Month: June 2020

Late starts and small achievements

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I finally managed a slightly longer run today…

…which I’m really happy about! It was only three miles, but still. I really had to fight for the motivation this morning, and it could very easily have been yet another one-miler, so I’m going to take it as a win.

We didn’t end up driving to Geth’s office this morning, as we had a bit of a late start after his birthday yesterday. Geth says he has enough work to be getting on with as it is for the next week, so we’ll collect his books next Friday instead. I’m actually fairly glad we didn’t, as the roadworks near us are so bad today that they’re having a knock-on effect on the whole surrounding area. Hopefully the traffic will be slightly better this time next week.

I’ll be settling down to work on my game over the weekend, but will post my running vlogs (and possibly a few extras) as usual.

Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition
Geth is happily esconced in Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition. When he first played the original in late 2011, the soundtrack got me through my first NaNoWriMo; I’m hoping it will provide a similar creative atmosphere for my various projects this time round.

Today’s earworm playlist:

ACE+ – ‘Riki The Legendary Heropon’

Happy 40th Birthday Geth!

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Just the usual mile today…

…but I really am hoping to manage a longer run tomorrow.

I woke up really late, presumably due to not having slept well on Monday and Tuesday nights. As such, it’s been a bit of a slow day – it’s also Geth’s 40th birthday today, so we had a Zoom meetup to celebrate. I got him the new Xenoblade Chronicles version as his main present, which should keep him fairly quiet for the next couple of months!

It’s a shame that his milestone birthday coincided with lockdown, but a lot of people are in the same boat this year, and you have to make the best of it. It’ll be nice to have gradual face-to-face celebrations with people when we do get to meet up.

Tomorrow we’ll be taking a trip to Geth’s office, as he needs to collect his books for continued working-from-home purposes. Other than that, I’m looking forward to settling in with my current game project again.

Birthday cake
Geth’s birthday cake. He wanted white chocolate, and this Sainsbury’s offering was perfect.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Hiroyuki Sawano and Gemie – ‘Ashes Suite’
Mabel – ‘God Is A Dancer’

Phone Box Thursday: Queensway, London

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Here’s another phone box from the area where I was staying when I visited London last November.

Red phone box
Red phone box, Queensway, London, 27th November 2019.

(Coordinates 51°51’03.7″N, 0°18’69.5″W.)

This is one of two phone boxes outside Queensway tube station. I’ll post the other one next week!

It always annoys me when one of the ‘Telephone’ signs has been put back in the box upside-down like this. It looks a bit sloppy. In general, though, it’s another fairly well-maintained phone box.

One last London box next week, and then we’ll be heading north again…

Midweek, muddling on

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A mile and a half-ish today!…

…although the extra half-ish was only because the roadworks near us had become so convoluted by this morning that I couldn’t actually access certain streets. I’m really looking forward to those roadworks being finished, but I’m not holding my breath (it’s been four years so far).

I’m experimenting with intermittent fasting again (i.e. only eating during certain hours of the day) to try and help get my lockdown weight off, and it’s been going well so far. I do feel a bit hungry earlier in the day, but am still finding that my healthy Slimming World evening meals are satiating enough that I don’t need much else during my ‘eating window’. I don’t think I’ll do it long-term, but I’m happy to try it for a few weeks to see if it helps me get back down to my SW target again.

Mostly admin and game creation today. Tomorrow will be slightly different, as Geth has a big and important milestone birthday.

Vase of corks
These corks (possibly a result of my penchant for alcohol-free fizzy since getting sober) were clogging up the cupboard yesterday, and I needed that cupboard space for all the birthday cake Geth had requested, so I’ve tidied them into this vase. I think it’ll look better once the vase is full, but judging by the amount of Nosecco I’ve been drinking recently, that won’t take long.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Michael Land – ‘Closing Themes (Monkey Island 2)’
Michael Land – ‘Mêlée Island’
Natalie Cole – ‘Miss You Like Crazy’

The unreal world

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Yet another mile today…

…and I’m starting to feel bad about not getting out for longer runs, but at least I am still getting out. I’ll definitely do three miles on Friday if not before.

I also went for a fairly long walk today so that I could visit one of the bigger supermarkets near us and pick up some supplies for Geth’s birthday on Thursday. Passing through parks and the like, with people milling around and not always keeping their social distance, feels more and more unreal and uncomfortable these days; I’m not sure how being within two metres of anyone is ever going to start feeling ‘normal’ again.

Other than that, I’ve been getting on with admin and a bit of day job work – will be returning to my game creation stuff this evening.

Trees in summer
Summer always smells nice, even on a cold and grey day. This woodland near us makes for a good pretend jungle.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Hiroyuki Sawano and Gemie – ‘Ashes Suite’
Taylor Swift – ‘You Need To Calm Down’

A quiet Monday

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A faster mile today…

…and since then I’ve spent the rest of the day quietly getting on with my to-do list. Geth and I didn’t have the greatest weekend health-wise – the awful, awful world situation is taking a bit of a toll, and we’ve both been struggling to get as much exercise in as planned and to eat healthily. Today feels a bit more manageable in those respects.

There’s quite a lot on my list this week, but at the moment it’s just taking one day at a time.

Fence rainbow
I like this painted half-rainbow that I run past most days.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Duran Duran – ‘The Edge Of America’
Wham! – ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’
Wham! – ‘Club Tropicana’
Rihanna and Jay-Z – ‘Umbrella’
Culture Beat – ‘Mr Vain’

parkrun tourism: South Shields

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In February, I attended my twentieth different parkrun venue (a big deal in the parkrun world – you get various unofficial virtual badges and things like that). I’d been meaning to try out South Shields parkrun for ages, as I’d enjoyed lots of nice days out around the area, and it finishes along the same straight as the Great North Run does.

South Shields parkrun
Pop-up sign (love these) at South Shields parkrun.

It was a fairly cold winter’s day when I went – not really a day for enjoying the seaside! However, the route is an enjoyable meander through the sand dunes for the most part. This long section isn’t very flat or fast, but the tarmac downhill finishing straight makes up for it. Maybe it was just memories of multiple Great North Runs, but I found myself overtaking far more people than I usually do as I raced for the line!

Like a lot of the parkruns I attended this last winter, I would really, really like to do this course again in the summer. Of course, parkrun is very unlikely to return in the next few months, but hopefully we will be parkrunning again by summer 2021, and I can return to South Shields on a sunny day with Geth in tow 🙂

Bigger mornings

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I did another three miles today…

…and was still back home well before nine because I woke up about seven this morning. That doesn’t usually happen, as I place a lot of importance on natural sleep patterns (I’m aware that this is a privilege resulting from being in charge of my own work hours!) and mine tend to favour the hours between one and nine. The extra couple of waking hours have made a huge difference and I’ve managed to get a lot more achieved today!

My prep for my next game is going well. I’ve made a mini-game in Adventuron that I’m going to try porting today to see if I can get it working on a Spectrum emulator. That should give me a better idea of any issues that I’m going to need to look out for when doing the same process with the main jam game later in the month.

I’m also quite excited about the weekend – it looks like I’ll have a bit of time to get back to playing videogames as well as making them! Fingers crossed.

Running vlogs and review posts as usual over the weekend, and I’ll update again on Monday.

Batman: Arkham Knight
Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na BATMAN. Arkham Knight was one of the reasons I built a gaming PC five years ago… yet I never got round to buying it, largely because I never got round to finishing all the previous Arkham games on the XBOX 360! However, Geth is fairly certain that he wants to get an XBOX Series X (which will be backwards-compatible with XBOX One), and the XBOX One version is now a fraction of the price that it was on release, soooo… I may be starting an Arkham marathon again soon!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Hiroyuki Sawano and Gemie – ‘Ashes Suite’
Little Mix – ‘Move’
The Shamen – ‘Ebeneezer Goode’
Tom Jones – ‘It’s Not Unusual’