Category: Personal

For the love of The Last of Us

And all other video games

One thing that has filled my heart with joy recently has been a lot of people enjoying the drama series The Last of Us. For full disclosure: I’ve never played the game, nor seen the TV show, but I live vicariously through tweets such as this one from Dan Walker, who doesn’t strike me as a gamer.

Video games, for me, is the only piece of media I regularly consume. I don’t read. I rarely watch movies (I watched Terminator 2 for the first time last Sunday – it was great). My TV viewing is comfort viewing of Red Dwarf & Phoenix Nights, along with sport and game/antique/cooking shows. That’s really it.

Video games and me

Video games however are my comfort art form, and I always feel like it gets a bad rap. They provoke emotions in me like no other art form. Be it the pangs of nostalgia from playing Tehkan’s Bomb Jack which takes me back to playing it in Rhos-on-Sea seafront arcade with my grandparents, to the endorphin rush of solving another three fates in Return of the Obra Dinn. It has been my comfort blanket for such a long time. Even during lockdown – when we couldn’t go anywhere – me and pals regularly met up in Sea of Thieves to consume (real and fictional) grog. It beat a Zoom call.

That’s just the games that don’t necessarily have the strongest narrative but evoke happy memories. Stories in games have really gotten better and better. The twisting narrative in The Detective for the Commodore 64, through to the RPGs of the Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger games, all the way to modern day classics like Mass Effect, Horizon: Zero Dawn. Stories can be told, with wonderful deep characters and meaning. I enjoy the interactivity, but I understand many don’t. Which is why you’re catered with the compelling stories in walking simulators, such as Firewatch and To the Moon.

I always take it a bit personally whenever it isn’t given the due I feel is deserves. At the time of writing I’ve 3 games on the go. A short blast in RC Pro-Am on the Nintendo, and two story driven games (Metal Gear Solid & Red Dead Redemption). If I said I had three books on the go, nobody would bat an eyelid. Or spending a weekend watching three shows? That’s fine. But I do feel at times occasionally I have to justify spending a weekend resting playing video games. Maybe it’s in my head a bit. It’s for kids, it’s violent and rots your brain, etc etc. Things like that. I’m reminded however of an OkCupid question of “how would you feel if your partner spent the weekend playing video games?”. I feel like no other art form would ask that question.

The main culprit I find is in mainstream media. Not in terms of attacks but, it doesn’t really penetrate into the public consciousness like other things. Take for example quiz shows. When was the last time you had a video game question of reasonable difficulty on The Chase or Pointless? However when was the last time you had a question on TV. Or a film. Or books. There’s probably a reason financially, but another reason could be the folks who are in the positions of power don’t really understand it, and haven’t grown up with it.

Video games in other media

Which is why I welcome TV shows like The Last of Us, as hopefully exposes more people to the art form. Like Marvel, that began it’s success with comic book fans watching their movies, I suspect HBO have made the decision to commission the compelling story because it would get fans of the show to watch first, causing a groundswell, and then get people into the story (the story – if it follows the games – is apparently excellent. You should listen to the Playthrough Podcast that deep dived into both games, and only really criticising the actual game).

With the success of The Last of Us, I hope some of the people who may not have been exposed to video games much, play the games, or indeed other games. I hope other franchises get converted into video games as there are so many stories to tell to new audiences. People missing out on the gripping finale of the reaper invasion in Mass Effect because “they don’t play video games”, I don’t know, just makes me a bit sad.

I’m sad as it’s people who willingly shut themselves off from an art because they don’t understand it or dismiss it for kids. Like people who don’t listen to Rammstein because they don’t speak German. I’m probably a massive hypocrite in this regard as I do the same with books, TV and movies.

But I don’t care. I’ll just get back to John Marsdon galloping around Blackwater in Red Dead Redemption. I’m getting to the the good bit.

New Year, New Goals (2023 Edition)

On why you’ll see more/less of me this year

I’m not one for goal setting, in all honestly. I struggle with maintaining the effort over the course of the year to keep myself on track and often the beauty of being a freelance is to switch focuses incredibly quickly if opportunities arise.

Nevertheless, with everything going on I feel like this year with a recession on the horizon could be one of the tougher years for me, with less money for investment into their sites.

I also feel personally if I could make this year work, then this year could be the year. I’ve said since the business turned 4 years old in August this year I’m beginning to look further than web sites for clients and looking to share my over 15 years of commercial web development. I’ve begun looking at what’s next.

I struggle personally to look at the big picture, opportunities that exist outside of my main focus. So I’ve made a few goals that I’d like to achieve in the next year. Some of those personal, some of those professional. Here are where my focuses are 2023.

Professional Goals

Improving my Personal Branding

My personal branding is a mess. Everything is not the same. In the classic case of the busiest shoemakers have the worst shoes, if you looked at my sites that I use to advertise my wares then you’d think I’m terrible.

I have this blog which is everything, Dwi’n Rhys which is my WordPress freelance site, Winwar Media which is the name of the company, and half a dozen other sites. And don’t get me started on my bloody Twitch Channel branding. Twitch handle one name, Twitter another. It’s all a bit of a mess.

I’m not sure exactly how to bring it all together, but I will aim to. Also the sites need redoing. They’re old. So that’s an idea.

I guess my goal for 2023 is to be in a better position personal branding wise than I am now. At the very least get at least one of my sites that use jQuery Migrate (Winwar Media & WP Email Capture) bloody off of it.

Side Projects to Cover the Mortgage

I’ve a bunch of side projects that have been coming out the wazoo. Domains bought, affiliate links not transferred, Twitter accounts began with gusto but died quickly.

I’d like to pick them up and make them bigger. A few people I know have been rather successful with them, and I’d like to improve them.

Side projects are hard. Like, really hard, and do require focus. Sure you can do 5-9pm but there is life as well and I went freelance to eventually craft out working for myself and give myself more time, but ideally – especially with the way the world is going in 2023 I’d like to grow them.

The goal for my side projects is for it to pay for my mortgage by the end of the year. Christ that is such a lofty goal, but we’ll see how we get on.

Which is related to the following…

Work Less

In Blackpool, on September 30th, I had a realisation.

I was just about to close my laptop from a week in work. I’d made the trip up to the seaside resort from one of my favourite weekends of the year – Play Expo in Blackpool. My calendar was opened, and I noticed something.

I had not done as much as I intended.

Sure, I’ve been busy, incredibly busy, but I had manage to cope. Clients were happy, I was happy, and things were getting done. But, inadvertently, I had only worked four days every week for a month.

Fri-yay in Blackpool
Fri-yay in Cardiff (not actually a Fri-yay)
Fri-yay in London
Fri-yay in Old Trafford (not actually a Fri-yay)

It wasn’t planned, of course, but every Friday I was busy. I was either in Cardiff for Clash at the Castle, or London for OMG Center’s launch, or at Play Expo in Blackpool. I was busy doing things, enjoying things, or pushing my business forward.

COVID had been an interesting time, in that I had to hunker down a bit and not do much.

So this got me thinking – how can I do it more?

I’d looked on with a bit of admiration with what my good friend Shane has managed to carve out since going freelance in terms of his work schedule. He had one tip – book your time out for other things.

So, for the foreseeable future in 2023, I’m dropping to 4 and a half days per week.

Friday afternoon, which traditionally isn’t the most productive time anyway, I’m dedicating to side projects, hustles, improving things, or just knocking off early and going for a walk.

My goal is to hopefully have had Friday afternoon largely free for 80% of the year.

Personal Goals

These are more “nice to have” goals within my personal life.

The first is an art form I really enjoy – podcasting. I’d really like to appear on a podcast at some point. Because as a straight white man it’s pretty much the goal isn’t it? Not sure where, not sure how, but I’d really like it as a medium I think it’s great.

The second is a sport that I fell in love with in 2022 – cricket. Last March soon after my birthday I joined my local cricket club (remember last year where I said I needed a hobby? Well I found one). Playing wise I feel I’m better at batting than at bowling, but even then I’m not 100% confident. Last season I played 8 games with a high score of 10. In 2023 I’d like to score 23 in a match (the only mate I knew before playing cricket who played cricket’s high score was 22, so I’d like to beat that), and play more than 8 games in the season.

Finally, I feel like I need another personal goal, but I’m struggling. I am proud of the personal growth I made in 2022, so I’m throwing it open to you 🙂. What should I improve in 2023?

Old Man Yells at Cloud (Based Systems)

Or: How I miss the old internet.

So I’ve been thinking recently quite a lot about where I stand on the fact that noted person who had money and did okay with it but he’s a wee bit of a numpty Elon Musk has bought my favourite social media site. There are far more interesting takes about what the hell he will do with it (I urge you to read The Verge article on it).

I worry about what he will do to the place. I worry about it’s role as a player in a future Arab-Spring like event. I worry about my friends who – somehow – made it a safe space going forward. I worry that it’ll become a haven of extreme right wing rhetoric it’s been pretty good at stopping. I’m also worrying that he will kill the site, as so far his rhetoric on making back $44bn has been small fries. I do feel with a lot of these systems the only way they make money is by trying everything else (anybody else remember when WordPress.org started selling links?), and $8p/m verification doesn’t seem like it ever will recover the investment. Like a shiny toy, I worry he’ll get bored and abandon it. That’s how it happens in tech, right?

If the latter will come to pass, it’ll be a shame, as it has been one of the more positive social media sites I’ve been on. It was instrumental in phase 2 of my career (back when MancSEO was in it’s infancy, I travelled to their meetup on a random Thursday night in January 2010, and met the wonderful SEO Community that I’m still friends with), but that was when Twitter was a lot smaller, and it was easy to find people to connect with and chat to. The Tweets were shorter, but the conversations were longer.

I miss that.

But then, I miss the old internet. I don’t want to gatekeep people from access to a tool that has started revolutions, but I do feel like the internet was maybe slightly better where we didn’t congregate around singular water coolers, as turns out a large group of people in one place invariably generates some bad apples, and maybe we need to go back into our respective silos.

Sure, we may not get the reach. I doubt this blog post would get the eyeballs on it that if I posted it in a thread on Twitter I would have got, but is that a bad thing? Surely you would want to share your content to the largest eyeballs as quickly as possible, but if we get one or two people who are genuinely interested, rather than those with a passing glance, surely that’s better? A warm lead, as opposed to an ice cold one, to use marketing speak.

Plus, if we have smaller silos, we will probably see more innovation. Social media is a behemoth, and really if the only innovation they can come up with is an easily abusable verification system or a system that has legs with graphics the average third year game development student can knock together (seriously, I wrote a QBasic game in the early 2000s, that had legs), then it probably doesn’t deserve the eyeballs it needs.

Retro Gamer forum meetup at r3Play Blackpool from 2011. Ironically it came up in my Facebook memories today.

But that’s the thing, they need the eyeballs, they need the communities. I miss forums. Forums were a thing, but they went away when we all transferred over to social media. Maybe they should come back, as they were great for conversations surround great topics. I remember sitting for days on the Retro Gamer forums (a forum that only shut recently) discussing retro games. A couple of the members of said forum I class as close friends. Heck even on forums where I didn’t dedicate all my time I have had positive experiences – even now on Facebook I have a couple of people who I befriended on a Blitz Basic coding forum on my friends list. Maybe I want people to have similar positive experiences, that have enriched my life like the years I’ve spent online.

The best conversations with the best people I’ve had recently have occurred on Discord, and it’s the only system since early Twitter that I’ve been happy to meet people off of it. I’m not sure if Mastodon and a decentralised system is really the solution (purely because joining is a bit of a nightmare), but maybe they’re on to something with a decentralised system.

Maybe as well as having a decentralised system, we need to decentralise the users as well.

Race to 100 err…103 grounds complete

Bloody England.

And Bloody Wales.

And Bloody Worcester City.

So I have been embarking on a trip to see as many football teams play in as many stadiums as possible. I had hoped to reach 100 by the end of the season, and I did! I thought I’d did it on a Tuesday in mid April when I went through the turnstiles at Deepdale (home of Preston North End), ticking off my 100th ground.

Or so I thought.

Turns out, like all brilliant minds do every now and again, I had miscalculated. I had seen 100 different teams playing at various stadiums. However, I’d actually ticked off a fair few already.

Let me explain using my beloved Wales.

Ask me if I seen Wales play at home, then I would say “Yes”. I had. However I’d seen them play in two different venues that they call “Home”: The Millenium Stadium & Cardiff City Stadium. Same applies to England (Old Trafford & Wembley) and Worcester City (St George’s Lane & Aggborough). Like Phileas Fogg, I’d well and truly screwed up my calculations and actually achieved more than I thought.

So in actual fact, my 100th ground – Ramsbottom United vs Colwyn Bay – was completed on a cold Spring evening in Late March, making Preston, Blackpool, and my trip to bloody Genoa rather redundant.

Oh well.

All in all, I feel a weird sense of pride with my achievement. It’s means nothing, didn’t make me healthier, didn’t raise money for a charity or even do something for somebody. It was selfish, it was selfish bloody minded stubbornness for something that impressed only me and a few other people. I don’t think I’d even put it on my Tinder bio.

But I don’t care, as for this journey, there has been a weird solace for me within a WhatsApp group. Two of my friends from university heard about the challenge and decided to go for their own challenge related to it. One of which was to hit 100, another was to hit 50. If absolutely nothing else, as I hurtle to my mid 30’s, I’m glad that I’ve managed to reclaim and spend some quality time with two great friends. That has been what has made the last 6 or so month’s special.

I’ve not decided if I’m continuing to 200, or 250, or whatever. This isn’t swimming: the next 100 will probably be harder, but I’ve paired with one of my friends and we’ve started a little instagram account for groundhopping. You can see it here at @ystbah. Please give us a follow!

Anyway, now onto some stats!

  • Most Northerly ground – Firhill, Glasgow (Partick Thistle)
  • Most Easterly & Southerly ground – GSP Stadium, Nicosia (Cyprus)
  • Most Westerly ground – Giants Stadium, New York (New York Red Bulls)
  • I’ve watched football matches in 13 different countries: Andorra, Belgium, Cyprus, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, United States and Wales.
  • I’ve watched football at 59% of the teams in the Evostik Divison 1 North, my most populous league.
  • I’ve seen football played in 23 competitions: European Championships, World Cup Qualifications, European Championship Qualifications, Champions League, Europa League, Premier League, Championship, League 1, League 2, Conference North, Evostik Premiership, Evostik Division 1 North, Evostik Division 1 South, North West Counties Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup, FA Trophy, League of Wales, Cymru Alliance, League of Ireland, Scottish Premiership, Bundesliga & Serie A.

Anyway, here’s a map!

Anyway, if you have any questions or anything, I’m opening the comments up to an unofficial AMA, if you have any questions for my escapades, leave them in the comments!

Thirty-Four

This weekend I turn thirty-four.

It’s been quite a weird year. Thirty-three wasn’t a great year, starting off incredibly rubbish due to losing Bonnie and going through a breakup. July was when things started improving, thanks to some cool people coming into my life, and also reconnecting with some old ones (mainly the Manchester SEO crowd thanks to events like Media Poker), and although since about October 2017 I was pretty much waiting for the year to be over.

2018 has started well, I feel more focused, and more driven. I think the waiting for the year to end wasn’t necessarily the best course of action, but I’ve definitely got a plan for 2018 going forward. It’s going well so far too. Yes, this is vagueblogging. More will hopefully be revealed soon.

Regarding the things I love, I travelled to a new country for the first time whilst being 33 (Ireland). My Germanophile nature was fed further as a long weekend in Köln was spent following my love of professional wrestling, as well as falling in love with Berlin in November. I also took my main holiday in the UK for the first time since 2012 with a week spent in London and Brighton. I played a bunch of new games and my time playing video games has creeped up. Gym has taken a hit, but I’m walking a lot more these days. I also think I drink less, and eat slightly better.

Now, suggested by Nichola Stott, here is the first of what I hope will be an ongoing series, here is my life-by-life comparison with Reese Witherspoon.


 Rhys (With a Spoon)
Rhys (With a Spoon)
Reese Witherspoon
Age Nearly 34 Nearly 42
Oscars (Nominated) 0 1
Books Written 1 0
Marriages 0 2
Children 0 3
WordPress Plugins Written 10 0

I'm not sure how much further I can compare my life to Reese Witherspoon, so if you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments!

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