Bechuga

Tried The Division on a free weekend, might buy it now. Mindless but fun (or fun because it's mindless?). Playing on PC with a PS3 controller, the best way to play PC games.

Hollow Knight is a great metroidvania. Slightly too easy to lose your way and have no idea where you're meant to go, but fun nonetheless to explore and find stuff. Music is stellar, too.

Here is a conversation between two AI bots that developed their own language: Conclusion: they pose as much threat as your average meme shit poster

Wear a suit of magnets, over which you wear a wool sweater, onto which sweater you rub balloons furiously. Combine with dusty hands and no AI will ever attempt to bag your meat.

Don't trust Putin when it comes to computin

The Caretaker is my favourite artist whose music I can barely remember after hearing it. Keep it up!

Received my copy of NieR. Once I've finished Hollow Knight--which might take a while--gonna plunge into it with relish. So many good games, all in a row. I feel spoilt!

Many books read, few I have mentioned here. Let's go: Finished John le Carré's The Looking-Glass War and A Small Town In Germany, completing the omnibus collection I had. Both excellent books, if slightly over detailed, especially A Small Town.... Will continue to read further le Carré books, yet to be betrayed by his work. Also booked a ticket to watch a live-screening of an interview with him, which will be my first literary event. Looking forward to it. N W and Changing My Mind: Collected Essays by Zadie Smith. I had suspected N W to be a book trying too hard to be out there and weird as some reviews had described it as, but such suspicions were unfounded. Really enjoyable, with a few genuine funny moments. H(a)ppy by Nicola Barker. Very strange, with another somewhat sudden and not so satisfying ending, although not the worst. Her books just stop, in a way that does not feel quite right. Only Darkmans had a satisfactory ending, considering the content that came before it. To me, the ending of a book is like the last bite of a meal: if you fuck that up, that's all you remember. Just begun reading Villages of Britain: the Five Hundred Villages That Made The Countryside by Clive Aslet. Consists of short stories about (guess what) villages, and their inceptions. Pretty interesting, I could do with learning a little more about my own country than reading another American book. Speaking of Americans, I started reading Underworld by Don Delillo at work. Disappointed it has nothing to do with English rave but I think I'll enjoy it.

*Gets finger ready to pre-order vinyl*

I have no idea about genre defining, but I simply really like that album. Vaporwave or ambient or whatever, it's a really great electronic album.

Christ, they are sold out! Fucking hell, I almost didn't buy them earlier, thinking they wouldn't sell out so quick (bought the double pack). I almost made the same mistake as before, in waiting... I'm going to go lie down for a bit.

Birth of a New Day & 2814 violet coloured vinyl double pack announced: https://dreamcatalogue.bandcamp.com/album/--18 https://dreamcatalogue.bandcamp.com/album/2814 They had to announce this just after I run out of money. Bastards!

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Hollow Knight is really great. I kinda feared I'd bought a game I wouldn't play but I look forward to completing it. Not an easy game, either.

Prob. won't play much of Drakengard 2. Kinda crappy, horrific dialogue + voice acting. Astonishing how bad the story is! Yet the original is wonderful, dark story telling, with much better voice acting + story. Gonna skip to NieR instead. You can really tell Yoko Taro was not involved with it. Awesome Master Roshi cosplay avatar! Thank ye!

Got Ending E of Drakengard. Yep, dude makes weird games. Onto Drakengard 2.

My coworker, with whom I work with in special accounts (foreign exports, awkward orders, carrier shipping etc), had a major heart attack several weeks ago, and will be off work for a while. There are multiple downsides to this: 1) He's an awesome guy, who works surpremely hard, is willing to do everything he can to help and is always trying to improve himself, even when it's outside his comfort zone. There are few coworkers I would say I like, but he is one of them, and that he has been taken ill like this has made me quite sad. To hear that he's on the mend and survived was news I received happily. 2) He had learned many of the jobs I alone know how to do, and with him off, having holiday days off will be quite awkward. I have not been told I am not allowed time off, but I know what kind of look I will receive if I try to book any. 3) The person I have been given to replace him is totally shit, lazy and deluded as to his abilities as a worker and human being. Not to mention a selfish prick: when told he would be helping me for a while, he said he didn't want to do it because he believes the job is what gave my coworker the heart attack, and that he 'valued his health more than taking on jobs he doesn't want to do' (he said this on the morning we found out the coworker had suffered a heart attack). The lazy replacement spends all of the day making comments like 'no wonder he had a heart attack with work like this' and 'I don't want to die early', and expects me to agree with him. The work he's doing is the same as what he normally does, except he now has to put slips of paper into the boxes he packs. Which I have to help him with, despite being busy with more complicated stuff, because he keeps forgetting what to do. And then asks when he's getting a pay rise for having to deal with the extra 'stress'. tl;dr: sad about ill colleague, holidays are but a distant dream and his replacement is a wanker. And this is the second time in two years that a coworker of mine has suffered major health problems (last year, my former coworker broke his ankle and took six months to recover). Perhaps I am bad luck to be around? Does my cowanker have a reason to be afraid? The only plus is that I am again in a tough situation, and might get another huge bonus for dealing with it without complaining (apart from on WATMM, course). Perhaps. Maybe. If I don't get one then there really isn't any plus!

Locked out of my gmail account for reasons I cannot fathom. It's not allowing me to set a new password like it usually does, and even asks me to type in a phone number I haven't used for a couple of years. But even typing that in, it does not acknowledge it's me. Even though I am still accessing the emails from my phone with no problem (and can confirm no-one has hacked my account to use it for shady stuff). A n n o y i n g

On my list to get and play. Might get someone to buy it for me for a b'day present. I have heard about that quest, should be fun :)

With NieR ranking as one of my favourite gaming experiences in a while, I am playing Yoko Taro's other games in order. This means I'm playing Drakengard on PS2. Oh boy, this is a step-down gameplay wise from Automata! Really? What are you getting out of it at this point? He's scouring the universe for the gameplay

Even the selected comments on his bandcamp page from fans decry him: That said, I've not yet given Flashbulb a proper listen. Will do so and find out what the fuss is about (that said, the first song I clicked on his bandcamp was about a tree saying 'very mean things' )

Will pay £300 for Aphex pencil, lead needs 2B unbroken

I've had about all I can tape from this ridiculous thread

Gotta tape what you can get

After completing NieR, I'm reading / watching interviews of Yoko Taro, the game's director. He might be my current favourite person.