My Life Archives - Rhys Wynne

50 before I’m 50 – Release a video game

Warning: This blog post is long, winding and probably doesn’t make sense, but explains the last few weeks. If you just want to play MonoScale, click here.

One of the 50 before I’m 50 that I have technically done before is release a video game. Using Blitz Basic in the early 2000’s, I made a bunch of games. You can read about them here. Though, sadly, the games are no longer available to download (I must have removed them at some point). Sadly lost to time.

I’m older, and a bit more experienced in programming, so embracing my new-found sobriety, as the nights draw in I thought to play around with game development and try to make a video game.

Not wanting to let it drag on forever and to give myself some sort of deadline, I entered a Game Jam. Game Jams are you’re given a limited length of time to release a game. And like the time I signed up for a 5k, I signed up for a game jam without really any sort of experience in game engines. I’d played around with Godot a bit, but I was not too experienced with it and regularly hitting walls. There’s a physics based joke in there.

Anyway, I found a Game Jam I was interested in the concept of – a 1-Bit Jam. As well as a theme where the limitations were to graphics, it also gave a couple of weeks development time. I’ve seen game jams that last for 48 hours and they just do not sound fun. So I signed up, joined the Discord server, and readied myself for making the game.

The Idea

Before the Jam started there was a vote for the theme. As well as the restrictions you had to make a game surrounding a theme. I can’t remember all the potential themes, but the two that I remember were “Silhouette” and “Tower”, purely because I had an idea for each of them. Silhouette may get made later down the line, as I really like the concept, but Tower won.

As for an idea? Well, sadly I went for the obvious. I was ravaged with COVID and was watching the Olympics at the time. I got really into the Speed Climbing. I was fascinated by the speed they were scaling the walls. A simple climbing game was what I thought, climb the outside of a tower incredibly quickly. Rather than climbing, I thought of a grappling hook system, where you’re against the clock to climb a tower quickly.

With an idea in my head (actually two), I hoped either Tower or Silhouette won. Tower won, so I begun development.

Development

Although I’d been playing around with development in other items, I felt using Godot was the best tool for my needs in terms of familiarity and features.

The difficulty going from WordPress to game development is that – even with the current state of the community and the irrationality of certain actors – I’m fairly confident WordPress is never going to introduce a physics engine. Even though Godot does a lot of the heavy physics engine work (things like “apply force to this object in this direction” are one commands), it can be tricky for somebody that focuses on PHP and MySQL to get their head round.

Godot development uses “Nodes”. These can be anything and everything. So for example, they can be players, enemies, power ups etc. You code every interaction needed for the game. In this game, I had a couple of base nodes – the climber, and hooks.

The climber can fire a grapple. This grapple would have a max length, and the player cannot fire a grapple if one is already active. If the grapple is attached to a hook, then the player is pulled towards the grapple. In reality, a force pushing the player towards the hook is applied. Once the player reaches the hook, it is released.

It sounds complex, but the force direction and application is two lines of code, so I don’t have to calculate anything!

These nodes were then put into another node, a Tower node. Which adds a background and detects the player position. The hook node was set to randomly generate and pushed out onto the wall.

At the moment it felt like a wall, so I want to make it feel like a tower. This was relatively easily to do, as I looked at games like Nebulus to see how that was done. A brickwork pattern was applied to the background, and when the player hit collision areas located in the left, right and top of the screen, the tower scrolled left, right and up.

Hooks were interesting, as to maintain a look scrolling the hooks was needed. This again was looping through each hook and moving it left, right or down. Should the hook scroll off the bottom of the page it’s deleted from memory and a new hook is spawned at the top of the page. Oddly, even though there were approximately 100 hooks on a 1500 x 1500 pixel area, there was no real slow down, and although you could get parts where hooks are clustered together and other parts of the tower are barren, it worked pretty well.

Finally, I had to introduce a lose state (which is the player falling off the bottom of the screen) and a win state. The win state was a bit of fun, a simple ending animation should the player go off the top of the screen when the height climbed was over 100m, the time recorded and a return to the title screen. This is where game development gets difficult as nodes are in effect wrapped into one other. A main game node (containing the player, hooks, HUD and background), a title screen (containing information and the high score) and an ending scene. One advisory I saw about Game Jam entries was “make your game fairly easy”. Send the punter home happy, show a lot of your content early and often. I imagined most people would have played my game at maximum two times, so I set the height of the tower at 50m (I struggled to complete it at 100m) which should offer enough challenge, but not too difficult.

The game was actually built relatively quickly – I did use ChatGPT to format things I didn’t really understand but no AI was used in the art or music assets. I think in total about 10 hours to take the idea to completion.

Polish

Once the game was finished in it’s most simplest form I began thinking of ways to polish it. The first was improving the sprite work.

I found a tool – Aseprite – for the sprite work. I felt confident enough in my abilities to do some basic sprite work (soon to be misfounded). Sure enough, after about an hour and a bit I managed to get a basic tower built and graphics. It’s incredibly powerful, Aseprite, but not really had too much time to play with it.

One thing I did struggle with was the people, as I’m not great at drawing people. I used – oddly – the arcade version of Track and Field as a guide, and it didn’t turn out well. Poor Gwyn the Colourless was not looking well. In the end I left him looking a bit odd and weird in the game, as I did with Princess Blanc (the character you “rescue”). But we’ll leave it at that.

The evolution of the “falling” sprite for Gwyn the Colourless. I didn’t like the second draft, as he looked odd and too similar to the “going up” sprite.

One thing I am proud of is the tower effect. One thing I was worried about was the hooks and the fact they didn’t stand out on the tower. Thankfully with Aesprite it was easy enough to create a dithering effect, and the hooks were made a bit bigger and bolder so they stood out a bit more.

With the dithering, it also allowed me to put a round effect on the background. This was done with an overlay so it looked more like a tower that scrolled around the screen.

After the graphics was the music. I am not musically inclined so I approached the Discord asking if somebody would help me out. Thankfully somebody offered to help me out so that was fine. With the sound effects, I’d been playing around with Pico-8 recently and it has a snazzy sound effect editor. After a bit of time I had a game over, fire and connection sound effect ready to go.

Finally, I made a title screen, somewhat of an ending and cleaned it all up. The title screen I was most impressed with thanks to the starfield I created, that allowed me to drag and drop it into other scenes, set the width, height, offset and density, and put it elsewhere.

LOOK AT IT SPARKLE!

There were other ways to polish it. But I wanted to get it finished by the end of Wednesday 9th October, as I’ve two days before submitting it. Come the 9th, lateish in the day, I uploaded it and submitted in preparation for the game jam. The second suggestion was making your game playable online, rather than relying on people to download it. Thankfully in Godot you can compile your game to web so a quick upload to itch.io and the game was ready to play online. About 5 uploads in total for various reasons (the music wasn’t looping, “Fullscreen” would reveal my tower secrets, etc etc), but I got there in the end, and it was published on the 10th.

The polish work was the 20% of the 80/20 rule. Whilst the main game took me about 10 hours, polishing was around 15 hours.

Should you wish to play MonoScale you can do so at the link below. Let me know how you get on!

Post “Launch” Debug

There were things I wasn’t too happy with the game. I found it frustrating and it came up time and again in testing. I did think about reducing the height but I thought having an average time of 2 minutes to complete it is fine.

Nevertheless, it probably is too difficult. A new version would probably be slightly easier, with a bigger hitbox for the hooks.

Come Friday 11th October when the Game Jam was over the voting began. At this point you have a period of time to vote on other games. Here’s a bunch of feedback I received as well as the general comment of “It’s too difficult”.

An idea that was suggested on was camera work. I liked the end condition of throwing yourself off the top of the screen to win the game, so I wanted to keep that, but the scrolling up as you go up is a bit wonky. I’m not sure what to do here but one suggestion was maybe a zoom out if the height is under the 50m target height.

Quickfire ideas that I both a) like and b) take on board are the following:-

Sound levels are a bit off. SFX are a lot louder than the music (anybody who has watched me on Twitch will know that’s no real surprise).
A cylinder warp effect on the tower would definitely make it look more cylandrical.
Give the option to immediately retry the game, rather than push folk to the title screen.

One of the surprising bit of feedback was that Michael Klamerus featured it in his Indie Game Roundup on October 11th. I was not expecting any coverage outside the Game Jam itself. He praised the art (which is always a nice thing to hear as I feel like I can’t draw). Once again though I’ve heard the comment “I’m bad at this” which I’ve translated as “The game is too hard” for people who are incredibly polite 😊.

Also, checking the stats I’m somewhere on Indienova, but I don’t know where as a search has proved fruitless and Google Translate only goes so far.

Finally, the nicest feedback I received was that it would make a perfect mobile game.

All of those are suggestions for what I’m wanting to do when I have a bit of time.

The Game Jam & Results

During the voting phase, you’re encouraged to vote on other games. Here’s some games I really liked were:-

One of my favourite games was “The Skyscaper Plagiarism Agency“, which is a simple one bit game that requires you to build towers to match another tower. Really good fun and it showed – was in the top 10 of the most fun games out there (Gameplay it came 7th). Would be fascinating to see a full version of this without the 1 bit limits.

Bab.le was a Wordle clone I quite enjoyed. You have to build longer and longer words. Again, an original take on the tower concept (granted, the idea of “Tower of Babel” isn’t exactly unique, but the execution was great). This game also did well. In the top 50 for both originality and gameplay.

Witow Hero was a thunder god playing on a tower, so had a basic kind of guitar hero clone, but the graphics and the music really appealed to me, as it was a gameboy aesthetic.

Spire Bound was another great game: a fun little Metroidvania game that had a nice pacing and you were never really truly stuck. Gameplay it scored well (again another top 50 game).

Finally, Escape Tower was a fun escape tower with an amazing soundtrack. Did get lost, and it wasn’t truly 1 bit in my eyes (there were discussions on how games should deal with transparency, and it confused everybody, so I don’t really blame the author, however it’s something that affected a lot of games, and that was the game jam’s fault).

Anyway, how did I do? After the voting period was over I scored the following:-

Criteria	Score	Rank (out of 340)
Gameplay	3	141
Theme	4	54
Originality	3.273	157
Art	3.091	171
Music	2.727	178
Uses 1 Bit graphics	4.545	198
Overall	3.439	153

Overall, it was a fairly average game that scored slightly above half way. Happy with that overall. It wasn’t the most original of course and it had some limits but after the first week it did seem to drop off in terms of popularity. I knew art and music would be my weaker areas (there were some areas I didn’t like about the music), so not surprised about that.

I was a bit miffed with the “Uses 1 bit graphics”. I’m not sure what knocked me down a point or two? Maybe I missed some pixels and they were dark grey, as opposed to black, or the side dithering? I don’t know.

There were things I should have done better. If I enter it next year it is to change the colour scheme. MonoScale doesn’t stand out with all the black and white entries. Maybe go for a Game Boy palette?

You can see MonoScale, or not, as it doesn’t stand out…

Conclusion

Overall, I really enjoyed my first game jam. Even if it became a bit all consuming at the end of it. The last couple of days I was pretty much finishing work and doing 2 to 3 hours on MonoScale, but I wanted to get it done and over the finish line in a state that I am proud of it. And I am. It’s not GTA7, but it’s my little indie game.

There’s a base for a game – a MonoScale 2 or “Deluxe” version, using the feedback shared above, and adding a few bits I didn’t have time for.

Finally, I’ve also found a new hobby. I already have game #2 on the go, which I hope to release before the end of the year. There’s a bit less pressure on me for that one.

That however is being worked on with less time pressure. Will shout about it when it’s done here, or you can follow my itch.io page here.

Yet another white 40 year old tech company director with no medical experience praises high tech solution to health issues he brought upon himself

Seriously lads, the NHS Couch to 5k App is amazing.

In mid July, when I had a 40+ health check and was instructed to be more active as my blood pressure was high, I decided to look at the Couch to 5k App after a few folks I like rated it. It had been something that I was wanting to do, but the health check gave me the boot up the backside to do it.

I’d argue it’s probably the best thing I’ve done for my health. I’m not a runner. Really not a runner. I was crap at PE and crap at running in particular. Cross country was my least favourite activity in my least favourite sport in school. To explain how bad I am at 40 years of age: in my first ever run with the app you run for 7 x 1minute splits, with a 90 second walk in-between. By the end of that run, I couldn’t do the final 1 minute split.

On Tuesday, I did 30 minutes continued running.

For me 30 minutes is a wee bit short of 5k for me. The run on Tuesday saw me complete week 9 of Couch to 5k, and the course in general. It’s fair to say that I got a bit emotional. It had it’s ups, it had it’s downs. I got sick of Vernon Kay’s 90’s playlist, I questioned Denise Lewis’ concept of time, I cursed my left calf, but I got there in the end.

There are so many highlights to my journey, but here’s a bunch that come to mind.

The bemused look from a neighbour who I ran past on my first run.
The joy I experienced on my 4th run, which was Week 1 run 3 again, as I had COVID and thought I lost my ability. I didn’t.
The run in London where I ran along the South Bank of London on a gorgeous Friday evening.

I think giving I was running along one of my favourite places in the world, this was the first run I really enjoyed.

The first time I overtook somebody in Mile End Park in London. Granted she was 75 and looked knackered but I did it!
My first Week 4 run, which saw me run along Dusseldorf’s riverfront. It was a tough run.

I needed a shipping container to hold me up in Dusseldorf

My first failure, the Week 4 run 2, in Berlin, where I just couldn’t run up a tiny hill and a chihuahua ran in front of me, causing me to stop. I nearly cried.

The run in Berlin. Gorgeous park, but I just couldn’t do it there and then.

Week 5 Run 3, and the joy I experience when I finished it. It’s a step up that one – a full 20 minutes running!

Smashing my phone on a run, meaning I had to run alone with my thoughts. Not good. Turns out I moan a lot when running.
My first Parkrun, where I set a goal to run under 45 minutes by the end of 2024.

First Parkrun. Picked a hilly bastard one.

My second Parkrun two weeks later, where I ran it in 39:39.
Learning about Zone 2 running which has really helped me. A more efficient fat burning style of running, with less effort, who knew!?!?!
And telling a kid I couldn’t get his ball back he hoofed over the school fence, because I was on a good pace (I’m not too proud of this one).

I’d really like to publicly thank a bunch of people: Aled, Nat, Fern, Shane & Del who pretty much have had to listen to my questions and the strange selfies over the past 3 months (especially my brother Aled, who I messaged when he was at a wedding to ask about strategies for reducing chafing). But also so many other folks who have given me support on Instagram, Threads and Mastodon. Genuinely couldn’t have done it without you.

But mainly, it’s the Couch to 5k. In little over 4 months, I’ve pretty much gone from panting and wheezing to being comfortable running, to being a Garmin and Strava wanker, buying all sorts of clothes from Decathlon, and probably fitter and healthier I’ve ever been in my life. I’d really recommend it to fat folks like myself wanting to get a bit fitter, as if I can do it (and make a new hobby out of it), I’m confident you can too.

So while certain individuals who are the similar age to me are funding medical research to justify their addictions to South American hallucinogenic plants, I’ll just stick to my running, getting up early on a Saturday to do a Parkrun. I feel it’s easier to justify to the parents, talk about publicly, and – whilst Parkrun is a bit of a cult like community at times – it is something I can discuss at parties and people will not think I’m creepy.

Sorry if that’s a bit boring for a white bloke in tech.

Update December 5th: So very kindly this got mentioned in Tim Nash’s latest newsletter. So hello if you came from Tim’s Newsletter! Please sign the guestbook. I thought I’d give an update, not least because I’ve gone past Couch To 5k.

I’m still running! Once you’re done with the app you’re on to “Beyond Couch to 5k” which are three different runs designed to help you further. They are designed to improve each element: speed, stamina and cadence (which is called “Stepping Stone”, because alliteration). I did fail at these the first time, but I sit here writing this after completing a “speed” run, relatively comfortably at lunchtime today. So once you complete the course you just loop on that for a bit. Though I’d recommend doing parkruns.

I’ve become a regular of doing parkruns recently, albeit on naff all sleep. Last Saturday I did Widnes parkrun. It was my fifth parkrun and 4 of those have been personal bests. The only one that wasn’t was Conwy parkrun where I ran with my sister-in-law who was on week 2 of the Couch 2 5k. She’s now on Week 7. I’m very close to breaking 36 minutes 5k. I’ve also signed up to do the Aintree 5k in a few weeks. I’m going to do Ormskirk parkrun this weekend.

After Christmas I’m probably going to do one less run a week. Cricket season starts again and I want to focus on that – and I’m not like Shane who can do a Parkrun followed by a 40 over match. However, I plan to use the Runna app to structure my training a bit. Consider me bitten by the bug!

Finally – Tim called me an inspiration (which I’m still bemused with). I’m happy to help folks with their running journey. If you want to natter about it then drop me a message on Bluesky, Mastodon or via my contact me page. Always happy to help folks!

My Computing History

In my birthday post a few months ago (eek!) I mentioned how I struggle to blog when things are going okay. Spoiler alert: things still are, however I feel this place has been neglected.

One of my favourite social platforms at the moment is Mastodon (follow me there) – because I enjoy the nerdy conversations there. From a toot by Jack McConnell I found a blog post by Kev Quirk called “My Computing History“, which details all the system Kev’s had over the years.

Brilliant. I’m nicking it. Here’s my computing history.

~1991: Commodore 64

The first system I owned was this beautiful Commodore 64. This version (the “Playful Intelligence” one) was a fascinating release – it was a re-hash of the ill-fated Commodore 64GS, with the keyboard stuck back on, a cartridge bundled in with 4 games (Fiendish Freddy’s Big Top o’ Fun, Flimbo’s Quest, International Soccer and Klax), and flogged in Tandy for about £65.

I bloody loved this. Although I really wanted a Commodore Amiga 500, I became a huge Commodore 64 gamer (suck it, Spectrum owners). I still have it – the header image is my machine. I still have the cartridge now, as well as 2 of the 3 budget games I got with it (American 3D Pool, Agent X II* and Rollaround) and Decembers’ Zzap! 64 Magazine I also got that year.

I got better and more powerful machines, even for Christmas from my parents, but I grew to love this beautiful machine.

~ 1995: Atari STe 520

My second computer was a hand-me-down from my uncle, which took residence at my grandparents house. The Atari STe 520. Although I craved it mainly for a game I played occasionally – Lemmings – a lot of franchises I love and still love to this day come from this machine. It had Civilization, The Secret of Monkey Island, Championship Manager, Populous, and many more. As you can tell there were a lot more cerebral and slower games – with good reason: a lot of arcade conversions were not great. More known for it’s music, ST Format did champion the computer long past it’s lifespan. Late games that haven’t got their flowers include the excellent Obsession, the “fuck me they’ve done a Doom clone on the ST” Substation and Super STario Land. All three were games I played long after the commercial lifespan of the machine had ended.

Also, fun fact – this was the first machine I dabbled with HTML in. Creating documents and putting them on disk, viewing them using the Crystal Atomic Browser. I wonder how that ended up for me?

~ 1997-1998: Olivetti PCS P/75n Pentium 75 (I think)

My first PC was a bit of a surprise. My grandad – who was probably born a generation or two too early – picked up a PC when the local Radio Rentals was closing and they were selling off stock. A great machine, I spent my mid teenage years playing some fantastic big box MS-DOS games that were a bugger to get loading. Theme Park, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Magic Carpet were all played and loved. All played for hours. Also I had a lot of fun with early Windows 95 games, particularly Shareware compilations became the order of the day, with CDs full of them and played with. Happy times with my grandparents.

It was used as a work machine though, so did used to type up my homework on it as well. It was an absolute timesaver as occasionally we had to repeat our homework, so being able to restore from a saved document rather than rewrite it saved hours. No need to rewrite in my best handwriting** the development of characters in The Mayor of Casterbridge anymore!

~ 1999: AMD (Something or other) with a Voodoo 3 2000 Graphics Card

I remember the graphics card. That’s all. What a beast this was.

Bought locally, this was the first computer at my parents house. A gorgeous machine, with an amazing graphics card, it was pretty much the PC I discovered a lot of later era FPS’ on, with Half Life, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena being the order of the day on this machine. Sadly it was an AMD machine that’s chips – for whatever reason – didn’t quite work with the motherboard so I had to have a version of Windows 95 that was cloned on it. Odd. Anyway, it kind of worked, but every so often we had to wipe the machine clean and restore it from a CD.

Online for the First Time

This was eventually the first computer I had with the internet. It was expensive at the time (1p/minute, which racked up pretty sharpish), originally I connected with Ezesurf (if you want a rabbit hole, how that company went to the wall is a read), then with Freeserve, it was just about affordable at that point before we got broadband. After having a summer or two in Yahoo! Chat Rooms (which looking back may not have been the best idea as a 16 year old kid), I did discover a couple of interests.

One was programming. I ended up messing around in Blitz Basic and making and releasing a few games. I still occasionally run in to people from that forum. Sadly all but one of the games have been lost to time, as the forum that hosted it is no longer around. Even the game that still works, can’t run on modern PC’s.

With 56k I also discovered the world of serious online gaming, I mentioned Jase a few posts back. This was where he comes onto the scene as part of me getting quite addicted (and quite good) at online Team Fortress Classic. Less action focussed games that were a game called Cosmic Consensus – a family fortunes style game that was great fun, and Acrophobia – which involved created Backronyms. Both games were precursors to what became the Jackbox Party Pack. Bring back Cosmic Consensus I say.

Sadly, something was always wrong with how it was built, as it exploded with a glorious electrical smell some point a few years later.

~ 2002: Pentium P133

A slight bit of a downstep in quality, as I went to Liverpool University to got another hand me down, this time a mid range Pentium P133. Sadly, this was pretty much a work and general browsing of the internet, but thankfully the beauty was being super connected to the internet meaning I was revisiting Doom, Quake and Command & Conquer in multiplayer when I wasn’t out causing mischief on the streets of Liverpool.

I think I did spend the three years upgrading it, so by the end of my time in university it could run Counter Strike very comfortably. Which probably explained the 2:1. I also began my first ever blog (on Blogger, yeah WordPress wasn’t a thing just yet), which at the time I think I may have blogged every day 😬. I can’t have been that interesting?

2008: Isys Elite – Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 2048mb DDR2 667Mhz 250GB SATAII nVidia 8500GT 512MB PCI-E Graphics DVDRW

You will notice this is the first PC with full stats, as in the process of writing this email I found the Novatech order I made to acquire this machine. From reading between the lines I’d have been working for a couple of years at this point, so had a wage, and also noticed that it seemed to have been ordered after I failed my driving test.

It took me two more years to finally pass.

Oddly, I cannot remember much of this PC as I was well into making websites at this point so I imagine some early WordPress development was done on this machine. One game in particular I remember playing quite heavily is Team Fortress 2.

This PC was stored in the shed at my parents until fairly recently, and went in a clear out.

~ 2012: Acer Aspire 5749

I cannot find the email about this, but apparently I bought my first laptop from Tesco. Primarily used for work (this is when I became rather boring), it was the first laptop I used to drag around to places. I believe it was what I used to contribute to WordPress for the first time. Oh my fresh face so excited to be helpful. Where did that person go?

I still have it. It’s covered in stickers and in a draw in my office. But occasionally I use it if I need a Windows XP machine to do something. The last time was to try and Nike Football Scorpion Knockout running – the free game based around that classic Nike advert. It has a CD drive which is unique as no other computers I own do.

2014: Apple Macbook Pro (2.6GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5)

This was a gorgeous machine.

From being a bit vocal supporter of Windows machines, I took the plunge and got a MacBook when being a Windows user became a bit of a barrier for contributing to WordPress (and that’s a statement I expect to be tore apart on podcasts), when all the documentation was written in Mac’s in mind. I loved the power with this machine – was powerful and allowed me to do some heavy duty coding, so much so that I had to rewrite a contract to use it for work.

A great machine, it’s since become a “Zoom Calls in my Lounge” and “Ordering off of Just Eat” laptop. It’s what Steve Jobs would have wanted. I also launched Dwi’n Rhys from Frankfurt Airport there, so saw me through my first two years of freelancing.

I also used it for Twitch Streaming as well. That wasn’t so good and begun to struggle.

The most expensive computer I think I bought, but the one that paid for itself many times over.

2020: Apple Macbook Pro (1.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5)

And finally to the machine I type these words on whilst sat in the City Tavern in Chester. A bit of a fluke really. 6 years after working on a Macbook it has been my pretty much my workflow now and I couldn’t imagine working with much else. However I needed to get a bit more power – it was the pandemic, and sure enough people were going online. I was juggling projects and it was taking up so much space on my laptop.

So – cue some good fortune.

My hosting company – 34SP – was celebrating 20 years and as part of it were giving away 20 prizes of increasing perceived value. The top prize was a MacBook Pro.

Which I won.

Truth be told I missed the fact I won (it went into spam) and even when I did win I begun to spun into working class guilt that always manifests itself with good fortune (said working class exists as I got my tax refund today). Three months later when I actually began to use it I discovered it was a great machine. Rarely do I hear a fan go on it. Probably need to clean the screen, mind.

2020: ASUS ROG Strix GA15 G15DH-UK041T Gaming Desktop

I had a solid pandemic really. Which feels wrong to say. I managed with my clients and people coming online and needing web presences to muster two years worth of accounts and a deposit for a house. In October, I moved out of Manchester to Newton-le-Willows to my first home.

With that came a room I could dedicate to an office, as well as room for a proper gaming/streaming rig. I bought this machine, which I use for more high end stuff. Mainly streaming, but also for training videos for clients. I’ve discovered the wonderful world of Steam gaming with this. Many of the games from the “Video Games I Fell in Love With” series in the past 2 years have been on this machine.

Not top of the range, but good enough for what I want to do.

And Next….?

Honestly, where is next? I don’t know. Both machines I own are powerful enough for what I want to do. As such, an upgrade is not on the cards at the moment. But you never know. But by writing this I’m reminded on how much technology is linked with me. As the machines have upgraded, so have I. The memory on the machines have gotten bigger but the memories with the machines have become stronger.

I genuinely didn’t expect to write as much as I have. I hope it’s not too self indulgent!

* Fun fact: There isn’t an Agent X 1, despite the name of the game suggesting there was…
** Which – if you ever received a Christmas Card from me would know – is terrible.

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)	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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