I like to flip the narrative on this one: I rely on Tech to give me that push to be healthy. My brain just doesn’t get it right on its own. I NEED an element of gamification to help with my disordered eating and exercise. Give me NUMBERS! Give me STREAKS! Give me TARGETS to hit!

Willpower alone just does not seem to work for me.

What actually works? A personal journey begins…

Garmin Epix Gen 2: The Ultimate Accountability Buddy

There’s something mildly terrifying about a device that knows more about your body than you do. My Garmin Epix Gen 2 doesn’t just track my steps—it tracks my heart rate, sleep, stress, and whether I’m actually putting in the effort on those runs. It even tells me when I’m ‘Not Productive’ (typically when I’m feeling particularly proud of the run I’ve just put in).

But beyond the raw data, the real power of this watch is the nudging. If my Acute Load has dropped out the green zone, I know I’m slipping. If my VO2 Max score is rising, I know that my training is starting to have a real impact. Of course it’s real: The numbers are telling me it is!

Most importantly, it helps with willpower. On days when my motivation is low, seeing the numbers forces me to show up. It’s not about waiting to ‘feel’ like running—it’s about knowing that future me will regret skipping it. Garmin makes it harder to make excuses.

(It’s not a perfect science: Garmin’s predictions on my race times are always fantastical. I can run myself into the ground on a 5k, HR pinned to the red zone, with the watch cheerfully telling me that I could definitely do that 2-3 minutes quicker).

Withings Smart Scales: Brutal Honesty in a Beautiful Package

Stepping on a scale used to be an emotional rollercoaster. Now, it’s a data point (And also an emotional rollercoaster). The Withings Smart Scales give me body weight, fat percentage, and muscle mass. Even a pretty graph to show the trend. Okay, it’s mostly about the pretty graph.

Weight loss doesn’t tend to be the straightest of lines. Here, the trend line smoothed out my paranoia and let me see the bigger picture.

Self-accountability is helped by the data being auto-synced to Garmin (for accurate calorie burn calculations) and Cronometer (coming up!).

(This is the shortest section in this article. I’m finding it very hard to be enthused to write much about smart scales. Woo! Wi-fi! Digital display! Batteries!)

Cronometer: Finally, a modern fitness tracking app

I have been a MyFitnessPal user for years, but have become increasingly disillusioned with the product. Their food database started to become increasingly inaccurate (the problem with crowdsourcing is that the data ranges from ‘helpful’ to ‘hopelessly wrong’). The mobile app started behaving as if it was mired in treacle. Then the ‘Scan barcode’ feature was locked behind a paywall in a move that seemed to indicate a real hatred of the user community. I’m very happy to pay for apps for advanced features, but no, things had just gone a bit awkward here. It’s not me, it’s you.

Some searching around on alternatives showed a lot of signposting towards Cronometer. So I’m trying it out.

It’s fast. It looks great. It has outstanding integration support (So I can seamlessly pull in the fitness data I care about from Garmin). The mobile app works very well. There are paid membership options if you want all the bells and whistles, but the basics are not restricted. Perfect.

It makes me think beyond just calories. How’s my protein intake? Am I actually getting enough fibre? Should I be eating more magnesium-rich foods? (Spoiler: Yes.) I mean, it makes me think about these things: I’m not yet crafting my diet to hit all these right numbers. I’m a simple calorie man, me. One step at a time.

Instead of trying to ‘eat better’ based on vague intentions, I have clear, objective numbers. When I log my meals, I know exactly what needs adjusting, which means I don’t have to rely on guesswork or gut feelings. Hah, gut feelings. I know, I know.

Can Tech Actually Make You Fitter?

Yes—if you let it. The key is to use tech as a tool, not as a distraction. My Garmin keeps me moving. My Withings scales keep me honest. Cronometer makes sure I’m fuelling my body properly, or at least steering me away from excessive cake.

The best thing about all this? It takes willpower out of the equation. When my watch, scales, and food tracker all sync up, I don’t have to rely on motivation to stay on track. The numbers don’t lie (and if they do, at least they keep me moving). I can see whether my deficit is working. I know if I need to adjust. And that means no more stabbing in the dark. Or rifling the food cupboard in the dark.

So if you’re looking for an edge in your fitness journey, don’t ditch technology. Just use it better.

Oh, and steer yourself away from the scroll-holes…

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This wasn't your usual sporting event: This was an Esports event, with ten top of the range gaming PCs at the centre of the arena.

League of Legends, launched in 2009 by Riot Games, is known as a MOBA: Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. In the game, two teams of five face off on an isometric map to attempt to destroy the enemy base. Each player controls a champion (from a dizzying choice of over 140), each with a different combination of abilities. A game typically lasts 30-40 minutes as each team builds up resources and attempts to control key parts of the map.

The game combines the need for both mechanical and strategic skills. Strategy includes the drafting stage, where each team picks the Champions they intend to use for the next game. The teams also get to deny the opposing team a number of champions of their choice too. 'Cat and mouse' only begins to cover the back and forth of this decision making process and the game itself.

League of Legends owes much of its popularity to uptake in Korea and China: In Korea, 37.3% of all time spent playing games on PCs is with LoL, and there is even a League of Legends Park / Esports stadium. Fittingly the final was contested by teams from those countries. The popularity has led to spin-offs too, such as Netflix’s Arcane animated series. Netflix doesn’t break out viewing figures, but the series hit the top of the viewing charts in 52 countries upon release. It was also a critical success, with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The series allegedly cost around $250 million to produce.

Behind the scenes

I had the great opportunity of being invited on a Behind The Scenes tour of the O2 Arena on the day before the Finals. Due to the secrecy around the Opening Ceremony (technical rehearsals were ongoing at the time we were walking through the main arena), mobile phones had to be handed in first.

The sheer scale of the event soon started to come into focus. As a starter, this was a hyper-scale live broadcast sporting event: 72 cameras, 80 transmission lines and 256 audio channels. All the networking to support this had to be put in, and there were big bundles of thick cables pinned to the walls throughout the tour. Then we have the opening ceremony complete with its pyrotechnics (The largest number featured in any O2 show to date). And then the fact that the games themselves needed to be played in a reliable, secure and zero latency manner.

One of the first facts mentioned was that a team of over 1,500 people were making this event happen on-site, with a massive catering tent sitting outside in the car park.

The final production does not happen on-site. The raw feeds from the cameras and gaming PCs are sent to Riot Games’ Remote Broadcast Centre in Dublin. It is there that the live editing happens, and the feeds are packaged up for the streaming partners. SVG Europe has a great article on everything that is involved. Given that these events happen worldwide, it minimises the number of people that need to travel in order to execute on the production, as well as reducing set-up and teardown time.

League of Legends is traditionally played over the Internet, but for events such as this the game servers are on-site. We got to see the outside of the server room (or rather, trailer) in the periphery of the arena, complete with its own security guard and pictures of who was allowed to enter. Playing with effectively zero latency changes the mechanics of the game, and so the professional players get to practice beforehand in a replicated environment in their hotel.

The Main Event

The Opening Ceremony featured Ashnikko, Linkin Park and more. It was an amazing experience, complete with the ‘made famous by Coldplay’ PixMob bracelets flashing all over the place.

In fact, you can watch it right here!

Elie, Creative Director at Riot Games posted this fascinating Behind the Scenes footage on TikTok of the final preparations leading up to the day.

@ve1vetine9 months of work for a 13 minute show, our goal was to create an experience that was equally great if you were in the O2 or watched it from home. Wherever you were I hope you enjoyed all the love and practical magic in the OC, and congratulations to T1 on their fifth championship 🎉💕 #leagueoflegends #worlds2024 #t1 #paintthetownblue #arcane #stillhere #heavyisthecrown #linkinpark

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And it would have been remiss of me not to feature my own TikTok video (which covers the Opening Ceremony and the closing moments of gameplay). Yes, this definitely means you should subscribe to my TikTok if you haven’t already.

@tristan.greavesPOV: Attending the League of Legends Finals in London. #leagueoflegends #esports #gaming#o2arena #linkinpark #ashnikko #riotgames

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There is a risk in these Finals that one team totally dominates, winning 3-0 in the ‘Best of 5’ and it being a shorter day out. Korean team T1 were the favourites going in, featuring Esports legend ‘Faker’ (nickname: ‘The unkillable demon king’) who is an outlier both in terms of skill and length as an LoL pro. An average pro only plays at that level for 2-3 years. Faker has managed over 10, with an estimated annual salary of $4-5 million.

Their opponents, Bilibili Gaming, rocked the boat by decisively winning the first game, pushing aggressively within the first few minutes. GAME ON! Both teams played hard to take it to 2-2 and the deciding game. At this point, the playing style of both teams changed: The game was exceptionally cagey with both teams playing not to lose. Suddenly, T1 found a break, and after an epic battle they were able to rush the enemy base and win the Final. Cue total scenes, pyrotechnics and epic music.

What’s next?

There is a wide selection of Esports games on the market, although League of Legends tends to be pull in the highest viewing figures. The Grand-Daddy of them all is Valve Software’s Counter-Strike, a first-person shooter (FPS) with Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists battling on maps in different scenarios. CS started life in 1999, with up to 24 million players monthly (peaking in 2020), and 2.4 million people watched the PGL Majors in Stockholm in the same year. Riot Games were inspired by Counter-Strike to create VALORANT: Same gameplay, but with their own graphical flair and introducing ‘Agents’ with different abilities to mix things up a bit.

Esports globally was valued at $1.88 billion in 2022, with expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.8% from 2023 to 2030. My experience of the weekend shows how it is appealing to a huge cross-spectrum of an audience as well, turning out to watch the event live when historically they would have been playing and watching from their homes.

It inspired me to fire up VALORANT again. But it may be a while before I’m walking out on stage at the O2 Arena as Linkin Park rock out.

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There was also an explainer: It need not be a game you even played. Perhaps it had an impact for another reason?

Here I also remember a great variant of this question that my good friend Chris Melissinos poses (This one will give you all the nostalgia feels). The starting point is the same: Find in your brain that game that you have memories of, perhaps from your childhood….

When was this?

Where were you?

What was the occasion?

Who was in the room with you at the time?

How were you feeling?

Take a few moments, close your eyes, and try it out. And if you’re not much of a gamer yourself, why not try it with a memorable piece of music? The first CD, vinyl or tape that you owned?

I have two answers

When I answer this one myself as part of my ‘flavour slide’ when presenting, I tend to flip flop between two answers depending on my mood at the time.

The first would be the classic Star Raiders on the Atari 400. This game was released in 1980, which meant I was 3 when it first came out and it was a few years after that before I got to experience it! However, I was hooked. Space combat. On an actual COMPUTER (you needed to use keys as well as the joystick). Yes, you really did need to read the A4 sized hole-punched manual.

My Dad had got the computer second hand with a bunch of games. Even though some of the other games were somewhat more familiar and easier to play (games such as Pole Position and Centipede), something about the more involved gameplay of Star Raiders grabbed me. You had to deploy strategy on the Galactic Map to protect your bases and defeat the enemies. You had to refuel and repair. There was more to it than just blasting enemy spaceships. This was art!

I later retrieved it from my parents’ loft and the thing still ran (somehow), although the spring-loaded cartridge slot catapulted across the room when first opened. I later donated everything to the National Museum of Computing.

My second answer, and one I can remember the details of a bit better, would be Pool of Radiance on the Commodore 64. I was 10 when it was released in 1988.

Before the days of downloading games in mere minutes (There are over 100,000 games available on Steam at the time of writing), games came in boxes. Small boxes. BIG BOXES. Matte boxes. SHINY BOXES. As a result, my first memory of this game was actually seeing that shiny box and it forming a key part of my memory of buying the thing.

I was a geek and into Dungeons & Dragons, so the combination of the shiny box and the game being based on D&D was a perfect storm. I spent many, many hours on this one. The fact it came on four double-sized discs was a memory in itself and speaks to the sheer amount of content in the game. I never completed it, but re-rolled characters by myself and with friends many, many times to explore Phlan, its dungeons and surroundings. You explored the first person 3D world, went on quests and battled enemies (in a neat turn-based way).

I remember the box. I remember the discs. I remember my C64 set up on the white desk in my bedroom. I remember the panic when I accidentally ran over one of the discs with one of the wheels of my chair, but thankfully no damage was done.

This also inspired me to want to MAKE games. As this game had clear RULES, like D&D itself. Characters had attributes. So did items. A dice was rolled to determine results. The was a system behind all of this. A system that could be represented in code.

I’ve had a great love of RPGs ever since, although still trying to find one that scratches my turn-based RPG itch in the same way as my first love.

What about you?

Just writing this has made me realised that my two picks above just aren’t the whole story. Numerous other memories of games have come flooding back, and depending on my mood on any given day, might now take the top stops! Such as Ikari Warriors on the C64 for all those two-player co-op experiences… no, stop, must publish!

Now it’s your turn. I’d love to hear the game that impacted YOU the most! And, of course, the story behind your experience…

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I wanted to quickly share that I was recently interviewed by Chris Melissinos of AWS for Games about AVENGER SHARKS.

On this stream, we spoke about how I co-created the game with my two children (aged 4 and 6 when we started the project). It’s a twin-stick shooter inspired by everything from Jeff Minter's Llamatron to more recent games such as Vampire Survivors.

The children ensured that it contained elements such as sharks (obviously) and 'Mr Dinosaur'.

We cover everything from the genesis of the project, through to self-publishing on Steam, and BEYOND.

You can pick up the game for Windows, Mac and Linux (including Steam Deck) for FREE right now! Here’s the link.

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The case was settled out of court. Score one for creatives not being screwed around by the evil empires of the industry. Well, hopefully: the terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Well, NOW SHE IS BACK! Take it away, Scarlett!

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“Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system. He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people.

After much consideration and for personal reasons, I declined the offer. Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named "Sky" sounded like me.

When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference. Mr. Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word "her" - a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human.

Two days before the ChatGPT 4.0 demo was released, Mr. Altman contacted my agent, asking me to reconsider. Before we could connect, the system was out there.

As a result of their actions, I was forced to hire legal counsel, who wrote two letters to Mr. Altman and OpenAI, setting out what they had done and asking them to detail the exact process by which they created the "Sky" voice. Consequently, OpenAI reluctantly agreed to take down the "Sky" voice.

In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity. I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected.”

Consent is a principal that is highly relevant in the world of Generative AI. What are the LLMs learning from? Are those creatives (authors, artists, musicians…) being appropriately credited or compensated for their work? Where’s the transparency? Spoiler alert: There really isn’t any. Unless forced, that is: Following a class-action complaint, Midjourney released a list of the artists they absorb into their LLM machinations.

The TechBro narrative behind this story leaves a really sour taste in the mouth. Scarlett said no. That was taken as a ‘Yes waiting to happen’ and she was asked again closer to Sky’s release. She said no again. The TechBro passive aggressively tweets a reference to Scarlett’s past. And does the bad thing anyway. Then acts surprised when called out on his poor behaviour. Never change, TechBros.

Staff with responsibility for safeguarding have been leaving the company in recent times (and this is before this latest bombshell). Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike announced their departures over a week ago. In his goodbye post, Jan wrote: “Over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a back seat to shiny products”. Damning. Nearly as damning as Elon Musk, clearly a beacon of morality and strong judgement, deciding you are acting unethically (he has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, with one of the stated reasons is that he is concerned about the ‘consequences’ of their recent change in direction).

I am grateful for Scarlett sticking up for creatives everywhere, using the power of her voice which will ultimately benefit others that don’t have her level of star presence. SAG-AFTRA have been seeking federal protection of actors’ likenesses and voices for some time, and they have released a statement supporting Johansson’s stance.

OpenAI have since stopped offering the ‘Sky’ voice. Their claim is that it is based on a professional actress who just happens to sound a lot like Scarlett Johansson. In the UK, those of a certain vintage (like me) would be stroking their chin thoughtfully and exclaiming, “Suuuuurrrreeeeee” at hearing this.

In their statement, OpenAI state that they ‘support the creative industry’. Well, yes, in the sense that a spider supports the wellbeing of any flies that stray into its web.

This one will keep on running for a while, that’s for sure.

For now, let’s hope that those responsible for developing AI pick one of the great mantras of our times and follow it. Perhaps, “With great power, comes great responsibility”? Or, “Just because you could, doesn’t mean that you should”?

Perhaps keep things really simple: “Don’t be a dick”.

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It is all of these things, and the ritual of the hygienist attempting to upsell me the latest and greatest electric toothbrush.

This time, she was successful.

This time, the electric toothbrush has ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

AI will not win. In this article, I am confidently asserting that I am smarter than my toothbrush.

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Getting my teeth into it

I picked up the Oral-B IO8 electric toothbrush. I was given a special discount code by the hygienist which could be redeemed on Oral-B’s website directly.

It has all the standard electric toothbrush features. You can charge it. When you press a button, it vibrates in your mouth. It even seems to clean your teeth!

A genuinely good feature is that a light lets you know if you are using the right amount of pressure. Blue? GO HARDER. Green? PERFECT. Red? WOAH TIGER, DIAL IT BACK A LITTLE.

The digital display will feed your cortex with judgemental smiley faces. If you don’t brush for at least two minutes you are going to get the frowning face of dental disappointment. For the first time in my life, I am being held to account by a toothbrush.

But there’s more. You can connect the vibrating twig of delight to your phone via Bluetooth!

Why? Well, if you have not yet quite worked out how to brush your teeth yet: There’s an app for that!

This is where the fabled Artificial Intelligence kicks in. The toothbrush works with the app to track where you are brushing, to ensure each zone is getting enough bristly love.

Except it doesn’t.

Adding gamification to brushing your teeth is one thing, but if your core tech is hamstrung by just not being accurate enough to do the job, it’s not a fun time.

Hitting all the right toothy zones increases your score. But the AI continuously misidentifies where in your mouth the toothbrush is. Is it due to the shape of my mouth? How I hold my toothbrush? I DON’T KNOW, I JUST WANT TO CLEAN MY TEETH, DON’T MAKE ME WORRY ABOUT THESE THINGS!

The problem is that this is all (bad) marketing: There’s no genuine AI at play here. There is no way of training the toothbrush to recognise the different parts of MY mouth. There’s no way of giving any feedback at all on how the recognition is performing. This makes it a dumb toothbrush, not a smart one.

Reviews around the Internet, such as this one from WIRED magazine, seem to confirm that the issue isn’t my mouth or wrist technique. I am relieved. It was the tech all along!

Left with a bad taste in my mouth, I no longer use the app. The smiley faces and 2 minute demands of my time, lit up by the soft LED lighting, will be enough for me.

At least until the next generation of toothbrushes come with WiFi uplinks direct to Generative AI models in the cloud.

Give it six months.

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I’d been exposed to the wonders of the BBC Micro courtesy of the British schools system in the 1980s, where 80% of all schools had one. It was chunky. It had a pretty decent BASIC to write software in. It had floppy disks! And, unlike the Atari, it had a keyboard where the buttons actually moved when you pressed them! I WANT ME ONE OF THOSE PLEASE.

Narrator: He didn’t get one of those.

The BBC Micro was retailing for £100 more than the Commodore 64 at the time, which was a significant chunk of change. My parents were apparently talked round by whoever was working in the computer store in Guildford. I was a bit annoyed, but these feelings soon evaporated.

Why? Because the Commodore 64 is the coolest computer that has ever been created. And this article is going to tell you exactly why.

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It wasn’t an Amstrad

There were credible competing machines to the Commodore 64. The most well-known was the pint-sized rubber-keyed ZX Spectrum. Home to classic games such as Manic Miner, Atic Atac and Jet Set Willy.

The slightly odd one out was the Amstrad CPC. It just didn’t fit in. It was aiming to be an all-in-one device. It had a weird vibe, like a creepy uncle at a wedding. Even the floppy disks were a STRANGE SIZE. So alien. So confusing.

It sold three million units compared to the C64’s fifteen million (and Spectrum’s five million). Three million people probably wishing they had made a different choice.

It looked like a bread bin

Fashions fade, only style remains the same. Thanks Coco Chanel.

The Commodore 64 looked like it meant serious business. It was not afraid to be a beige bread bin with crisp, dark keys sprinkled on top. It would hurt someone if you threw it at them. Every press of one of those keys signalled intent.

It would have a facelift in later years in the form of the C64C, when it became more angular and was given a teeth whitening treatment. This was the model I had, and while it was definitely more modern… it just wasn’t cool (man).

VERDICT: Crusty Cool.

You could listen to SID for days

6581 was the magic number. MOS Technology 6581, that is, more commonly known as the C64’s SID (Sound Interface Device).

This masterpiece combined analogue and digital circuits into a single chip. It allowed music to be created that actually SOUNDED like music, in contrast to the ‘beeps and bops’ or just plain NOISE that was more commonly associated with computers.

My favourite C64 track is that of Monty on the Run, by Rob Hubbard. You must listen to it immediately.

Such is the power of those C64 tunes, various artists have created modern day versions. PRESS PLAY ON TAPE are a band that have released three studio albums of the stuff.

VERDICT: Synthesised Cool.

You could reset it with a paper clip

The standard way to PEEK and POKE inside games and other software was with a special cartridge that let you press a button and freeze time. The most well known is the Action Replay series. Enter cheats! Rip graphics and sound! Make ‘special backups’ of software! It was all possible.

Or…. you could bend a paperclip and touch two pins together on the User Port. If you are happy taking the risk of shoving a piece of metal onto a live circuit board, of course.

Can you reset your PC or Mac by pushing a paperclip into one of its ports? Of course you can’t. BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT COOL.

VERDICT: Magic Smoke-Inducingly Cool.

Loading games was a visceral experience

Loading a Commodore 64 game from tape took some minutes. As a result, the loading screen experience was a real thing, including the infamous OCEAN LOADER series.

How can music combined with a title image slowly appearing evoke such joyful and nostalgic feelings?

I don’t really have the answer. But if watching this example video doesn’t cause your soul to bloom, then you are dead inside.

BONUS POINTS to INVADE-A-LOAD! which allowed those with even less patience to play a version of Space Invaders as the main event was on its way.

VERDICT: Deferred Gratification Cool.

Its BASIC made you work harder

Like most computers of its era, you could power on the Commodore 64 and immediately start programming. Children around the world soon mastered 10 PRINT “TRISTAN IS COOL”, 20 GOTO 10, and beyond. I spent some of my misspent youth re-creating classic BBC Micro educational games such as Granny’s Garden and Dragon World.

It was not a great BASIC experience compared to, say, the BBC Micro. The BBC had such quality of life features as PROCEDURES and RENUMBERING. None of that on the C64. You couldn’t even change the colours on the screen without mystical incantations (POKE 53281,0 - so catchy).

EVERYTHING WAS HARD.

This was made really obvious by the INPUT magazine series. Every issue had type-in software, many of which involved graphics. Most of these were not available for the C64 unless you had the add-on Simon’s Basic cartridge which boosted the machine’s capability to a more sensible level.

Taking the easy route is not cool. Adversity IS cool.

VERDICT: Cryptically Cool.

You could visit Compunet

Before the Internet, dial-up modems allowed computers to connect to other computers in a much more rudimentary way. And, for 80 pence per off-peak hour, a Commodore 64 armed with a custom modem could tie up the phone line to be part of Compunet.

Compunet allowed users to upload and download software, chat, play games (including multi-user experience Federation 2 - still running in a new community form) and more. The custom modem software presented this using the graphical style of the Commodore 64, complete with a scrolling ‘duck shoot’ selection system. This was in sharp contrast to most dial-up systems that presented slow scrolling text only.

At the time, phone bills in the UK arrived quarterly. This meant my time with Compunet lasted about one quarter before my parents got the first phone bill: Those 80 pences per off-peak hour sure added up after a while.

VERDICT: Bank-breakingly Cool.

You could take a dip in the Pool of Radiance

Even now, the thought of the ‘Gold Box’ series sends a chill down my spine. Such is the impact of this game on my childhood, it has been a bit of a staple in my intro when I give talks about the gaming industry.

Pool of Radiance was a Dungeons and Dragons-based Role Playing Game (RPG). You formed a party of adventurers, went on quests, and battled enemies in turn based combat. Cities, slums and the wilds could be explored.

You needed the optional 1541 disk drive for this one: It came on four double-sided disks. Good training for disk swapping. It thankfully came embedded with a ‘Fastloader’ — essential as the disk drive out of the box was incredibly slow due to some interesting technical decisions by Commodore at the time.

Stranger Things has made D&D cool in recent years. Pool of Radiance did it in 1988.

VERDICT: A Successful Saving Throw vs Uncool.

It still has the BEST fans

Something is definitely swaggeringly cool if, despite being discontinued in 1994, it still commands the creation of dedicated glossy paper fanzines today.

FREEZE64 is such a magazine that I am proud to say I am a paid subscriber to. Every issue is packed full of content from the ‘golden years’, but also telling stories of modern day software creations for the Commodore 64. Yes, developers are still churning out new games for the C64 (taking advantage of modern computers and toolchains to make this a bit easier). An outstanding example of this was the release of Eye of the Beholder - previously a fully-fledged 16 bit game, very credibly ported to a much less powerful architecture.

If people are cool for wearing vintage clothing, then people are going to be cool for creating for retro platforms.

VERDICT: Audrey Hepburn Cool.

You can visit this world again

Want to dip back in to the world of the Commodore 64? Or perhaps pick one up for the first time?

In terms of NEW hardware, there are two options available today: THEC64 Mini (tiny!) and THEC64 (actual size). These are running emulators under the hood, come pre-loaded with a selection of classic games, and can load additional games via a USB stick. So wholesome. Oh, and you even get a proper joystick and the whole thing can plug into a modern TV or monitor via HDMI.

I have the larger version, and it is everything that I hoped it would be. There’s even a third-party carousel ‘hack’ (Project Carousel USB) that drastically increases the number of games available.

Buy the C64Mini today on Amazon!

VERDICT: Repeatedly Cool

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Nowadays, AI likes to create life instead.

Not content with de-aging actors for roles (Hey, it meant Jeff Bridges could remain eternal playing The Dude in Tron: Legacy - and he will be doing it again), AI took a leap forward by helping to digitally recreate a young Mark Hamil (LUKE SKYWALKER to YOU) in Star Wars show The Mandalorian.

It looked and felt a bit uncanny valley, the psychological effect where we have a bit of an allergic reaction when something so very nearly but not quite looks human. It was even improved further by YouTuber Shamook who did their own Deepfake version, resulting in a successful hiring by Lucasfilm. A happy ending.

Well, until they dragged George Carlin, out of his grave, in 2024.

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George Carlin’s estate did not give permission for this monstrosity to happen, but it happened anyway. Thankfully now forced offline after a legal settlement, it was a ‘comedy special’ (heavy lifting with this phrase) featuring the dead comedian created by feeding the Generative AI model with his imagery and material. A full transcript is available online if you want to subject yourself to it.

The technology has advanced to allow the creation of videos from just a single photograph. And as it becomes more easily available to the masses, we are seeing the rise of relatives channeling their grief into recreating their dead loved ones. The Taiwanese singer Bao Xiaobai used the tech to recreate his 22-year-old daughter, who died in 2022. The result? A video of his daughter singing happy birthday to her mother. Is creating ‘new’ memories of the dead a healthy way of going through the grieving process?

Using technology to effectively bring people back from the dead is not new. Brandon Lee tragically died in an on-set accident during filming The Crow (1994), and a level of CGI was used to complete his character’s appearances in the film. More recently, Carrie Fisher’s presence in the latest Star Wars films was completed by editing in unused footage.

All of this is at least being done with (you would hope) a level of respect and good intentions by the people involved. Then Alan Turing happened.

Turing died in 1954. He is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. He pioneered the Turing Test, a test still used today to test AI: A machine can be considered to ‘think’ if it is not possible for an interrogator to tell the machine apart from a human through conversation. We’ve come a long way since ELIZA (Which uses an illusion of pattern matching and substitution to simulate conversation):

> Hello, I am Eliza. I'll be your therapist today.

* I want to write a new Substack

> What if you never got to write a new Substack?

* I would feel sad about that.

> What does that suggest to you?

* That I should write as many Substacks as possible!

> Would you say that you have psychological problems?

* NEVER.

Turing also played a crucial role in cracking intercepted messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Axis in many crucial engagements during the Second World War.

His life had a tragic end. In his lifetime, homosexual acts were illegal. He was convicted of ‘Gross indecency’, and underwent chemical castration as a condition of his probation. Totally horrific treatment, and after all of his services to his country as well! His cause of death? Suicide.

Turing has subsequently been recognised with respect. There is a large Wikipedia page dedicated purely to his legacy: Things are named in his honour, there were centenary celebrations and he was even portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game. Alan (finally) received a Royal Pardon in 2013 for his conviction.

This respect has NOT been accorded by those behind the so-called Genius Group who, like vultures, have elected to pick apart the legacy of Alan Turing.

In late April, Genius Group proudly announced (with a straight face) that they had appointed Alan Turing as their ‘Chief AI Officer’. This was complete with an AI-generated video of Turing talking about how happy he was to be given the role. He appears to have been fused with Henry Cavill and Benedict Cumberbatch in the AI training process.

At best, this is a crass and ill-judged marketing gimmick by a company desperate for attention. At worse, well, see ‘at best’ combined with a staggering lack of respect for a tremendous legacy, family and values. You don’t need to be a genius that contributed to cracking wartime codes to see that.

Even Fake Alan Turing agrees (Part of the gimmick is that Fake Alan Turing is a Chatbot as well - YES, IT GETS WORSE).

Other quotes have included: “Awful and disrespectful”, “A monumental level of disrespect”, “This is wrong on every possible level”.

All to ghoulishly shill a training company’s courses. Including, and I promise I haven’t made this up, a “2 week AI Metaversity Microschool”. It certainly hasn’t helped to shore up the share price of the struggling Genius Group, currently flatlined at around $0.40 USD

Good news though: I can help you be an AI Influencer too!

Don’t be evil. Show respect. Use AI to do good deeds.

That’s it.

I’ll let you know where to transfer the funds to.

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GamesMaster was an innuendo-filled video games show that aired 1992 to 1998. It was aimed at children, featuring challenges, reviews and tips. It means I will forever associate Dominik Diamond with video games. And lines such as, “Remember folks: Life is a bit like a mountain bike - tough going up hill, but fantastic going down.”

As such, I was shocked (SHOCKED, I tell you) to read Dominik’s latest column, where although he professes his love for the Commodore Amiga, he considered it ‘painfully uncool’. How could he do this to us?! After all these years?!

As such, I am contractually bound to spend some time giving the case for the defence. Readers, I present to you: REASONS WHY THE COMMODORE AMIGA WAS EXTREMELY VERY COOL INDEED.

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Not an Atari ST

We need to get this one out of the way. In the 16-bit computer era, the Amiga was mostly competing against the Atari ST. Was it really a competition? The Atari ST wasn’t great. It won over musicians a bit as it had a MIDI port as standard, but everything else was just… painful. I’m not mad or angry or upset about the Atari: Just disappointed.

In a world full of sadness, there just isn’t anything sadder than the Atari’s GEM Desktop. I mean, just look at it. It’s practically weeping through the screen.

VERDICT: Cool by default.

The One That Wasn’t The Amiga A500

Most people familiar with the Amiga will be thinking of the Amiga 500. It was indeed grey and drab. It was the computer equivalent of what you get when you ask a 5 year-old to draw a picture of a car.

I was lucky enough to get upgraded to the Amiga 1200 one Christmas. Now THIS was more like it. I mean, just look at it! Angular. Sleek. And the coolest things lay under the hood: AGA chipset (better graphics), and the ability to slide in your very own hard disk. Which I did, and it changed my life: Going from swapping floppy disks every five seconds to having 540 megabytes of hard disk space was the stuff of dreams.

Oh, and it was so cool that Calvin Harris whipped his out to perform at the Brit Awards this year.

VERDICT: Reassuringly Cool.

A World of Friendship

If something is truly cool, you don’t mind your mates knowing about it.

Sensible World of Soccer was the game that solidified that connection between the Amiga and your friends. It was absurdly playable. Many a joystick was waggled to its demise, or hurled against a wall, due to this game. Bedrooms became tournament battlegrounds.

Such is the ongoing coolness of this game, competitions are STILL held yearly (Take that, EA Sports!), and unofficial updates are made to the game to keep league structures up to date.

VERDICT: Sensibly Cool.

The Sound of Success

Say hello to Paula, the Amiga’s custom sound chip.

Paula allowed four-channel sound and up to 29k samples per second. This meant one thing: The Amiga sounded SUPERB!

Music sounded like music, not the beeps and bops of 8-bit computers. Proper instrumental samples could be used to great effect. And not just by Calvin Harris.

If you have three hours to kill, there’s a great compilation of Amiga music available to listen to via YouTube. Playlists and albums are abound on Spotify. The vertically scrolling ‘tracker’ approach to music production is still in use today.

VERDICT: Aurally Cool.

The Scene

As a teenager, one of the main things that got my heart racing was a stuffed jiffy bag popping through my letterbox.

The Amiga was a hotbed of public domain (PD) software. Owners would write software of all sorts, for fun, and then give it away. I was really lucky to live a bike ride away from a shop that actually sold PD software (basically charging for the disks and the service). My mind was blown by the sheer variety of stuff on offer: Graphical demos, music disks, games… hundreds if not thousands of disks were available.

There are too many demos to highlight here, but one of the classics was State of the Art by demo group Spaceballs. You can watch it on YouTube. In fact, you should do that RIGHT NOW.

This was all pre-Internet. Trading of software was by post, hence jiffy bags were the weapon of choice. Covering them with multiple layers of parcel tape for longevity was a standard trick. I even got my very own rubber stamp made to save time when sending out packages…. and come on, what could be cooler than THAT?

I graduated from having my very own collection of hundreds of disks built up over time, to creating my own (admittedly very simple) scene productions, teaming up with total strangers met via the wonders of Royal Mail.

It wasn’t just about the floppy disks, either. In some cases, pen pals were made, with pages of writing (and later dot matrix printing) accompanying each trove of digital delight.

VERDICT: Stuffed full of Cool.

The X Factor

The image that accompanies this section, of X-Copy Professional, will stir the heart, or even loins, of anyone who owned an Amiga. Even if they are now a dead inside 40-something adult.

X-Copy was THE disk copying tool for the Amiga. A sea of green zeros meant success. Those games were now YOURS to take from your mate’s house back home to enjoy at your leisure.

Of course, this was only used for the aforementioned public domain titles. It would never, EVER be used for any pirated and therefore illegal software. Not even once.

VERDICT: Suspiciously Cool (Doubly cool if you owned an external disk drive to make this process even quicker).

Amiga Power

The Amiga had a decent selection of paper magazines at is peak. Some were all very grown up and professional. Some concentrated more squarely on the games. The one that stood above them all, like a colossus, was Amiga Power. It was The Fonz of computer magazines.

Amiga Power existed for 65 issues. It oozed cool due to the irreverent, personal style that ran through each copy of the magazine. Strange anecdotes, interviews done in weird styles just for the fun of it, it was all going on. I read a LOT of computer magazines in my formative years (some surprise, right?) and I can point to them for how my own writing style came about. Or blame them.

Such was the impact of this magazine is that every single issue has been archived on the Internet and can be downloaded. You should read all of them.

VERDICT: Rebelliously Cool.

I heard it on the Grapevine

It wasn’t all about the paper. Now, Grapevine was not the only disk magazine for the Amiga. It was, however, the most ubiquitous. It spanned 21 releases in the end, packed full of content on… to be honest, everything imaginable. Scene news? Sure. Game reviews? Expected. How to hypnotise people and get free phone calls? Let’s have some of that as well. I always eagerly anticipated each new release, and you could send in blank floppy disks to be one of the first to get a copy.

I even have some of my own articles immortalised in there somewhere.

VERDICT: Swaggeringly cool.

Copyright disputes are cool

Everyone loves a good ol’ corporate dispute nowadays.

Commodore announced bankruptcy in 1994. Its assets were purchased by Escom, who celebrated by themselves going bust in 1996. Gateway 2000 then snapped everything up, only to sell it all after three years. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly who owns the Amiga in the present day. Books could be written on the subject, and probably have been. It seems to be a fist fight (yes, actual court action) between Amiga Inc, Hyperion and Cloanto. There are now divergent releases of the Amiga Operating System (is 3.9 a later release than 3.2? Good luck making a decision, as they are by different developers!).

VERDICT: Legally Cool.

Can’t stop the re-issues

Finally, if you missed out first time around, don’t worry: Someone managed to cut through the legal challenges and snag the rights to create a cute re-issue of the Amiga hardware in recent times.

THEA500 Mini (Weird spacing intentional) is essentially an Amiga emulator in a box. It’s tiny, connects to your TV, and comes with 25 classic games off the bat. You can install additional games at your leisure. You even get a mouse and joypad thrown in.

Nostalgia is the coolest thing of all.

VERDICT: Compressed Cool.

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And, for this break, we wanted to avoid selling a few minor organs, or remortgaging the house a couple of times, in order to go to Center Parcs. Yes, factoring in a ferry TO A DIFFERENT COUNTRY still made our holiday cheaper, and it turned out to be a great experience.

Destination Duinrell

Duinrell Holiday Park offers ‘the perfect family holiday in the Netherlands’. At this point, I will raise my hands and admit that my wife did all the (excellent) research on this as an option. Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I can continue to write the rest of this with the authority of someone who claimed it was their idea all along.

I’ll dive more deeply into Duinrell and the whole Netherlands thing later on. For now, how about getting there?

We took the overnight ferry (Harwich to Hook of Holland) courtesy of Stena Line (Check for discount codes online!). We took our car, with a tow-bar bike rack on the back. Arriving at the terminal and getting on the ferry was pretty seamless, even if there aren’t any road signs for the port until you are pretty much on top of it.

For the overnight crossing, it is mandatory to have a cabin so we elected to take two that were next each other (There is a small charge for picking your location but it was worthwhile) with each parent sharing with a child. What surprised me was the noise. As in, there wasn’t any. I was all set to be hearing throbbing diesel engines all night and not getting any sleep. It was calm. I slept incredibly well. Not a bad start.

The TV in the room gives you the option of watching a view outside the ship, the kennels or all those Tom & Jerry cartoons you used to watch when you were 10 years old.

In the morning, after the obligatory queue of cars due to passport control, we just had a 45 minute drive from the port over to Duinrell itself. We had to charge the car first (YES, WE HAVE AN EV) — charging infrastructure in the Netherlands is pretty decent, and notably a LOT cheaper than in the UK. Finding stations using Zapmap or ABRP worked very well. We paid using either debit cards or a Chargemap card.

Duinrell itself

I’m a big fan of Duinrell now. I loved it.

We stayed just outside of the Dutch school holidays, which meant it never felt too busy. There were notably families from across Europe (e.g. Belgium) as well as the UK. The odd coach load of children did descend upon occasion for a school day out but it certainly never got close to approaching Alton Towers level of carnage.

We stayed in one of the Premium Plus Duingalows, on paper designed for six people. While I can see that working, it would be VERY cosy. It worked great for a family of four, with each child getting their own room. By the time we booked, there wasn’t a lot of choice left in terms of location, so we went with what was available — which worked in our favour, as the Duingalow seemed pretty much brand new!

Everything within the park was an easy walk. Hire bikes or pedal karts are available, but more of an option to keep your kids occupied! Some basic food options (including a couple of takeaways) are there, along with a small supermarket. It’s cheaper to pop into the local town and visit the ‘Jumbo’ store though.

The park has a whole collection of the usual sorts of rides, including three different rollercoasters — plenty for both the five and seven year-old. It was possible to do one of the rides and have another go within a couple of minutes - perfect! By the end of the holiday, our eldest had plucked up the courage to go on the biggest ride (see photo) which he then wanted to do repeatedly. A roller coaster fanatic in the making.

The main focus of our on-site activities was the Tiki Pool. Our package came with four visits included (You book your hour slot with one of the codes you get on check-in). Firstly, the geek in me was impressed by the fancy digital lockers (I managed not to use cash at any point during this holiday). Secondly, the selection of water slides and pools is stellar. Truly something for every age and, similar to the rollercoasters, it was wonderful to watch the children switch from extreme nervousness, to going on the water slides in an endless loop. And I am including myself in the collective ‘children’ group here: The top tier slides were FUN!

There’s an impressively stocked arcade as well (1000 square metres and over 80 machines). A huge variety: Everything from the usual ‘coin pushers’ through to modern releases such as Minecraft. This allowed the children to collect hundreds of paper tickets to exchange for the tiniest toys ever conceived.

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Cycling and… tulips!?

Cycling in the Netherlands is much like cycling in Surrey. Well, apart from it being a lot flatter. And the dedicated cycling infrastructure EVERYWHERE. And cyclists being at the top of the hierarchy of road users, with cycling being embedded within everyday life. And motorists not actively trying to kill you, or at least expressing extreme attitude, at every possible opportunity.

So, other than all those things, it’s pretty much the same.

At one point, a car driver nearly reversed into my wife’s bike. They were nearly lynched by the surrounding posse of pedestrians and other cyclists.

The infrastructure made it both straightforward and safe to cycle from Duinrell to the nearby charming town of Delft. This was about 20 km each way, with our e-cargo bike (Tern GSD S10) easily eating those miles up with both children on board.

We took the bikes over to Keukenhof - dubbed ‘The most beautiful spring garden in the world’. If you love tulips and/or brightly coloured things, you are going to have a good time here. I’m personally pretty ambivalent on this but my phone did get full pretty quickly with flower pictures. I recommended EXCEPTIONALLY STRONGLY that you book an early morning session as the place gets VERY busy VERY quickly (I lost count of the number of coaches in the car park at the point we left).

Keukenhof does cycle hire (or bring your own bikes) allowing you to ride a selection of local routes which take in the tulip fields. Again, the cycling infrastructure is great and it was very relaxing. A perfect addition to Keukenhof itself, just in case you really hadn’t seen enough tulips already. You can even buy some of the tulips! TULIPS! BUY THE TULIPS! (There were a lot of tulips).

Windmills!

I never thought I’d use the phrase, “I’m no stranger to windmills” but here we are. I’m no stranger to windmills. I’ve now stood next to one running at full tilt under a decent amount of wind. Those things are SAVAGE. If one of the sails hit you, that would be game over for sure. The Final Destination series should definitely consider having some form of tragic windmill incident in one of its set pieces.

This was courtesy of the village of Kinderdijk (one hour’s drive from Duinrell). You can see the windmills from the outside. You can see the windmills from the INSIDE (great climbing adventures for all). You can get on a boat and see the windmills from the outside again but this time from a DISTANCE! We didn’t do the boat trip as it didn’t seem it would add much to the experience.

Plus you can tick off the place from the UNESCO Heritage List - although as there are 1,199 sites, completing all of them may take some time.

Efteling: World of Wonders

Efteling (90 minutes drive from Duinrell) is your more traditional theme park. And I mean this literally: It was so refreshing to be at a park which wasn’t awash with branded rides. No Disney. No Marvel. No dreaded Paw Patrol. And, get this: PEPPA PIG WAS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN. Huge selection of zones and rides to suit all ages and thrill-seeking desire.

It was certainly busy, needing long queues for some of the rides, but these never felt that bad (Legoland Windsor would be thinking, “We can get at least another six million people in here”). The park app is really good at advising you, plus Efteling operates ‘Baby switch’, where parents can immediately swap at a ride’s exit to bypass the queues. This was not heavily advertised and sometimes ride attendants had to ask colleagues what to do: You have to make the effort to ask when you get off any eligible ride.

We took in a show involving horses, sword fighting and magic which also had strong Power Ranger vibes. It was in Dutch so I had no idea what was going on, but I think the Power Rangers won, and the Bad Team sunk under the water never to be seen again. Oh, and there was a DRAGON! Defeated with water cannons. It was so confusing.

I also ate the creation you can see below, which I think meant I hit my calorie requirements for the next eighteen years.

Catching the Z at parkrun

We are keen parkrun participants. Combined, we’ve done well over 500 of these Saturday 5k events, and the children are well underway as well with their 2k versions courtesy of Junior parkrun.

If we’re away from home, and there’s the possibility of taking in a parkrun as a tourist… then it is going to happen! Especially if it is one of the few parkruns in the world beginning with a Z. Yes, there are all sorts of voluntary challenges you can do with parkrun, and one of them is to do a parkrun for every letter of the alphabet. Except X. As it would be impossible. For now.

It was straightforward to get to Zuiderpark back in The Hague and enjoy the rudimentary (100% tarmac) two lap course. Aware of the very strong international attraction of both The Hague and this particular parkrun, there were two briefings (English first, then Dutch). Very well run, extremely friendly, and Brooks were there to sell some new running shoes. Fair enough, as the correct number of pairs of running shoes to own is always more than you currently have.

I was even able to get out on my own to run with some actual hills back at Duinrell. Pretty much the only hills of any significance I can remember during our entire trip. It’s easy to run down to the local beach and back (dedicated running and cycle track) which is a nice 10k and a lowly 50m of elevation gain.

Getting back again

And then we went home.

The main difference is that we took a daytime ferry back. Although a cabin is not mandatory when you do this, we did book one as somewhere to relax a bit more. This was a good decision: The facilities on the ferries are rudimentary.

When we last took a ferry, over to France, there were several decks of Things To Do, including a cinema, large games area, and so on. Not so with this crossing. There was one deck, mostly taken up with seating and food areas and… well, that’s about it really. There was a children’s play area about the size of a disabled toilet and a single games console. Bring your own things to do!

Also allow the same time that the crossing takes to get through passport control back in the UK (This never gets any quicker).

The end

In summary: My mood matched the smiling frog mascot of where we were staying. I would happily live in the Netherlands from everything that we experienced.

If you’ve any of your own recommendations / tips for the area, then please let me know!

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Resources

• Facebook group: “Duinrell - Chats and Tips for Holidaymakers”

• Facebook group: “Efteling Just For Brits”

• Stena Line - Get the ferry!

I’ve never even played League of Legends. Just the very concept of MOBAs (That’s ‘Multiplayer Online Battle Arena’ to you) leaves me a bit cold. In addition, as the game has been running since 2013 it has grown to feel impenetrable to someone coming at it new, featuring 168 different champions. Who has that sort of time?! (Turns out a lot of people do: 180+ million monthly active players as of 2022, fact fans).

By contrast, the show sucked me right in. I had no idea who any of the characters were going in, or why they might (or might not be) important. I didn’t care. It was superb. I now hear Jason Spisak’s voice everywhere as a result.

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Falling back in

I am much more familiar with the Fallout game series. My memories are a little hazy though, as I was mostly invested in Fallout 3 which was released in 2008 (woah). I did start on Fallout 4 (2015) but I am not sure I got very far at all. A first-person nuclear wasteland action RPG, but with a strange (and lovable) sci-fi / 1950s / Steampunk kitsch cross-over going on.

(Bethesda loved the game engine behind it all so much that playing their most recent offering, Starfield, is like stepping back in time to 2008. The Creation Engine’s old-tech style of NPC conversations has not aged well when compared to other recent releases such as Baldur’s Gate 3. I grew bored of the game within a few hours.)

What’s great about the new TV show is that it 100% passes the vibe check, which is not something that can be said for all Amazon creations (I’m looking at you, Rings of Power!). That whole strange 1950s vibe of the Vault Dwellers is just nailed on, particularly so by Lucy with her ‘Oh Golly!’ Can Do attitude. Except in this world, that Can Do approach is extended to removing the head from a corpse as part of a mission to find your father. The beauty of the storytelling here is that her actions doesn’t seem unreasonable at all.

Fallout, or at least the main timeline, is set in a post-apocalyptic world. The start of all of this is brilliantly done in the first episode, and the show knows what it is doing: Teasing the audience by always having a waiting-to-be-nuked cityscape in the background of a lot of the shots. Society is split. ‘Vault Dwellers’ have been sealed away in their little perfect underworld utopias. Survivors on the surface have scavenged their way to survival, but there are raiders and Ghouls (mutants!) making life very dangerous. In the games, and this show, THE WORLDS COLLIDE. Hence Lucy’s quest.

Lucy is great, but a couple of the characters do seem a bit derivative by comparison. ‘The Ghoul’ is the bounty-hunter cowboy trope, complete with some nicely derived Westworld-style audio cues (I’m talking ORIGINAL Westworld here, of course). Maximus’ characterisation as a fish-out-of-water super soldier questioning his loyalties just screams ‘Finn from Star Wars’.

I can forgive both of these purely with Dale Dickey’s portrayal of Ma June. She steals the show every moment she is on scene in her episode, and it feels like her eyes are staring deep into the soul of any other character.

The show looks totally authentic to the games. Be that those perfect little Vaults, the ‘Pip Boy’ gadgets and their functionality, Nuka-Cola signage… the list goes on. Oh, and of course I can’t forget the T45 Power Armour which is centre stage. And this is what I love: All of these things are not included as Fan Service. They don’t feel out of place or thrown in. It all just works. There are no characters looking at the camera, winking, and saying things like, “I hope we don’t… Fall Out…. over this…”, like we’ve come to be spoon fed by more traditional Hollywood movies in recent times.

And the thing is, at the time of writing this, I am only three episodes in! So I really hope the rest of the series is not absolutely terrible, but my confidence is very high so far.

I’ve now come full circle: As a result of my Fallout experiences being reawakened by the show, I want to dive back into the games again. Perhaps I will finish Fallout 4 this time. And did I ever actually play Fallout: New Vegas?!

People, we’ve come a long way since DOOM (“A bland lifeless piece of science fiction fodder that really doesn't pay homage to the game.” - Cinema Crazed).

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That’s a question that sums up being overwhelmed with the sheer amount of STUFF TO DO that comes my way. It’s insidious. It creeps up over time.

My sources of woe include:

• E-mail (Both work and personal). No inbox has quite reached the ‘ARRRRRRGH’ stage, but both inboxes have been acting as some sort of ‘You need to do this’ graveyard.

• Talking to myself on WhatsApp when things pop into my head that I need to remember.

• Phone notifications (Ping!)

• Work Slack (Dozens of channels, Direct Messages, various ‘Saved for later’ bookmarks — oh, and the dubious privilege of being a Guest in a host of other Slack instances to keep track of).

• Family Trello board (This has become a monstrous beast over time, moving away from the elegant nature of Kanban to a multi-headed hydra of DOOM: Blood-red ‘OVERDUE’ indicators staring with malice).

• Work tasks embedded within my primary note-taking app, Obsidian.

• People having the audacity to TALK TO ME.

It was getting too much. It was starting to feel like Tasks were getting in the way of actually Getting Things Done.

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Getting Things Done

Getting Things Done is a personal productivity system developed by David Allen. Allen states "there is an inverse relationship between things on your mind and those things getting done". Aha! This was sounding familiar.

From Wikipedia:

The GTD method rests on the idea of moving all items of interest, relevant information, issues, tasks and projects out of one's mind by recording them externally and then breaking them into actionable work items with known time limits. This allows one's attention to focus on taking action on each task listed in an external record, instead of recalling them intuitively

Want to buy the book? Why, here’s a link so you can follow the same path.

Let’s get to work.

Step 0: Turning down the firehose

In this system, ‘All items of interest’ need to be sorted out. That leaves behind all items which are DEFINITELY NOT of interest. They may be distracting, annoying, spammy — perhaps all of these.

Sometimes, app developers just hate their users: I recently wanted to scan a bottle of wine in Vivino to find out more about it. I hadn’t used the app for ages. This time around, it forced me to sign up as a user. The app then proceeded to spam me daily with adverts about wine, and emails also started popping into my Inbox doing the same. A horrible user experience, all for ONE (JUST ONE!) bottle of wine.

I disabled the notifications and unsubscribed. I started doing for every single notification or email that wasn’t bringing actual value to my life. No, eBay, I don’t need to know about your current listing special offer. No, random shop I visited to buy a present for someone two years ago, I really don’t want to buy anything else from you. No, social_media_app_47, I just don’t care that ‘someone I might know’ posted something about teapots today.

Now, if I get an email or ‘ping’ on my mobile, the odds have moved a bit more in my favour that it is something I might actually care about.

Step 1: The Universal Inbox

At this point, I still had multiple places where Things That Need Doing could live. It was time to consolidate. And in the process hit the mythical INBOX ZERO.

I was always close to Inbox Zero. However, there would always be, Columbo style, ‘just one more thing’ that would be sat there as a reminder. Alongside this, I would be marking requests for help on Slack with a ‘Save for later’ — all a very vague way of tracking what needed to be done.

I use Obsidian as my primary work note taking application. It’s Markdown based, which I love, and it has a whole host of plugins to customise the experience. One of these plugins allows it to be used as a task tracking system (You can embed tasks within any note). It’s incredibly powerful but also takes some manual configuration to get it right for the individual. Ultimately, it wasn’t quite working for me with the general jumble of information. The tasks needed to go somewhere else.

But where?

The good news is that there is a whole host of Getting Things Done-inspired apps out there. I tried out a couple of the most popular for Mac: OmniFocus 4 and Things 3. Both of these are highly capable, well established and well thought of by their users. In the end, I settled for Things 3 as, well, it just passed the vibe check for me. It works well, it looks elegant and it just lets me get on with things. I also needed to make a decision quickly to avoid falling into a Paradox of Choice trap. Ultimately, these apps (and others) are so similar that I strongly suspect I’ll be writing an, “And now I have switched to Product X!” post in the future.

With that choice made, I threw everything that would stick into the my Things Inbox: Emails needing attention at some point, tasks from Obsidian, those flagged messages on Slack — everything just came pouring out of my mind. It was very cathartic. It gave me a Single Source Of Truth, and allowed me to clear down all the other places to nothing.

Hurrah! INBOX ZERO ACHIEVED.

Well, kind of. I now had a single massive Inbox. It was time to curate.

Step 2: Keeping my Things in order

Now that I had everything out of my mind and into a filing system, I needed a mechanism to complete the loop on it all.

This meant categorising everything into Areas and Projects (The screenshot above gives some examples of this: An area of ‘Family’ containing a Project of ‘Vacation in Rome’). Next up was setting realistic deadlines and the thing that actually needs to be done for each task.

To pick one of a myriad of home tasks, one was getting new football socks for my son. It got thrown into the Inbox, then filed into an appropriate ‘Home’ project with a date to be actioned some point over the weekend. This meant that Things handily popped it up to remind me. I ordered the socks, and created a new task for when they should be arriving so that I didn’t just forget about the whole thing (And means I don’t rely on loads of order status emails cluttering up my mail Inbox). Job done.

Although a trivial example, it highlights how a Task can be something you are waiting for someone else to do. This is a really useful approach to keeping more complex tasks under control.

Another handy helper here is that tasks can be recurring. Is there an outstandingly exciting Excel spreadsheet that you need to review once a week? You can make so very sure that the task in question will correctly come back to haunt you as required. Until you die, if necessary.

During all of this time, anything new appearing that needed my attention (such as email or Slack message) would go straight into my Things Inbox. All these competing Inboxes would start sprouting up again like weeds otherwise.

Step 3: Time management!

Task management is one thing. Time management is a challenge in its own right.

I’ve generally been good on discipline in this area, so this wasn’t something I needed to adjust too much. I allocate time in advance that matches when tasks need it. For example: If I need to write a hefty document for work, I’ll block out that writing time on the right days. If there are a complex series of inter-related tasks (a good recent example would be recruiting someone!) I’ll make sure that time is ring-fenced.

If it’s particularly Heavy Thinking Work [TM] I’ll drop into Pomodoro Time: Set a timer to work solely on that, turn off notifications and go into ‘Focus’ mode with whatever app I am using. I can then create happily within my little bubble.

I also put in time just for reviewing where I am with everything, to ensure a continued strategic view. Do I have the right things on my lists? Maybe priorities have changed. Are there things that I am NOT doing that I should be? Taking the time to step back and look at everything holistically is important.

Step 4: Is this actually working?

I’m not at this step yet. It’s early days and, as per the whole Get Things Done system, I need to review THE WHOLE THING at some point. We are at least at the, “Write a post about it” stage, so that’s something.

And, hey, writing this was a task in itself! So I can tick it off and move onto the next.

This is the sort of therapy that I can really get behind.

Please let me know how YOU are keeping yourself organised… or perhaps you aren’t?! What are your personal tips and challenges?

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The Atari 400, released in 1979, was my very first computer. It came stuffed with a massive 8 kilobytes of RAM, a disgraceful membrane keyboard, and a cartridge slot to allow instant loading of any software.

In my case, the majority of that software was games.

One of the most striking things of official Atari games of that era was the packaging. The boxes and manuals were MASSIVE. The styling definitely evokes the era, and at this point I have to heavily recommend The Art of Atari - a 353 page hardback book packed full of the stuff.

One thing I didn’t notice as a child (and why would I, I just wanted to PLAY!) was that no-one was credited for creating the games. There were no programmers, artists or musicians (most of the time all of these were the same person) mentioned in the games or the manuals. Everything was just, ‘COPYRIGHT ATARI’. This applied to Atari systems in general, including the classic Atari 2600 that was launched in 1977.

This led to disgruntled developers, and was a contributing factor (along with the lack of revenue sharing or bonus payments for successful releases) to several Atari developers leaving to form Activision in 1979.

It also led to the coining of the term ‘Easter egg’ in computing.

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1. Let’s go on an Easter Egg Adventure

One of the aforementioned malcontents was Warren Robinett, who created Adventure (One of the great things of the early days of video games is that you could pick very generic titles and they would be original).

In this game, the player (square blob) embarks on an epic quest to find a magical chalice and return it to the golden castle. Dragons (resembling ducks) and bats are out to get you. The graphics are primitive as is expected of the era, so a certain amount of imagination is required.

Following a precise set of instructions will reveal the hidden screen (see above screenshot) which renders Warren’s name in all its glory. He was being paid $22k a year by Atari, who were selling 1 million+ cartridges at $25 a pop, so this cheeky little implementation seems fair enough.

By the time it was discovered, the game had been released, and Warren had left the company. Fixing it would have meant creating a new hardware mask for the cartridges (EXPENSIVE). In the end, Atari decided to take ownership of the situation, and declared that Easter eggs should be included in their future games.

2. Make love, not war

The term ‘Easter egg’ was coined by Steve Wright of Atari at the time of the discovery of Robinett’s hidden message. It wasn’t the first time something had been squirrelled away in computing.

The PDP-6 predated the Atari 400 by 13 years, being released in 1964. It was a mainframe. This meant the base model weighted in at 590 kg: The same as 366 of the latest MacBook Pros. You could own one for a cool $120k - $300k depending on specification. It was a serious bit of kit.

One of the core commands in the TECO text editor was ‘MAKE’ to create a new file. And, lo, comedy genius ensued from one of the engineers involved in creating the system:

> MAKE LOVE
NOT WAR?

William F. Weiher later confirmed he was responsible in a fascinating interview, which showed a mischievous intent on a few different levels:

“There was also an interesting dynamic with DEC. Many of the things I wrote ended up as part of DEC’s release of the TOPS-10 operating system (totally with my permission). It was something of a test to see what would get through DEC without modification like the ability of the Calcomp plotter routines (which they did give me credit for) to plot in Feanorian (the Elvish alphabet from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings).”

3. How do you take your coffee?

Easter eggs don’t have to exist with the intention of being discovered.

In 2005, Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold 677k copies in the UK on its first weekend alone.

During development, there was an intention to have sex-based mini games (!). These were created, but ultimately removed in order to secure a ‘Mature’ rating from the Entertainment Software Review Board (ESRB).

However, ‘removed’ is doing a bit of heavy lifting here: The developers just disabled the content. The code, graphics and so on still existed within the game (and had been distributed to anyone buying it) — it just didn’t appear during normal play.

Upon the game’s release for Windows, modder Patrick Wildenborg disabled the controls around the code and released the revised code online in June 2005. The title of the mod? HOT COFFEE.

The unlocked content allowed the player to go back to a girlfriend’s house ‘for some coffee’. Full details, if you so wish, can be found here, but it involves rhythm, the analog sticks and an ‘Excitement meter’.

It was downloaded over 1 million times over a 4 week period.

There was significant fallout as a result. The ESRB re-rated the game as AO (Adults Only), typically issued for games with titles such as ‘All Nude Nikki’ and ‘Erotic Heat Vol. 4’. Major retailers, such as Walmart and Target, announced ceasing of all sales of the game. Australia banned San Andreas outright.

A patch to remove the illicit content entirely was released in August, and the original ratings were restored. Take-Two, publishers of the game, incurred losses of $24.5 million from the game’s recall, and then had to face class action lawsuits and legislator interest in the whole affair.

4. Getting caught with your trousers down

Compared to San Andreas, 1987 Commodore 64 game, International Karate + had a much more wholesome approach to being caught with your trousers down.

In this fun Karate fighting game, hitting the ‘S’ and ‘E’ keys together would result in the karateka all dropping their trousers.

That’s it. That’s the Easter egg.

Continuing the wholesome theme, attempting to type in swear words on the Amiga version of the game would result in it rebuking the player. A second attempt would result in the game resetting itself.

(The game had a smattering of other Easter eggs as well, such as the ability to trigger fish leaping out of the water, periscopes, birds and more).

5. The code to rule all codes

One code to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

I present to you: THE KONAMI CODE.

This incantation was first used in 1986 NES game, Gradius: Pausing the game and entering the code activated a selection of power-ups for the player. It is perhaps most well known for its use in Contra where it gave 30 extra lives when used.

Kazuhisa Hashimoto invented the code, originally to help him complete Gradius when testing it. He meant to remove the code prior to release but…. this never happened, and the rest is history.

The code is now ubiquitous and not just in Konami games. Many developers for many games and many platforms have deployed the code. It’s even spread outside of games: Amazon’s Alexa will respond to an audio version, a previous Marks & Spencer Christmas site would pop up some festive creatures, and entering it on a 404 page on Discord’s web site will unlock a secret game of Snake.

6. Where Konami and Atari collide…

The Atari story of developers not getting credit for their games has a modern equivalent too. Sometimes, the power balance is reversed.

Following a bit of a breakup between Konami and game developer legend Hideo Kojima, Konami did their best to remove any reference to Hideo from all material relating to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Hideo didn’t counter this with an Easter egg. Instead, he put full credits before every episode of the game. His name flashes up more than 60 times during an average playthrough.

Sometimes, An Easter egg can hide in plain sight, with the story itself being the thing to discover.

Do YOU have any favourite Easter eggs?

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I had the pleasure of attending the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco last week. This was my second time, having first attended to speak on behalf of AWS for Games in 2022. 2022 was an interesting time for the event; it being the first instance of GDC since lockdown ending, and so this year was an opportunity for me to see the real GDC.

But… if GDC is a reflection of the games industry, what would it actually be showing? The games industry is NOT in a happy place right now. More than 10,000 people were laid off in 2023, and 8,000 are showing as laid off in this year in Q1 alone! Studios impacted range from the smallest to the very largest, such as Epic Games and Microsoft.

Come dive into my stream of consciousness as I write about all things games, running and San Francisco (baby!)

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Taking the San Francisco warp gate

I flew out and back with United Airlines - my first time! This worked out pretty well, to be honest. There were no dramas with anything related to the flights, other than the gate staff on the outbound leg causing chaos by deciding to call every single group simultaneously. I was feeling very flush that I was in ‘Priority Group 2’ (work perk despite having to endure cattle class), but then quickly realised that half the plane seemed to be in this group. ONE DAY I WILL BE TRULY SPECIAL.

Kudos to the United app developers as well. It is an app that is actually decent and actually gives you all the information that you might want. In a sea of vendor apps that are utterly terrible at times this was a breath of fresh air.

Immigration was seamless, thanks to a tip from a colleague to use the Mobile Passport Control (MPC) app. This very simple app is a replacement for those old paper immigration forms that used to get handed out towards the end of the flight. Using the app got me through passport control in about five minutes. The queue for everyone else was epic, and once word spread, others were quickly downloading the app to fill in the details to change lines.

In further evidence that I might be in some sort of The Good Place simulation, my baggage rolled off the line within 5 minutes, and the weather was mild and sunny all week.

All of these good vibes persisted when coming home. This was helped by me having cracked the “We’re going to arrive in London 30 minutes early” code some time ago. This without a doubt always means, “We’ll land early and then sit on the tarmac for at least 30 minutes because the gate staff don’t know we are coming for some reason”.

Uber to the hotel took about 25 minutes. As is standard with US hotel rooms, it was about the size of the entire downstairs of my house.

Running the gauntlet

My method of dealing with jet lag for short trips like this is really simple: I don’t deal with it. I doom myself to waking up at around 3-4 am every morning and going from there. The plus point is that my recovery upon coming home again is exceptionally quick.

I was determined to keep up my running regime during the week to help prevent myself putting on 19 stone from the local cuisine. My hotel was located within the Embarcadero district, and I could run to the highly popular waterfront route within a couple of minutes. A loop out to Fort Mason and back was a nice 10 kilometres. I discovered pretty quickly that everyone else out running at 7am is FASTER THAN ME: San Francisco breeds dedicated runners!

The decent number of people about (but not toooooo busy - the place is a real tourist trap later on) meant I felt safe. And I need to write about the elephant in the room: San Francisco has a bit of a reputation at the moment in terms of its (reported) decline.

With the thousands of people descending on the city for GDC, there was a high police and security presence (The number of stores with visible security in broad daylight was telling). The homeless and drug problem was obvious (I spotted used needles at one bus stop - nice) but nothing stood out compared to other US cities I have visited in recent years. However, I’m a 6’ man who can do a good impression of being athletic, so I very rarely get accosted. On numerous occasions I witnessed others, typically women, being targeted as a mark and needing to get away quickly. I was comfortable walking back from the GDC venue to my hotel in the evening along the main streets — but had read enough about BART to not fancy that at all.

Blue warrior needs food badly

This was a real mix.

I made the mistake of picking up breakfast at Moscone Centre just once. An anaemic sandwich, drink and apple cost $32. THIRTY-TWO ACTUAL DOLLARS.

Much better was grabbing breakfast after my morning runs from 5th Avenue Deli which was right next to the hotel. These sandwiches were epic. Imagine Subway but delicious and good. I suspect they had about a gazillion calories in but SO WORTH IT!

Other than that, I grabbed what I could amongst the chaos of running to and from meetings and the various evening events. Everything from Mexican, through classic American breakfasts to a staple Super Duper Burger.

I think I got the balance between exercise and ALL THE FOOD about right: My weight was pretty much the same once I returned home. The elevated number of steps from just walking everywhere no doubt helped as well.

What about the GAMES?

I should probably write about the conference itself.

It was a busy week, packed with meetings with customers, colleagues and partners. These stretched into the evenings as there were various events happening and it was impossible to go to all of them. On a personal level, it was wonderful to meet some of the key Godot Engine people, given I used it to create my gaming passion project. Godot has a decent sized presence at the show in terms of Expo footprint, and it makes me very happy to see it becoming more mature and adopted over time.

I helped to support one talk from Larian Studios on ‘Capturing the Magical Realm of Data Generated by Baldur's Gate 3’. This was heavily attended which was to be expected given the wonderful success of the game (a pivotal part of the talk was the game exceeding launch expectations).

Generative AI was, as expected, a big topic of the week. Saltwater Games presented ‘Harnessing Generative AI to Create Unlimited Content Within Game Worlds’. The part I liked here was the use of their ‘ThorAI’ to allow the player to customise their little drone helper with their voice. E.g. “Please talk to me like a cockney gangster”. There were many tech demos of GenAI littered throughout the conference, but of course the contentious elements were an overriding theme (Some studios still have an outright ban on Generative AI for philosophical reasons). 4 in 5 surveyed developers surveyed by GDC have ethical concerns over the technology. Giovanni Colantonio interviewed SAG-AFTRA’s Sarah Elmaleh on the union’s position on AI in gaming: It it is a good summary of the potential of the technology versus the challenges.

My favourite part of the accompanying Expo (feeling much more at full strength than my last visit) was the alt.ctrl.GDC section. It goes without saying that there is a huge amount of talent and creativity within the games industry. This exhibit took that up a notch, with its demonstrations of alternative control systems for games. There was a game using a WAFFLE IRON as a control interface. In the video below, it’s BAR CODE SCANNING!

Oh, and I will always be magnetically attracted to any retro gaming museum exhibits. I am duty bound to include a photo of Pong…

All of these positive stories immediately slam into the opposing force of the redundancies that have been hitting the industry. There were many attending that don’t have jobs right now. Amir Satvat did an outstanding job of securing free passes for those in need of them by working with numerous partners across the industry — this work is very much to be applauded!

Put it this way: When was the last time you attended a conference that featured a screaming session?

The right sort of loot box

Then I went home.

I don’t go too overboard with going after swag from events any more. I got some decent t-shirts and socks (standard), but most of my focus was on assuaging the terrible guilt of abandoning my family for a week.

The pictured swag (Baseball caps, cute bears, totally random arm warmers) probably forms a large chunk of our monthly mortgage repayments.

I really enjoyed the week. It was busy and exhausting. However, I got to catch up with people from around the world I hadn’t seen for some time, meet others for the first time, and be totally immersed in this amazing industry of ours. Times are tough right now. Fingers crossed that the passion, creativity and sheer grit of those within Games pulls us safely to a more prosperous and stable future.

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One of the most powerful voices of 2023 did not belong to a woman. It didn’t belong to a man. It belonged to a bot on Twitter: Gender Pay Gap Bot.

This bot, developed by Francesca Lawson and Ali Fensome (website), spoke truth to power. For every company or brand tweeting proudly on Twitter about how much they were getting behind International Women's Day, it replied with any available data from the Gender Pay Gap Service (There is a legal requirement in the UK for any employer with 250 or more employees to publish their data comparing men and women’s average pay).

The results were always interesting:

Verdict went into this in some detail back in 2022: Analysis then showed that 91.1% of companies in the tech industry pay men more. Men’s median hourly pay was 16% higher than women - above the national average of 11.6%.

Sadly, the Good Bot doesn’t seem to be operational in 2024.

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History of women

This pay gap difference is unfair and a terrible shame considering the impact that women have had, are having, and will continue to have in Tech.

This post started with an image of Margaret Hamilton. Margaret and her team created the on-board flight software for that enabled humans to land on the Moon in 1969. That’s impactful. For those curious, the source code itself is now available on GitHub (There are even 78 Pull Requests open to suggest changes to the code, some 55 years later!)

We can go back further than 1969. How about Ada Lovelace, who was born in 1815?

Ada, among other things, developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching. She had a mindset of ‘poetical science’ that led her to ask questions about the Analytical Engine, examining how individuals and society relate to technology as a collaborative tool. In present day, her name was used as the codename of Nvidia’s new GPU architecture, as featured in their RTX 4000 series. GPUs are a particular hot topic right now, given their importance in allowing Generative AI to work in the first place.

How about the ‘Mother of the Internet’? Radia Perlman invented the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP). This protocol, published by the IEEE as the 802.1D standard, is fundamental to the operation of network bridges. No network bridges, no Internet. Any algorithm that can be expressed as an Algorhyme deserves a special mention in my book.

Algorhyme

I think that I shall never see
A graph more lovely than a tree.

A tree whose crucial property
Is loop-free connectivity.

A tree which must be sure to span
So packets can reach every LAN.

First the root must be selected.
By ID it is elected.

Least cost paths from root are traced.
In the tree these paths are placed.

A mesh is made by folks like me
Then bridges find a spanning tree.

Present day

Things are improving. Slowly. More women are getting involved in Tech roles. Seniority is increasing. The pay gap, agonisingly slowly, seems to be closing.

I get to work alongside inspiring Women in Tech every single day. Going further afield than my present company, I’m going to recognise Molly Sheets. Currently Director of Engineering, Kubernetes at Zynga, I consider her a role model in general within the games industry. She has achieved great things in the past and is continuing to do so now, and her voice is always opinionated (THIS IS A GOOD THING) and insisting on the highest standards. “Be more Molly” would be good advice for anyone.

Reshma Saujani is the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code. The organisation, founded in 2012, has taught computing skills and inspired over 40,000 girls across America. There’s even an inspirational book, including real-life stories of girls and women working at places like Pixar and NASA.

The future

As a father (one boy, two girls), I’m going to have a biased view of wanting to ensure that fair opportunities are out there for my children.

This is why a ‘full stack’ approach is needed. The Tech companies need to be doing everything they can to make things fair. And, right at the other end, parents and educators need to be showing the possibilities of a career in Tech. And, yes, definitely moving away from having ‘boy toys’ and ‘girl toys’. Judith Elaine Blakemore, Professor of Psychology, said: “If you want to develop children's physical, cognitive, academic, musical, and artistic skills, toys that are not strongly gender-typed are more likely to do this.”

There are plenty of ways for women to be inspired in Tech careers. One example is the STEM Ambassadors. “More than 90% of teachers said engaging with STEM Ambassadors has improved their students’ awareness and ambitions in STEM.”. The Raspbery Pi Foundation published Six women doing excellent things with Raspberry Pi as part of their own highlights, including Dr Lucy Rogers and her Raspberry Pi controlled robot dinosaurs.

Closing the loop

In 2023, Samsung did some research. Only 14% of 18-25 year-old women could correctly identify Ada Lovelace. Promisingly though, two thirds of them saw a future career in Tech, BUT 38% v 29% of them thought the route in was through non-tech roles!

In 2023, Samsung were paying women 25.2% lower than men.

We have work to do.

Celebrate women's achievement. Raise awareness about discrimination. Take action to drive gender parity.

These are from the International Women’s Day website. How are YOU going to help? Not just today, but EVERY day?

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Robin Williams, taken from us too soon, died in 2014. He is considered one of the top comedians of all time. Wikipedia has a dedicated article just listing his awards and nominations: It’s a very long list.

I asked ChatGPT 4 to tell me a joke about kittens in the style of Robin Williams (which it told me was an ‘energetic and whimsical’ style):

"Why did the kitten join the Red Cross? Because it wanted to be a first-aid purrr-amedic! You see, in the world of kittens, CPR doesn't stand for 'Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation.' Oh no, it's 'Cat Purrs Resoundingly.' And when they bandage you up, they don't use tape; they use fur. That's right, you get a fur-st aid kit. And let me tell you, those kittens are the only medics who will make you feel better just by walking into the room. Because nothing heals a soul quite like a purring kitten with a stethoscope, looking up at you saying, 'Don't worry, I've got nine lives of experience!'“

Good attempt? Bad attempt? One for the reader to decide just how strong a derivative work this one really is.

For every realistic deepfake out there, there is an example of incredibly poor use of Generative AI. A particularly terrible and also abject horrifying one was that of Willy’s Chocolate Experience. This event (NOTHING TO DO WITH WILLY WONKA AT ALL, LAWYERS) was held in Glasgow, with the website and Generative AI art promising a world of sweet-based wonders for families. The reality was mostly looking round a warehouse. There were tears, police and a lot of press on this.

To those with any experience of Generative AI, the images were obviously ‘a bit dodgy’. Right now, such images have an unmistakable derivative style to them - a sort of creative Uncanny Valley. Just to make it even more obvious, the images had spelling mistakes all over them (‘ENCHERINING’ instead of ‘ENCHANTING’, I guess?) — the models are not good at handling text, in the same way that hands are still problematic.

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Robin Williams: The Test

We’ve established that Generative AI can, to different degrees of success, create derivative works. It’s even starting to flood the likes of Amazon with AI-written e-books. No best sellers though.

When I asked ChatGPT to come up with sitcom episode ideas for fun, it dished up the sort of tedious lukewarm affair that you would find clogging up early evening BBC programming at the weekends. Example: ‘Under One Roof" is a sitcom set in a vibrant co-housing community where families, singles, seniors, and young adults coexist in a large, renovated urban building […] The humor is derived from everyday situations, misunderstandings, and the quirky personalities of its members, while always maintaining a respectful and heartfelt tone.”

Ugh.

Right - The Test!

It’s really simple:

This is the big gap right now. It can’t. Any of the output is always in the style of. Either because the user has asked for that, or because Generative AI can only give OUT what it took IN (from its training) in the first place. There is no mechanism for it to come out with something fresh or new.

Would Generative AI have computed the steps that took 80s music to 90s music? Or would we be listening to the 80s FOREVER? (Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad).

Would Generative AI have taken the steps to move beyond tired Peppa Pig to the blissful family delight of Bluey? Or would we be forever left with the slightly dubious stereotypical family unit concerns of Peppa and her family?

Would Generative AI have taken the creative steps to move from a TV show such as the X Files (ALIENS) to Breaking Bad (DRUGS AND MAYHEM)? Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad, also worked on the X Files. The idea for the later show was sparked by a glib comment about a meth lab during a telephone call.

This is why the current fears that Generative AI will destroy all the jobs in (insert industry here) are misplaced. Like with any sea change of technology, industries will change. We had all of this with Photoshop and the photography industry. I found articles from 2015 stating authoritatively that a combination of Photoshop and cameras in mobile phones will kill photography. Right now, there are in the region of 50 thousand wedding photographers in the UK - maybe someone should tell them?

It’s helping with developer productivity: Tools such as Amazon CodeWhisperer that can generate code suggestions in real-time are a great help. However, the tool can’t give you a great idea for what you should be creating in the first place. This is precisely why I needed to rely on the imagination of small children when creating my game, Avenger Sharks. I did try using various Generative AI tools to build assets for the game, but the results were always highly variable in quality and not consistent in style — I invested my time into learning rudimentary Photoshop instead.

There’s also ongoing nervousness in the industry about the legalities surrounding the technology. The fact that Generative AI can always spit out what went in is a factor in why 1 in 4 organizations have banned the use of GenAI (Cisco), with 48% admitting entering non-public company information into such tools. A similar regurgitation episode resulted in DPD’s AI chatbot swearing and criticising its own ‘employer’.

How you can help

The next time you are faced with someone telling you that Generative AI is going to create masterpieces or kill an industry, just do the Robin Williams test with them. You can replace Robin Williams with a better frame of reference to suit your conversation.

I suspect Taylor Swift would be more ‘down with the kids’ nowadays.

And would Generative AI have created Taylor Swift?

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Parenting influencers seem to hate their children. Or love engagement. Maybe a combination of both? I grew tired of the constant parade of negativity one-upmanship. EVERYTHING IS HARD. MY CHILDREN COMPLAIN ABOUT THINGS. I CAN’T GET THEM OUT THE DOOR. It’s endless.

What about… the joy?

I had been wanting to create a new video game for a while. My job involves working closely with the games industry in helping them find success with their own creations, but my own imaginative urges were not being fully satisfied.

I also wanted to learn Godot. It’s a beautifully lightweight Open Source game creation engine. It can easily export games for PC, Mac, Linux and more. It also has a nice distinction between its workflows for 2D and 3D games (not the case for all engines), and as I was definitely going to stick to two-dimensional fun, this was perfect for me.

I have a decent amount of coding experience, so I jumped into running through the ‘Your first 2D game’ tutorial. This got some sprites moving around the screen, controlled by the player, and was a very simple game.

At this point, I hit my usual stumbling block with learning new tech: Okay, this is cool, but…. What should I actually build?

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Children are great

This is where having the combined imagination of a six and four year old on tap works wonders. “Can it be about a shark that eats people?”. Why, yes. YES IT CAN. I promptly knocked up a prototype with an animated shark that could indeed hunt down the enemies and eat them. (In reality, the sprites just vanished - child friendly game!)

From there, it was a case of struggling to keep up with my children as they came up with new ideas.

“Can you shoot the enemies?” - Errr, okay, but let’s keep it child-friendly with special WATER JETS that make the enemies fall over and go to sleep.

“Can the shark do <insert whacky idea here>”- Okay, now we need a power-up and upgrade system.

“Can it have a dinosaur in it that helps you?” - Introducing Mr Dinosaur who rampages around the screen when you collect him!

Avenger Sharks came naturally as a name to be given to this sheer madness.

My own ideas got to creep in as well. I had grown up with games such as Llamatron on the Amiga (itself inspired by Robotron: 2084, originally released in 1984). These were twin-stick shooters (one stick moves, the other aims your shots) and formed the core gameplay style. ‘Zany’ is the word that captures the style of Llamatron.

This meant that different enemies were given different characteristics: Some would chase you. Some would move randomly. Some would be a bit erratic. That’s also a homage to Pac-Man where each ghost has its own AI (Blinky will always chase you, Clyde switches between chasing or fleeing, and so on).

As we clearly had a game involving a shark out for vengeance, the story needing setting up! Thus a cute intro sequence was created involving the shark’s fishy friends being kidnapped. Yes, in this game the shark likes to be friends with fish, and collecting them allows him to build up power for a special FISH FRENZY attack. Wholesome.

Suddenly, with all of this going on, it starts to look like an actual game.

Publishing it TO THE WORLD!

As I made more updates to the game, implementing everything that was spilling out of our combined heads, I thought that maybe, just maybe, other people might want to play this?

I started by putting pre-release versions on indie-game platform itch.io. This allowed me to get early feedback, and even an optional ‘Tip’ of $2 (At last, I can quit my day job and go full-time!).

After the game matured a bit more (like a fine wine), I put everything together in order to get the game published on Steam: a game distribution platform that boasts 132 million daily active users. This involved a lot of fiddling with Photoshop to get the artwork capsules in place, including the creation of an actual game logo.

I was never intending to try and make any money from this game: It was built for FUN and to give my children a taste of what this whole game development thing is all about. In addition, the odds are against you on actually making any money. In 2022, Chris Zukowski found that the median game on Steam earns just $1,136 in its lifetime. I could revisit this in the future if the mood takes me, and there is a precedent for this: Alien Hominid started as a Flash prototype and was later released as a commercial game on numerous platforms.

My now 7 year-old adoringly said, “Dad! I can’t believe that you’re going to be FAMOUS for making Avenger Sharks!”. I love his optimism.

There was one more requirement for Steam to publish the game. A TRAILER! I’d been rolling out various videos as an excuse to learn DaVinci Resolve for a while, so this was great fun to do and an opportunity to totally ham it up 80s style.

Watching that trailer back really makes me happy (MORE JOY) at how far the game has come.

It’s the same feeling when I look at the mass of code that makes up the game in the Godot editor. It actually does stuff!

LAUNCHED!

Avenger Sharks launched on Steam on 21st February 2024. My children jointly pressed the big green RELEASE NOW button. That was a wonderful moment.

That means you can download and play the game right now.

At the time of writing, 4,846 people have clicked to download the game. Some of those have even left positive reviews. I didn’t do this for the glory (okay, maybe a little bit…) but it is nice to have that level of feedback.

What’s next? I’m continuing to add more features to the game, and listen to my children as they come up with new ideas. More than that, I have been handed a piece of paper as an initial design document for our next game.

This means I have won the best game of all: Inspiring my children to want to create something of their own.

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See also…

• When children hit the age of 8, Scratch is a great programming language for them to learn to create interactive stories, games and animations. This will be the direction I steer mine in next.

• My next game is possibly going to be created using the PICO-8 fantasy console. It’s a love letter to old consoles and has a thriving scene. Many, many games have been created.

According to Wikipedia, “Emergent gameplay refers to complex situations in video games, board games, or table top role-playing games that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics”.

Minecraft, first released in 2011, certainly qualifies for having relatively simple game mechanics. In the classic sandbox game, players explore a world consisting entirely of pixelated blocks. The world is procedurally generated, and features a variety of landscapes, structures and creatures. Players can discover, craft and create as they desire. It has been wildly popular, with an estimated 166 million monthly active players. This popularity led to Microsoft buying the game for $2.5 billion in 2014, and it can be played on a multitude of different platforms: PCs, Macs, mobile devices, consoles and more.

Minecraft is very much a complete brand. In the official shop, you can buy everything from plushies to chess sets. And, in sync with Valentine’s Day this week, why not treat your loved one to a personalised Minecraft mug?

Like LEGO, it’s also a great way to use technology to stimulate the imagination of children. They can build! They can play! They can explore! They can…. face danger! Wait, what? Well, the default game mode of Minecraft is SURVIVAL. In this mode, creatures with nefarious intent spawn at night, and the player needs to watch their health and food supply. An initial priority is to build a house so that the player can be safe at first nightfall. A pretty fun and challenging game experience for older ages, but anxiety-driving for younger children.

For our family adventures, we put Minecraft into its non-scary crafting and peaceful mode. No monsters come out to hunt you. You don’t have to worry about food and health. You can fly around the landscape at will. You can choose any block in the game to build with, without needing to find its constituent materials first. UNLIMITED IMAGINATION FUEL!

My children (4 and 7) both enjoyed single player Minecraft in different ways. For the younger child, the basics of exploring and building very simple and frankly incredibly random structures (BEHOLD THE TOWER OF WINDOWS!). The seven year-old was able to better appreciate building more complex things and exploring the wide variety of block types on offer (over 150).

I soon learned that some of their friends were also playing Minecraft, so decided to set up my very own server to allow them to play together. There are a few ways to do this. The official Microsoft way is via Minecraft Realms which uses a subscription model to rent a server (1 month free, then $7.99 per month) - this is the most straightforward due to how well-integrated it is with the game. There is also a wide range of third-party hosting companies, such as Apex Hosting who have plans ranging from $7.99 to $26.25 per month, depending on the processing power you want behind your virtual world.

Or… you can do it yourself!

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I have a bit of a Home Lab going on for tech things, which easily gave me the ability to spin up a private virtual server to run Minecraft on. This is on the other end of the spectrum of using one of the providers mentioned above where you can just click a few buttons to get your server running. For those who also like spending far too much time on this sort of thing, you can find out more details in the Links section at the end of this article.

Once installed, everyone could connect and start playing together! A WhatsApp group was born for parents to co-ordinate activities.

There were some initial squeals of excitement at seeing ANOTHER PERSON exploring the world, and then the building began. Handily, one of the invited friends was already a bit of a dab hand at Minecraft. This meant some pretty cool structures started springing up early on, which in turn helped inspire my own children.

This was wonderful to see and my cold heart was filled with joy.

This is where the emergent gameplay aspects started to, well, emerge. Out of the box, Minecraft uses the honour system for building. One player can build something, but there is nothing to stop another player from knocking it down again. This led to a spate of signs like this cropping up in the game, and stronger parental intervention being required at times to prevent an escalation of tears:

It got even more challenging when the children’s voyage of discovery went on to include a fateful combination of TNT and FIRE. Suddenly, vast swathes of the landscape were ‘mysteriously’ vanishing.

Although some clever plugins always allow the culprits to be identified:

The potential for chaos led me to create this gem (ALL THE RAGE ON TIKTOK):

This was starting to put our entire Minecraft civilisation at risk due to a TNT-fuelled arms race, so I moved quickly to disable explosive blocks from working in the world. It’s a hard job, but someone has to be the benevolent dictator of this slice of the Internet.

Finally, although we’ve had parental supervision throughout this experiment… why should it be the children having all the fun? One Dad, a surveyor by day, started deploying his architectural vision at night. Behold, the waterfall of our hearts!

What have we learned?

The children (and adults!) are having a lot of fun. They are getting to express themselves by building whatever they can think of - and there are books that can help with the creative spark. Social dynamics are at play in terms of creating, destroying and having to get on with each other (most of the time). The children are reading books on how to build new things (including portals which were VERY exciting and naturally no-one obeyed my ‘DANGER - KEEP OUT!’ signs).

Every time I log into the server to see what has changed, something surprises me. The swimming pool shown earlier wasn’t there yesterday. Nor was the fancy new cow petting zoo.

What will be new tomorrow?

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Links ‘n’ things

• The server is running on an Intel NUC PC running Proxmox (Open source edition). The host VM is Ubuntu hosting a suite of Docker containers, one of which is docker-minecraft-server. It’s paired with docker-mc-backup for regular backups of the world.

• Plugins are essential for a sane experience, due to Minecraft being wide open out of the box. Start with EssentialsX (does LOTS of different things), LuckPerms (permissions for players) and CoreProtect (lets you see what players have been doing - e.g. track the TRAILS OF DESTRUCTION and rollback afterwards!).

• In more adult gaming news, I have mostly been playing Helldivers 2 on PC. It is the video game equivalent of Starship Troopers, both in terms of action and tone. Here’s 18 minutes of gameplay courtesy of IGN.

I am feeling pretty self-satisfied at the moment. Why? One of the many graphs from my Garmin smartwatch has been pointing up and to the right for about four weeks now.

My VO2 Max score, indicating the maximum rate of oxygen consumption available during exertion, has been creeping up. I’ve been training consistently (various forms of running). My weight, and therefore my BMI, is creeping downwards. This follows several months of not doing very well at fitness at all, and both of those graphs were curving in the other direction.

Exercise makes me happy with the triple threat of endorphins, discipline and DATA.

The amount of fitness data available to us nowadays is staggering. Long gone are the days of tracking weight, and perhaps heart rate and estimated calories. GPS on devices track distances and speed throughout any activity. Other sensors capture not just heart rate, but how much you ‘bounce’ when you run (vertical oscillation), cadence, left / right foot favouring, stride length, your stamina and potential stamina… the list goes on.

The data onslaught continues even when we are NOT exercising. Garmin have a ‘Body Battery’ concept so you can get validation of whether you really should be feeling tired or not. How fast it drains during the day depends on how stressed you are. Which is also tracked. Rushing around getting the kids ready for school always results in a flurry of yellow spikey graphs rather than the reassuring ‘Everything is going to be fine’ blue.

I’ve found the Body Battery genuinely interesting. When I last came down with Proper Flu, my watch pristinely showed how my body was not in a happy place as I ended up under a blanket on the sofa.

“Well, at least I can depend on my heart rate being steady when I’m not doing anything”. No, it turns out you can’t. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) relies on the concept that your heart is NOT a perfect metronome at rest, and there will always be microsecond differences in your rhythm. These timings vary depending on how fit you are. Wait, so what is a ‘fit’ score to get, exactly? Surprise, there isn’t one! Worrying about it will most likely have a negative impact on your score though.

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I’ve mentioned my current happy state due to progress going in the right direction. It isn’t always this way. My watch is quite keen sometimes to tell me that I am being UNPRODUCTIVE (the horror), and that all those endorphins are not actually resulting in me getting any fitter. In addition, when I first kickstarted my fitness it was easy to get an absurdly high Training Load as my body didn’t know what had hit it. Now that my body doesn’t go into a panic mode when anticipating running up a local hill, the Training Load has dropped. Help, I’m confused!

On top of all of this, many smart devices are not actually approved by medical bodies such as the FDA. This is slowly changing, however: Garmin expands ECG App to additional smartwatches (This article is from late 2023 so only the latest devices are impacted).

Also, just how accurate is the science behind a lot of the data being presented to us? My watch is happily predicting a Marathon time for me of 4:13. That’s nice, except that the longest training distance I am doing at the moment is 10k. Attempting to run a marathon right now would result in me going to the Bad Place mentally and physically.

I’ve mostly detailed what Garmin offer in this space, as this is my fitness ecosystem of choice. Equivalents exist with Apple, Polar, Fitbit and many more. Right now, you can’t swing a cat without hitting an Influencer touting the wonders of ZOE (Davina McCall is ‘living her best life’) - “Easy, at-home tests give us an inside look at your blood fat, blood sugar, and gut microbiome health”. Scores ranging from 0 to 100 keep you honest, or perhaps fearful. Got to improve your microbiomes! Instagram videos show celebs of varying levels slapping on the ZOE device, proclaiming “It doesn’t hurt!” — well, your bank balance might as the initial test costs £259.99. Fun challenge for you: See how long it takes you to find the pricing model when you visit the ZOE web site. Let me know how you do.

Is it any wonder that some have just about had enough of all this, and are going back to basics? Fancy a bit of naked running? Fiona Russell has written an interesting article, ‘Naked running – what happened when I ditched the sports watch’ - “I didn’t think I normally felt much pressure to perform but it occurred to me that I must in some  way because without the watch on, I felt a lot more relaxed.”. Impressive that she knew she was more relaxed despite not wearing a device that could actually tell her this. This has been a feature at parkrun on occasion as well, with their US blog opining in 2018, “Would You Run Naked?”. This is perhaps slightly ironic as parkrun have removed various records from their website recently which has now also led to a petition for them to be reinstated.

As for me, the data is helping me be honest at the moment. I know if I was to skip a training day, my Training Load will drop to the “YOU’RE LAZY” part of the graph. If I go into a carb frenzy and over-eat (Pizza is my guilty pleasure), my HRV will plummet the next morning as my body beats me up for it overnight. I treat all of this as a guideline, of course, as how you actually feel is the prime indicator — and I know that by being honest, I feel good. Really good.

“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” is the timeless quote. But “Nothing tastes as good as endorphins being in perfect harmony with the data” just doesn’t scan as well.

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Links ‘n’ things

• The watch that has enslaved me to its data tracking is the Garmin epix Gen 2. Here’s a link to pick one up via Amazon. It’s an Affiliate link, allowing us both to benefit from the data and purchasing overload. There’s now a ‘Pro’ model available with a few extra bits like an enhanced torch.

• Regarding that watch, if you want to see a full review of it by someone who goes into an incredible amount of EXCEPTIONALY INTERESTING detail, check out Garmin Epix In-Depth Review by DC Rainmaker.

• I recently covered the parkrun data removal incident: The first casualty of parkrun is Data.

• Video: Davina McCall being an Ambassador (i.e. BEING PAID A LOT OF MONEY) for Zoe.

• Video: Garbage - Only Happy When It Rains - I am duty bound to include this after the TERRIBLE pun earlier in this article. Great track.

• Video: Running Up That Hill (Stranger Things). I got this ear-worm purely because I wrote about running up a hill in this post. I must therefore share it with you.

• The ‘citizen’ line that is in the title of this blog is inspired by the Paranoia RPG (Role Playing Game). Trust the computer! The computer is your friend!

I did my first parkrun in 2010. In total, I’ve now done 278 parkruns at 50 unique venues. My fastest time is 20:52 (A while ago now!) which I recorded at two separate places. In recent times, my Age Grading is hovering around 54%.

I know all of this due to one of the great things about parkrun: The data it shares that allows participants to track their involvement over time, and (if they want to) compare themselves with others.

parkrun has approximately 1,500 events worldwide. Each Saturday, free of charge, the public can walk, jog, run, volunteer or spectate the 5k event. There is also a junior parkrun, at a shorter 2k distance, for 4-14 year olds and their families, every Sunday morning.

The ethos is one of inclusion. No-one finishes last (As there is a nominated volunteer ‘tailwalker’). In recent months, ‘parkwalkers’ have been introduced to help to encourage those that want to walk the course. Buggies of all shapes and sizes are a regular feature. I’m still, just about, pushing round my 4 year-old at some level of speed… although her own junior parkrun career is picking up now!

Although parkrun is not officially a race, you could finish first. parkrun attracts a diverse crowd. Some athletes will want to try and get that number one spot. They might want to get the course record. A group of parkrun tourists enjoy visiting as many different events as possible, and there’s a whole suite of unofficial challenges based around this - such as Compass Club (Run a parkrun named after each of the compass points - quirky!). Naturally, there’s an app for that.

This week, in a contrast to its previous Open Data position, parkrun announced the removal of a swathe of data from its website:

Based on the conclusions and recommendations of the project group, we will no longer publish data such as most first finishes, sub 17 men and sub 20 women, and age grade or category speed records. Alongside these, as part of our ongoing data protection improvements, the search function has been removed.

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This is a disappointing move. I can understand that parkrun has been put into a very difficult position recently with a lot of negative campaigning and press. That can be summed up by this Telegraph article: Parkrun removes all records in transgender row despite ‘sex discrimination’ claims. parkrun allows participants to self-declare gender (Male, Female or ‘prefer not to say’) - equally, any name can be specified without checks, and I’m aware of one case where a family had registered their dog to rack up parkruns. All of this can impact upon the perceived validity of some of the records. But so could someone lending their registration bar code to someone else to run an event on their behalf. The honour system applies!

The removal of data is not the solution. It doesn’t solve the core issue and I am not convinced that its existence was off-putting to those considering parkrun for the first time. I am open minded here, but this relies on parkrun actually publishing the thought process and recommendations of their project group fully. They should do this to evidence that they are not rushing into a tactical response to the furore on social media.

parkrun is many things to many people. Some will not care for the removal of the data at all, especially since individual results are not impacted (“Your personalised results email and your individual profile pages will remain unchanged”). In fact, many participate without thinking about their result or trends at all: That’s the beauty of the inclusion of the event. But some do! (The parkrun Tourist group is being notably vocal here - Typical quote: “Darned useless and wooley (sic) minded snowflakes take over the world again.”)

parkrun needs to continue to set an example in both inclusion and the power and beauty of making data available to all. A whole eco-system of apps and browser plug-ins has formed around what parkrun has started. Sub-cultures such as the parkrun tourists have formed around finding emergent challenges in the data. All of this in itself is a form of inclusion!

I hope parkrun finds a way to navigate its way through this current storm. The safe harbour it chooses needs to preserve the public’s access to Open Data.