I got into Poets of the Fall in a big way after Late Goodbye. Their work is fantastic and they’re brilliant live.

I’m glad Remedy have stuck with them over the years, the Herald of Darkness song from Alan Wake II was a banger.

Life’s too short to get hung up on it, friend.

I know it’s easy for me to say, but each success; mistake; and blatantly oblivious sign that they’re DTF missed are all learning experiences.

It makes you who you are now, and that’s kinda awesome. You’re better than who you were before. Onwards and upwards!

I was just clueless as fuck. I’ve got the sum total of zero game when it comes to dating, not that it matters now I’ve settled down.

I did learn my lesson though. Met a girl who was absolutely stunning, like cover girl model looks, and she was lovely. Asked her out on a date expecting to be shot down, and she said yes. At that point I was like a dog that had chased a car and caught up with it, I didn’t know what the fuck to do.

Anyway, we went out a couple of times - nice restaurant, bowling, the cinema… had a great time with her but it wasn’t really moving forward and just kinda started to fizzle out, which was no big deal.

One evening she phones me, saying she was at a house party two or three towns over, and was getting bored - and asked me to take her home. No worries there, I wasn’t doing anything, so I drove over to get her and she hopped in, a bit worse for wear after a glass or twelve of wine but not absolutely munted.

Halfway down the road home, she’s like “actually, can we go back to yours? I don’t really want to get in and my parents see me like this”. Not a problemo, took her back to mine, got her a coffee and sat and chatted. She came through to my room when I was getting changed and crashed out on the bed beside me, faced me, and said “maybe I’ll sleep here tonight?”

I’d learned my lesson, I could see that she wanted all two inches of this rage and disappointment. So I said “sure, no problem… I’ll sleep on the sofa”.

I drove her home the following morning and she never said a word. I desperately wished I could have taken that opportunity, but the whole consent thing after her sesh at the party made it a little bit dicey. I never did get another opportunity. She was absolutely lovely though and I hope she found a guy that made her happy. 😊

I dated a girl once who came round. She asked “are you going to give me the tour?”

I was like “uh, okay sure” so showed her around the living room, kitchen and back yard, before heading upstairs. I showed her the guest rooms and my room, and she sat on the bed and was like “it seems comfy in here”.

Right then I did what any guy would do, stopped for a moment, and said “it sure is. Now let’s head back downstairs and see what there is to watch”.

It was a good couple of years later when I thought back about it and it hit me like a train, “you fucking idiot”

The preferred cereal of JEFF.K!!!11

You can generally tell how well a push has gone by looking at your phone at 9pm on the Friday nights.

If there’s no missed calls, it’s gone well.

If there’s two or three figures worth of missed calls, then it’s gone really well and it’s just been people wanting to congratulate you on how well it’s gone.

Either way, a Monday task.

I had the Atari 800 edition.

I didn’t know what the fuck the “enter your account number” was at the start. Young me didn’t realise it was a thinly veiled password system. Quite clever actually

Wasn’t it done in David Crane’s heyday too?

edit: wow, I didn’t realise quite how bad the NES edition looked, though I’ve never played it. Seems that doubling of RAM paid off for the early Atari 400 platforms. The Atari edition did miss that final tower ascent section though.

I vote (illegally) for MetalJesusRocks.

The Star is somewhere between The Sun (a Rupert Murdoch spec tabloid rag with a “publish first, verify sources later” approach) and The Sport (contrary to its name, is less about the development and performance of elite ball games, and more about substituting the journalism with as much softcore pornography as possible).

Admittedly, the Star is highly entertaining - like the “nottheonion” comm in print form, with an approach more like a magazine than a newspaper. It’s usually a fraction cheaper than most of the major tabloids too.

Oftentimes, it was even more wild than that. One flight may have been ten or twelve quid; and the other flight might have been three or four quid. Granted this was ten or fifteen years ago; but some of the low-cost carrier flights were insanely low.

There’s still some crazy low prices to be had if you live near a hub for a low cost carrier, like Stansted or Glasgow Prestwick.

An old colleague of mine worked at a different office - he got fed up of the rat run and took a job within a stone’s throw of Stansted Airport - close enough that a hotel or carpark shuttle bus covered his route.

He couldn’t be arsed with London and Essex house prices so he bought his house near Shannon (yes, in the Republic of Ireland) and commuted by plane every day. The major problem with that was if he didn’t book a flight when they were released (where it was about fifteen or twenty quid return!), or if there was a short notice job came in that changed his hours, he was royally fucked and it cost him a fortune.

I should imagine his carbon footprint was somewhere between “Chinese concrete factory” and “literally burning petrol in the back garden for a laugh”.

A friend of a friend did something similar in east London - couldn’t be holed with the London house prices so got a place in some Paris suburb and commuted by train most mornings, only staying over if there was a staff night out or a late working task planned.

…and I sometimes complain about my ten mile commute.

I do quite like the self-awareness of Bubsy 3D being absolute donkey tonk. The redrawn sprites in 3D looks cool, let’s see if they learn the lessons from thirty-ish years ago.

Yeah, I went to a short notice concert in Laaaahndan last year when hotel prices were ludicrous. A same day domestic flight cost fifty notes .

I boarded with no luggage - just my watch, phone, wallet, and a phone charger - expected the bare minimum and wasn’t disappointed. Like Ronseal, it did exactly what it said on the tin.

Ryanair is like the single rider queue for rides.

They’re handy if you need to go somewhere fast and cheap, but asking any more of them is just going to lead to frustrating and lots of extra fees.

At this point, their reputation is so well-publicised (and even celebrated) that nobody really has any real right to moan once they’ve actively selected them as a carrier.

no, because line needs to go up

Seriously though, I agree with you. It’s just so wasteful. It’s really disheartening to try and do my eco friendly bit to reduce waste (particularly of power) and then data centres just piss away the ground we’ve collectively made.

I still think of the National Enquirer ripoff that was included in the Zak McKraken box. Young me didn’t realise it was a hint book masquerading as a faux-gossip rag.

The trinkets and inclusions in big box games were cool, whether they were required (Lenslok, codewheels etc) or otherwise.

Amazing. Somehow they managed to make it look almost as good as a full price title at the time!

Demos were cool and that (ThatNukemGuy and Sean Seanson do brilliant recap vids), but…

…what I really looked forward to were the Net Yaroze games that were published on the discs. Most of them were decent; some of them were utter shit; but some of them were absolute bangers.

That, and putting the discs in the CD player gave you a blind taste of some 90s techno choons - the drop in the Lifeforce Tenka track is top quality.

Is there a soundbite that sounds like “masturbate, then re-evaluate”?

Like “urinate then negotiate” or “pissing before purchasing”

I don’t know, I’m shit at these

Who needs git when you have a B: drive and a Save As command for tycoon43.asm

Version control? You mean this?