Mania)
If you followed me online for a while, you’d know that this sounds a lot like a game I made. Gone Fission! was inspired by Chain Reaction (and a thousand other PD games, I’ve got an article in my drafts where I talk about all different versions of the game and everything cool that has happened post launch. This is another of those things to add to that post, in a fun coincidence.
Anyway, weird kind of full circle on a side project that dominated this year.
I see that AOL has ended it’s dial-up service after 30 years with barely a whimper. I think the first times I explored the internet was on AOL sometimes in the early 2000s, usually playing Slingo or downloading Quake Maps off a friends internet connection.
It was also the first time I experienced some form of gatekeeping. With AOL being ubiquitous with early internet with it’s easy setup, and the fact it was incompatible with Netscape Navigator, meant that it was always for those who weren’t the most technically literate. Something I – sadly – participated in.
This gatekeeping was reinforced when, during University in 2002, the “Social and Technical Internet” module I studied in my degree included a fascinating few lessons on early internet culture, and things like Eternal September. Further studies meant I really wanted to go back to that time.
Anyway, it’s kind of ironic that the cause of Eternal September died on 1st October.
I miss folks commenting on blog posts really. At my peak I’d post a blog post at home, walk the half a mile from my student digs to university, and then be greeted with 4 or 5 comments. Now? I think I’ve had one comment in the past year. I still don’t stubbornly take the comments off here nor Dwi’n Rhys though, in a vain hope they come back. They won’t. But they may.
But seemingly like half the attendees at LoopConf last week in London (read Tim Nash’s post about his ridiculous schedule from Yorkshire > London > Poland to be at events), I too was inspired by Ana Rodrigues’ talk “Building, Sharing, and Owning Your Online Presence”, who had a number of inspiring slides, including the one I’ve used as the header image (albeit with a terrible photo :-
Personal websites are the perfect playground for experimentation. They afford a space to explore new technologies that might not yet be suitable for professional projects and a safe space to fail.
So consider me inspired, and me testing more things that may fail. I’ve switched on Webmentions using this plugin, and also using Autoblue as well to try and foster some more comments from BlueSky (this post should automatically post there and also automatically pull in replies as comments). It may work. It may be utter rubbish. But we try.
It’s the first strand of things to do. I want to promote this blog to all the things. I want to take this blog back to the 00’s. I want to put 88×31 buttons on. I was bored on Sunday made a few because James Huff on the Post Status Slack wanted a retro button and the ones on the Web Archive were terrible. I want under-construction GIFs. I want to use my new found Aseprite skills to make this blog look a little less like the blog of a 41 year old business owner who renewed his home insurance today, and more of the bloke in his early 20’s who spend his evenings drawing little graphics, installing ridiculously unsafe PHP scripts, and generally having a good life online. Granted less of the PHP scripts, but more moving purposefully and breaking things.
Last weekend I completed another of my 50 before I am 50. I ate in a Michelin Starred Restaurant. The restaurant in question was Wilson’s in Bristol, and I went there with my partner to celebrate one of her friend’s birthday.
Sadly, I’m not Jay Rayner, and I do not have the vocabulary to accurately explain the food, except to say it was delicious. The six course tasting menu was using freshly grown herbs and vegetables from it’s own two acre farm. Really, they were the stars of the show – whilst there were fish and meat that were the main element of the dish, in reality the flavourful herbs were what made it a bit special.
I think the thing for me was I was expecting to be disappointed. I don’t know why. Naturally pessimistic – like you wait your life to see a band only to be terrible. In reality it was excellent. 6 decent portions of food, full of flavour, and also some great non alcoholic mocktails that – whilst not paired with the dishes – were great.
I did the wanky thing and take photos of all the food which are below.
Tomato and lemon verbena. Not sure what a verbena is.This is the Strawberry Soda, probably my favourite drink of the eveningThis was served with the bread course, not sure what these were. Mackerel and dill on a seaweed cracker were the green onesThe bread course, with butter….…and a herby tahini like thing. It was deliciousThis was a gooseberry and chamomile cocktailSea bass, gooseberry, thai basil and smoked creme freche. This was my favourite dish of the dayDry aged trout with courgettes in a horseradish sauce and a chili buttermilky thingFig leaf coktailGuinea fowl, florence onion and carrotsFarm herbs and a mirangue. The puddings were quite herby which worked in this case I thought.Cherries, Basil & Chocolate – probably my least favourite dish, could have done without the basilPetits Fours with chocolate and pumpkin fudgy things and a posh fruit pastille.
Last night I’ve just finished a game that will feature very highly in my “Game of the Year” blog post – The Roottrees Are Dead. It’s a wonderfully charming romp to map a family tree to see who stands to gain a large inheritance. It’s a classic detective game in the style of The Return of the Obra Dinn (my game of the decade) and, whilst it doesn’t quite stick the landing – it suffers the same fate as most of these games do in that once you get close to the end it becomes guessable – it’s well worth your time.
As with all of these games, once completed (there’s a nice little twist towards the end), I dived into the read more about the game. Whilst The Roottrees are Dead was released earlier this year, it is a “remaster” of a game released a few years back, and the previous version did use generative AI. Only when the original game was released completed and got a bit of traction did the original developer switch to use proper assets – which saw the game become a success.
Good AI in Gaming? Maybe?
It gave me a bit of an uneasy feeling when I read that, and I think I wanted to try and justify it. The game right now that is on Steam is guilt free – beautifully drawn images, great soundtracks, voice acting, it’s a wonderful game. The AI version? Well, it’s still in essence the same game (deciphering photography is a key part of the game), but I doubt I would have played it.
I then thought about would the game have seen the light of day with the AI version? Sadly, doubtful. But once the proof of concept was there, the author did the right thing by seeing it’s potential and investing in artists to see their vision cross the line. So I think I’m happy about it.
Rubbish AI in Content Creation
I awoke this morning to find a video on my feed from YouTuber icklenellierose, that helped crystalise my thoughts on Generative AI and why it’s bad. You should watch it all below. Grab a brew, it’s good.
The basic gist of some of the elements was the fact she was tricked (from an “Inspiration” tab) to get a few video ideas. Generative AI – particularly for artists and creators – can be a touchy subject. Some folks really don’t want to use it for their well optimised creation process, and I must say I can’t blame them. I was a relative late comer to AI within my code, and even then I use it sparingly, and I curse Copilot for auto”correcting” code I write at times. Just stop it.
I’m reminded of a quote from Homer Simpson where he talks about the obnoxious character – Poochie – being added to the Itchy and Scratchy Show:-
One, Poochie needs to be louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine. Two, whenever Poochie’s not on screen, all the other characters should be asking “Where’s Poochie”?
Homer Simpson – “The Itchy & Scracthy & Poochie Show”
I feel AI is being Poochiefied. There are some genuinely cool things out there, I use it in my job at times (I used it yesterday to come up with a small idea to extend a blog post as I was under a word count and was struggling). In fields such as medicine it could be genuinely useful.
I don’t think it’s the be-all and end all mind. Keeping up with developments is both tiring and nothing makes me want to switch off a podcast than saying “We’re going to talk about AI”. Nobody as of yet has come up with a cool reason why I should use it, beyond asking it for sorting arrays, working out where I’ve gone wrong with my code or finding a hook I can use within a plugin with code everywhere. As such, I’m not convinced yet it is the deserving of the amount of column inches it serves.
I especially don’t like it when AI is either front and centre (I had an “AI Summary” present itself in Slack yesterday without asking) or when people are tricked into using it with dark UX. I imagine situations like Ellen describes and experienced by us all during our days is used in board room presentations on how the adoption of AI has been a complete success and it’s what customers want. Using words like “uptake has been stellar”.
That then leads to situations like what was on before Google did put up their prices of business accounts that’s sold on “greater AI integration”.
Cheers for asking, dicks.
I think that’s the point I’m trying to make. I don’t necessarily mind AI if it is presented in such a way that it is an option to use, and there has been education on it and also it doesn’t lurch to “Yay Nazi’s are great!”.
However, I don’t want to work where my processes are having to change due to having AI forced on me.
