A Year in TV
I have not watched as much TV as I usually do, this year. Mainly because I have become a little weary of the ways contemporary TV is produced, especially with regards to streaming shows. Due to the costs, shows such as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds only have 10 episodes per season. Simply put, the season begins to hit its stride and then is abruptly over. This problem (if you see it as such) is then further compounded by there being a significant wait between seasons. In the case of STSNW it was two years between season two and season three. Not all shows fall foul of this. Apple TV produces two seasons of the excellent espionage drama Slow Horses at a time, ensuring a prompt release schedule. However, even this has issues. Due to the complexity of the plots of many contemporary TV shows, something that is a marketing point, some viewers cannot remember the plot after a twelve month hiatus. Network TV shows seldom have these issues with each season being 20 plus episodes long and story arcs that are seldom as complex.
I have not watched as much TV as I usually do, this year. Mainly because I have become a little weary of the ways contemporary TV is produced, especially with regards to streaming shows. Due to the costs, shows such as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds only have 10 episodes per season. Simply put, the season begins to hit its stride and then is abruptly over. This problem (if you see it as such) is then further compounded by there being a significant wait between seasons. In the case of STSNW it was two years between season two and season three. Not all shows fall foul of this. Apple TV produces two seasons of the excellent espionage drama Slow Horses at a time, ensuring a prompt release schedule. However, even this has issues. Due to the complexity of the plots of many contemporary TV shows, something that is a marketing point, some viewers cannot remember the plot after a twelve month hiatus. Network TV shows seldom have these issues with each season being 20 plus episodes long and story arcs that are seldom as complex.
I find the formula of the obligatory cliffhanger ending for each season, to keep viewers “keen”, rather wearisome. Again, each season of Slow Horses is a self contained story, based on a specific novel. I wish more shows took this approach. I don’t relish having to watch summary videos on YouTube to refresh my memory. However, I think this is symptomatic of a wider malady that is affecting modern TV. Despite high production values, adult themes and complex narratives, many feel to me as well crafted contrivances but contrivances no less. Essentially big budget and immaculately made curate’s egg. There have been several shows that I have started watching and have been broadly entertained by, yet I have at some point abandoned them simply because on some level I just couldn’t be bothered to continue. Furthermore, I didn’t see my abandonment to be a loss. I stopped watching The Last of Us season 2 for this very reason.
Another thing that has come to my notice is the gulf between what shows get written about in the online press and what the public actually watch. For example Succession was dissected in great detail by critics and had praise heaped upon it. However, despite respectable viewing figures, it is not by any means the most popular show on TV. NCIS and Tracker have far more substantive audiences but seem to be more written about on entertainment websites rather than formal online newspapers. This to me is evidence of the ever increasing cultural divide that is becoming apparent in western culture. People not only live and work in their own bespoke bubbles but can also have separate viewing habits. Another growing factor is “TV poverty”. Succession is a cable/streaming show whereas NCIS and Tracker are available on digital terrestrial TV. The cost of subscribing to multiple “premium content” platforms is simply too prohibitive.
I won’t list all the shows that I have enjoyed this year but I will name a few. Dept. Q was a very absorbing contemporary crime drama. Mark Gatiss was excellent in Bookish, channeling a great deal of Agatha Christie and sporting a handsome post WWII production design. Season 2 of Andor totally nailed the zeitgeist with its sociopolitical commentary. Alien Earth was far better than I was expecting and worked well within its canonical restrictions. Murder Before Evensong found the sweet spot between cozy drama and grim murder mystery. Season 2 of NCIS Origins is also maintaining a high standard of writing that is sadly lacking in its long running predecessor. Dark Winds continued to be a solid police drama, following two Navajo Tribal Police officers in the seventies. There were several popular shows that I decided not to watch for various reasons. I chose not to get on the hype train with regard to The Traitors and Pluribus.
Finally, I have noticed that I do not seem to watch comedy anymore. Apart from the occasional standup special by a comedian that I like, I don’t really watch any comedy panel shows anymore, such as Would I Lie To You, or entertainment shows such as Taskmaster. My granddaughters like US sitcoms such as Young Sheldon and Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage but I find them incredibly bland. Safe, non-controversial entertainment that is amusing but no more. I like satire and sadly, it appears to be running scared at the moment for obvious reasons. However, I did watch The Franchise in late 2024 and was hoping for a second season of its excellent dissection of a film studio that definitely isn’t Disney. Sadly, it’s been cancelled. Which brings me back to my original point about annoying foibles of modern TV production. Add great shows being cancelled to the list.
I have not watched as much TV as I usually do, this year. Mainly because I have become a little weary of the ways contemporary TV is produced, especially with regards to streaming shows. Due to the costs, shows such as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds only have 10 episodes per season. Simply put, the season begins to hit its stride and then is abruptly over. This problem (if you see it as such) is then further compounded by there being a significant wait between seasons. In the case of STSNW it was two years between season two and season three. Not all shows fall foul of this. Apple TV produces two seasons of the excellent espionage drama Slow Horses at a time, ensuring a prompt release schedule. However, even this has issues. Due to the complexity of the plots of many contemporary TV shows, something that is a marketing point, some viewers cannot remember the plot after a twelve month hiatus. Network TV shows seldom have these issues with each season being 20 plus episodes long and story arcs that are seldom as complex.
It is customary in a post such as this to list the various games that I’ve played over the last twelve months and share my thoughts on them. Wider analysis of the video game industry is also de rigeur. Unfortunately, I don’t really feel disposed to do either of those two things. My thoughts on the games I’ve played have already been published and can easily be accessed via the links at the bottom of this post. As for the video game industry, it suffers the same flaws as music, TV and cinema. There is creativity and innovation out there but it is often drowned out by mainstream products which are demonstrably inferior due to their inherent mediocrity. As for the business side of things, we once again clearly see the failings of the corporate management class. Sadly, they do not face the consequences of the mistakes that they make.
I began 2025 with a fairly strong writing streak, publishing posts about games, technology and even air fryers. Sadly, this burst of enthusiasm gradually tailed off between April and June. I can’t even recollect if there was any particular “real world” reason for this or whether it was just a case of I wasn’t especially motivated. Fortunately, I started writing again in July in preparation for Blaugust: Festival of Blogging and subsequently wrote throughout the entirety of August. Revamping my blog in September and moving it to the latest version of Squarespace proved a positive move and since then I have kept up a writing schedule of posting to Contains Moderate Peril every second day. At present I have a lot of draft posts pending and I am not struggling to come up with ideas and write in general. I intend to nurture this positive approach and see if I can build upon it in 2026.
Looking back at my various posts regarding “technology” this year, a recurring theme has been my ongoing attempts to replace certain mainstream products with alternatives that do the job in-hand better, don’t require constant updates, aren’t bloated by superfluous functionality and are more cost effective or even ethical. Needless to say, this has proven quite hard. Hence I was unable to find a suitable replacement email client for Microsoft Outlook and end my subscription to Microsoft 365 Personal. The main problem is that most alternative software won’t support my email archive due to differences in the mailbox format. One possible work around is to install an older and therefore, non-subscription version of Outlook but this raises support and compatibility issues. It would be a lot easier to divest myself of a lot of mainstream software if I was starting from scratch.
I created a Bluesky account a little over a year ago. I was initially somewhat sceptical of adopting a third social media messaging platform, because I had become quite comfortable using Mastodon as a replacement for Twitter/X. However, certain individuals that I wished to continue to follow were migrating to Bluesky, so I followed suit. It has always been my long term goal to pick one of these two newer services and make it my sole point of presence in social media terms. So far that hasn’t happened. Hence a year on I find myself juggling three such platforms. Twitter/X, Mastodon and Bluesky. I post links to my blog posts on all of these services. To be honest none of them generate any tangible traffic but this is how you promoted your website or blog 15 years ago and old habits die hard.
In my teenage years, there was a social obligation to go out on New Year’s Eve. This often meant congregating in some dismal pub, queuing at the bar for 30 minutes to get a drink, then trying to find a corner where you could stand and struggle to have a conversation with your friends, above the noise of the crowd. The evening was dull, noisy and often ended in a fight. Then, around 1:00 AM we were summarily turfed out into the street and had to make our way home. Buses always run at this time of year to serve a public need but the “drunk express” was never a pleasant means of transportation. Quite frankly the whole experience was shit but the hubris of youth meant we deluded ourselves that we were having a good time. If someone suggested something similar today, I would laugh in their face. I am happy to spend New Year’s Eve indoors and away from it all.
It is customary for me to write an end of year summary of my gaming activities but I suspect that on this occasion it will be somewhat short. For me, 2024 has really hammered home the notion of the ephemeral nature of video games as well as their commercial ubiquity. The moment a game fails to satisfy for whatever reason, rather than complain or worry about it, I just move on to something else. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of games out there. I have a substantial back catalogue of games that Epic and Amazon prime regularly giveaway. I have bought numerous discounted bundles in the past, in the pious hope that I’ll play one of the games included, at some point in the future. Games may well be enjoyable and engaging but many are also disposable. That’s not to say they’re bad. While playing them you are indeed “entertained”. However, when you’re “done”, it’s amazing how you quickly find another and forget what you were previously playing.
The last time I wrote A Year in Movies post was back in 2020. That was naturally an unusual year and it certainly had a radical impact upon the film industry and the way new movies are distributed. In many ways the pandemic accelerated the inevitable move towards cross platform, same day releases. 4 years on and it is quite usual for films to have a short cinema release before becoming available on streaming media. They often appear on physical media at the same time. Effectively you can go to the cinema, or simply watch at home on the platform of your choice if you prefer. Rent, buy or subscribe, the film studios still get their pound of flesh and everyone is happy. Sometimes if a film has failed to gain sufficient traction at the cinema, its release will be cut short and it will go to streaming even quicker. Direct to video from the eighties and nineties has been superseded with direct to streaming.
It is fair to say that we live in an age where we do not lack quality TV. There are numerous shows that have garnered critical acclaim or a strong word of mouth following that are deemed “must see” viewing. No doubt you, like myself, have a long “to do” list of programs that you need to “get round to watching” on top of those shows which are staples of your viewing regime. If you didn’t have enough programmes already to catch up with, we all have friends and family telling us about a “great show” that’s on a platform we don’t subscribe to, that we really need to see. It is quite extraordinary and a far cry from my youth when the UK simply had three terrestrial channels until satellite TV became popular in the late eighties. To paraphrase the former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan “we’ve never had it so good”.
This post is not intended to be a comprehensive review of music per se in 2024. It is simply a few thoughts on what I’ve been listening to over the course of the year and my ever changing relationship with the Terpsichorean muse. As a man in his fifties who has always enjoyed multiple genres of music and it is a comforting presence in day-to-day life. Up to a year ago, I relied upon my own music collection on my PC as the source of music to which I listened. Yet, this meant that I was somewhat locked into my own existing tastes and there was limited scope for me to find new material. This changed last December when I started subscribing to Spotify and since then it has become my primary source of music. It caters to my tastes, which at times are quite niche and it gently introduces me to new material without being too invasive. This has proven most beneficial.
This is my third attempt at writing this post. The first was a little too philosophical, tackling the nature of adult life and how it is a far cry from the childish notions I had about being a “grown up” when I was seven. The second was just a list of the various shit that has gone down in my life over the last twelve months and it felt far too much like whinging. Hopefully this one is more succinct and even handed. 2022 was not a good year, personally speaking. My family and I experienced a lot of health issues and my mother died after a rapid decline. Hence there has been a lot of stress and anxiety which has left me feeling tired and somewhat jaded. Due to the subsequent changes in my personal circumstances, I now find myself at somewhat of a “loose end”. I feel the need to channel my energies into something but I’m not sure exactly what at present.
So far I have written 135 blog posts in 2022. Not much compared to previous years, but frankly I’ve become a little despondent with writing in recent months (I shall expand more upon that in a moment). Hence, since October I have been enjoying a break from regular blogging. I have written sparingly and pursued other leisure activities. Given that my post output has gone down, it would be logical to assume that there has been a commensurate drop in web traffic to Contains Moderate Peril, but this is not the case. Overall, my monthly statistics have remained the same, proving once again that most of my readership find my written content via Google searches, rather than reading new material on a daily basis. This has given me much food for thought and added to my ongoing reflection upon my writing activities.
When I wrote Goodbye 2020 a year ago, I endeavoured to be philosophical and sanguine in my approach. It was a challenging year for all of us and for me it was further compounded by a bereavement. However, I strove to keep matters in perspective and tried to look at things in a broader context. I cannot be as even handed this time. 2021 has been a very difficult year for myself and my family and I will be glad to see the back of it. Nationally speaking, things haven’t been much better. I feel that we’ve squandered the initial progress that the COVID-19 vaccines offered. Obviously, I cannot do anything about the problems that the UK faces in 2022. However, I certainly intend to address some of the issues that I and my immediate family are facing. I am going to tackle some specific problems that need to be laid to rest and set myself some tangible goals to achieve. 2022 isn’t going to be something that just happens and I passively sit back and watch.
Getting older does have a few benefits. One of them, if you are fortunate enough to embrace the concept, is a degree of self awareness and the ability to be honest with yourself. Over the years I have tried to adjust my technological habits but ultimately I am a creature of habit. My use of technology and consumption of content has been determined by the decades I grew up in. Therefore, I am a PC user and prefer to sit in my office where I write, play games and peruse the internet. I have my desk set up in a way that suits my needs and I can go about my business in comfort. When away from my office, I rely heavily on my phone as an alternative platform. In some instances phone based apps offer a superior experience to the desktop or browser based PC alternatives. Banking being one example. For better or for worse this is how I do things and I am comfortable with these choices.
Usually in a post such as this, my primary focus would be writing about the games that I’ve played over the last twelve month and what it was about them that I specifically enjoyed. However, this year I feel that I must address the wider issues that have dominated the news regarding the video games industry. Simply put, several very high profile and successful triple A video game companies have been beset by scandals over the last twelve months. And these have been of such a nature that they have finally laid to rest the myth that some still cling to, that working “in video games” is somehow different from working in more traditional industries because it’s “cool”. It turns out that it has all the same failings as TV, music and film. The people at the top are abusive and broken and maltreat those at the coalface who do all the real work for precious little reward.
I can’t speak for others but my relationship with social media has certainly changed over the last two years. Whenever new internet technologies emerge, there is a brief period when it feels like some sort of new frontier. Often such innovations become a means of empowering the marginalised and the voiceless. For a while new platforms can even be a force for good. But eventually commercial interests creep in along with rules and regulations. Hence, it all inevitably takes a turn for the worst. The frontier is finally tamed and ends up being just another corporate space. Social media is certainly not a forum for discussing social issues or politics, instead being a medium for tribalism and rancour. Because of these factors and others, I have moderated my use of social media and it has proven extremely beneficial to my state of mind.
A very wise Vulcan once said “change is the essential process of all existence”. 2020 has demonstrated that unequivocally. How our privileged, pampered lives have altered over the last twelve months. We’ve had to stay at home, curtail our social interactions and reflect upon the meaning of existence. I appreciate that things are relative, so it’s not helpful to compare the concerns that discombobulate people today with the realities that folk had to endure during World War II for example. I won’t trivialise the sense of isolation and desperation some folk have felt over the lockdown. From my own perspective, my life as a carer is regimented and focused, so 2020 hasn’t really “cramped my style” to use an old fashioned phrase. However, several things happened over the course of the year that have had an impact upon myself and my family.
Let it suffice to say that due to current “circumstances”, Mrs P and I have watched a lot more TV this year. However, rather than just reiterate what we’ve viewed, which is already covered in my recurring blog post The Idiot Box, I thought I’d take the time to reflect upon some wider issues. TV has become a major source not only of entertainment but psychological support during this year’s social restrictions. The closure of cinemas for the majority of the past twelve months has meant that TV has had little or no competition. Furthermore, many of the films that may well have drawn audiences away, have come to the smaller screens a lot quicker. Never has so much TV been voraciously consumed. There’s also been a degree of nostalgia as viewers have watched popular shows at broadly similar times, reviving that sense of a shared experience that was so common in the seventies and eighties. However, the pandemic has also caused a slow down in TV production. Will the shortage of new content that many have predicted finally manifest itself next year?
In 2019, I went to the cinema just once to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I didn’t write a summary of the films I’d seen throughout that year, as I felt that mainstream releases had become far too formulaic and dull. 2020 has done little to change my perspective. The global pandemic has meant that Cinemas have spent most of the time closed and therefore many of this year’s major film releases have ended up on video on demand services. A few titles remain indefinitely postponed, such as the latest Bond movie No Time to Die, while Sony Pictures wait to see if “normality” resumes. But a film that is sitting on the shelf is not a film making money. Hence, Warner Bros. have announced that all their major releases for 2021 will be across multiple platforms simultaneously, thus ensuring a broader flow of revenue. This has not pleased director’s such as Christopher Nolan who argue passionately regarding the merits of cinema. But I doubt Mr. Nolan has ever had to endure an out of focus screening in the wrong aspect ratio at Cineworld, Rochester, where audiences talk and mess with their phones continuously.
Retrospective posts such as this can be a sprawling mess. There is also potential to cover the same old ground that I’ve covered in my monthly summaries “A Month in Gaming”. So I’ll try to be as succinct as I can. Firstly I won’t dwell too much on the iniquities of the video game industry as I’ve covered that elsewhere. Let it suffice to say that the notion of the “rock star developer” and the ethical publisher have proven false. Buying a triple A mainstream game is as morally compromised as buying a pair of jeans made by child labour. But let’s not get caught up in ethics. That’s another post. The pandemic meant that I, like many others, had far more leisure time this year and hence I spent that time gaming. It’s been a good year for video games publishers and the revenue has rolled in. Have I had fun while playing more games? Yes. The games have proven engaging and they also provide a lot to write about, so it’s a win, win scenario from my perspective.
In my lifetime technology has always been promoted as something that improves our lives, especially at a domestic level. The VCR in the eighties is a prime example of this. It liberated us from having to watch TV at a specific time and place. Then there the personal computer, which brought into our own homes tools, that until that point, had been exclusive to the office. And for all the ill that it brings, the internet has certainly made the world demonstrably smaller. It’s revolutionised shopping and has improved the administration of services. So overall, I still feel that technology is a force for good. However there have been changes. In recent years technology on a domestic level has ceased to be quite as transformative and become more of a disposable commodity. Tech is now a fashion accessory, with a distinct lifecycle and upgrade treadmill. It is fast becoming just another form of superfluous crap to fill your home with.
Despite the tumultuous events of the last twelve months and the accompanying emotional fallout that has followed in their wake, I’ve managed to keep writing throughout 2020. My output has been somewhat inconsistent this year and I’ve noticed some changes in what I write about. This is inevitable as one’s tastes and focus changes naturally change over time. I’m finding it tougher to write enthusiastically about the video games industry per se, as it has hardly covered itself in glory this year. However, I still enjoy writing film reviews although I haven’t set foot inside a cinema for over a year. I suspect that this will remain the case for much of 2021. My writing has broadened in its scope and I find myself writing social commentary about various aspects of life, rather than just posting articles about my hobbies. Sharing my thoughts on the pandemic itself and “caring for the elderly” has proven very cathartic. But as I’ve stated many times before, writing is one of the ways in which I make sense of the world around me.
Last year I tried to write a measured and balanced post about the passing of the year. Sadly this time round my attitude toward the departing 12-month period is somewhat binary. Yes there were a couple of highlights to 2019 but most of it was an uphill struggle and therefore not worth celebrating. It can frankly sod off and won’t be missed. The two high points were my son’s wedding in August and my renewed enthusiasm for blogging that came about due to the Blaugust writing event. But overall 2019 was a repetitive and somewhat depressing grind having to continuously deal with multiple family illnesses, numerous hospital visits and then at the end of the year a bereavement. Yes, these are things that happened to us all eventually and there is no escaping them but I appear to be trapped in this facet of the “circle of life”. Furthermore, until certain situations resolve themselves, I cannot make or implement any long-term plans. 2019 has been in many ways about just treading water.
Life is often cyclical, if you don’t believe me go watch The Lion King. I started 2018 playing The Lord of the Rings Online and by writing a post about how gamers collectively seem to repeat the same mistakes. And as the year and indeed the decade ends, I find myself once again playing the Yule Festival in LOTRO and reflecting upon how some games that garnered criticism over their egregious business models, have ended up as huge hits. It would appear that gamers are their own worst enemy. I shall leave the psychological analysis of paradox to others. From my perspective, irrespective of the iniquities of the video game industry and certain quarters of the gaming community, it has been a good year, gaming wise. I have enjoyed my time playing MMOs such as Star Trek Online, The Elder Scrolls Online and the aforementioned LOTRO. These and other titles have entertained me, provided me with an opportunity to unwind as well as affording me some much-needed social interaction. I particularly enjoy Wednesday evenings when I log into my Discord server and then chat and play collaboratively with longstanding gaming friends.
One of the benefits that comes with age (for some people at least), if the gift of realistic expectations. Having reached 51 years, I no longer harbour thoughts that each year will be a rollercoaster ride of excitement, mirth and personal gain. Nor do I count on the stars aligning so that I make my fortune and retire peacefully to the Cayman Islands, to live the life of a tax exile. If New Year’s Eve rolls round and no one has died, I’m not looking at being tried for murder and there’s still gin in the drinks cabinet, then I usually deem the previous twelve months an acceptable year. However, despite even these fairly lose and undemanding criteria I feel compelled to say that 2018 was bollocks and that I won’t be sad to see the back of it.
I did not manage to maintain my writing schedule this year and have not posted everyday as I would’ve liked. I have produced over two hundred and seventy posts but still feel I could have done more. Blaugust was a welcome burst of enthusiasm that I managed to sustain for September and October, but I lost momentum in the run up to Christmas. At least I know what the root cause is which puts me a step nearer to resolving it. Having written several posts in the past about “writers block” and the other perennial excuse of not having anything to write about, I seem to have squarely fallen into both those traps. At present I find that motivating myself is the key problem. If I haven’t started writing something by midday, then it more than often gets left for the day. If I intend to escape this malaise, then I shall have to establish a far stricter writing schedule for 2019 and endeavour to do my writing first thing in the morning, when I am most focused.
Throughout my adult life I have always gone to the cinema as a leisure activity. 2018 has been of note in this regard as it’s the year I’ve been to the cinema the least. I have visited my local multiplex just three times over the last twelve months. It’s not that good quality movies are not made anymore. Far from it. It’s just that they don’t always get released theatrically. Furthermore, the cost to entertainment ratio has simply become too much of a gamble. Standard tickets are priced between £12 to £15 locally and I resent such an outlay for a film that may only be adequate or worse. Perhaps my outlook on pricing is unreasonable but I am not going to pay such money for mediocre entertainment. I don’t expect every movie I see to be a cinematic milestone or genre classic but nor do I expect it to be an exercise in indifference. If I had paid such ticket prices to see The Predator or Death Wish at my local Cineworld, then I would have been singularly annoyed. Mercifully I saw them both at home and therefore at a much lower cost.
The term social media is a broad church. For me it primarily means Twitter as that is the only platform of that ilk that I use regularly. I maintain a presence on Facebook simply to stay in touch with friends who have emigrated to the US. We have a private page where we catch up instead of using the traditional medium of emails. It is more immediate but also more frivolous. If it weren’t for need that it serves, I would have long closed my Facebook account. 2018 was also the year where I tried to continue using Instagram but failed. I don’t tend to catalogue and display my life in the manner that this medium tends to demand and use it mainly to see what my granddaughters have been up to. For me Twitter is the social media platform I feel most comfortable using and feel that I have mastered. I use it to promote my writing and for quips, banter and social interaction. Beyond that I think its benefits are both limited and even questionable.
My relationship with technology has changed over the years and my enthusiasm has tempered greatly. Having worked in the IT field for 25 years (up until 2016), I have been immersed in technological advancement and due to my age have seen a great deal change. I was at one time an early adopter of anything I considered to be potentially beneficial to me and at times have been guilty of acquiring something “new and shiny” simply for its own sake. I have even flirted with that dubious notion of tech as a fashion accessory. But sometimes age does bring wisdom, so nowadays, I’m a firm believer in finding the sweet spot between “the right tool for the job” and “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. Subsequently, 2018 has not seem me acquire a great deal of new technology. However, what I have bought this year or started using has been well received and useful.
A Year in Gaming
It is customary in a post such as this to list the various games that I’ve played over the last twelve months and share my thoughts on them. Wider analysis of the video game industry is also de rigeur. Unfortunately, I don’t really feel disposed to do either of those two things. My thoughts on the games I’ve played have already been published and can easily be accessed via the links at the bottom of this post. As for the video game industry, it suffers the same flaws as music, TV and cinema. There is creativity and innovation out there but it is often drowned out by mainstream products which are demonstrably inferior due to their inherent mediocrity. As for the business side of things, we once again clearly see the failings of the corporate management class. Sadly, they do not face the consequences of the mistakes that they make.
It is customary in a post such as this to list the various games that I’ve played over the last twelve months and share my thoughts on them. Wider analysis of the video game industry is also de rigeur. Unfortunately, I don’t really feel disposed to do either of those two things. My thoughts on the games I’ve played have already been published and can easily be accessed via the links at the bottom of this post. As for the video game industry, it suffers the same flaws as music, TV and cinema. There is creativity and innovation out there but it is often drowned out by mainstream products which are demonstrably inferior due to their inherent mediocrity. As for the business side of things, we once again clearly see the failings of the corporate management class. Sadly, they do not face the consequences of the mistakes that they make.
I once thought that being a relatively new creative industry, there was something “special” about the video game industry. I had a naive notion that the commercial imperatives were somehow kept in check by the artistic vision of those working on the creative side of things. Nope, that conceit quickly fell apart like a cheap suit upon exposure to the facts. There are game developers that strive to balance their business needs along with their creative ideas, while trying to look after their staff as well as they can but it is not the norm in any way. The video game industry is just as greedy, exploitative and unethical as any other and those who work in it suffer the same iniquities as employees from any other industry or sector. Low pay, shitty terms and conditions and sociopathic bosses are a universal constant it would seem.
Sadly, another aspect of video game culture that is a regular source of eye rolling are “militant fans”. What can I say about this demographic that hasn’t been said already? Not much. The usual suspects are exceedingly wearing with their lack of objectivity and self-awareness, gatekeeping and reactionary demeanour. Sadly, for those who view pop culture from the sidelines, these individuals are often misconstrued as being the default “gamers”. I was watching some YouTube videos by Josh Strife Hayes recently and he has started prefixing his content with multiple caveats in a vain attempt to calm the furiously hard-of-thinking who confuse subjective criticism and analysis with a personal attack. It seldom works though, so I favour simply telling them to fuck off. It is a waste of time to even engage with these fools.
Reflecting on 2025, playing video games still brings me pleasure. Especially when I find those that have good writing and contain challenging ideas. Hence I got a great deal of mileage out of Atomfall and finally completing Disco Elysium. MMOs such as The Lord of the Rings Online have also kept me busy and in a good way. But a lot of games that I play are just “filler”. The same way that some books or films are just okay and serve their purpose of occupying me in an acceptable fashion. Once you’re done, you move on. The fact that I own somewhere in the region of nearly 1,000 video games but have possibly only bought 10% of those says a lot about the ephemeral nature of the video game industry. It also raises the question of sustainability. The myth of infinite growth has already greatly harmed triple A gaming. Will the industry contract further in 2026? Feel free to make your predictions in the comments.
Some video games lend themselves to being set aside and resumed at a later date with zero consequences. These are often casual games with no major goals other than having fun while playing them. Fall Guys is a great example of this. You have a cartoony avatar that participates in zany group races, filled with obstacles. You run, jump, climb but the controls are far from difficult. You may well become skilled but such things are mitigated by the other players as they stumble around. You’re not at the mercy of apex players or “try hards”. It is not a game about winning and mastering techniques. The fun comes from playing it and the unique experience you have each time. I’ve been playing this game, on and off, since it’s launch in 2020 and in that time I have only ever won once (winning requires you to win a series of 4 to six individual races). However, whenever I pick up my controller and play Fall Guys, I have fun and the game lifts my spirits.
I recently completed the main story in Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. In total I spent about sixty hours playing the game. I began at the start of the year, then took a break for a while but returned to it recently because I wanted to see if I could unlock a specific ending. I did manage to do this. Like so many other RPGs, Tainted Grail: the Fall of Avalon has a central storyline, along with a wealth of side quests, based around factions in specific zones. I think I possibly completed about a two thirds of these. However, once I finished the main story, my interest in the game began to wane. I finally left my character in the last major quest hub in case I wish to return at a future date. I then logged out of the game and uninstalled it from my PC to free up space for whatever I was to play next. In this case its The Sinking City 2. None of this is a negative reflection on Tainted Grail: the Fall of Avalon. I enjoyed the time I spent playing this quirky RPG. I simply had my fill and left to play something else.
On Tuesday 11th April, Aspyr Media rather surprisingly re-released The Lord of the Rings: War in the North, a co-op action-RPG from 2011. This game was delisted in late 2019, possibly due to changing rights ownership or a license expiring. Hence, I was somewhat discombobulated by the return of this title to all major gaming platforms. Mind you, the Embracer Group (through its subsidiary Middle-earth Enterprises) still controls the worldwide commercial and video game licensing rights for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Furthermore they have explicitly stated that they have plans for more games. It would appear this also means re-releasing and updating old favourites. It is also worth noting that they own Aspyr Media, which is also a bit of a giveaway. Let it suffice to say that this re-release and sparked enthusiastic online debate as to whether any other he Lord of the Rings themed games from the same era will receive a similar makeover. Judging by the internet chatter, there’s potentially a market for them.
The next expansion for the MMORG, The Lord of the Rings Online, was announced on the 1st August, via the gaming website MMORPG.The Wolves of Mordor, which will launch later in the year, appears ambitious in scope as it will include two new game systems as well as the obligatory story update. This expansion takes place in Draugardh located in the North East of Mordor, beyond the Plateau of Gorgoroth. It includes the new zones of Heledhris, Parth Rhavas and Nan Ogol. These vary environmentally ranging from the arid, volcanic and semi-tropical. Players will encounter the Daugrim in these regions, Werewolves but not in the modern sense. This is not the lycanthropy of Eastern European legends but in the established Tolkien idiom of fell spirits inhabiting the bodies of Wolves. The region also sees the return of the Woses and players can expect to encounter Elves and scouts from Gondor. As ever with LOTRO expansions, there will be new instances as well as a raid.
This is a post about the power of nostalgia and how sometimes, interacting with something from your past, be it physically or mentally, can produce a very strong and tangible emotional reaction. In some instances, this can be the result of something that you have specifically set out to do. On other occasions you can wander into a sense of nostalgia purely by chance. Today I experienced a very strong sense of nostalgia while watching a YouTube video and then again when I sought to replicate what I had seen. The video showed someone installing Windows 95 on to an old 486 PC from that era. The Window’s start up sound really touched a nerve (but in a good way) and then when the guy in the video launched Space Cadet 3D Pinball, a game that shipped with the operating system, I felt a strong compulsion to track down a copy and install the game myself, thus revisiting something that was an integral part of my life in 1995.
RV There Yet? is possibly the most entertaining game I’ve never played. My vicarious pleasure regarding this title has come exclusively from watching two popular YouTubers, JackFrags and WillFromWork, play through the game over a series of videos. It has been immensely amusing to watch and I have empathised a great deal as the group of four players has struggled with the game’s unpredictable mechanics and their own team’s dynamic. I could go and buy RV There Yet? myself but I doubt if I would ever have a gaming experience anywhere close to what I’ve watched online recently. So in some respects watching these videos has been an interesting alternative as I’ve been entertained, which ultimately is the point of video games. Perhaps there is a deeper philosophical point here that the game developers should reflect upon, as they’ve lost a potential sale. However, that is separate discussion for another day.
I don’t keep up with gaming news as much as I use to but several noteworthy announcement have come to my attention of late. Firstly, there’s an expansion, Songs of the Past, coming for the Witcher III: Wild Hunt in 2027. No doubt this is to pave the way for the Witcher IV. Next, I also found out about Hand of Fate: Horde. I liked this franchise and was saddened to learn that the original studio, Defiant Development, closed. Hence is was a pleasant surprise to see this new game being developed by members of the original studio. The third announcement was regarding Guild Wars 3. A new MMORPG in active development by a major studio is no small feat and is certainly good news for fans of this franchise and the genre per se. However, once you look beyond this news this announcement raises several questions and has certainly given me pause for thought. Let us take a few moments to consider them.
Star Trek Online has many in-game systems that are common to the MMORPG genre. The reputation system is one such example. In STO there are 13 reputation factions. Once a player has reached level 50 they may start progressing through the 6 reputation tiers of each one. Players gain progression through daily projects (20 hours in duration). Hourly projects are also available though they yield less reputation advancement and are limited to three times a day. Hence 20 hour projects are consider by default the most efficient way to gain rep. Projects require 30 Faction Specific Marks (earned via various activities in-game), 15,000 Energy Credits (standard in-game currency) and 2000 Expertise points. The most efficient way to tackle the reputation grind is to build up the necessary resources in advance and then at a designated time each day, start all 13 respective projects. Upon completion projects yield a player bound lockbox containing a random space or ground weapon, a console or Elite Marks which can be used to acquire faction gear.
I was recently perusing my archive of old blog posts, when it struck me how much I’ve written about the MMORPG genre over the years. Naturally, there was far more material from between 2008 and 2012 as that was period when I immersed myself in the genre and was very enthusiastic about it. I was at a point in my life when I had the time to dedicate to such games and I was happy to participate in the social aspect of they offered. I would regularly play through group content and spend time socialising online with fellow guild members. My experience remains a textbook example of how online games can be more than the sum of their parts and that where you are at in your life has a major impact upon your overall enjoyment. As I read though various old posts it became clear that my experiences where specific to this particular part of my life and that they cannot be repeated. My relationship with the genre is very different now and that’s fine.
Creating alts is an integral aspect of the MMORPG genre. Many players will create a character of a specific class or faction, play it for a while, lose interest in it or they may decide that it is just not for them. Fortunately it is no effort at all to simply re-roll a new alt and set off once again. Furthermore, lots of players never reach level cap of the MMORPG that there playing. When the going get’s tough, so to speak, you can either soldier on for another 50 levels or simply create a new alt and return to the comfort of tried and tested content. Alts also give you the chance to secure an accolade or achievement that you previously missed. They are also of great benefit to the genres social aspects. Creating a new alt so you can play along with a friend who is just starting is great fun. Developer’s love them too as it means you’re still playing the game.
I recently took a break from Crimson Desert choosing instead to to play something familiar and easy going. As I’ve been logging into Star Trek Online daily to participate in the anniversary event, I decided to look through my various alts and see how far they had progressed through the game and what resources they had. At present I have twelve alts. My primary Captain was created in 2015 during the original Delta Recruit Event. I had previously played STO intermittently since its release in January 2010 but I never kept any of those characters. Hence this decade old Tactical Federation Captain has been my main focus when playing. The other eleven alts are the result of other recruitment events or whenever I wanted to try something different, such as playing a specific class or faction. I obviously played a lot of STO during the lockdown as several alts date from that period. Several had maximum reputation across all factions.
The action, open world RPG Crimson Desert has been patched five times since it launched on March 19th and there have also been multiple hotfixes. At first glance this isn’t anything unusual. New games have bugs and issues arise once a game is released and played across a much wider variety of hardware than in QA testing. However, if you read the patch notes that accompany these sizeable downloads it quickly becomes apparent that developer’s Pearl Abyss are not just addressing bugs and software glitches. They are actively engaging with their player base and responding to suggestions and requests from that community. Although this is not a unique approach, what is surprising is the speed and quantity in which these player driven changes are happening. There seems to be an active ongoing process to refine the game and eliminate some of its “rough edges” and the players are contributing to this process with their feedback.
According to my Steam statistics, I last played Starfield on 19th December 2023. I bought the game upon its release in September of that year and played in total for 136 hours. Starfield held my interest for three and a half month and I wrote seven blog posts about various aspects of the game. Although there were some engaging aspects to Starfield, I did feel that that the game was somewhat lacking in systems and content, at that point in its lifecycle. I also think that the marketing and player expectations associated with Starfield were overblown and unrealistic. The shadow of Skyrim looms large over all new Bethesda releases and they don’t seem able to quite recapture that magic. Hence, I inevitably drifted away from Starfield and to another game and was effectively “done” with it. I have not played the game since which seems to validate the theory that game are becoming increasingly more ephemeral.
13 days after its release, market analysts estimate that Crimson Desert has already earned $200 million across the four main platforms (PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S). The game is certainly proving popular among gamers with the internet awash with live streams and “let’s play” videos. However, reviews are mixed both among gaming journalists and YouTube influencers. Common complaints about the game include that it is slow to start, the controls are poorly laid out on all platforms and that developer’s Pearl Abyss have done a poor job of explaining most aspects of the game to new players. Although such criticisms are true to a degree, I think these complaints highlight how many gamers are conditioned to expect new titles to follow a specific pattern with regard to pacing, narrative exposition and learning in-game systems. A pattern that Pearl Abyss has chosen to ignore, instead favouring an old school approach.
Early on Crimson Desert, the main quest requires the player to enter a tavern and arm wrestle a particularly strong guard. The arm wrestling match consists of a quick time event. If playing on PC you have to rapidly press the “E” key which turns a power meter from white to red. Then a white dial appears above the meter with a rotating hand. When the hand passes over a segment of the dial that is marked by hatching, the player must press the “R” key. The idea being the meter filling with red is you strength building (or waning) and the “R” key prompt indicates when to try and force your opponent’s arm. You will need to to continuously press the “E” key throughout the arm wrestling match and the “R” key about 4 times to win.
Earlier this week, Nvidia posted a video featuring their latest iteration of DLSS technology (Deep learning super sampling). DLSS 5 is an AI-powered “real-time neural rendering” process and unlike previous versions that focused on improving frame rates through upscaling or frame generation, DLSS 5 uses generative AI to “infuse” frames with photorealistic lighting and material details that the game engine never actually calculated. Let us pause for a moment and consider these words. Material detail that the game engine never actually calculated. Therein lies the rub. If you watch the aforementioned video or peruse the images posted here, it is abundantly clear what the technology does.
Last night, I spent the first 45 minutes after the launch of Crimson Desert, watching the 92GB pre-downloaded game files slowly decompressing and installing. I finally launched the game at about 10:50 PM GMT. I then waited a further 5 minutes while shaders were downloaded. It took me about 15 minutes or so to read through the various game settings and choose those that are optimal for my PC. I suspect even if you have a beast of a computer, you’re still going to have to spend some time tweaking settings. As for those players like myself with a gaming rig that is somewhere in the middle of the game’s specifications, be prepared to do a lot of fine tuning both within Crimson Desert itself and your Windows settings.
I have been aware of the online interest around the open world action game Crimson Desert for a while now. One of the things that has intrigued me about it is the scope of the game. The word “hype” has been bandied about by a few gaming websites. However, from what I have observed, developers Pearl Abyss have not been excessively hyperbolic themselves, with regard to the manner in which the game’s systems and mechanics have been marketed. Now that the press embargo has been lifted, the pre-release reviews seem to confirm that everything we’ve seen in promotional videos in the run up to the launch, is in fact present in the game. So far the initial critical response has been very positive and it has been hinted that the game may well be a genre milestone. Perhaps Crimson Desert is just a rare example of a game that has not had a rushed development and isn’t launching prematurely for business reasons.
Video games as a genre are extremely poor at explaining themselves. When you buy a new game you’ll often find little or no information regarding the basic systems and mechanics. The industry assumes that their customers are by default familiar with the fundamentals of playing a modern video game. Hence if a game has a tutorial, it is often based around videos rather than detailed verbal instructions. You are are briefly shown a clip of a specific move being successfully undertaken but it is seldom shown in a wider context. The industry also expects the fan community to take on the role of curating and disseminating information about its games. The move away from forums and bespoke websites to Discord highlights this. Discord is a primarily a real time communication tool and not good at maintaining a historical data archive. If you want an answer to a specific gaming question, you’ll more than likely find it on YouTube in a video made by a fellow gamer.
I have written in the past about the video games we cannot play. The ones that require a keen understanding of a game’s mechanics, along with a strong degree of manual dexterity and situational awareness. Being 58 years old, I tend to have neither the co-ordination necessary to succeed or the patience to master such complex skill requirements. With this in mind, I recently watched a YouTube video for Chivalry 2 and thought, that looks like fun. The fact that it showed someone picking up a chicken and throwing it at an opponent is neither here nor there. However, after watching a few more videos I realised that combat in the game was complex and that, as usual, the reality of playing such a game would be different from my expectations. Hence, I came very close to not buying Chivalry 2. However, I eventually decided that I would, so I bought it for just under £10 from an online vendor.
I decided to pursue a magic and spellcasting build in the RPG Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon after the story prologue. During the opening section of the game, the player is presented with a sufficient range of weapons to determine which type suits them best, although you can change at any time during the game. For me, casting spells feels right and is fun. Plus I have fond memories of the magic system in Two Worlds II and Skyrim. So once I started playing through the first zone, I started putting attribute and skill points into the appropriate trees to bolster my spells strengths and frequency. I also chose gear that would bolster those statistics further. The results have been surprising, as magic and spellcasting is not presented in the usual “glass cannon” style you find in some other RPGs. Here it offers robust DPS output and with the right gear and spell combination, a strong degree of survivability.
I originally bought Warhammer: Dark Omen in the summer of 1998. I played a demo copy via a magazine cover disc, which was a common means of promotion and marketing back then. Although I was at that point, unfamiliar with the Warhammer Universe, I found this game to be an excellent point of entry. The story did an excellent job of introducing players to “The Old World”, the political and power structure and major characters. I instantly liked both the aesthetic and the lore. Warhammer: Dark Omen was also the first real-time tactical wargame that I played and I spent numerous hours playing through the campaign. Overall, the game was a critical success, particularly on PC, but it struggled commercially upon its initial release and didn’t quite find the audience that it deserved. However, it has achieved status as a “cult classic” among gamers, leading to a recent re-release on GOG in late 2025.
According to the recent “letter to the players”, Standing Stone Games will be adding a new zone to the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online in the second quarter of this year. Possibly around May or June. Having spent the last three expansions in the South of Middle-earth exploring the tropical Umbar and the deserts of Harad, I would certainly welcome a change of location. I have gradually warmed to these zones over the last eighteen months but I do find them so incongruous. They are so radically different to the European style content that has been the mainstay of the game for so long. Tolkien’s source text has plenty of detail regarding Eriador and Rhovanion. Information regarding Harad is scarce, hence it has afforded the developers a great deal of artistic freedom. Although exceedingly well realised these tropical zones have taken a while for me to get used to.
I’m not sure exactly when it started but I’ve recently noticed a graphical bug within the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online. This problem often occurs within caves or in areas where there are a lot of rocky surfaces. Hence it has become very apparent in the latest two expansions, set in Umbar and Harad. This graphical glitch causes some surface textures to appear to flash from light to dark intermittently. The resulting strobe effect is hard to ignore and very distracting. Fortunately, a quick online search showed that this is not a problem unique to my installation of LOTRO and is a known problem. Furthermore, there is a very simple workaround, which is to go into the Advanced Graphics setting and uncheck “Per Pixel Lighting”, which immediately remedies the problem. I have no idea why this has recently started to happen but at least it can be resolved.
This year is the 60th anniversary of Star Trek. The original TV show was first broadcast in the US on September 8th 1966. If you search online you’ll find details of lots of related events. There are documentaries, conventions, new TV shows and even some video games in development. However, what you won’t find are any details regarding what will be happening with the MMORPG Star Trek Online. So far no road map for 2026 has been posted online by the developers but it is still quite early in the New Year. That being the case, I am not especially optimistic about there being any major plans waiting to be revealed. It is not as if DECA Games have demonstrated or stated any major ambitions for STO beyond keeping the endless events treadmill going and regularly adding content to the in-game store, during their development tenure. The ongoing story arc drags on inexorably and is as dull as ditchwater.
I first played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in June 2013. This was over 18 months after the game’s initial release and the base game and DLC were bundled together in a “Legendary” edition. Although a seasoned gamer at the time, familiar with the RPG genre with such titles as Mass Effect and Grand Theft Auto IV, I had not played a game from this franchise before. It only took a few hours of gameplay to realise that this was a special title. The scope of the story, the art design and the size of the world were immediately notable. Tamriel was immersive in a way I had not experienced with other titles. Often simply traversing the terrain and watching the dawn break while the game soundtrack swelled, was sufficient to hold my attention. I instantly picked up on the voice acting of Christopher Plummer and Max Von Sydow. All of which indicated that this was a gaming landmark.
The latest expansion for the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, Kingdoms of Harad, launched on December 3rd. With this release the level cap was raised from 150 to 160. It should also be noted that the cap for virtue traits was also raised from 96 to 100. Naturally these changes meant that there is a requirement to replace all armour and jewellery once the new cap is reached. Similarly Legendary Items have to be reforged and any traceries upgraded or replaced. If you follow the Epic Story it will lead you from quest hub to quest hub. The main quest rewards, along with those from side quests will provide adequate gear as you slowly progress towards the new level cap. The new raids, instances and missions/delvings then provide a means to acquire higher quality level 160 gear. LOTRO and indeed, many other MMOs are consistent in this methodology.
It is customary in a post such as this to list the various games that I’ve played over the last twelve months and share my thoughts on them. Wider analysis of the video game industry is also de rigeur. Unfortunately, I don’t really feel disposed to do either of those two things. My thoughts on the games I’ve played have already been published and can easily be accessed via the links at the bottom of this post. As for the video game industry, it suffers the same flaws as music, TV and cinema. There is creativity and innovation out there but it is often drowned out by mainstream products which are demonstrably inferior due to their inherent mediocrity. As for the business side of things, we once again clearly see the failings of the corporate management class. Sadly, they do not face the consequences of the mistakes that they make.
Today Standing Stone Games began beta testing Update 46.1 for the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online. The current preview on the Bullroarer test server is mainly for the new instance cluster that comes with the Kingdoms of Harad expansion which launched a few weeks ago. However, it would appear that this latest preview has another feature or note. One that should please LOTRO players. Contrary to what a lot of people thought, myself included, SSG have been working on a scaling UI for 2K and 4K monitors and the results are now available for testing from today Monday 15th through to Friday 19th December. Until now the main workaround to the lack of UI scaling has been to use either Nvidia or AMD graphics software to upscale the game from 1920 x 1080, or a third party app such as LosslessScaling. Having an official solution is a far better option.
Kingdoms of Harad, the 13th expansion for the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, was released today. Highlighting developer’s Standing Stone Games continuing commitment to this eighteen year old game. As 2025 draws to a close, I thought it would be prudent to reflect upon the current state of LOTRO and to consider what may come next year. Two words that I associated with this MMO are stable and consistent. The playerbase is loyal and dependable. Player numbers never greatly decline nor do they notably expand. LOTRO fills a very specific gaming niche and one of the reasons it retains its players is that there is no suitable alternative game. Although there is not a great deal of data in the public domain, it is generally accepted that LOTRO has an older player demographic and that many are consummate Tolkien fans.
A Year in Blogging
I began 2025 with a fairly strong writing streak, publishing posts about games, technology and even air fryers. Sadly, this burst of enthusiasm gradually tailed off between April and June. I can’t even recollect if there was any particular “real world” reason for this or whether it was just a case of I wasn’t especially motivated. Fortunately, I started writing again in July in preparation for Blaugust: Festival of Blogging and subsequently wrote throughout the entirety of August. Revamping my blog in September and moving it to the latest version of Squarespace proved a positive move and since then I have kept up a writing schedule of posting to Contains Moderate Peril every second day. At present I have a lot of draft posts pending and I am not struggling to come up with ideas and write in general. I intend to nurture this positive approach and see if I can build upon it in 2026.
Cake is an important part of my writing process
I began 2025 with a fairly strong writing streak, publishing posts about games, technology and even air fryers. Sadly, this burst of enthusiasm gradually tailed off between April and June. I can’t even recollect if there was any particular “real world” reason for this or whether it was just a case of I wasn’t especially motivated. Fortunately, I started writing again in July in preparation for Blaugust: Festival of Blogging and subsequently wrote throughout the entirety of August. Revamping my blog in September and moving it to the latest version of Squarespace proved a positive move and since then I have kept up a writing schedule of posting to Contains Moderate Peril every second day. At present I have a lot of draft posts pending and I am not struggling to come up with ideas and write in general. I intend to nurture this positive approach and see if I can build upon it in 2026.
I have been part of a wider, informal blogging community for fifteen years. During that time a lot of people have come and gone. However, a core group of habitual writers still regularly post their thoughts. Something that I find immensely reassuring. Although I only know them through their writing, exchanging comments on each other’s blogs and conversations on social media, I am immensely fond of our community. I actually gain creative strength through reading their work, their comments online and their general good nature and amiable disposition. Although we’re quite an eclectic bunch from various parts of the world, we all have a common interest in sharing our thoughts online, along with our bemusement of the current state of the world. I feel I should make some sort of Bilbo Baggins quote here about liking people. I’m sure you get the point.
As I mentioned earlier, this year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging was very well attended and I discovered a lot of new bloggers. I have hundreds of active blogs in my feed reader and I find it very encouraging that so many are still writing online, rather than using other mediums. I was also reminded this year that things change and that there isn’t a “one size fits all” approach to writing online. Hence I feel I should be fully supportive of microblogs, or those who choose not to have comments on their posts. The important fact is that they’re writing and sharing with the wider community. Also let us not forget that bloggers are people and behind the text there are folk dealing with the day-to-day bullshit of real life and that sometimes life is hard and unkind. Hence a kind word and some human empathy is important. Unless it’s Colin. He can go piss up a rope.
With 2026 fast approaching, I fully intend to keep writing and maintaining a fairly regular schedule of content for Contains Moderate Peril. I’m not sure what the Chinese bots that regularly scrape the site make of my musings but I thought I’d give them a mention, as they are the lionshare of my audience growth this year. As for this year’s ambition of increasing traffic and building a wider audience, it hasn’t been a total failure. Overall there’s been a 16% increase in visitors, which upon mature reflection and sober consideration, is better than a 16% decline. I also have a couple of projects on the go at present that I’m hoping to launch in the New Year. However, it is pertinent to remember that quote about the plans of mice and men. In the meantime, to all my fellow bloggers I would like to say thanks for all the interesting posts in 2025. Keep writing.
I don’t really celebrate New Year’s Eve anymore. By that I mean, I don’t go to the pub or any other social gatherings. Nor do we have guests ourselves. Mrs P often doesn’t stay up to midnight. Mainly because she tends to go to bed relatively early, by default. One year changing to another seems a somewhat arbitrary excuse for a celebration to me. However, I realise that New Year is a big deal for some. I used to work with someone who said, very philosophically, that Christmas was for the children and New Year was for the adults. He was of Scottish antecedents and so New Year’s Eve was of more cultural significance to him. Also if you’ve had a difficult, problematic or traumatic 2025, then I fully understand that you may well be happy to see the back of 2025 and look to 2026 to be a significantly better year. Or at least, not to be as shit.
I have not watched as much TV as I usually do, this year. Mainly because I have become a little weary of the ways contemporary TV is produced, especially with regards to streaming shows. Due to the costs, shows such as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds only have 10 episodes per season. Simply put, the season begins to hit its stride and then is abruptly over. This problem (if you see it as such) is then further compounded by there being a significant wait between seasons. In the case of STSNW it was two years between season two and season three. Not all shows fall foul of this. Apple TV produces two seasons of the excellent espionage drama Slow Horses at a time, ensuring a prompt release schedule. However, even this has issues. Due to the complexity of the plots of many contemporary TV shows, something that is a marketing point, some viewers cannot remember the plot after a twelve month hiatus. Network TV shows seldom have these issues with each season being 20 plus episodes long and story arcs that are seldom as complex.
It is customary in a post such as this to list the various games that I’ve played over the last twelve months and share my thoughts on them. Wider analysis of the video game industry is also de rigeur. Unfortunately, I don’t really feel disposed to do either of those two things. My thoughts on the games I’ve played have already been published and can easily be accessed via the links at the bottom of this post. As for the video game industry, it suffers the same flaws as music, TV and cinema. There is creativity and innovation out there but it is often drowned out by mainstream products which are demonstrably inferior due to their inherent mediocrity. As for the business side of things, we once again clearly see the failings of the corporate management class. Sadly, they do not face the consequences of the mistakes that they make.
I began 2025 with a fairly strong writing streak, publishing posts about games, technology and even air fryers. Sadly, this burst of enthusiasm gradually tailed off between April and June. I can’t even recollect if there was any particular “real world” reason for this or whether it was just a case of I wasn’t especially motivated. Fortunately, I started writing again in July in preparation for Blaugust: Festival of Blogging and subsequently wrote throughout the entirety of August. Revamping my blog in September and moving it to the latest version of Squarespace proved a positive move and since then I have kept up a writing schedule of posting to Contains Moderate Peril every second day. At present I have a lot of draft posts pending and I am not struggling to come up with ideas and write in general. I intend to nurture this positive approach and see if I can build upon it in 2026.
Looking back at my various posts regarding “technology” this year, a recurring theme has been my ongoing attempts to replace certain mainstream products with alternatives that do the job in-hand better, don’t require constant updates, aren’t bloated by superfluous functionality and are more cost effective or even ethical. Needless to say, this has proven quite hard. Hence I was unable to find a suitable replacement email client for Microsoft Outlook and end my subscription to Microsoft 365 Personal. The main problem is that most alternative software won’t support my email archive due to differences in the mailbox format. One possible work around is to install an older and therefore, non-subscription version of Outlook but this raises support and compatibility issues. It would be a lot easier to divest myself of a lot of mainstream software if I was starting from scratch.
I created a Bluesky account a little over a year ago. I was initially somewhat sceptical of adopting a third social media messaging platform, because I had become quite comfortable using Mastodon as a replacement for Twitter/X. However, certain individuals that I wished to continue to follow were migrating to Bluesky, so I followed suit. It has always been my long term goal to pick one of these two newer services and make it my sole point of presence in social media terms. So far that hasn’t happened. Hence a year on I find myself juggling three such platforms. Twitter/X, Mastodon and Bluesky. I post links to my blog posts on all of these services. To be honest none of them generate any tangible traffic but this is how you promoted your website or blog 15 years ago and old habits die hard.
In my teenage years, there was a social obligation to go out on New Year’s Eve. This often meant congregating in some dismal pub, queuing at the bar for 30 minutes to get a drink, then trying to find a corner where you could stand and struggle to have a conversation with your friends, above the noise of the crowd. The evening was dull, noisy and often ended in a fight. Then, around 1:00 AM we were summarily turfed out into the street and had to make our way home. Buses always run at this time of year to serve a public need but the “drunk express” was never a pleasant means of transportation. Quite frankly the whole experience was shit but the hubris of youth meant we deluded ourselves that we were having a good time. If someone suggested something similar today, I would laugh in their face. I am happy to spend New Year’s Eve indoors and away from it all.
It is customary for me to write an end of year summary of my gaming activities but I suspect that on this occasion it will be somewhat short. For me, 2024 has really hammered home the notion of the ephemeral nature of video games as well as their commercial ubiquity. The moment a game fails to satisfy for whatever reason, rather than complain or worry about it, I just move on to something else. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of games out there. I have a substantial back catalogue of games that Epic and Amazon prime regularly giveaway. I have bought numerous discounted bundles in the past, in the pious hope that I’ll play one of the games included, at some point in the future. Games may well be enjoyable and engaging but many are also disposable. That’s not to say they’re bad. While playing them you are indeed “entertained”. However, when you’re “done”, it’s amazing how you quickly find another and forget what you were previously playing.
The last time I wrote A Year in Movies post was back in 2020. That was naturally an unusual year and it certainly had a radical impact upon the film industry and the way new movies are distributed. In many ways the pandemic accelerated the inevitable move towards cross platform, same day releases. 4 years on and it is quite usual for films to have a short cinema release before becoming available on streaming media. They often appear on physical media at the same time. Effectively you can go to the cinema, or simply watch at home on the platform of your choice if you prefer. Rent, buy or subscribe, the film studios still get their pound of flesh and everyone is happy. Sometimes if a film has failed to gain sufficient traction at the cinema, its release will be cut short and it will go to streaming even quicker. Direct to video from the eighties and nineties has been superseded with direct to streaming.
It is fair to say that we live in an age where we do not lack quality TV. There are numerous shows that have garnered critical acclaim or a strong word of mouth following that are deemed “must see” viewing. No doubt you, like myself, have a long “to do” list of programs that you need to “get round to watching” on top of those shows which are staples of your viewing regime. If you didn’t have enough programmes already to catch up with, we all have friends and family telling us about a “great show” that’s on a platform we don’t subscribe to, that we really need to see. It is quite extraordinary and a far cry from my youth when the UK simply had three terrestrial channels until satellite TV became popular in the late eighties. To paraphrase the former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan “we’ve never had it so good”.
This post is not intended to be a comprehensive review of music per se in 2024. It is simply a few thoughts on what I’ve been listening to over the course of the year and my ever changing relationship with the Terpsichorean muse. As a man in his fifties who has always enjoyed multiple genres of music and it is a comforting presence in day-to-day life. Up to a year ago, I relied upon my own music collection on my PC as the source of music to which I listened. Yet, this meant that I was somewhat locked into my own existing tastes and there was limited scope for me to find new material. This changed last December when I started subscribing to Spotify and since then it has become my primary source of music. It caters to my tastes, which at times are quite niche and it gently introduces me to new material without being too invasive. This has proven most beneficial.
This is my third attempt at writing this post. The first was a little too philosophical, tackling the nature of adult life and how it is a far cry from the childish notions I had about being a “grown up” when I was seven. The second was just a list of the various shit that has gone down in my life over the last twelve months and it felt far too much like whinging. Hopefully this one is more succinct and even handed. 2022 was not a good year, personally speaking. My family and I experienced a lot of health issues and my mother died after a rapid decline. Hence there has been a lot of stress and anxiety which has left me feeling tired and somewhat jaded. Due to the subsequent changes in my personal circumstances, I now find myself at somewhat of a “loose end”. I feel the need to channel my energies into something but I’m not sure exactly what at present.
So far I have written 135 blog posts in 2022. Not much compared to previous years, but frankly I’ve become a little despondent with writing in recent months (I shall expand more upon that in a moment). Hence, since October I have been enjoying a break from regular blogging. I have written sparingly and pursued other leisure activities. Given that my post output has gone down, it would be logical to assume that there has been a commensurate drop in web traffic to Contains Moderate Peril, but this is not the case. Overall, my monthly statistics have remained the same, proving once again that most of my readership find my written content via Google searches, rather than reading new material on a daily basis. This has given me much food for thought and added to my ongoing reflection upon my writing activities.
When I wrote Goodbye 2020 a year ago, I endeavoured to be philosophical and sanguine in my approach. It was a challenging year for all of us and for me it was further compounded by a bereavement. However, I strove to keep matters in perspective and tried to look at things in a broader context. I cannot be as even handed this time. 2021 has been a very difficult year for myself and my family and I will be glad to see the back of it. Nationally speaking, things haven’t been much better. I feel that we’ve squandered the initial progress that the COVID-19 vaccines offered. Obviously, I cannot do anything about the problems that the UK faces in 2022. However, I certainly intend to address some of the issues that I and my immediate family are facing. I am going to tackle some specific problems that need to be laid to rest and set myself some tangible goals to achieve. 2022 isn’t going to be something that just happens and I passively sit back and watch.
Getting older does have a few benefits. One of them, if you are fortunate enough to embrace the concept, is a degree of self awareness and the ability to be honest with yourself. Over the years I have tried to adjust my technological habits but ultimately I am a creature of habit. My use of technology and consumption of content has been determined by the decades I grew up in. Therefore, I am a PC user and prefer to sit in my office where I write, play games and peruse the internet. I have my desk set up in a way that suits my needs and I can go about my business in comfort. When away from my office, I rely heavily on my phone as an alternative platform. In some instances phone based apps offer a superior experience to the desktop or browser based PC alternatives. Banking being one example. For better or for worse this is how I do things and I am comfortable with these choices.
Usually in a post such as this, my primary focus would be writing about the games that I’ve played over the last twelve month and what it was about them that I specifically enjoyed. However, this year I feel that I must address the wider issues that have dominated the news regarding the video games industry. Simply put, several very high profile and successful triple A video game companies have been beset by scandals over the last twelve months. And these have been of such a nature that they have finally laid to rest the myth that some still cling to, that working “in video games” is somehow different from working in more traditional industries because it’s “cool”. It turns out that it has all the same failings as TV, music and film. The people at the top are abusive and broken and maltreat those at the coalface who do all the real work for precious little reward.
I can’t speak for others but my relationship with social media has certainly changed over the last two years. Whenever new internet technologies emerge, there is a brief period when it feels like some sort of new frontier. Often such innovations become a means of empowering the marginalised and the voiceless. For a while new platforms can even be a force for good. But eventually commercial interests creep in along with rules and regulations. Hence, it all inevitably takes a turn for the worst. The frontier is finally tamed and ends up being just another corporate space. Social media is certainly not a forum for discussing social issues or politics, instead being a medium for tribalism and rancour. Because of these factors and others, I have moderated my use of social media and it has proven extremely beneficial to my state of mind.
A very wise Vulcan once said “change is the essential process of all existence”. 2020 has demonstrated that unequivocally. How our privileged, pampered lives have altered over the last twelve months. We’ve had to stay at home, curtail our social interactions and reflect upon the meaning of existence. I appreciate that things are relative, so it’s not helpful to compare the concerns that discombobulate people today with the realities that folk had to endure during World War II for example. I won’t trivialise the sense of isolation and desperation some folk have felt over the lockdown. From my own perspective, my life as a carer is regimented and focused, so 2020 hasn’t really “cramped my style” to use an old fashioned phrase. However, several things happened over the course of the year that have had an impact upon myself and my family.
Let it suffice to say that due to current “circumstances”, Mrs P and I have watched a lot more TV this year. However, rather than just reiterate what we’ve viewed, which is already covered in my recurring blog post The Idiot Box, I thought I’d take the time to reflect upon some wider issues. TV has become a major source not only of entertainment but psychological support during this year’s social restrictions. The closure of cinemas for the majority of the past twelve months has meant that TV has had little or no competition. Furthermore, many of the films that may well have drawn audiences away, have come to the smaller screens a lot quicker. Never has so much TV been voraciously consumed. There’s also been a degree of nostalgia as viewers have watched popular shows at broadly similar times, reviving that sense of a shared experience that was so common in the seventies and eighties. However, the pandemic has also caused a slow down in TV production. Will the shortage of new content that many have predicted finally manifest itself next year?
In 2019, I went to the cinema just once to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I didn’t write a summary of the films I’d seen throughout that year, as I felt that mainstream releases had become far too formulaic and dull. 2020 has done little to change my perspective. The global pandemic has meant that Cinemas have spent most of the time closed and therefore many of this year’s major film releases have ended up on video on demand services. A few titles remain indefinitely postponed, such as the latest Bond movie No Time to Die, while Sony Pictures wait to see if “normality” resumes. But a film that is sitting on the shelf is not a film making money. Hence, Warner Bros. have announced that all their major releases for 2021 will be across multiple platforms simultaneously, thus ensuring a broader flow of revenue. This has not pleased director’s such as Christopher Nolan who argue passionately regarding the merits of cinema. But I doubt Mr. Nolan has ever had to endure an out of focus screening in the wrong aspect ratio at Cineworld, Rochester, where audiences talk and mess with their phones continuously.
Retrospective posts such as this can be a sprawling mess. There is also potential to cover the same old ground that I’ve covered in my monthly summaries “A Month in Gaming”. So I’ll try to be as succinct as I can. Firstly I won’t dwell too much on the iniquities of the video game industry as I’ve covered that elsewhere. Let it suffice to say that the notion of the “rock star developer” and the ethical publisher have proven false. Buying a triple A mainstream game is as morally compromised as buying a pair of jeans made by child labour. But let’s not get caught up in ethics. That’s another post. The pandemic meant that I, like many others, had far more leisure time this year and hence I spent that time gaming. It’s been a good year for video games publishers and the revenue has rolled in. Have I had fun while playing more games? Yes. The games have proven engaging and they also provide a lot to write about, so it’s a win, win scenario from my perspective.
In my lifetime technology has always been promoted as something that improves our lives, especially at a domestic level. The VCR in the eighties is a prime example of this. It liberated us from having to watch TV at a specific time and place. Then there the personal computer, which brought into our own homes tools, that until that point, had been exclusive to the office. And for all the ill that it brings, the internet has certainly made the world demonstrably smaller. It’s revolutionised shopping and has improved the administration of services. So overall, I still feel that technology is a force for good. However there have been changes. In recent years technology on a domestic level has ceased to be quite as transformative and become more of a disposable commodity. Tech is now a fashion accessory, with a distinct lifecycle and upgrade treadmill. It is fast becoming just another form of superfluous crap to fill your home with.
Despite the tumultuous events of the last twelve months and the accompanying emotional fallout that has followed in their wake, I’ve managed to keep writing throughout 2020. My output has been somewhat inconsistent this year and I’ve noticed some changes in what I write about. This is inevitable as one’s tastes and focus changes naturally change over time. I’m finding it tougher to write enthusiastically about the video games industry per se, as it has hardly covered itself in glory this year. However, I still enjoy writing film reviews although I haven’t set foot inside a cinema for over a year. I suspect that this will remain the case for much of 2021. My writing has broadened in its scope and I find myself writing social commentary about various aspects of life, rather than just posting articles about my hobbies. Sharing my thoughts on the pandemic itself and “caring for the elderly” has proven very cathartic. But as I’ve stated many times before, writing is one of the ways in which I make sense of the world around me.
Last year I tried to write a measured and balanced post about the passing of the year. Sadly this time round my attitude toward the departing 12-month period is somewhat binary. Yes there were a couple of highlights to 2019 but most of it was an uphill struggle and therefore not worth celebrating. It can frankly sod off and won’t be missed. The two high points were my son’s wedding in August and my renewed enthusiasm for blogging that came about due to the Blaugust writing event. But overall 2019 was a repetitive and somewhat depressing grind having to continuously deal with multiple family illnesses, numerous hospital visits and then at the end of the year a bereavement. Yes, these are things that happened to us all eventually and there is no escaping them but I appear to be trapped in this facet of the “circle of life”. Furthermore, until certain situations resolve themselves, I cannot make or implement any long-term plans. 2019 has been in many ways about just treading water.
Life is often cyclical, if you don’t believe me go watch The Lion King. I started 2018 playing The Lord of the Rings Online and by writing a post about how gamers collectively seem to repeat the same mistakes. And as the year and indeed the decade ends, I find myself once again playing the Yule Festival in LOTRO and reflecting upon how some games that garnered criticism over their egregious business models, have ended up as huge hits. It would appear that gamers are their own worst enemy. I shall leave the psychological analysis of paradox to others. From my perspective, irrespective of the iniquities of the video game industry and certain quarters of the gaming community, it has been a good year, gaming wise. I have enjoyed my time playing MMOs such as Star Trek Online, The Elder Scrolls Online and the aforementioned LOTRO. These and other titles have entertained me, provided me with an opportunity to unwind as well as affording me some much-needed social interaction. I particularly enjoy Wednesday evenings when I log into my Discord server and then chat and play collaboratively with longstanding gaming friends.
One of the benefits that comes with age (for some people at least), if the gift of realistic expectations. Having reached 51 years, I no longer harbour thoughts that each year will be a rollercoaster ride of excitement, mirth and personal gain. Nor do I count on the stars aligning so that I make my fortune and retire peacefully to the Cayman Islands, to live the life of a tax exile. If New Year’s Eve rolls round and no one has died, I’m not looking at being tried for murder and there’s still gin in the drinks cabinet, then I usually deem the previous twelve months an acceptable year. However, despite even these fairly lose and undemanding criteria I feel compelled to say that 2018 was bollocks and that I won’t be sad to see the back of it.
I did not manage to maintain my writing schedule this year and have not posted everyday as I would’ve liked. I have produced over two hundred and seventy posts but still feel I could have done more. Blaugust was a welcome burst of enthusiasm that I managed to sustain for September and October, but I lost momentum in the run up to Christmas. At least I know what the root cause is which puts me a step nearer to resolving it. Having written several posts in the past about “writers block” and the other perennial excuse of not having anything to write about, I seem to have squarely fallen into both those traps. At present I find that motivating myself is the key problem. If I haven’t started writing something by midday, then it more than often gets left for the day. If I intend to escape this malaise, then I shall have to establish a far stricter writing schedule for 2019 and endeavour to do my writing first thing in the morning, when I am most focused.
Throughout my adult life I have always gone to the cinema as a leisure activity. 2018 has been of note in this regard as it’s the year I’ve been to the cinema the least. I have visited my local multiplex just three times over the last twelve months. It’s not that good quality movies are not made anymore. Far from it. It’s just that they don’t always get released theatrically. Furthermore, the cost to entertainment ratio has simply become too much of a gamble. Standard tickets are priced between £12 to £15 locally and I resent such an outlay for a film that may only be adequate or worse. Perhaps my outlook on pricing is unreasonable but I am not going to pay such money for mediocre entertainment. I don’t expect every movie I see to be a cinematic milestone or genre classic but nor do I expect it to be an exercise in indifference. If I had paid such ticket prices to see The Predator or Death Wish at my local Cineworld, then I would have been singularly annoyed. Mercifully I saw them both at home and therefore at a much lower cost.
The term social media is a broad church. For me it primarily means Twitter as that is the only platform of that ilk that I use regularly. I maintain a presence on Facebook simply to stay in touch with friends who have emigrated to the US. We have a private page where we catch up instead of using the traditional medium of emails. It is more immediate but also more frivolous. If it weren’t for need that it serves, I would have long closed my Facebook account. 2018 was also the year where I tried to continue using Instagram but failed. I don’t tend to catalogue and display my life in the manner that this medium tends to demand and use it mainly to see what my granddaughters have been up to. For me Twitter is the social media platform I feel most comfortable using and feel that I have mastered. I use it to promote my writing and for quips, banter and social interaction. Beyond that I think its benefits are both limited and even questionable.
My relationship with technology has changed over the years and my enthusiasm has tempered greatly. Having worked in the IT field for 25 years (up until 2016), I have been immersed in technological advancement and due to my age have seen a great deal change. I was at one time an early adopter of anything I considered to be potentially beneficial to me and at times have been guilty of acquiring something “new and shiny” simply for its own sake. I have even flirted with that dubious notion of tech as a fashion accessory. But sometimes age does bring wisdom, so nowadays, I’m a firm believer in finding the sweet spot between “the right tool for the job” and “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. Subsequently, 2018 has not seem me acquire a great deal of new technology. However, what I have bought this year or started using has been well received and useful.
A Year in Technology
Looking back at my various posts regarding “technology” this year, a recurring theme has been my ongoing attempts to replace certain mainstream products with alternatives that do the job in-hand better, don’t require constant updates, aren’t bloated by superfluous functionality and are more cost effective or even ethical. Needless to say, this has proven quite hard. Hence I was unable to find a suitable replacement email client for Microsoft Outlook and end my subscription to Microsoft 365 Personal. The main problem is that most alternative software won’t support my email archive due to differences in the mailbox format. One possible work around is to install an older and therefore, non-subscription version of Outlook but this raises support and compatibility issues. It would be a lot easier to divest myself of a lot of mainstream software if I was starting from scratch.
Looking back at my various posts regarding “technology” this year, a recurring theme has been my ongoing attempts to replace certain mainstream products with alternatives that do the job in-hand better, don’t require constant updates, aren’t bloated by superfluous functionality and are more cost effective or even ethical. Needless to say, this has proven quite hard. Hence I was unable to find a suitable replacement email client for Microsoft Outlook and end my subscription to Microsoft 365 Personal. The main problem is that most alternative software won’t support my email archive due to differences in the mailbox format. One possible work around is to install an older and therefore, non-subscription version of Outlook but this raises support and compatibility issues. It would be a lot easier to divest myself of a lot of mainstream software if I was starting from scratch.
AI is currently everywhere and seems to be the biggest talking point of the year. I have mixed feelings on the subject as I feel that it can be a useful tool in some specific circumstances. I like AI tools that can be used to fix photos, as I am currently cataloguing my parents’ prodigious collection. Some of the pictures are from the start of the last century and have a lot of damage. I occasionally use AI for collating basic data. The sort of information that is not disputed or subject to political misrepresentation. However, I don’t agree with AI being used to bypass paid creativity and sadly that appears to be at the vanguard of its use. I’m sure Disney’s $1 Billion investment in OpenAI will end with negative consequences for the existing animators, voice artists and other creative employees. I look forward to an EU law that mandates that the use of AI has to be declared when buying a product or service.
Another notable aspect of 2025 has been the ongoing war between ad blockers and their respective corporate opponents. YouTube has pushed back hard against such apps and browser extensions. Although advertisements can still be blocked, there are notable delays, sometimes commensurate with the blocked adverts running time, before the desired video will actually play. Advertising has become more pervasive and invasive, even finding a foothold on my Windows 11 lockscreen and desktop. Fortunately such features can be removed. Advertising on social media also became problematic and is harder to remove or bypass. All of which indicates an advertising market that is declining, or at least fragmented, hence corporations are pursuing “their piece of the cake” more aggressively. Again, shareware, freeware and companies offering a one time payment, rather than a subscription become more appealing.
A short break at the end of October served as a timely reminder of the ubiquitous nature of the internet in our life and our reliance upon it for both work and leisure alike. I found myself in an environment (a static caravan) that did not have internet access by default and I briefly lost connectivity. It certainly gave me pause for thought about how I live my life. In the meantime while grappling with this philosophical crisis, I resolved the immediate problem by internet tethering to my phone. Another recent change is how I fill “dead time”. Over this year I have pivoted from reading while waiting for a bus, train or travelling, to relying on my phone to entertain me. This is mainly via the internet, with games such as Roblox. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of and I shall try and address this in the New Year. Using the internet for leisure is fun but everything in moderation.
I bought a little new technology this year, mainly out of necessity. My phone needed replacing due to battery bulge and my ageing monitors were becoming difficult for me to see clearly. So I bought a new handset and a pair of 2K monitors. I hope that I can future proof my current desktop PC for another 24 months. Looking forward to 2026, my next technology based endeavour is to see if I can ditch Windows as an operating system for everyday use. Perhaps set up a dual boot PC with a bare bones install of Windows for running games and some variation of Linux, such as Zorin OS, for everything else. I also need to continue with locking down my phone and making web browsing via that device as good an experience as using my PC. Overall technology is losing its appeal. Too often causes just as many problems as it solves. It also tends to serve the manufacturers needs more than the customers.
I don’t really celebrate New Year’s Eve anymore. By that I mean, I don’t go to the pub or any other social gatherings. Nor do we have guests ourselves. Mrs P often doesn’t stay up to midnight. Mainly because she tends to go to bed relatively early, by default. One year changing to another seems a somewhat arbitrary excuse for a celebration to me. However, I realise that New Year is a big deal for some. I used to work with someone who said, very philosophically, that Christmas was for the children and New Year was for the adults. He was of Scottish antecedents and so New Year’s Eve was of more cultural significance to him. Also if you’ve had a difficult, problematic or traumatic 2025, then I fully understand that you may well be happy to see the back of 2025 and look to 2026 to be a significantly better year. Or at least, not to be as shit.
I have not watched as much TV as I usually do, this year. Mainly because I have become a little weary of the ways contemporary TV is produced, especially with regards to streaming shows. Due to the costs, shows such as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds only have 10 episodes per season. Simply put, the season begins to hit its stride and then is abruptly over. This problem (if you see it as such) is then further compounded by there being a significant wait between seasons. In the case of STSNW it was two years between season two and season three. Not all shows fall foul of this. Apple TV produces two seasons of the excellent espionage drama Slow Horses at a time, ensuring a prompt release schedule. However, even this has issues. Due to the complexity of the plots of many contemporary TV shows, something that is a marketing point, some viewers cannot remember the plot after a twelve month hiatus. Network TV shows seldom have these issues with each season being 20 plus episodes long and story arcs that are seldom as complex.
It is customary in a post such as this to list the various games that I’ve played over the last twelve months and share my thoughts on them. Wider analysis of the video game industry is also de rigeur. Unfortunately, I don’t really feel disposed to do either of those two things. My thoughts on the games I’ve played have already been published and can easily be accessed via the links at the bottom of this post. As for the video game industry, it suffers the same flaws as music, TV and cinema. There is creativity and innovation out there but it is often drowned out by mainstream products which are demonstrably inferior due to their inherent mediocrity. As for the business side of things, we once again clearly see the failings of the corporate management class. Sadly, they do not face the consequences of the mistakes that they make.
I began 2025 with a fairly strong writing streak, publishing posts about games, technology and even air fryers. Sadly, this burst of enthusiasm gradually tailed off between April and June. I can’t even recollect if there was any particular “real world” reason for this or whether it was just a case of I wasn’t especially motivated. Fortunately, I started writing again in July in preparation for Blaugust: Festival of Blogging and subsequently wrote throughout the entirety of August. Revamping my blog in September and moving it to the latest version of Squarespace proved a positive move and since then I have kept up a writing schedule of posting to Contains Moderate Peril every second day. At present I have a lot of draft posts pending and I am not struggling to come up with ideas and write in general. I intend to nurture this positive approach and see if I can build upon it in 2026.
Looking back at my various posts regarding “technology” this year, a recurring theme has been my ongoing attempts to replace certain mainstream products with alternatives that do the job in-hand better, don’t require constant updates, aren’t bloated by superfluous functionality and are more cost effective or even ethical. Needless to say, this has proven quite hard. Hence I was unable to find a suitable replacement email client for Microsoft Outlook and end my subscription to Microsoft 365 Personal. The main problem is that most alternative software won’t support my email archive due to differences in the mailbox format. One possible work around is to install an older and therefore, non-subscription version of Outlook but this raises support and compatibility issues. It would be a lot easier to divest myself of a lot of mainstream software if I was starting from scratch.
I created a Bluesky account a little over a year ago. I was initially somewhat sceptical of adopting a third social media messaging platform, because I had become quite comfortable using Mastodon as a replacement for Twitter/X. However, certain individuals that I wished to continue to follow were migrating to Bluesky, so I followed suit. It has always been my long term goal to pick one of these two newer services and make it my sole point of presence in social media terms. So far that hasn’t happened. Hence a year on I find myself juggling three such platforms. Twitter/X, Mastodon and Bluesky. I post links to my blog posts on all of these services. To be honest none of them generate any tangible traffic but this is how you promoted your website or blog 15 years ago and old habits die hard.
In my teenage years, there was a social obligation to go out on New Year’s Eve. This often meant congregating in some dismal pub, queuing at the bar for 30 minutes to get a drink, then trying to find a corner where you could stand and struggle to have a conversation with your friends, above the noise of the crowd. The evening was dull, noisy and often ended in a fight. Then, around 1:00 AM we were summarily turfed out into the street and had to make our way home. Buses always run at this time of year to serve a public need but the “drunk express” was never a pleasant means of transportation. Quite frankly the whole experience was shit but the hubris of youth meant we deluded ourselves that we were having a good time. If someone suggested something similar today, I would laugh in their face. I am happy to spend New Year’s Eve indoors and away from it all.
It is customary for me to write an end of year summary of my gaming activities but I suspect that on this occasion it will be somewhat short. For me, 2024 has really hammered home the notion of the ephemeral nature of video games as well as their commercial ubiquity. The moment a game fails to satisfy for whatever reason, rather than complain or worry about it, I just move on to something else. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of games out there. I have a substantial back catalogue of games that Epic and Amazon prime regularly giveaway. I have bought numerous discounted bundles in the past, in the pious hope that I’ll play one of the games included, at some point in the future. Games may well be enjoyable and engaging but many are also disposable. That’s not to say they’re bad. While playing them you are indeed “entertained”. However, when you’re “done”, it’s amazing how you quickly find another and forget what you were previously playing.
The last time I wrote A Year in Movies post was back in 2020. That was naturally an unusual year and it certainly had a radical impact upon the film industry and the way new movies are distributed. In many ways the pandemic accelerated the inevitable move towards cross platform, same day releases. 4 years on and it is quite usual for films to have a short cinema release before becoming available on streaming media. They often appear on physical media at the same time. Effectively you can go to the cinema, or simply watch at home on the platform of your choice if you prefer. Rent, buy or subscribe, the film studios still get their pound of flesh and everyone is happy. Sometimes if a film has failed to gain sufficient traction at the cinema, its release will be cut short and it will go to streaming even quicker. Direct to video from the eighties and nineties has been superseded with direct to streaming.
It is fair to say that we live in an age where we do not lack quality TV. There are numerous shows that have garnered critical acclaim or a strong word of mouth following that are deemed “must see” viewing. No doubt you, like myself, have a long “to do” list of programs that you need to “get round to watching” on top of those shows which are staples of your viewing regime. If you didn’t have enough programmes already to catch up with, we all have friends and family telling us about a “great show” that’s on a platform we don’t subscribe to, that we really need to see. It is quite extraordinary and a far cry from my youth when the UK simply had three terrestrial channels until satellite TV became popular in the late eighties. To paraphrase the former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan “we’ve never had it so good”.
This post is not intended to be a comprehensive review of music per se in 2024. It is simply a few thoughts on what I’ve been listening to over the course of the year and my ever changing relationship with the Terpsichorean muse. As a man in his fifties who has always enjoyed multiple genres of music and it is a comforting presence in day-to-day life. Up to a year ago, I relied upon my own music collection on my PC as the source of music to which I listened. Yet, this meant that I was somewhat locked into my own existing tastes and there was limited scope for me to find new material. This changed last December when I started subscribing to Spotify and since then it has become my primary source of music. It caters to my tastes, which at times are quite niche and it gently introduces me to new material without being too invasive. This has proven most beneficial.
This is my third attempt at writing this post. The first was a little too philosophical, tackling the nature of adult life and how it is a far cry from the childish notions I had about being a “grown up” when I was seven. The second was just a list of the various shit that has gone down in my life over the last twelve months and it felt far too much like whinging. Hopefully this one is more succinct and even handed. 2022 was not a good year, personally speaking. My family and I experienced a lot of health issues and my mother died after a rapid decline. Hence there has been a lot of stress and anxiety which has left me feeling tired and somewhat jaded. Due to the subsequent changes in my personal circumstances, I now find myself at somewhat of a “loose end”. I feel the need to channel my energies into something but I’m not sure exactly what at present.
So far I have written 135 blog posts in 2022. Not much compared to previous years, but frankly I’ve become a little despondent with writing in recent months (I shall expand more upon that in a moment). Hence, since October I have been enjoying a break from regular blogging. I have written sparingly and pursued other leisure activities. Given that my post output has gone down, it would be logical to assume that there has been a commensurate drop in web traffic to Contains Moderate Peril, but this is not the case. Overall, my monthly statistics have remained the same, proving once again that most of my readership find my written content via Google searches, rather than reading new material on a daily basis. This has given me much food for thought and added to my ongoing reflection upon my writing activities.
When I wrote Goodbye 2020 a year ago, I endeavoured to be philosophical and sanguine in my approach. It was a challenging year for all of us and for me it was further compounded by a bereavement. However, I strove to keep matters in perspective and tried to look at things in a broader context. I cannot be as even handed this time. 2021 has been a very difficult year for myself and my family and I will be glad to see the back of it. Nationally speaking, things haven’t been much better. I feel that we’ve squandered the initial progress that the COVID-19 vaccines offered. Obviously, I cannot do anything about the problems that the UK faces in 2022. However, I certainly intend to address some of the issues that I and my immediate family are facing. I am going to tackle some specific problems that need to be laid to rest and set myself some tangible goals to achieve. 2022 isn’t going to be something that just happens and I passively sit back and watch.
Getting older does have a few benefits. One of them, if you are fortunate enough to embrace the concept, is a degree of self awareness and the ability to be honest with yourself. Over the years I have tried to adjust my technological habits but ultimately I am a creature of habit. My use of technology and consumption of content has been determined by the decades I grew up in. Therefore, I am a PC user and prefer to sit in my office where I write, play games and peruse the internet. I have my desk set up in a way that suits my needs and I can go about my business in comfort. When away from my office, I rely heavily on my phone as an alternative platform. In some instances phone based apps offer a superior experience to the desktop or browser based PC alternatives. Banking being one example. For better or for worse this is how I do things and I am comfortable with these choices.
Usually in a post such as this, my primary focus would be writing about the games that I’ve played over the last twelve month and what it was about them that I specifically enjoyed. However, this year I feel that I must address the wider issues that have dominated the news regarding the video games industry. Simply put, several very high profile and successful triple A video game companies have been beset by scandals over the last twelve months. And these have been of such a nature that they have finally laid to rest the myth that some still cling to, that working “in video games” is somehow different from working in more traditional industries because it’s “cool”. It turns out that it has all the same failings as TV, music and film. The people at the top are abusive and broken and maltreat those at the coalface who do all the real work for precious little reward.
I can’t speak for others but my relationship with social media has certainly changed over the last two years. Whenever new internet technologies emerge, there is a brief period when it feels like some sort of new frontier. Often such innovations become a means of empowering the marginalised and the voiceless. For a while new platforms can even be a force for good. But eventually commercial interests creep in along with rules and regulations. Hence, it all inevitably takes a turn for the worst. The frontier is finally tamed and ends up being just another corporate space. Social media is certainly not a forum for discussing social issues or politics, instead being a medium for tribalism and rancour. Because of these factors and others, I have moderated my use of social media and it has proven extremely beneficial to my state of mind.
A very wise Vulcan once said “change is the essential process of all existence”. 2020 has demonstrated that unequivocally. How our privileged, pampered lives have altered over the last twelve months. We’ve had to stay at home, curtail our social interactions and reflect upon the meaning of existence. I appreciate that things are relative, so it’s not helpful to compare the concerns that discombobulate people today with the realities that folk had to endure during World War II for example. I won’t trivialise the sense of isolation and desperation some folk have felt over the lockdown. From my own perspective, my life as a carer is regimented and focused, so 2020 hasn’t really “cramped my style” to use an old fashioned phrase. However, several things happened over the course of the year that have had an impact upon myself and my family.
Let it suffice to say that due to current “circumstances”, Mrs P and I have watched a lot more TV this year. However, rather than just reiterate what we’ve viewed, which is already covered in my recurring blog post The Idiot Box, I thought I’d take the time to reflect upon some wider issues. TV has become a major source not only of entertainment but psychological support during this year’s social restrictions. The closure of cinemas for the majority of the past twelve months has meant that TV has had little or no competition. Furthermore, many of the films that may well have drawn audiences away, have come to the smaller screens a lot quicker. Never has so much TV been voraciously consumed. There’s also been a degree of nostalgia as viewers have watched popular shows at broadly similar times, reviving that sense of a shared experience that was so common in the seventies and eighties. However, the pandemic has also caused a slow down in TV production. Will the shortage of new content that many have predicted finally manifest itself next year?
In 2019, I went to the cinema just once to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I didn’t write a summary of the films I’d seen throughout that year, as I felt that mainstream releases had become far too formulaic and dull. 2020 has done little to change my perspective. The global pandemic has meant that Cinemas have spent most of the time closed and therefore many of this year’s major film releases have ended up on video on demand services. A few titles remain indefinitely postponed, such as the latest Bond movie No Time to Die, while Sony Pictures wait to see if “normality” resumes. But a film that is sitting on the shelf is not a film making money. Hence, Warner Bros. have announced that all their major releases for 2021 will be across multiple platforms simultaneously, thus ensuring a broader flow of revenue. This has not pleased director’s such as Christopher Nolan who argue passionately regarding the merits of cinema. But I doubt Mr. Nolan has ever had to endure an out of focus screening in the wrong aspect ratio at Cineworld, Rochester, where audiences talk and mess with their phones continuously.
Retrospective posts such as this can be a sprawling mess. There is also potential to cover the same old ground that I’ve covered in my monthly summaries “A Month in Gaming”. So I’ll try to be as succinct as I can. Firstly I won’t dwell too much on the iniquities of the video game industry as I’ve covered that elsewhere. Let it suffice to say that the notion of the “rock star developer” and the ethical publisher have proven false. Buying a triple A mainstream game is as morally compromised as buying a pair of jeans made by child labour. But let’s not get caught up in ethics. That’s another post. The pandemic meant that I, like many others, had far more leisure time this year and hence I spent that time gaming. It’s been a good year for video games publishers and the revenue has rolled in. Have I had fun while playing more games? Yes. The games have proven engaging and they also provide a lot to write about, so it’s a win, win scenario from my perspective.
In my lifetime technology has always been promoted as something that improves our lives, especially at a domestic level. The VCR in the eighties is a prime example of this. It liberated us from having to watch TV at a specific time and place. Then there the personal computer, which brought into our own homes tools, that until that point, had been exclusive to the office. And for all the ill that it brings, the internet has certainly made the world demonstrably smaller. It’s revolutionised shopping and has improved the administration of services. So overall, I still feel that technology is a force for good. However there have been changes. In recent years technology on a domestic level has ceased to be quite as transformative and become more of a disposable commodity. Tech is now a fashion accessory, with a distinct lifecycle and upgrade treadmill. It is fast becoming just another form of superfluous crap to fill your home with.
Despite the tumultuous events of the last twelve months and the accompanying emotional fallout that has followed in their wake, I’ve managed to keep writing throughout 2020. My output has been somewhat inconsistent this year and I’ve noticed some changes in what I write about. This is inevitable as one’s tastes and focus changes naturally change over time. I’m finding it tougher to write enthusiastically about the video games industry per se, as it has hardly covered itself in glory this year. However, I still enjoy writing film reviews although I haven’t set foot inside a cinema for over a year. I suspect that this will remain the case for much of 2021. My writing has broadened in its scope and I find myself writing social commentary about various aspects of life, rather than just posting articles about my hobbies. Sharing my thoughts on the pandemic itself and “caring for the elderly” has proven very cathartic. But as I’ve stated many times before, writing is one of the ways in which I make sense of the world around me.
Last year I tried to write a measured and balanced post about the passing of the year. Sadly this time round my attitude toward the departing 12-month period is somewhat binary. Yes there were a couple of highlights to 2019 but most of it was an uphill struggle and therefore not worth celebrating. It can frankly sod off and won’t be missed. The two high points were my son’s wedding in August and my renewed enthusiasm for blogging that came about due to the Blaugust writing event. But overall 2019 was a repetitive and somewhat depressing grind having to continuously deal with multiple family illnesses, numerous hospital visits and then at the end of the year a bereavement. Yes, these are things that happened to us all eventually and there is no escaping them but I appear to be trapped in this facet of the “circle of life”. Furthermore, until certain situations resolve themselves, I cannot make or implement any long-term plans. 2019 has been in many ways about just treading water.
Life is often cyclical, if you don’t believe me go watch The Lion King. I started 2018 playing The Lord of the Rings Online and by writing a post about how gamers collectively seem to repeat the same mistakes. And as the year and indeed the decade ends, I find myself once again playing the Yule Festival in LOTRO and reflecting upon how some games that garnered criticism over their egregious business models, have ended up as huge hits. It would appear that gamers are their own worst enemy. I shall leave the psychological analysis of paradox to others. From my perspective, irrespective of the iniquities of the video game industry and certain quarters of the gaming community, it has been a good year, gaming wise. I have enjoyed my time playing MMOs such as Star Trek Online, The Elder Scrolls Online and the aforementioned LOTRO. These and other titles have entertained me, provided me with an opportunity to unwind as well as affording me some much-needed social interaction. I particularly enjoy Wednesday evenings when I log into my Discord server and then chat and play collaboratively with longstanding gaming friends.
One of the benefits that comes with age (for some people at least), if the gift of realistic expectations. Having reached 51 years, I no longer harbour thoughts that each year will be a rollercoaster ride of excitement, mirth and personal gain. Nor do I count on the stars aligning so that I make my fortune and retire peacefully to the Cayman Islands, to live the life of a tax exile. If New Year’s Eve rolls round and no one has died, I’m not looking at being tried for murder and there’s still gin in the drinks cabinet, then I usually deem the previous twelve months an acceptable year. However, despite even these fairly lose and undemanding criteria I feel compelled to say that 2018 was bollocks and that I won’t be sad to see the back of it.
I did not manage to maintain my writing schedule this year and have not posted everyday as I would’ve liked. I have produced over two hundred and seventy posts but still feel I could have done more. Blaugust was a welcome burst of enthusiasm that I managed to sustain for September and October, but I lost momentum in the run up to Christmas. At least I know what the root cause is which puts me a step nearer to resolving it. Having written several posts in the past about “writers block” and the other perennial excuse of not having anything to write about, I seem to have squarely fallen into both those traps. At present I find that motivating myself is the key problem. If I haven’t started writing something by midday, then it more than often gets left for the day. If I intend to escape this malaise, then I shall have to establish a far stricter writing schedule for 2019 and endeavour to do my writing first thing in the morning, when I am most focused.
Throughout my adult life I have always gone to the cinema as a leisure activity. 2018 has been of note in this regard as it’s the year I’ve been to the cinema the least. I have visited my local multiplex just three times over the last twelve months. It’s not that good quality movies are not made anymore. Far from it. It’s just that they don’t always get released theatrically. Furthermore, the cost to entertainment ratio has simply become too much of a gamble. Standard tickets are priced between £12 to £15 locally and I resent such an outlay for a film that may only be adequate or worse. Perhaps my outlook on pricing is unreasonable but I am not going to pay such money for mediocre entertainment. I don’t expect every movie I see to be a cinematic milestone or genre classic but nor do I expect it to be an exercise in indifference. If I had paid such ticket prices to see The Predator or Death Wish at my local Cineworld, then I would have been singularly annoyed. Mercifully I saw them both at home and therefore at a much lower cost.
The term social media is a broad church. For me it primarily means Twitter as that is the only platform of that ilk that I use regularly. I maintain a presence on Facebook simply to stay in touch with friends who have emigrated to the US. We have a private page where we catch up instead of using the traditional medium of emails. It is more immediate but also more frivolous. If it weren’t for need that it serves, I would have long closed my Facebook account. 2018 was also the year where I tried to continue using Instagram but failed. I don’t tend to catalogue and display my life in the manner that this medium tends to demand and use it mainly to see what my granddaughters have been up to. For me Twitter is the social media platform I feel most comfortable using and feel that I have mastered. I use it to promote my writing and for quips, banter and social interaction. Beyond that I think its benefits are both limited and even questionable.
My relationship with technology has changed over the years and my enthusiasm has tempered greatly. Having worked in the IT field for 25 years (up until 2016), I have been immersed in technological advancement and due to my age have seen a great deal change. I was at one time an early adopter of anything I considered to be potentially beneficial to me and at times have been guilty of acquiring something “new and shiny” simply for its own sake. I have even flirted with that dubious notion of tech as a fashion accessory. But sometimes age does bring wisdom, so nowadays, I’m a firm believer in finding the sweet spot between “the right tool for the job” and “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. Subsequently, 2018 has not seem me acquire a great deal of new technology. However, what I have bought this year or started using has been well received and useful.
A Year in Social Media
I created a Bluesky account a little over a year ago. I was initially somewhat sceptical of adopting a third social media messaging platform, because I had become quite comfortable using Mastodon as a replacement for Twitter/X. However, certain individuals that I wished to continue to follow were migrating to Bluesky, so I followed suit. It has always been my long term goal to pick one of these two newer services and make it my sole point of presence in social media terms. So far that hasn’t happened. Hence a year on I find myself juggling three such platforms. Twitter/X, Mastodon and Bluesky. I post links to my blog posts on all of these services. To be honest none of them generate any tangible traffic but this is how you promoted your website or blog 15 years ago and old habits die hard.
Twitter/X, Mastodon and Bluesky
I created a Bluesky account a little over a year ago. I was initially somewhat sceptical of adopting a third social media messaging platform, because I had become quite comfortable using Mastodon as a replacement for Twitter/X. However, certain individuals that I wished to continue to follow were migrating to Bluesky, so I followed suit. It has always been my long term goal to pick one of these two newer services and make it my sole point of presence in social media terms. So far that hasn’t happened. Hence a year on I find myself juggling three such platforms. Twitter/X, Mastodon and Bluesky. I post links to my blog posts on all of these services. To be honest none of them generate any tangible traffic but this is how you promoted your website or blog 15 years ago and old habits die hard.
One of the main reasons for moving to Bluesky was the decline of Twitter/X once Elon Musk took over the corporate reins. Although you can still theoretically control what you see or don’t see in your timeline, Musk circumnavigated these settings and so I am still seeing content I have no desire to see and things I find interesting becoming harder to find. Hence Bluesky initially felt like rolling back the clock. Sadly, a year on and despite a greater degree of control, I still find that too much politics finds its way into my timeline. Most of it hails from the US and I simply will not dignify such culture war, zero sum game, intellectually bankrupt bullshit into my life. I’m not especially keen on the same sort of shit that originates from UK politics. It is tedious and pointless, at least for me. I don’t think I’m a priority target for any lobby group seeking to sway opinion.
Therefore, 2025 has been notable for my declining participation on such social media. I promote my writing, communicate with online friends and follow a few folk who do interesting things. I like to check out what’s going on among peers but that’s more of a daily thing nowadays. It used to have Twitter/X open all the time on my PC. I think going forward, I will probably withdraw from Twitter/X in 2026, because to continue using it is questionable. I shall also review my continued use of Bluesky and at the very least mute a lot of names and keywords because I just don’t want to know about somethings. Stepping back from sociopolitical issues is good for your mental wellbeing, as is minimising your exposure to fools and the furiously hard of thinking. Overall, my plan is to focus more on Mastodon as my platform of choice. It seems to have more of a community ambience, with a focus around shared interests. I like its old school vibe.
Instagram and Facebook
I use Instagram to keep up with immediate family members. My son and daughter in-law use it prodigiously. I briefly increased my output on this platform while on holiday in Croatia this summer but overall I tend to use it to passively consume the nonsense that the algorithm feeds me. And man is that algorithm good and figuring out the trivial nonsense that appeals to me. When you step back from scrolling and consider the technology behind these platforms it is both equally fascinating and scary. Its addictive quality is also worrying. However, I’ve noticed an unpleasant trend regarding what you choose to view. If you watch such content as Fail Army or any other material that can be described as “humourous accidents” the algorithm starts feeding more extreme material. Fortunately you can filter out such content but the fact that it escalates in this way is concerning.
One of the problems with social media is that everyone favours differing platforms, hence I maintain a presence on Facebook simply to keep in touch with some friends who exclusively use it. Earlier this year my account was compromised and I logged in to find I was now Silke Kraus from Düsseldorf. Hence I created a new account. Despite providing minimal details for my user profile and expressing few interests, I started getting content recommendations from such vile and scurrilous calumniators (to coin a Dickensian phrase) as The Daily Mail, Daily Express and Reform UK, by default. These can be filtered out but seem to return regardless, proving how this platform’s owners have a clear political affiliation and agenda. Again, next year I shall see if I can encourage my friends to move to another platform because I don’t really want to be associated with this propaganda tool.
Age Verification and Social Media Bans
I wrote a while ago about the age verification requirement that has become mandatory for certain online services in the UK, due to the Online Safety Act. Although well intentioned it misses the mark and can be easily circumnavigated. Such legislation is never good in the long term as it ultimately fails those it seeks to protect and brings the law into disrepute. Any lobby that arises against it will ultimately be usurped and become a trojan horse for more sinister political forces who want a totally unregulated environment. In Australia, as of this month they’ve gone so far as to ban social media access on specific platforms for under 16-year-olds. This has impacted upon 2 million young users. I am not against protecting children but find state intervention a blunt tool. Again I ask, shouldn’t parents be the first line of defence? No doubt my “year in social media|” summary next year will show if this “bold move” has proven positive.
I don’t really celebrate New Year’s Eve anymore. By that I mean, I don’t go to the pub or any other social gatherings. Nor do we have guests ourselves. Mrs P often doesn’t stay up to midnight. Mainly because she tends to go to bed relatively early, by default. One year changing to another seems a somewhat arbitrary excuse for a celebration to me. However, I realise that New Year is a big deal for some. I used to work with someone who said, very philosophically, that Christmas was for the children and New Year was for the adults. He was of Scottish antecedents and so New Year’s Eve was of more cultural significance to him. Also if you’ve had a difficult, problematic or traumatic 2025, then I fully understand that you may well be happy to see the back of 2025 and look to 2026 to be a significantly better year. Or at least, not to be as shit.
I have not watched as much TV as I usually do, this year. Mainly because I have become a little weary of the ways contemporary TV is produced, especially with regards to streaming shows. Due to the costs, shows such as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds only have 10 episodes per season. Simply put, the season begins to hit its stride and then is abruptly over. This problem (if you see it as such) is then further compounded by there being a significant wait between seasons. In the case of STSNW it was two years between season two and season three. Not all shows fall foul of this. Apple TV produces two seasons of the excellent espionage drama Slow Horses at a time, ensuring a prompt release schedule. However, even this has issues. Due to the complexity of the plots of many contemporary TV shows, something that is a marketing point, some viewers cannot remember the plot after a twelve month hiatus. Network TV shows seldom have these issues with each season being 20 plus episodes long and story arcs that are seldom as complex.
It is customary in a post such as this to list the various games that I’ve played over the last twelve months and share my thoughts on them. Wider analysis of the video game industry is also de rigeur. Unfortunately, I don’t really feel disposed to do either of those two things. My thoughts on the games I’ve played have already been published and can easily be accessed via the links at the bottom of this post. As for the video game industry, it suffers the same flaws as music, TV and cinema. There is creativity and innovation out there but it is often drowned out by mainstream products which are demonstrably inferior due to their inherent mediocrity. As for the business side of things, we once again clearly see the failings of the corporate management class. Sadly, they do not face the consequences of the mistakes that they make.
I began 2025 with a fairly strong writing streak, publishing posts about games, technology and even air fryers. Sadly, this burst of enthusiasm gradually tailed off between April and June. I can’t even recollect if there was any particular “real world” reason for this or whether it was just a case of I wasn’t especially motivated. Fortunately, I started writing again in July in preparation for Blaugust: Festival of Blogging and subsequently wrote throughout the entirety of August. Revamping my blog in September and moving it to the latest version of Squarespace proved a positive move and since then I have kept up a writing schedule of posting to Contains Moderate Peril every second day. At present I have a lot of draft posts pending and I am not struggling to come up with ideas and write in general. I intend to nurture this positive approach and see if I can build upon it in 2026.
Looking back at my various posts regarding “technology” this year, a recurring theme has been my ongoing attempts to replace certain mainstream products with alternatives that do the job in-hand better, don’t require constant updates, aren’t bloated by superfluous functionality and are more cost effective or even ethical. Needless to say, this has proven quite hard. Hence I was unable to find a suitable replacement email client for Microsoft Outlook and end my subscription to Microsoft 365 Personal. The main problem is that most alternative software won’t support my email archive due to differences in the mailbox format. One possible work around is to install an older and therefore, non-subscription version of Outlook but this raises support and compatibility issues. It would be a lot easier to divest myself of a lot of mainstream software if I was starting from scratch.
I created a Bluesky account a little over a year ago. I was initially somewhat sceptical of adopting a third social media messaging platform, because I had become quite comfortable using Mastodon as a replacement for Twitter/X. However, certain individuals that I wished to continue to follow were migrating to Bluesky, so I followed suit. It has always been my long term goal to pick one of these two newer services and make it my sole point of presence in social media terms. So far that hasn’t happened. Hence a year on I find myself juggling three such platforms. Twitter/X, Mastodon and Bluesky. I post links to my blog posts on all of these services. To be honest none of them generate any tangible traffic but this is how you promoted your website or blog 15 years ago and old habits die hard.
In my teenage years, there was a social obligation to go out on New Year’s Eve. This often meant congregating in some dismal pub, queuing at the bar for 30 minutes to get a drink, then trying to find a corner where you could stand and struggle to have a conversation with your friends, above the noise of the crowd. The evening was dull, noisy and often ended in a fight. Then, around 1:00 AM we were summarily turfed out into the street and had to make our way home. Buses always run at this time of year to serve a public need but the “drunk express” was never a pleasant means of transportation. Quite frankly the whole experience was shit but the hubris of youth meant we deluded ourselves that we were having a good time. If someone suggested something similar today, I would laugh in their face. I am happy to spend New Year’s Eve indoors and away from it all.
It is customary for me to write an end of year summary of my gaming activities but I suspect that on this occasion it will be somewhat short. For me, 2024 has really hammered home the notion of the ephemeral nature of video games as well as their commercial ubiquity. The moment a game fails to satisfy for whatever reason, rather than complain or worry about it, I just move on to something else. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of games out there. I have a substantial back catalogue of games that Epic and Amazon prime regularly giveaway. I have bought numerous discounted bundles in the past, in the pious hope that I’ll play one of the games included, at some point in the future. Games may well be enjoyable and engaging but many are also disposable. That’s not to say they’re bad. While playing them you are indeed “entertained”. However, when you’re “done”, it’s amazing how you quickly find another and forget what you were previously playing.
The last time I wrote A Year in Movies post was back in 2020. That was naturally an unusual year and it certainly had a radical impact upon the film industry and the way new movies are distributed. In many ways the pandemic accelerated the inevitable move towards cross platform, same day releases. 4 years on and it is quite usual for films to have a short cinema release before becoming available on streaming media. They often appear on physical media at the same time. Effectively you can go to the cinema, or simply watch at home on the platform of your choice if you prefer. Rent, buy or subscribe, the film studios still get their pound of flesh and everyone is happy. Sometimes if a film has failed to gain sufficient traction at the cinema, its release will be cut short and it will go to streaming even quicker. Direct to video from the eighties and nineties has been superseded with direct to streaming.
It is fair to say that we live in an age where we do not lack quality TV. There are numerous shows that have garnered critical acclaim or a strong word of mouth following that are deemed “must see” viewing. No doubt you, like myself, have a long “to do” list of programs that you need to “get round to watching” on top of those shows which are staples of your viewing regime. If you didn’t have enough programmes already to catch up with, we all have friends and family telling us about a “great show” that’s on a platform we don’t subscribe to, that we really need to see. It is quite extraordinary and a far cry from my youth when the UK simply had three terrestrial channels until satellite TV became popular in the late eighties. To paraphrase the former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan “we’ve never had it so good”.
This post is not intended to be a comprehensive review of music per se in 2024. It is simply a few thoughts on what I’ve been listening to over the course of the year and my ever changing relationship with the Terpsichorean muse. As a man in his fifties who has always enjoyed multiple genres of music and it is a comforting presence in day-to-day life. Up to a year ago, I relied upon my own music collection on my PC as the source of music to which I listened. Yet, this meant that I was somewhat locked into my own existing tastes and there was limited scope for me to find new material. This changed last December when I started subscribing to Spotify and since then it has become my primary source of music. It caters to my tastes, which at times are quite niche and it gently introduces me to new material without being too invasive. This has proven most beneficial.
This is my third attempt at writing this post. The first was a little too philosophical, tackling the nature of adult life and how it is a far cry from the childish notions I had about being a “grown up” when I was seven. The second was just a list of the various shit that has gone down in my life over the last twelve months and it felt far too much like whinging. Hopefully this one is more succinct and even handed. 2022 was not a good year, personally speaking. My family and I experienced a lot of health issues and my mother died after a rapid decline. Hence there has been a lot of stress and anxiety which has left me feeling tired and somewhat jaded. Due to the subsequent changes in my personal circumstances, I now find myself at somewhat of a “loose end”. I feel the need to channel my energies into something but I’m not sure exactly what at present.
So far I have written 135 blog posts in 2022. Not much compared to previous years, but frankly I’ve become a little despondent with writing in recent months (I shall expand more upon that in a moment). Hence, since October I have been enjoying a break from regular blogging. I have written sparingly and pursued other leisure activities. Given that my post output has gone down, it would be logical to assume that there has been a commensurate drop in web traffic to Contains Moderate Peril, but this is not the case. Overall, my monthly statistics have remained the same, proving once again that most of my readership find my written content via Google searches, rather than reading new material on a daily basis. This has given me much food for thought and added to my ongoing reflection upon my writing activities.
When I wrote Goodbye 2020 a year ago, I endeavoured to be philosophical and sanguine in my approach. It was a challenging year for all of us and for me it was further compounded by a bereavement. However, I strove to keep matters in perspective and tried to look at things in a broader context. I cannot be as even handed this time. 2021 has been a very difficult year for myself and my family and I will be glad to see the back of it. Nationally speaking, things haven’t been much better. I feel that we’ve squandered the initial progress that the COVID-19 vaccines offered. Obviously, I cannot do anything about the problems that the UK faces in 2022. However, I certainly intend to address some of the issues that I and my immediate family are facing. I am going to tackle some specific problems that need to be laid to rest and set myself some tangible goals to achieve. 2022 isn’t going to be something that just happens and I passively sit back and watch.
Getting older does have a few benefits. One of them, if you are fortunate enough to embrace the concept, is a degree of self awareness and the ability to be honest with yourself. Over the years I have tried to adjust my technological habits but ultimately I am a creature of habit. My use of technology and consumption of content has been determined by the decades I grew up in. Therefore, I am a PC user and prefer to sit in my office where I write, play games and peruse the internet. I have my desk set up in a way that suits my needs and I can go about my business in comfort. When away from my office, I rely heavily on my phone as an alternative platform. In some instances phone based apps offer a superior experience to the desktop or browser based PC alternatives. Banking being one example. For better or for worse this is how I do things and I am comfortable with these choices.
Usually in a post such as this, my primary focus would be writing about the games that I’ve played over the last twelve month and what it was about them that I specifically enjoyed. However, this year I feel that I must address the wider issues that have dominated the news regarding the video games industry. Simply put, several very high profile and successful triple A video game companies have been beset by scandals over the last twelve months. And these have been of such a nature that they have finally laid to rest the myth that some still cling to, that working “in video games” is somehow different from working in more traditional industries because it’s “cool”. It turns out that it has all the same failings as TV, music and film. The people at the top are abusive and broken and maltreat those at the coalface who do all the real work for precious little reward.
I can’t speak for others but my relationship with social media has certainly changed over the last two years. Whenever new internet technologies emerge, there is a brief period when it feels like some sort of new frontier. Often such innovations become a means of empowering the marginalised and the voiceless. For a while new platforms can even be a force for good. But eventually commercial interests creep in along with rules and regulations. Hence, it all inevitably takes a turn for the worst. The frontier is finally tamed and ends up being just another corporate space. Social media is certainly not a forum for discussing social issues or politics, instead being a medium for tribalism and rancour. Because of these factors and others, I have moderated my use of social media and it has proven extremely beneficial to my state of mind.
A very wise Vulcan once said “change is the essential process of all existence”. 2020 has demonstrated that unequivocally. How our privileged, pampered lives have altered over the last twelve months. We’ve had to stay at home, curtail our social interactions and reflect upon the meaning of existence. I appreciate that things are relative, so it’s not helpful to compare the concerns that discombobulate people today with the realities that folk had to endure during World War II for example. I won’t trivialise the sense of isolation and desperation some folk have felt over the lockdown. From my own perspective, my life as a carer is regimented and focused, so 2020 hasn’t really “cramped my style” to use an old fashioned phrase. However, several things happened over the course of the year that have had an impact upon myself and my family.
Let it suffice to say that due to current “circumstances”, Mrs P and I have watched a lot more TV this year. However, rather than just reiterate what we’ve viewed, which is already covered in my recurring blog post The Idiot Box, I thought I’d take the time to reflect upon some wider issues. TV has become a major source not only of entertainment but psychological support during this year’s social restrictions. The closure of cinemas for the majority of the past twelve months has meant that TV has had little or no competition. Furthermore, many of the films that may well have drawn audiences away, have come to the smaller screens a lot quicker. Never has so much TV been voraciously consumed. There’s also been a degree of nostalgia as viewers have watched popular shows at broadly similar times, reviving that sense of a shared experience that was so common in the seventies and eighties. However, the pandemic has also caused a slow down in TV production. Will the shortage of new content that many have predicted finally manifest itself next year?
In 2019, I went to the cinema just once to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I didn’t write a summary of the films I’d seen throughout that year, as I felt that mainstream releases had become far too formulaic and dull. 2020 has done little to change my perspective. The global pandemic has meant that Cinemas have spent most of the time closed and therefore many of this year’s major film releases have ended up on video on demand services. A few titles remain indefinitely postponed, such as the latest Bond movie No Time to Die, while Sony Pictures wait to see if “normality” resumes. But a film that is sitting on the shelf is not a film making money. Hence, Warner Bros. have announced that all their major releases for 2021 will be across multiple platforms simultaneously, thus ensuring a broader flow of revenue. This has not pleased director’s such as Christopher Nolan who argue passionately regarding the merits of cinema. But I doubt Mr. Nolan has ever had to endure an out of focus screening in the wrong aspect ratio at Cineworld, Rochester, where audiences talk and mess with their phones continuously.
Retrospective posts such as this can be a sprawling mess. There is also potential to cover the same old ground that I’ve covered in my monthly summaries “A Month in Gaming”. So I’ll try to be as succinct as I can. Firstly I won’t dwell too much on the iniquities of the video game industry as I’ve covered that elsewhere. Let it suffice to say that the notion of the “rock star developer” and the ethical publisher have proven false. Buying a triple A mainstream game is as morally compromised as buying a pair of jeans made by child labour. But let’s not get caught up in ethics. That’s another post. The pandemic meant that I, like many others, had far more leisure time this year and hence I spent that time gaming. It’s been a good year for video games publishers and the revenue has rolled in. Have I had fun while playing more games? Yes. The games have proven engaging and they also provide a lot to write about, so it’s a win, win scenario from my perspective.
In my lifetime technology has always been promoted as something that improves our lives, especially at a domestic level. The VCR in the eighties is a prime example of this. It liberated us from having to watch TV at a specific time and place. Then there the personal computer, which brought into our own homes tools, that until that point, had been exclusive to the office. And for all the ill that it brings, the internet has certainly made the world demonstrably smaller. It’s revolutionised shopping and has improved the administration of services. So overall, I still feel that technology is a force for good. However there have been changes. In recent years technology on a domestic level has ceased to be quite as transformative and become more of a disposable commodity. Tech is now a fashion accessory, with a distinct lifecycle and upgrade treadmill. It is fast becoming just another form of superfluous crap to fill your home with.
Despite the tumultuous events of the last twelve months and the accompanying emotional fallout that has followed in their wake, I’ve managed to keep writing throughout 2020. My output has been somewhat inconsistent this year and I’ve noticed some changes in what I write about. This is inevitable as one’s tastes and focus changes naturally change over time. I’m finding it tougher to write enthusiastically about the video games industry per se, as it has hardly covered itself in glory this year. However, I still enjoy writing film reviews although I haven’t set foot inside a cinema for over a year. I suspect that this will remain the case for much of 2021. My writing has broadened in its scope and I find myself writing social commentary about various aspects of life, rather than just posting articles about my hobbies. Sharing my thoughts on the pandemic itself and “caring for the elderly” has proven very cathartic. But as I’ve stated many times before, writing is one of the ways in which I make sense of the world around me.
Last year I tried to write a measured and balanced post about the passing of the year. Sadly this time round my attitude toward the departing 12-month period is somewhat binary. Yes there were a couple of highlights to 2019 but most of it was an uphill struggle and therefore not worth celebrating. It can frankly sod off and won’t be missed. The two high points were my son’s wedding in August and my renewed enthusiasm for blogging that came about due to the Blaugust writing event. But overall 2019 was a repetitive and somewhat depressing grind having to continuously deal with multiple family illnesses, numerous hospital visits and then at the end of the year a bereavement. Yes, these are things that happened to us all eventually and there is no escaping them but I appear to be trapped in this facet of the “circle of life”. Furthermore, until certain situations resolve themselves, I cannot make or implement any long-term plans. 2019 has been in many ways about just treading water.
Life is often cyclical, if you don’t believe me go watch The Lion King. I started 2018 playing The Lord of the Rings Online and by writing a post about how gamers collectively seem to repeat the same mistakes. And as the year and indeed the decade ends, I find myself once again playing the Yule Festival in LOTRO and reflecting upon how some games that garnered criticism over their egregious business models, have ended up as huge hits. It would appear that gamers are their own worst enemy. I shall leave the psychological analysis of paradox to others. From my perspective, irrespective of the iniquities of the video game industry and certain quarters of the gaming community, it has been a good year, gaming wise. I have enjoyed my time playing MMOs such as Star Trek Online, The Elder Scrolls Online and the aforementioned LOTRO. These and other titles have entertained me, provided me with an opportunity to unwind as well as affording me some much-needed social interaction. I particularly enjoy Wednesday evenings when I log into my Discord server and then chat and play collaboratively with longstanding gaming friends.
One of the benefits that comes with age (for some people at least), if the gift of realistic expectations. Having reached 51 years, I no longer harbour thoughts that each year will be a rollercoaster ride of excitement, mirth and personal gain. Nor do I count on the stars aligning so that I make my fortune and retire peacefully to the Cayman Islands, to live the life of a tax exile. If New Year’s Eve rolls round and no one has died, I’m not looking at being tried for murder and there’s still gin in the drinks cabinet, then I usually deem the previous twelve months an acceptable year. However, despite even these fairly lose and undemanding criteria I feel compelled to say that 2018 was bollocks and that I won’t be sad to see the back of it.
I did not manage to maintain my writing schedule this year and have not posted everyday as I would’ve liked. I have produced over two hundred and seventy posts but still feel I could have done more. Blaugust was a welcome burst of enthusiasm that I managed to sustain for September and October, but I lost momentum in the run up to Christmas. At least I know what the root cause is which puts me a step nearer to resolving it. Having written several posts in the past about “writers block” and the other perennial excuse of not having anything to write about, I seem to have squarely fallen into both those traps. At present I find that motivating myself is the key problem. If I haven’t started writing something by midday, then it more than often gets left for the day. If I intend to escape this malaise, then I shall have to establish a far stricter writing schedule for 2019 and endeavour to do my writing first thing in the morning, when I am most focused.
Throughout my adult life I have always gone to the cinema as a leisure activity. 2018 has been of note in this regard as it’s the year I’ve been to the cinema the least. I have visited my local multiplex just three times over the last twelve months. It’s not that good quality movies are not made anymore. Far from it. It’s just that they don’t always get released theatrically. Furthermore, the cost to entertainment ratio has simply become too much of a gamble. Standard tickets are priced between £12 to £15 locally and I resent such an outlay for a film that may only be adequate or worse. Perhaps my outlook on pricing is unreasonable but I am not going to pay such money for mediocre entertainment. I don’t expect every movie I see to be a cinematic milestone or genre classic but nor do I expect it to be an exercise in indifference. If I had paid such ticket prices to see The Predator or Death Wish at my local Cineworld, then I would have been singularly annoyed. Mercifully I saw them both at home and therefore at a much lower cost.
The term social media is a broad church. For me it primarily means Twitter as that is the only platform of that ilk that I use regularly. I maintain a presence on Facebook simply to stay in touch with friends who have emigrated to the US. We have a private page where we catch up instead of using the traditional medium of emails. It is more immediate but also more frivolous. If it weren’t for need that it serves, I would have long closed my Facebook account. 2018 was also the year where I tried to continue using Instagram but failed. I don’t tend to catalogue and display my life in the manner that this medium tends to demand and use it mainly to see what my granddaughters have been up to. For me Twitter is the social media platform I feel most comfortable using and feel that I have mastered. I use it to promote my writing and for quips, banter and social interaction. Beyond that I think its benefits are both limited and even questionable.
My relationship with technology has changed over the years and my enthusiasm has tempered greatly. Having worked in the IT field for 25 years (up until 2016), I have been immersed in technological advancement and due to my age have seen a great deal change. I was at one time an early adopter of anything I considered to be potentially beneficial to me and at times have been guilty of acquiring something “new and shiny” simply for its own sake. I have even flirted with that dubious notion of tech as a fashion accessory. But sometimes age does bring wisdom, so nowadays, I’m a firm believer in finding the sweet spot between “the right tool for the job” and “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. Subsequently, 2018 has not seem me acquire a great deal of new technology. However, what I have bought this year or started using has been well received and useful.
LOTRO: The State of the Game in Late 2025
Kingdoms of Harad, the 13th expansion for the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, was released today. Highlighting developer’s Standing Stone Games continuing commitment to this eighteen year old game. As 2025 draws to a close, I thought it would be prudent to reflect upon the current state of LOTRO and to consider what may come next year. Two words that I associated with this MMO are stable and consistent. The playerbase is loyal and dependable. Player numbers never greatly decline nor do they notably expand. LOTRO fills a very specific gaming niche and one of the reasons it retains its players is that there is no suitable alternative game. Although there is not a great deal of data in the public domain, it is generally accepted that LOTRO has an older player demographic and that many are consummate Tolkien fans.
Kingdoms of Harad, the 13th expansion for the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, was released today. Highlighting developer’s Standing Stone Games continuing commitment to this eighteen year old game. As 2025 draws to a close, I thought it would be prudent to reflect upon the current state of LOTRO and to consider what may come next year. Two words that I associated with this MMO are stable and consistent. The playerbase is loyal and dependable. Player numbers never greatly decline nor do they notably expand. LOTRO fills a very specific gaming niche and one of the reasons it retains its players is that there is no suitable alternative game. Although there is not a great deal of data in the public domain, it is generally accepted that LOTRO has an older player demographic and that many are consummate Tolkien fans.
This is the third expansion for the game that is set in the South of Middle-earth. Although many aspects of the MMO remain consistently good, such as the story telling and character development, I personally haven’t warmed to this area. Umbar, Harad and Khand are not especially detailed regions within Tolkien’s writing. I feel that the game developers have drawn too much from a stereotypical depiction of Middle-eastern culture. The sort you see in Western pop culture depictions of Sinbad and Ali Baba. For me it is an incongruous contrast to the established regions of Middle-earth. I’d rather these areas had just remained alluded to within the game, the same way they are in the Legendarium. However, what I am describing is a matter of taste. I’m sure there are LOTRO players who feel the opposite.
The latest expansion sees an increase in the level cap from 150 to 160. Thus there will be a need to replace all your existing jewellery, weapons and armour equipped on your alts. It may feel somewhat arbitrary but levelling remains an important element to many players, as does the gear treadmill. No doubt there will be an increase in the virtue traits level cap, so there is plenty to work towards over the month ahead. The expansion will at some point include new raids and instances but these really are a niche requirement and only a nominal amount of players playthrough such content. There are no new classes or races and Kingdoms of Harad does not include any new systems or mechanics. However, this should come as no surprise as SSG tends to work within established confines.
The most significant event for LOTRO this year was the migration to 64-bit servers and the regional consolidation. The lag issue that has plagued this MMO for years has definitely improved but has not been totally eliminated. The main issue that SSG faces is a knowledge gap, as the majority of staff that built the game have gone. It’s not a case of SSG not wanting to fix issues but the fact that they can’t. Hence the game still cannot adequately support 2K and 4K gaming. It is the main reason why LOTRO always gets “more of the same”. Quests, instances and missions are known quantities. More ambitious projects such as overhauling the deed log have proven far harder. There is also a long list of issues that SSG have said that they will “look into” that remain outstanding. Standardising event or faction based barter currency is one example. Removing outdated systems from the HUD being another.
If you pay attention to the press releases from the business side of the Daybreak Game Company, it is clear that LOTRO is financially sustainable within its existing parameters. It has a stable playerbase and yields a sufficient ROI to keep moving forward. However, it was made clear by CEO Ji Ham that the much touted graphics upgrade and console version of the game would not go ahead because of the cost. He stated that they could get a new game for the price. LOTRO players have conjectured whether the cancellation of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings based MMO, will have an impact upon LOTRO. Could it mean further investment? I think not. The video game industry is contracting at present and is extremely risk averse. LOTRO continues because it generates sufficient revenue within its operational parameters. It is not seen, in business terms, as anything more than the sum of its parts.
LOTRO players have a strong emotional attachment to the game. I also believe that the developers SSG do the best with the budgets and resources they have to work with. However, I think that it is unrealistic to expect anything more from this vintage MMO other than what it currently offers. I believe I said exactly the same thing 3 or 4 years ago in a similar post. Hence, for me the most sensible thing to do going into 2026 is be content that LOTRO still endures. At some point in the New Year a roadmap for the next twelve months will be published, although I don’t expect any surprises. A year-long content schedule will be sufficient to keep me happy. Anything else is a bonus. Due to the tumultuous nature of the video game industry at present, perhaps it isn’t wise to look any further ahead. The road may not go “ever on and on” forever.
The next expansion for the MMORG, The Lord of the Rings Online, was announced on the 1st August, via the gaming website MMORPG.The Wolves of Mordor, which will launch later in the year, appears ambitious in scope as it will include two new game systems as well as the obligatory story update. This expansion takes place in Draugardh located in the North East of Mordor, beyond the Plateau of Gorgoroth. It includes the new zones of Heledhris, Parth Rhavas and Nan Ogol. These vary environmentally ranging from the arid, volcanic and semi-tropical. Players will encounter the Daugrim in these regions, Werewolves but not in the modern sense. This is not the lycanthropy of Eastern European legends but in the established Tolkien idiom of fell spirits inhabiting the bodies of Wolves. The region also sees the return of the Woses and players can expect to encounter Elves and scouts from Gondor. As ever with LOTRO expansions, there will be new instances as well as a raid.
I was recently perusing my archive of old blog posts, when it struck me how much I’ve written about the MMORPG genre over the years. Naturally, there was far more material from between 2008 and 2012 as that was period when I immersed myself in the genre and was very enthusiastic about it. I was at a point in my life when I had the time to dedicate to such games and I was happy to participate in the social aspect of they offered. I would regularly play through group content and spend time socialising online with fellow guild members. My experience remains a textbook example of how online games can be more than the sum of their parts and that where you are at in your life has a major impact upon your overall enjoyment. As I read though various old posts it became clear that my experiences where specific to this particular part of my life and that they cannot be repeated. My relationship with the genre is very different now and that’s fine.
Video games as a genre are extremely poor at explaining themselves. When you buy a new game you’ll often find little or no information regarding the basic systems and mechanics. The industry assumes that their customers are by default familiar with the fundamentals of playing a modern video game. Hence if a game has a tutorial, it is often based around videos rather than detailed verbal instructions. You are are briefly shown a clip of a specific move being successfully undertaken but it is seldom shown in a wider context. The industry also expects the fan community to take on the role of curating and disseminating information about its games. The move away from forums and bespoke websites to Discord highlights this. Discord is a primarily a real time communication tool and not good at maintaining a historical data archive. If you want an answer to a specific gaming question, you’ll more than likely find it on YouTube in a video made by a fellow gamer.
According to the recent “letter to the players”, Standing Stone Games will be adding a new zone to the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online in the second quarter of this year. Possibly around May or June. Having spent the last three expansions in the South of Middle-earth exploring the tropical Umbar and the deserts of Harad, I would certainly welcome a change of location. I have gradually warmed to these zones over the last eighteen months but I do find them so incongruous. They are so radically different to the European style content that has been the mainstay of the game for so long. Tolkien’s source text has plenty of detail regarding Eriador and Rhovanion. Information regarding Harad is scarce, hence it has afforded the developers a great deal of artistic freedom. Although exceedingly well realised these tropical zones have taken a while for me to get used to.
I’m not sure exactly when it started but I’ve recently noticed a graphical bug within the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online. This problem often occurs within caves or in areas where there are a lot of rocky surfaces. Hence it has become very apparent in the latest two expansions, set in Umbar and Harad. This graphical glitch causes some surface textures to appear to flash from light to dark intermittently. The resulting strobe effect is hard to ignore and very distracting. Fortunately, a quick online search showed that this is not a problem unique to my installation of LOTRO and is a known problem. Furthermore, there is a very simple workaround, which is to go into the Advanced Graphics setting and uncheck “Per Pixel Lighting”, which immediately remedies the problem. I have no idea why this has recently started to happen but at least it can be resolved.
The latest expansion for the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, Kingdoms of Harad, launched on December 3rd. With this release the level cap was raised from 150 to 160. It should also be noted that the cap for virtue traits was also raised from 96 to 100. Naturally these changes meant that there is a requirement to replace all armour and jewellery once the new cap is reached. Similarly Legendary Items have to be reforged and any traceries upgraded or replaced. If you follow the Epic Story it will lead you from quest hub to quest hub. The main quest rewards, along with those from side quests will provide adequate gear as you slowly progress towards the new level cap. The new raids, instances and missions/delvings then provide a means to acquire higher quality level 160 gear. LOTRO and indeed, many other MMOs are consistent in this methodology.
It is customary in a post such as this to list the various games that I’ve played over the last twelve months and share my thoughts on them. Wider analysis of the video game industry is also de rigeur. Unfortunately, I don’t really feel disposed to do either of those two things. My thoughts on the games I’ve played have already been published and can easily be accessed via the links at the bottom of this post. As for the video game industry, it suffers the same flaws as music, TV and cinema. There is creativity and innovation out there but it is often drowned out by mainstream products which are demonstrably inferior due to their inherent mediocrity. As for the business side of things, we once again clearly see the failings of the corporate management class. Sadly, they do not face the consequences of the mistakes that they make.
Today Standing Stone Games began beta testing Update 46.1 for the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online. The current preview on the Bullroarer test server is mainly for the new instance cluster that comes with the Kingdoms of Harad expansion which launched a few weeks ago. However, it would appear that this latest preview has another feature or note. One that should please LOTRO players. Contrary to what a lot of people thought, myself included, SSG have been working on a scaling UI for 2K and 4K monitors and the results are now available for testing from today Monday 15th through to Friday 19th December. Until now the main workaround to the lack of UI scaling has been to use either Nvidia or AMD graphics software to upscale the game from 1920 x 1080, or a third party app such as LosslessScaling. Having an official solution is a far better option.
Kingdoms of Harad, the 13th expansion for the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, was released today. Highlighting developer’s Standing Stone Games continuing commitment to this eighteen year old game. As 2025 draws to a close, I thought it would be prudent to reflect upon the current state of LOTRO and to consider what may come next year. Two words that I associated with this MMO are stable and consistent. The playerbase is loyal and dependable. Player numbers never greatly decline nor do they notably expand. LOTRO fills a very specific gaming niche and one of the reasons it retains its players is that there is no suitable alternative game. Although there is not a great deal of data in the public domain, it is generally accepted that LOTRO has an older player demographic and that many are consummate Tolkien fans.
The MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online runs on a broad spectrum of PCs. From archaic laptops to high end gaming rigs, although it may require a bit of tweaking. At present, the optimal way to play the MMO is at a resolution of 1920x1080 (FHD) with the graphics setting maxed out. The graphics are sharp and the UI is readable. However, a growing number of gamers are now using 2K and 4K monitors. You can play LOTRO at higher resolutions such as 2560×1440 (QHD) and 3840x2160 (UHD) and the game looks great. However, the UI does not scale and so is very small on 2K and 4K monitors. The skill icons on the quickslots (shortcut bars) and the in-game text become difficult to see at these resolutions, which deters some players from using them. It is a known issue that Standing Stone Games are attempting to address but it is unlikely to be resolved any time soon.
I recently read a post on Massively Overpowered about skills rotation in the MMORPG genre. I found the subsequent discussion in the comments fascinating. Mainly because I have never used a fixed rotation of skills in any of the MMORPGs that I play. I understand the reasoning behind such things and why some players want to optimise their combat performance. Using one’s skills in a specific order to maximise damage and manage their subsequent cooldown has a logical appeal. In Star Trek Online, some players go so far as to create keybinds for their rotations and assign it to a specific hotkey, which is then continuously pressed throughout combat. However, rotations are a blunt tool that lack flexibility, often being geared towards dealing with a single target or using an area of effect skill against a larger group. They may not be the optimal approach to combat when things do not go to plan.
Tolkien enthusiasts may recollect Athlon Games, a subsidiary of Leyou Technologies, announcing that it was developing a new MMORPG, based upon The Lord of the Rings, back in September 2018. The following summer, it was revealed that Amazon Game Studios was the partner developer for the project. In late 2020, Leyou Technologies (a Hong Kong-based company), was acquired by the Chinese conglomerate Tencent. This triggered a contract clause with the license holder, Middle-earth Enterprises, allowing them to terminate the existing arrangement if a new deal could not be met. Amazon and Tencent were unable to agree upon how to proceed with the project, leading Amazon to withdraw from negotiations. The project was subsequently scrapped. No details or images of the MMO have been released.
After a six month migration period, Standing Stone Games formally closed all their legacy 32-bit game servers for the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online, on the 31st August 2025. Despite this planned closure being widely discussed via the game’s official forums, professional video game websites and fan blogs, many LOTRO players were unaware of this deadline. Hence many were unable to migrate their respective alts to the new 64-bit servers. Naturally those affected by these closures were upset, especially those with longstanding characters who didn’t relish the prospect of starting from scratch with a new alt. Thankfully, SSG have been true to their word and as of today, have re-opened these “dark worlds” to character transfers. If you have an alt trapped on one of the older game worlds, then now is the time to use the transfer wizard and move them to a new active game world.
MMORPG announced earlier today and it was subsequently confirmed by Standing Stone games, that the new expansion for The Lord of the Rings Online will be Kingdoms of Harad and that it will launch later in the year. The expansion will see the conclusion of the epic Song of Waves and Wind storyline and the level cap raised from 150 to 160. There will be a new region to explore, Mûr Ghala, comprising four zones. Adagîm, Idagâl, An Shêru and Kighân. The latter contains the main trading hub of Zajâna. Players will travel into the region with Gandalf the White, along with allies of the Kindred of Coins and Mizadi as they seek to counter the regional power struggle brought about by the fall of Sauron. Canonically, this takes place three months after the destruction of the ring, hence King Elessar and Eomer are busy with domestic affairs in their respective kingdoms.
Skirmishes were added to the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, in 2009 with the release of the Siege of Mirkwood expansion. Skirmishes are a repeatable and scalable combat system that allows players to access various instances for solo or group play from anywhere in the in-game world. Players can choose a Skirmish Soldier from a variety of classes to accompany them and provide healing, tank or additional DPS. On paper it’s a great system which is why many other MMOs offer something similar. I recently decided to tinker with my Skirmish Soldier build on my main character to see if I could optimise their performance. As my primary alt is a Lore-master, for the last few years I have had a Warrior as their Skirmish Soldier, to take some of the aggro from attacking mobs. I used the excellent guide by FibroJedi and swapped over a few Training and Personal Traits.
On 2nd August 2025, I was playing the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, on my primary character, a level cap Lore-master. I decided to continue with one of the Allegiance Quest lines, specifically Durin’s Folk. I played through several quests and earned the appropriate tokens that advance the Allegiance system. I then handed these in to the NPC in the Hall Under the Mountain, expecting the next quest in the series “Chapter 3: Gimli’s Request” to be unlocked. An item appeared in my inventory that I then clicked on, which should have bestowed the quest. Unfortunately, nothing happened. Furthermore, the item vanished from my bag and therefore I could not attempt to click it again. I checked the LOTRO Wiki and then looked around the Hall Under the Mountain to see if any NPC had a ring icon above their head. As they did not, I surmised that this was a software glitch and logged a support ticket with Standing Stone Games.
Let’s start with a quote from a classic Walter Hill film, The Warriors. “Can you count, suckers?” says Sirus. The gang leader was referring to the number of Police in New York City at the time. Whereas, for the purpose of this post, I am referencing how many Delving Writs a player needs to acquire 6 pieces of level cap armour in LOTRO. Because, next to the gear you get from endgame instances and raids, Delving gear is a good alternative.. It is marginally better than the items you can get from lootboxes. Hence, Delving armour is a good source of high end gear for the solo player. Through the miracle of mathematics, the number of Delving writs required to acquire a full set of this armour is 9,000. At first glance, that seems like a lot. If you then do some further research to put the number in context, you realise it is indeed a lot and a substantial undertaking.
I am currently enjoying a renewed interest in the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online since I migrated all my characters from the old 32-bit servers to the new 64-bit replacements. I’ve created a new High Elf Lore-master on Peregrin server and am currently levelling them in a targeted play through of the Epic Story, supplemented by curated side quests. While playing recently, I realised the game UI on this alt wasn’t as I usually have it laid out. So I checked through the various documents on my PC and found a text file I had created many years ago that had a few hints and tips written down. I’ve added a few more and decided to share them as a blog post. I’m sure veteran players will be familiar with many of them but a lot of them are worth repeating. They may prove useful to those new to LOTRO or returning to the game after a long hiatus.
In mid-March, while the server migration debacle raged, I created a new alt for the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online, on Peregrin server. The idea was to play casually through content focusing on enjoyment, rather than worrying about progression. I was to level at a pace that suited me and had no specific plans to develop my alt in any particular way. I have been playing LOTRO since 2008 and have a primary level-cap character that has been my main focus over the years. Hence I have previously experienced all story content from all the expansions and am therefore very familiar with what the game has to offer. Which is why I thought I’d do things differently this time. So I started my new Lore-master in Mossward in Swanfleet, the new starting area added to the game in 2022.
In massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), alts (short for alternate characters), are new characters created by a player in addition to their primary character (often called the “main”). Alts are often encouraged by developers as a means to keep players engaged with their game(s). Sometimes an MMO will actively reward the creation of alts either with access to exclusive content, or with additional skills or items previously unlocked by primary characters. As the myth that an MMO really begins at endgame still persists in gaming culture, some games sell boosts that will instantly raise the level of an alt to that of the current level cap. Creating alts is such a key aspect of the MMO genre, that some games will sell additional character slots, so that players can create further alts beyond the default amount allowed. There are many reasons why players create alts. Let us consider some.
I wrote a while ago that a lot of kinships from the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online, would probably not survive the recent server migration. MMOs are social endeavours by nature, often with strong emotional ties but a lot of kinships (or guilds) have already fallen into decline, simply due to gaming entropy. Hence the migration has seen players leave existing kinships to move to the superior 64-bit servers, resulting in a lot of people who may be potentially looking for a new home. This is exactly what happened to me. I opted to move to Meriadoc server promptly, at the cost of leaving a kinship I have been a member of since 2009. However, the move presented me with an opportunity to remedy this problem myself. I subsequently set up my own kinship and decided to make it available to others.
The dust appears to have settled for the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, after last month’s server transfer debacle. Despite the technical issues arising and subsequent delays to the migration timetable as well as the procurement of in-game housing, LOTRO seems to be enjoying a minor resurgence. Many former players are returning to the game and moving retired alts to new servers, due to the superior performance. The migration issues have also brought a lot of attention to this 18 year old game and it would appear there are many new players trying this Tolkien themed MMO. I was pleasantly surprised to see that a further two 64-bit servers, Grond (EU) and Sting (US), are to be added to the game to meet demand. As I predicted in my previous posts, LOTRO has a habit of bouncing back due to its unique niche in the gaming ecosystem.
It has not been a good week for the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online and its developer Standing Stone Games. The migration from legacy 32-bit servers to 64-bit servers has not gone smoothly. The transfer queue was overwhelmed by the sheer number of accounts and it has taken far longer than expected to process the backlog of requests. Today has been the fifth day of waiting to see if my 3 main characters from Laurelin server have successfully migrated to their new home on Meriadoc. When I checked this morning, the transfer wizard indicated that my characters were back where they originally came from. I therefore considered repeating the entire process. However, around midday, Community Manager Cordovan indicated that SSG had caught up with transfer requests made around 8:00 AM EST on Sunday 9th March. So I decided to be patient and wait a little longer.
I’ve been busy this weekend, so it wasn’t until late afternoon today that I found time to sit down and attempt to migrate my characters from the old 32-bit server Laurelin, to the new 64-bit server Meriadoc. The “Great Server Migration” has not gone smoothly and the week has been a litany of changing deadlines and unfulfilled expectations. However, developer’s Standing Stone Games, have been “firefighting” issues on a daily basis and communicating regularly with the player base of the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online. Sadly, a lot of players have not responded well to the ongoing technical difficulties and there is subsequently a lot of ill feeling on the official forums. I have chosen to adopt a more pragmatic outlook and to let events run their course.
Standing Stone Games were scheduled to open their new 64-bit servers for the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online, today. However, when the free transfer service went live yesterday, it was quickly overwhelmed by the sheer number of players trying to migrate their alts from the older 32-bit servers to the new ones. Eventually SSG had to disable the transfer facility so that they could process the backlog. Hence today’s launch of the new servers has been postponed till tomorrow. In the meantime, the official LOTRO forum’s have gone into meltdown with irate players berating the developers for handling the migration poorly. True to form, SSG have been somewhat defensive and prickly in response to what they see as unjust criticism. Let it suffice to say that neither party has covered themselves in glory and there is a good chance that the technical problems will persist a while longer.
What Massively Overpowered calls LOTRO’s “Great Server Migration” began today. The MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online has opened 4 new 64-bit servers in conjunction with the 2 existing 64-bit legendary servers and the long term plan is to migrate all current players over to them. Eventually, the 32-bit legacy servers will be shut down, however that is a long way off at present. As of today, VIP players can select a new server, log into it and create new characters with their desired names. These placeholder characters cannot be played at present but can be used to reserve names. Tomorrow, if all goes well, the new servers formally open and free transfers begin. Players can then delete placeholder characters and rename alts that they have migrated, thus restoring desired names. It should be noted that none of this is mandatory and players can remain on the old servers for the present.
I have many pleasant memories associated with playing the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online during its first decade. A lot of them are due to the kinship (guild) that I have been a member of since 2009. I started playing LOTRO in December 2008 and it took me a while to find a suitable kinship but once I did, it made logging into the game a real pleasure. I was at a point in my life where I had sufficient time to play the game regularly and take part in kinship organised raids. It was also an added bonus to be able to spend some time and chat with some like minded people. I’m sure such an experience is not unique to me and that many LOTRO players have enjoyed similar periods of time. The lucky ones may still be enjoying a comparable kinship experience today.
I have two monitors on my desk. The first (which is the primary monitor as far as my PC is concerned), is on the left and the second is on the right. The primary monitor is a 24 Dell U2412M, which has a resolution of 1920 x 1200. It therefore has an aspect ratio of 16:10 which adds a little extra desktop real estate, which I prefer when writing. The second monitor is a 24 inch Dell S2421H with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080. It has an aspect ratio of 16:9 which is standard FHD. My chair is adjacent to the middle of my desk and I can turn according to each monitor I’m using. I tend to use the primary, larger monitor on the left for tasks such as writing via Google Docs and emails. The second monitor on the right is used for YouTube and gaming. This is because of its FHD format. I also have a Nintendo Switch connected to the second monitor for the same reason.
I always remember the sage wisdom of the great children’s TV character Huxley Pig. “If in panic, if in doubt. Run in circles, scream and shout”. Such was the initial reaction of players of the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, when it was announced recently that there is to be a new 64-bit server rollout in Q1 of 2025. At first glance, new servers are surely a good thing? The 64-bit legendary servers, which were tested in 2024, have proven to be a success and do much to address the lag issues that plague the existing 32-bit servers. Surely this is what players want? Well, yes it is, in principle but new infrastructure ultimately raises the issue of server migrations. Developer’s Standing Stone Games intend to consolidate the player population in the long term with the addition of 4 new 64-bit servers. The 2 legendary servers will remain but the 32-bit legacy servers will eventually close.
Bree Royce, editor-in chief at Massively Overpowered, recently asked the question “what is the most expensive MMORPG right now”. My first thought was to search through my old draft blog posts and track down an MMO cost analysis I wrote circa 2019. It includes data such as subscription rates and the price of current expansions. There was also information on what were the most popular cash shop items at the time. However, I then read some of the comments that had been left on Bree’s post and I quickly realised that this wasn’t just a matter of financial expenditure. Whether or not an MMO is expensive is also determined by one’s disposable income, respective wealth and personal relationship with money. The latter is perhaps the most important, irrespective whether you consider yourself rich or poor.
Strictly Come Dancing 2025: The Thomas Skinner Controversy
Strictly Come Dancing remains the BBC’s flagship light entertainment show for Autumn. Despite controversy and scandal, the show bounced back last year and firmly re-established itself as the “feel good, family show” it has always claimed to be. Blind comedian Chris McCausland becoming the 2024 champion certainly validated the show’s commitment to diversity and inclusion and helped place Strictly (as it is known to its fans) back on its cultural pedestal. I’m sure those involved in the production of the show breathed a sigh of relief when the season ended on such a positive note, eclipsing the negative press that had been ever present last summer. Second chances and opportunities for a “course correction” are few and far between these days. Especially when you have elements of the UK press waiting with bated breath and hoping that you’ll fail.
Strictly Come Dancing remains the BBC’s flagship light entertainment show for Autumn. Despite controversy and scandal, the show bounced back last year and firmly re-established itself as the “feel good, family show” it has always claimed to be. Blind comedian Chris McCausland becoming the 2024 champion certainly validated the show’s commitment to diversity and inclusion and helped place Strictly (as it is known to its fans) back on its cultural pedestal. I’m sure those involved in the production of the show breathed a sigh of relief when the season ended on such a positive note, eclipsing the negative press that had been ever present last summer. Second chances and opportunities for a “course correction” are few and far between these days. Especially when you have elements of the UK press waiting with bated breath and hoping that you’ll fail.
For those who live outside of the UK or who do not watch Strictly, it is worth taking a few moments to consider the significance of the show, its importance to the BBC and its place in UK pop culture. Strictly has grown from its humble origins in 2004 as a celebrity dance talent show, to a national institution and a text book example of “feel-good TV”. It champions dancing, fitness, inclusivity and celebrity re-invention. It regularly has an audience of over 7 million viewers and has been licensed to over 60 other countries under the title Dancing With the Stars. The show has a broadly wholesome reputation and as such has proven accessible to a wide audience. It appeals to wide eyed fans, families, casual viewers and even cynical old curmudgeons like myself, as learning to dance is a prodigious undertaking requiring dedication and fortitude. Strictly is also a great way for actors, artists and media personalities to revitalise their careers.
Bearing this all in mind, the fact that Strictly is a big deal in entertainment terms and that it has bounced back after a problematic year, let us address the elephant in the room that manifested itself in late summer when this year’s contestants were announced. Why did the BBC decide to include Thomas Skinner in this year’s line up? For those who are unfamiliar with Mr Skinner, he is a UK businessman and TV personality who is best known for appearing on The Apprentice. At first glance, this is hardly controversial. However, if you look further Thomas Skinner has clear political affiliations with the likes of J.D. Vance and Robert Jenrick, has spoken out publicly on several issues such as crime in London and the performance of Mayor Sadiq Khan and is potentially seeking a political career with either the Conservative Party or Reform UK. He has been offered support by Dominic Cummings.
Strictly has always been a bastion of inclusivity. Straight, gay, able bodied, disabled, all are welcome on the show. The show has even included former politicians, such as Anne Widdecombe and Ed Balls. However, these were individuals who were no longer directly involved in frontline politics at the time of their appearance. It can be argued that this is not the case with Thomas Skinner. Furthermore, Mr Skinner is linked to a type of popular politics that has specific views regarding diversity and inclusion. Things they perceive as being “woke” or the province of the left. A percentage of the UK electorate and thus Strictly viewers, see the sort of politics and ideology that Mr Skinner is affiliated to as populist, nationalist and even racist. Hence his inclusion in this year’s show was not well received by all. Others see it as a politically useful Trojan Horse.
If you peruse the in-depth musings on Strictly by its hard core fans on such platforms as Reddit, Instagram and TikTok, you’ll find several recurring complaints regarding Thomas Skinner. Firstly, that he potentially contradicts the show’s inclusivity philosophy with his personal views and political outlook. Secondly, his very presence diminishes the feel good factor inherent in Strictly by dragging real world politics into the show. Something that fans wish to escape. Thirdly, the inclusion of a person with clear right wing leanings will further exacerbate the tabloid press frenzy regarding the show, as much of the UK print media is owned and edited by figures of a similar political disposition. Hence, a show designed to bring audiences together may potentially become a vehicle for bi-partisan politics and a further bridgehead in the ongoing culture war.
The BBC has long been a target for the political right, being seen as institutionally biased against them and a platform for all the political and cultural ideas that they are mainly against. The BBC in its naivete continues to seek balance in all things and thus ultimately giving a platform and possibly an excess of air time to those who would happily see it brought to heel or closed. It can be argued that in principle, Thomas Skinner should be able to participate in a show such as Strictly Come Dancing and be treated the same as anyone else. He is competing in a dance based reality show and no more. However, the reality of the situation is quite the opposite. Television of this kind is about more than just entertainment. It is a platform for messaging and promoting a media persona. Look at what appearing on a few episodes of the comedy panel show Have I Got News For You did for Boris Johnson’s career.
It was inevitable that the inclusion of a person such as Thomas Skinner on a high profile TV show such as Strictly, would result in a political bunfight. The BBC cannot claim surprise at this? Perhaps they chose to do so as a way of declaring to their opponents, “look we aren’t biased. Here’s one of your people”. An act of appeasement or the extending of an olive branch, perhaps? However, such a move never works. As any child will tell you, you can’t befriend your bully. Which means that for however long Thomas Skinner remains on the show, the wider coverage will be about his politics and him personally, as opposed to his dancing prowess. More cynical viewers believe that he has been partnered with Amy Dowden, a much loved professional dancer who has been battling multiple illnesses, as a means to negate the negative optics. If that is the case I doubt it will work.
This Saturday’s second episode of this year’s Strictly will see the first couple voted off the show. Someone has to go and it usually is the celebrity with the least skill. However, the participation of Mr Skinner and the media circus that follows means that whatever happens, the situation will be portrayed negatively for the show and what it represents, in the tabloid press. No doubt there will be plenty of political capital to be gained. If Thomas is eliminated, it will be because the liberal elite establishment conspired against him and if he endures, then it will be a triumph of British traditionalism over the woke cultural Marxism. The right wing media headlines effectively write themselves, the BBC scores a massive own goal and the viewing public are left with an unpleasant aftertaste as their favourite pop culture safe place is dragged through the sewer of contemporary politics.
Keep dancing.
Strictly Come Dancing remains the BBC’s flagship light entertainment show for Autumn. Despite controversy and scandal, the show bounced back last year and firmly re-established itself as the “feel good, family show” it has always claimed to be. Blind comedian Chris McCausland becoming the 2024 champion certainly validated the show’s commitment to diversity and inclusion and helped place Strictly (as it is known to its fans) back on its cultural pedestal. I’m sure those involved in the production of the show breathed a sigh of relief when the season ended on such a positive note, eclipsing the negative press that had been ever present last summer. Second chances and opportunities for a “course correction” are few and far between these days. Especially when you have elements of the UK press waiting with bated breath and hoping that you’ll fail.
At the beginning of April, Mrs P and I went to the Churchill Theatre in Bromley to see Speakeasy, a dance show starring Karen Hauer and Gorka Marquez (of Strictly Come Dancing Fame). It was 100 minutes of Mamba, Salsa, Charleston, Foxtrot and Samba dance numbers and it was very well received by the audience. I don’t usually go to such shows but I enjoyed it because it was focused, dynamic and “did exactly what it said on the tin”, to invoke a cliché. As a result, we promptly booked tickets for a similar show that was scheduled for July. This one, Dianne & Vito: Red Hot and Ready, features Vito Coppola and Dianne Buswell, another two of the professional dancers from Strictly (as the cool kids call it). Once again the show was at the Churchill Theatre, which is proving to be quite a good local venue.
Tonight’s results for week 5 of Strictly Come Dancing (season 22) have once again demonstrated that this show is more than just a dancing competition to UK viewers. If it were just a case of determining who are the best dancers, then JB Gill would not have been in the dance off. The judges may well see things exclusively in such terms but the public clearly do not. I last wrote about this phenomenon in 2019 and I think it appropriate to raise the subject again as this season of Strictly seems to be bucking past trends and I suspect we may be in for further upsets in the run up to the season finale. Broadly speaking, the public usually tends to vote in a manner similar to the official leaderboard. Hence, those who score the lowest usually end up in the dance off. Occasionally an underdog will be championed and kept on the show but that trend seems to have lost its novelty in recent years. This season appears to be quite different.
I make no bones about the fact that I watch Strictly Come Dancing every year. For those who live outside of the UK, this is the original version of the dancing reality show that you probably know as Dancing With the Stars in your country. It is still a big deal in the UK as far as TV ratings go, getting audiences on average of 6.6 million viewers. There are many aspects of the show that are textbook examples of prime time, popular entertainment but I like it because the “celebrities” that take part are ultimately learning a skill that is genuinely difficult. The latest season of Strictly, as it is known to its fans, is especially interesting as the BBC had a major PR problem earlier in the year, where several previous participants made allegations of bullying and abuse about their pro-dancer partners. An investigation is still ongoing and in the meantime, the two professional dancers that were named have withdrawn from the show. Hence everyone involved with the latest season are all on message, stating that it’s “all about having fun”.
Rather than continue to analyse each week’s show, which after all is a somewhat over saturated field, I thought it would be more interesting to write about the different facets of Strictly Come Dancing. The one I particularly wish to focus upon this time is the voting system and how it often highlights a differing of opinion between the professional judges on the show and the British public. For the past two weeks now there have been several celebrity dancers in the dreaded dance off who are far from the weakest performers. This has led to competent individuals leaving the show unexpectedly early. In many ways the voting system and the fact that no one can be considered safe is one the key factors that keeps Strictly popular and in the media spotlight. However, it also provides some pause for thought. The judges broadly mark and assess the celebrity dancers based upon their talent and performance. If they do not like a routine but still appreciate its technical merits, then they reflect that in their scores. However, the public seem to approach things quite differently.
Strictly Come Dancing is now over halfway through the season and there’s no room for mistakes or relying on past successes. The judges will now penalise technical errors and the public votes have now become less predictable. With Blackpool on the horizon, there was a lot at stake last night. Karim Zeroual and Amy Dowden danced the Viennese Waltz to Give Me Love by Ed Sheeran. However, he did make several errors during the routine and was noticeably rattled by the end. Subsequently, he scored lower than last week. On a positive note, Saffron made a major comeback. Her Waltz with AJ was outstanding, lacking the excesses of her previous dance. This was a focused and traditional routine and it was very well received. Kelvin an Oti’s Samba was a success with the audiences but the judges still found some minor mistakes, so they dropped a few marks. Michelle Visage excelled with a slick American Smooth. Her professional partner Giovanni Pernice always fines the right balance between the theatrics and traditional dance content. At present, these four couples are the frontrunners in the show.
Saturday was week 7 of Strictly Come Dancing and it definitely showed. This is the stage in the series where the judges take the gloves off and start getting picky, even with those who are clearly at the top of the leaderboard. Hence, Kelvin Fletcher and Oti Mabuse's Viennese Waltz along with Michelle Visage and Giovanni Pernice who danced the Paso Doble, didn’t score as highly as you’d expect. The judges pointed out technical aspects that were wanting in both routines. But that’s what they’re supposed to do so I have no issues with these criticisms. We are also at the point where certain dances can throw a lifeline to some celebrity dancers. Hence Chris Ramsey and Karen Hauer’s Street/Commercial dance really played to their core fanbase and more importantly, Chris’s dancing strengths. I doubt he’ll better this routine and it should keep him in the show a little longer.
Although Saturday night provided yet another excellent show, Strictly Come Dancing was notable for the absence of audience favourite Will Bayley. The Paralympian injured himself during training after he jumped from a table whilst practising his jive routine. According to Will “I jumped off a table. And as I landed, I landed with straightened legs,” he explained. “I thought I broke my leg because I never felt anything like it before. To hear the words I absolutely can’t dance was just really gutting for me. But I need to recover now and come back even stronger next week”. Thankfully, the comprehensive rules that govern Strictly allows for a week’s absence due to injury. However, if Will cannot resume dancing for next Saturday’s show, then he may have to retire from the entire series. If this does unfortunately happen, then it will also require the show’s producers to revise the schedule with regard to future eliminations, so that Strictly continues to follow the pre-set timetable.
Week 5 of Strictly Come Dancing once again saw some significant improvement among the celebrity dancers. Most notable were Alex Scott and Neil Jones who delivered a very enthusiastic Charleston. For the first time it appeared that both the technical and performance aspects of dancing “clicked” for Alex. After being saved by the judges in last week’s dance-off, Emma Weymouth and Aljaž Škorjanec's put on a beautiful display with their Viennese Waltz. The judge’s marks reflected their progress respectively by all awarding 9 marks out of 10. Then there was Will Bayley and Janet Janette Manrara whose emotional contemporary dance left judges Motsi Mabuse and Alfonso Ribeiro in tears. Will said before this year’s series that he was taking part in Strictly to “inspire people with a disability”. He certainly seems to be doing so and his commitment to the show and his constant training have earned him a strong fan base among viewers.
Well Saturday night’s show was an utter revelation. Many of the celebrity dancers who have been previously at the lower end of the leaderboard and therefore at risk of being in the dance off, decided to significantly up their game. Not only did this make for great entertainment, it also succinctly reiterated one of the fundamental aspects of what makes Strictly Come Dancing so popular; the “journey”. Yes, it is an incredibly cliched phrase but its something that seems to resonate with viewers. If the UK does have any national characteristics, then one of them is an appreciation of dogged determination. We tend to warm towards plucky underdogs who improve through hard work and dedication. And that is what we were treated to on last night’s show.
As I’ve mentioned before, the one piece of reality TV that I avidly watch is Strictly Come Dancing. I’ve been a regular viewer since 2005. Once you’ve got your head around the format and have fully understood what the show is and is not, it makes for entertaining viewing. Strictly is not a pure dance competition by any shakes. If it were, then the public wouldn’t have any say in who remained on the show and it would all be left to the professional judges. But such a show would have very limited appeal. Hence, we have audience participation and all the theatrics of reality television. Talent and ability can be trumped by popularity and frequently is. Over the last fifteen years, the shows formula has been finely tuned and we now find ourselves with a very controlled format. The broad spectrum of celebrities fulfil the role of various archetypes and the judges all have distinct roles to play. But at its heart the show is still about people learning to dance (or not) and that is a difficult skill to master. For me therein lies the entertainment.
There really is an excess of genuine talent in this year’s show. It’s week three and the standard has been raised yet again. Michelle Visage and Giovanni Pernice delivered a smouldering Quickstep to Cabaret, proving once again that it is unwise to write anyone off based purely on age. Furthermore actress Catherine Tyldesley dancing with Johannes Radebe stunned the audience and judges alike with a Rumba to the ballad Shallow from the film A Star is Born. The Rumba is a notoriously difficult dance to perform and to pull off such a feat so early on in the season was quite incredible. And we were also treated to our first Street Dance, with Dev Griffin and Diane Buswell performing an outstanding Aladdin themed routine. Considering that Diane had an accident during the week, it made such an assured performance even more remarkable. And let us not forget Kelvin Fletcher and Oti Mabuse’s robust Charleston.
There is obviously some sort of psychological comfort in being spoon fed the same content, again and again and again. Because that is what Strictly Come Dancing, the BBC’s flagship Autumn entertainment show, definitely does. And I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, because once again, I am one of the 8 million viewers avidly watching this seasonal ritual. But is must be said, that the show is incredibly formulaic and that the production team are expert at playing upon all the foibles of the format. Hence every September we get a wide spectrum of “celebrities” eager to learn how to dance. All of whom fall neatly into the various categories that have been established over the last 15 years. There are those who display an innate ability right from the start. Then there are the determined improvers. We also have wild cards whose content wildly changes in quality. Another favourite are the rhythmically challenged whose embarrassing failures are deemed “entertaining”. And let us not forget those who are just hopelessly out of their depth and you know are going to fall at the very first hurdle.
Series 16 of Strictly Come Dancing has been in many ways the most predictable season to date. It became clear within a matter of weeks as to which couples were the front runners, who had potential to grow and who would only go so far. Apart from the slight anomaly of Vick Hope going out early in week 5 due to a poorly conceived dance (blame Graziano for that), the show has followed a fairly unsurprising route. Therefore, it really comes as no shock to find Joes and Diane, Stacey and Kevin, Ashley and Pasha as well as Faye and Giovanni are going through to next week’s final. Nor should we be astonished by the subtle distinction between the judge’s favourites, and the couples that the public related to and take to their hearts.
The upbeat social media buzz around popular reality TV show Strictly Come Dancing took a turn for the worse this week, after celebrity contestant Seann Walsh was photographed kissing his professional partner Katya Jones. To the casual observer, this is simply standard fare for the tabloid press; a storm in a tea cup and nothing of note. However, four days after publication the story has grown from celebrity tittle-tattle to a major topic of national debate. This is because of several reasons. Mr Walsh was at the time when the picture was taken, in a long-term relationship. Katya Jones is married to fellow Strictly Come Dancing professional dancer, Neil Jones. Subsequently, actress Rebecca Humphries split up with Seann Walsh and released a statement online citing deficiencies in the five-year relationship and alluding to “controlling” behaviour. It is this later aspect, rather than just faux prurient outrage by the tabloids about the celebrity indiscretion, which has made this “story” persist. It links into the ongoing debate over “toxic masculinity” and the #MeToo movement.
With each successive season of Strictly Come Dancing there appears to be more and more celebrity participants who seem to be “good”, right from the get-go. For many years now there have been ongoing debates about whether those from certain backgrounds, IE music, acting and possibly even sport, have an advantage over the usual chefs, astrologers and ageing minor celebrities. Although I can see the initial sense of such arguments, I don’t think they hold up to close scrutiny. Having performed a few arbitrary dance moves whilst touring or having done a stilted routine for a TV drama or play is not the same as the rigour and scrutiny that comes with Strictly Come Dancing. However, setting aside this perennial question, despite only being three weeks into series sixteen, we saw some extremely strong movie themed performances last night and the potential emergence of several dark horses. Subsequently tonight’s results were interesting.
In recent week’s Joe McFadden has been widely tipped to win Strictly Come Dancing 2017, having crept up the leader board with a series technically polished and spirited performances. Labelled by head judge Shirley Ballas as a “dark horse” he has quickly become a thoroughbred in the eyes of most bookies’ to become this evenings favourite to win. Joes has proven not only to be a consistently good performer but a popular one too, as he was the only one of tonight’s finalist never to have been in the bottom two. He has in many ways been a classic example of the celebrity that embarks upon the “Strictly journey” and this evening, all the hard work paid off as he lifted the glitterball trophy for this years show. Let us not forget that this is also Katya Jones night as well. She has choreographed some incredible artistic and intelligent routines this season and has clearly understood what works best for her partner.
Singer Mollie King went into this week’s semi-final as the bookies' favourite to be voted off the show, and it has proven so. I appreciate that Mollie has been training hard and applied herself to the advice given to her by the judges. However, it would appear that she has plateaued with regard to her level of skill and performance several weeks agao. Sadly, nerves and the pressure of the night got the better of her on Saturday and her Samba was not well received. It was hesitant and lacked polish. She partially redeemed herself with an elegant waltz, although it is fair to say that she simply wasn’t in the same league as the other celebrity dancers. The judges seemed to be a little too generous with their marks for this dance, possibly to spare her any further distress because Mollie was visibly upset.
Strictly Come Dancing 2017 is proving to be quite the rollercoaster ride. Each week it seems that there is potential for an upset and Saturday night proved no different. The fact that Davood and Nadiya scored poorly with their Argentine Tango was quite a surprise. The relatively low spread of points put them squarely at the bottom of the leader board and made them prime candidates for the dance off. Personally, I thought this was a damn shame because Davood has significantly improved in recent weeks and has embraced the Strictly journey. However, it was a shock to see Alexandra and Gorka fighting to stay on the show once again. Sadly, the outcome of the dance off was a forgone conclusion. Alexandra was technically outstanding and gave a spirited performance. She had something to prove after last week's difficult Rhumba and I thought she came back with a vengeance. Sadly, the public thought otherwise. I’m sure being in the dance off yet again will be a disappointment for her. However, for the present she is safe.
No one is safe. I’m sure it’s a thought that all remaining contestants on Strictly Come Dancing are currently thinking. Week 10 has been and gone and found front runner Alexandra Burke in the dance off against the delightful Susan Calman. Obviously, the moment this was announced, the outcome was a forgone conclusion. But it proves as I said last week that the spread of public votes may not be that wide and if a celebrity finds themselves in the middle of the linerboard then they are at serious risk. There can be no “bad weeks for the remaining contestants, from now on. Every dance now has to be undertaken with as much confidence and technical accuracy as possible. I suspect that unless Gemma raises her game and Mollie continues to improve they too may be potential dance off candidates next week. As for Alexandra, I would hazard a guess that she will focus very much on ironing out any technical issues and will return with a show stopping performance, next Saturday. The lady is extremely motivated and competitive.
Blackpool always brings out the best in the celebrity dancers, due to its immense entertainment heritage and standing within the world of professional dancers. So, it wasn’t surprising to see some couples raise their game and make significant improvements with their routines. Gemma showed that she had listened to the judges’ comments and delivered a polished and elegant performance. She also appeared to have noticeably rediscovered her confidence. Mollie also delivered a far better routine which corrected many of the issues that have plagued her in previous weeks. I would argue that it was her best dance of the series. And once again, Susan poured her heart and soul into her time on the dance floor, delivering another spirited performance that found favour once again with the public, if not the judges.
Well I said it last week that there was scope for a surprise elimination from Strictly Come Dancing and surely enough it has happened. Aston Merrygold, despite being tipped as a contender for the final, scored poorly with the judges last night and also failed to garner sufficient public support. He subsequently found himself in the dance off with Mollie King and despite correcting some of the technical issues that were present in his initial performance, he failed to sway the majority of the judges in his favour. Darcey and Bruno both voted to save him but Craig and Shirley (who as head judge has the casting vote) opted to save Mollie. Hence, bookies favourite Aston Merrygold has left the show, proving that no one can rest on the laurels. As you’d expect, there were vocal complaints from fans and supporters who felt that the judges had been unfair with their marks. However, I believe if anyone is to blame then it is Aston’s professional partner Janette Manrara.
I could be very philosophical about Strictly Come Dancing and describe how the judges scrutinise and mark the contestants on technique, viewing their performances through the prism of their own professional experiences. Conversely, the public react and elect to support the celebrities far more emotively; championing potential underdogs and showing solidarity with those they feel have been poorly treated. However, such Janusian analogies are unnecessary and ultimately pointless, because the show is primarily for entertainment and not a dancing competition, although the professional dancers may not see it that way. Also, as we saw demonstrated once again tonight, Strictly Come Dancing is a popularity contest and the only thing that really matters is convincing the public to vote for you.
Yes, we’re three weeks into this year’s season of the BBC’s flagship entertainment show, Strictly Come Dancing (that’s the UK version of Dancing with the Stars for the benefit of US readers). The tabloid press has already started obsessing, dissecting and outright lying about the antics of a handful of minor celebrities as they struggle with the rigours of learning to dance. From now until Christmas, prime time Saturday night viewing on the Beeb will be suffused with the superficial glamour of showbiz, a barrage of camp innuendo and a mixture of well-honed muscles and wayward flesh as well as far too much make-up. You also get to choose whether to laugh along with heavily scripted and contrived comments from the professional judges. If we’re particularly fortunate we may even be blessed with a professional dancer meltdown as they balk at a “ill deserved” poor score (yes, we’re looking at you Brendan Cole).
Blogging: 10 Things Not To Do
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
Don’t spend a penny until you know you like blogging: You have all the tools you need to start a blog at your disposal already. A computer, internet access and a wealth of free online resources. There are numerous blogging platforms that offer a basic free tier of access, so there is no need to buy a subscription or any additional software to begin with. Write in plaintext and edit any pictures using free online apps. First and foremost, find out if you like writing and whether you can sustain it as a hobby. If you do and you can, then you can think about buying a domain and buying any additional services.
Don't write just for yourself: Writing primarily for yourself remains prudent advice, as opposed to chasing what is deemed “popular”. However, it is wise to consider your audience and to follow up on content that has been well received. Write about a spectrum of subjects and see what gains traction. Establish shared interests and then explore them. Also add your voice to topical debates if you feel strongly about them or have something useful to contribute. If you receive any requests from readers to write about a specific subject do give it serious consideration.
Don't be inconsistent: Establish a regular posting schedule and stick to it to keep your audience engaged. Yes, I know this is hard and real life will often scupper your plans but it is an established fact that if you write regularly, your readers stick around. That being said, your schedule doesn’t have to be daily. Once a month is perfectly fine. Ultimately it is the consistency that readers like.
Don’t be afraid to express an opinion: Social media and other online communities can be a bear pit at times. No one especially wants or enjoys internet pile-ons and unpleasant comments. Hence some people won’t touch certain subjects with a bargepole and consider religion and politics verboten. This is a mistake. Treat your blog like your home. “My house, my rules”. You’re not obliged to justify yourself and do not have to tolerate abuse. Offensive comments can be deleted, without the need for a rebuttal. Everytime anyone is shouted down online or the threat of such behaviour actually stops you from expressing an opinion, it is only the bad guys who win. Tread boldly, write freely.
Don’t pander to the lowest common denominator to get clicks: With regard to the previous point, there is a wealth of difference between espousing genuinely held opinions and indulging in “hot takes” and “shitposting” just to get website traffic. The former is a democratic freedom that comes with some degree of personal responsibility. The latter just makes the internet shittier and is the prerogative of gits.
Don't ignore the benefits of networking: Connect with other bloggers in your niche and build relationships. Promote other blogger’s content and vice versa. Make friends with like minded individuals and riff off each other’s work. Be vocal in your praise. This is how communities are built.
Don't ignore analytics: Use tools like Google Analytics to track your blog’s performance and identify how your writing performs. Such information can provide useful feedback. However, do not become a slave to this data and do not allow yourself to obsess over it. Data is just that and nothing more. Do not take it personally if a post you feel is your best work doesn’t gain any traction.
Don't be afraid to experiment: Try different content formats, writing styles and subject matters. Blogging is a skill that grows over time. Therefore, throw a variety of material at your readers and see what works and what doesn’t. Apply this philosophy not only to your writing but to your blog template as well. There is nothing more frustrating to a blogger than being constrained by the boundaries that you have imposed upon yourself.
Don’t worry about the calibre of your posts: Not every post has to be comparable to the Gettysburg Address or Meditations by Marcus Aurellius. A simple post about your cat or collection of pogs can find an audience just as well as a weighty dissertation on early Etruscan pottery. The internet connects roughly two thirds of the world’s population. That’s 5.56 billion people. If you want to create a fansite about The Littlest Hobo, then you can potentially find an audience.
Don't be discouraged by slow progress: Building a successful blog takes time and effort. In fact the criteria for success is very subjective to begin with and an entire blog post in itself. However, whatever you are seeking from writing online, be it fame or just the pleasure of regularly sharing your thoughts with others, it takes dedication and a lot of writing before you reach the point where you feel that you have “everything at your fingertips”. Instant results are just as much a fantasy in blogging as they are in most other creative endeavours. Therefore, be patient, be consistent and don't give up. Or if you’re a Galaxy Quest fan, “Never give up. Never surrender”.
Enjoy Blaugust.
It is obligatory to start these sorts of posts by reiterating the standard mantra that you should not be driven by your websites stats and that the data they contain can be unreliable. Although a sound philosophy in principle, it is actually more nuanced than that. Such data can be useful for growth if used wisely. I have never been coy about trying to increase my readership. For me it seems an integral aspect of blogging. Over the course of 2026, the traffic to Contains Moderate Peril has doubled. A lot of that is down to curious spikes in visits which seems to be AI scraping the entire site. Setting aside these anomalies, more people are reading posts and a lot are doing so via the site’s RSS feed. All of which is fine by me as growing the audience for this blog was a goal for this year, I am quite pleased by this development and the ongoing progress. I hope it continues.
There is a subtle difference between being rash and being proactive. Being rash means acting too fast without thinking about the results, while being proactive is a question of acting early with careful planning. Why have I mentioned this? Well prima facie information indicates that recent Blaugust participants are interested in an “official” online presence for the annual festival of blogging, other than that existing Discord server. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not everyone likes using Discord and I do worry that they may reduce its free functionality at some point in the future. With regard to there being a Blaugust platform of some kind, there is a consensus that it doesn’t need to be some sort of sprawling commercially hosted website running on Wix or such like. Those sorts of site require funding, a degree of admin and possibly private data management. It also a bit too “corporate” if you like. Hence the logical compromise is to have a static site. Let it suffice to say, that has been done.
Judging by the posts I’ve read, it would appear that Blaugust 2026: Festival of Blogging has been well received by those who participated in it. That is most satisfying to know, especially in light of the fact that this is the first year the event has been run without our founder who sadly past away in July. It has also become clear that Blaugust is reaching a far wider and diverse audience and most definitely is no longer the exclusive province of bloggers from one particular community. There has been healthy discussions on our Discord server about whether this year event needs to adapt to accommodate the modern blogosphere. Questions such as whether or not there needs to be a dedicated Blaugust website have been raised and explored. Should every site participating have an RSS feed? How, if required, should comments be handled. Inevitably, the subject of the use of AI in blogging still remains a controversial issue.
After a very productive month of writing, we come to the final Blaugust 2026 Group Project writing prompt. It is titled lessons learned and is usually a chance to reflect on the festival and whether or not it has been to one’s satisfaction. Have you achieved your goals? What have you gained from the experience? Those sorts of things. It also poses two further questions; “What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?” and “what’s the best advice you’ve ever given to someone else?” for your consideration. I’ll address the questions shortly. Firstly let’s mull over this years event and assess how it’s gone.
It was my blogging anniversary on the 16th August. I’ve been writing and sharing my post online for 19 years, via various different websites and blogs. This current iteration of Contains Moderate Peril has been around since August 2015. To date it has 2,171 posts including this one. Quantity does not necessarily equate to quality but there are some articles I am proud of and feel that they make their point effectively.
This week’s Blaugust 2026 Group Project writing prompt is an important topic. Namely, staying motivated. I prepared a fairly lengthy post with some advice and ideas to keep people focused and writing. Then I checked it against the post I wrote last year and the year before that, going back to blogging events from 2012. All of these posts broadly said the same thing, so I decided to scrap what I had composed for today and to go with a simpler approach. I shall answer the questions Krikket posed for this writing prompt. Fellow blogger Bhagpuss has also done so and as ever, his thoughts are interesting and well expressed. Here are my answers.
Once again, I have stumbled across an interesting debate that has provided me with an opportunity to write a blog post. Over on the Blaugust Discord Server, I read a comment from AgingGamer regarding RSS feeds and their significance with regard to blogging. This in turn referred me to a post by fyr (don’t you love all these nom de plumes) who wrote at depth about the ongoing community debate about the use of RSS/Atom feeds. The article explored the importance of such feeds with regard to reaching readers and providing accessibility to the disabled. All of which provided me with a great deal of food for thought. Mainly because I use a mainstream website service provider for my online endeavours, so RSS is by default built. I’ve never really considered not having such a facility at my disposal. But the rise in the IndieWeb scene challenges this assumption.
I have written two blog posts today that I have subsequently abandoned. The first was gaming related but when I was about halfway through writing it, I felt like I was covering old ground and just repeating myself. It was also regarding an issue that can’t really be fixed. Namely, how do you ensure that matchmaking in PVP games is done equitably. As there is no solution to this issue at present, or at least not one that all parties can agree on, I decided to ditch it. Similarly a post I was working on about what becomes of my blog if anything happens to me was curtailed. In light of recent events in our community it seemed inappropriate. However, as a result of binning two blog posts, I new idea occurred to me. Do my fellow bloggers self-edit and curtail what they write about? Is your blog totally unfiltered or do you apply a set of rules that determine what content is deemed acceptable?
It is time for the next Blaugust 2026 Group Project writing prompt. This one comes with two lines of enquiry. The first is an opportunity to “introduce yourself”. Over the years, I have written several introductory posts for previous Blaugust events. Rather than repeat myself I’ll just link to the last one, which was posted in August 2023. I haven’t radically charged since then apart from my hair going whiter. The next part of the prompt poses a far more intriguing question. “If you could have one magical power or super power, what would you choose and what would you use it for?”, which offers much for consideration. Having given this proposition much thought here is my response.
A decade ago I wrote a post about blogrolls and the practical and social issues surrounding them. At the time, the version of Squarespace I was using didn’t easily support such things or at least wasn’t able to do so in a manner I liked, so I didn’t have one. Ten years later Squarespace as a hosting platform has far greater functionality, hence I recently decided to add a blogroll. That was in March this year. However it just wasn’t really fit for purpose. So I decided to revise it a few days ago and rather than just have a traditional list of blogs in a side column, I ended up producing a more comprehensive blog directory, which list two hundred plus sites alpha-numerically. I’ve been tinkering with it on and off and I am now finally happy with it. The latest update reflects the international nature of the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging and the fact that we have many blogs written in their native language. Translating text is now an integral function of web browsers, so I see no reason why these blogs should be excluded.
Today’s post is part of the Blaugust 2026 Group project, which features a series of writing prompts set for specific dates throughout the month. The idea being that everyone who wishes to participate can write about the same subject, riff off each other’s posts and enjoy a shared experience. In many respect having a common writing prompt levels the playing field and provides a sense of common purpose among those who take part. Today’s group project prompt asks the question “tell us all about your very first blog”. An unambiguous and interesting question that will hopefully prove enjoyable to write about and informative to others.
I have been writing online for nearly two decades. I don’t claim to be good or accomplished but what I can say with certainty is that the more often you write, the easier it becomes. For those who are new to writing a blog and the Blaugust Festival of Blogging, possibly the biggest hurdle that you now have to get over, is writing your first post of the month. You spent the lead up to this event sorting out your blog templates, fine tuning the backend and possibly banking some ideas. Or you may have decided to just wing it and make it all up as you go along. Both are perfectly valid approaches. However, there is one thing left to do that cannot be put off, avoided or danced around. Writing. At some point you’ve got to do it. Or bail on the event. The proverbial “shit or get off the pot”.
If you take a cursory look at a calendar you will see that the month of July is fast coming to an end. That means that Blaugust 2026 Festival of Blogging starts in a few days time! If you’re participating, or thinking of doing so, the next few days present a golden opportunity to do some practical organising and basic preparation. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Feel free to just do things as they come, so to speak, if that’s your approach. However, for most of us, it helps if we have some kind of plan in place and make some arrangements in advance. I personally prefer this approach and like to have some ideas for blog posts in the bank. It is also useful to have “options” if something doesn’t go to plan. For those who are new to Blaugust, here are a few ideas regarding preparation that may be of use to you. As ever, your personal mileage may vary and ultimately you are best off adopting a strategy that suits your writing style and personal schedule.
Prior to last year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging, I upgraded Contains Moderate Peril to the latest version of Squarespace. There are still some aspects of the site that need fine tuning but overall, I am happy with the appearance of my blog and its respective functionality. With this year’s writing event fast approach, I decided to tackle over the last few days, some of those finer points that need tweaking. I have wanted a post counter on the site for a long time but unfortunately there is no native Squarespace widget for this basic function. I also felt the need to upgrade the blogroll, as the current one didn’t support RSS feeds from certain sites (e.g. Google Blogger) and was dependent upon a third party service, Elfsight, which wasn’t ideal. Both of these issues have now been addressed and I am pleased with the results. There is now a post counter on the Blog Archive page, which seems a logical place to have it and the Blogroll is now far more comprehensive.
Next month the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging begins. Roundabout this time each year, I try to write a promotional post to raise awareness of the event and encourage potential participants. However, as I’ve done this quite a few times before, each year it is becomes increasingly difficult to present the essential facts about Blaugust: Festival of Blogging in an interesting fashion. There’s nothing worse than writing a post and feeling that you’re just covering old ground. So, this year, I thought I’d try something different and present the most important information about this annual event, as if it were a conversation between myself and an interested passer by. Feel free to attribute novelty voices for each party in your own head, while you read this. If it helps, try imagining that this discussion is happening between two celebrities or such like. Both may be wearing exotic hats but I digress. On with the scenario.
I read a blog post by Void recently, about finding a new internet home. He wrote about how he and many others have had to pick up their “digital roots” and migrate multiple times over the years, from one platform to another. It is a position I can sympathise with as I have done likewise. Hence I like the idea of having a place online where I hangout by default. My own blog is an anchor for me but it is not quite the same thing as a platform or online portal where I can find all my friends and colleagues, share content and shoot the breeze. It’s a curious thing, because as I typed that last sentence it struck how such a sentiment may seem alien to others. There may well be people who like to have a finger in multiple pies and who are happy to frequent and flit between various social media apps, Discord servers and subreddits. I prefer to focus my efforts on a single instance. A place that suits my requirements, allows me to put down roots and become part of the furniture. Like a virtual Diogenes Club.
Everyday, once I’m up, I sit at my desk in my office, fire up my PC and log into Feedly. I have various RSS feeds grouped by category, which I slowly trawl through and read anything that catches my eye. I have one curated feed named “Blaugust” named after the yearly festival of blogging event. It has over 250 blogs listed, many of which are former participants. Most of these regularly post. Hence there’s a lot to get through and so I don’t read all of them. However there are a few that I always checkout. Mainly because they’re the personal musings of some of our writing community’s oldest and most prodigious members. The sorts of guys and gals who are part of the furniture. They’ve always been there and it feels like they always will. Posting their thoughts, sharing their enthusiasm and spreading the love, so to speak. One of these blogs, is Tales of the Aggronaut. written by Belghast.
On Friday 26th June, I had another random spike in internet traffic to Contains Moderate Peril. The statistical package that comes with my Squarespace account recorded over 13k visits in less than 24 hours, which is not typical (although I wish it was). However, all of these visits to my blog arrived via the default homepage and spent between 1 and 2 minutes there. Hence, it was obvious that this was not human traffic, as there was no evidence of any searches being made of content that is available on my site, nor of the “visitors” clicking on any of the links on the top menu and viewing other posts. This was undoubtedly AI traffic arriving at the designated homepage and simply parsing the site. I had a similar spate of this sort of web traffic last November. The only difference on that occasion is that the traffic all came from China. This time round it hailed from the US. I suspect that this is something that will happen more often as companies set their AI loose on the net for what is effectively training.
I recently watched a video on Patreon by someone who I actively support as a “content creator” and whose work I enjoy. I shall provide no more detail regarding their identity because they may not want their work referenced with regard to what I am going to say. During the course of their video they briefly referenced the work put into promoting a podcast they are currently producing and the relatively low audience that it has garnered so far. The comments were an aside and most certainly not said with any sense of self-pity. They were simply a statement of fact. Furthermore, I suspect they are far from unique and similar sentiments have been expressed in one way or another by anyone who has created something the published it online, only for it to be lost among the greater white noise” of the wider internet.
When I first started blogging way back in 2007, I maintained a blogroll of all my colleagues and peers’ websites. At the time this was a common practice and a way to support an expanding community. I considered this such an important aspect of the blogging scene at the time, I created a website to aggregate posts from video game blogs, called The Gaming Blog Nexus. It ran for two years and proved quite useful. However, it was tricky to administer and would frequently break as a lot of the back end widgets and plugins were created and maintained by “gifted amateurs”. I eventually shut it down due to the operating costs. When I moved my own website, Contains Moderate Peril, to Squarespace in 2015 I intended to start maintaining a blogroll once again. However, at that time there was no native support for such a thing on the platform. Hence for the last ten years, I have not had a blogroll on my website, which hasn’t sat well with me.
I was speaking to someone recently about hobbies (fortunately it wasn’t Simon Quinlank) and I mentioned that I have maintained a blog for over a 19 years. When I talked about the ongoing cost they were most surprised, as they had assumed that blogging was something that could be done for free. I guess we’ve become so accustomed to the provision of free online services such as email, that this a reasonable assumption. I pointed out that although it is indeed possible to blog for free using Blogger, it was not the optimal approach, especially if you want to maintain some degree of control over your writing. Naturally, the next question they asked was how much do I spend and I gave them a ballpark figure. All of which reminded me that I wrote a post on this very subject a few years ago. So I’ve decided to revisit the subject and see how much it currently costs to maintain Contains Moderate Peril.
Today I started the slow process of auditing every post that has been published on Contains Moderate Peril since 1st August 2016. The goal is to correct any obvious typos and replace all existing images with larger ones. The Squarespace software upgrade I applied to the website at the end of last year has finally allowed me to establish a standard format that I am happy with. Hence the ongoing audit is the perfect opportunity to apply these style rules to all posts. There are also some technical issues and matters regarding functionality that need to be addressed. I need to determine how to embed YouTube videos in such a way that they automatically scale to fit whatever device is viewing them. Another area which needs improving is the website search facility. This needs refinement so that enquiries can be more specific. Older posts also need to be more accessible, although I am still researching how best to achieve this.
It’s nearly two and half months since the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event ended. During that time I’ve maintained a fairly regular writing schedule and I post every two days or so. Furthermore, I finally dragged my blog template, kicking and screaming, into the modern era. I tweaked a few pages and updated the content of the “about” page. The next task is to start going through all previous posts and replacing older, low resolution images with larger, more appropriate ones. This process also presents an opportunity to ensure that all posts follow a uniform style. IE Are appropriately categorised, have links to related posts at the bottom and are SEO optimised. This will be a lengthy task so I think the best approach will be to tackle two or three posts a day. Hopefully this will raise the profile of older content, which generates the lion’s hare of traffic to this site.
I use a browser extension called Control Panel for YouTube, which allows me to determine who many videos are displayed on my YouTube homepage and to filter the content that is shown. At present it is configured to display rows of six. Something that I have noticed of late, is the amount of videos with hyperbolic titles and thumbnail images created by AI. Both of which are design choices made to increase engagement. Clickbait titles are contrived to meet current SEO optimisation criteria and as such feature more and more in search results. The fact that they frequently have no relation to the subject I am researching, seems to be neither here nor there. The same issues arise with regard to AI generated images, which again frequently have no bearing on the matter. The fact that more and more content creators do this, infers that it works and is now an essential part of the process you must follow to be seen and featured in search results.
In the last post in this series, I specified the need for a plan with regard to upgrading my blog. Well a plan has emerged, been refined and has now been formally adopted. Rather than migrate Contains Moderate Peril to a new platform and effectively have to rebuild all the content, I am going to upgrade my existing presence on Squarespace. This decision was made for two reasons. Time and money. Migrating to a new platform will take a lot of time and incur additional costs. Upgrading the existing website will take less time and has no cost implications. That is not to say that it will be easy. It has become abundantly clear that the upgrade process will break stuff and that all published posts will have to be manually repaired. Hence my choice boils down to the lesser of two evils.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has reached an end and it would appear that this event has been well received by those who have participated in it. I believe that there were 168 bloggers taking part this year, many of whom have not participated before. Some were new to blogging, where others simply wished to see if they could increase their writing output. As ever there was a wide variety of blog styles and subject matters and it has been most interesting to read new posts every day. I have attempted to leave comments and positive feedback where I can and I hope that some of these new blogs that I’ve discovered continue to write. Well done to everyone who took part. I hope it has been an enjoyable and informative process and that you have learned from it. I know that at least one blogger has determined that writing online is not for them, which is a valuable lesson.
There is currently a group writing prompt available as part of this year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging which has piqued my interest. It asks the question “what is the oldest draft post you have” and suggests that it is revived in some manner. I have dozens of draft posts in a folder in my Google Drive. Many are film reviews or film related. The oldest of which dates back to summer 2010. Rather than write a straight forward review of Blake Edwards 1968 comedy The Party, I rather foolishly thought at the time that I’d tackle the issue of whether the film is sufficiently racist to make it beyond the pale. Let it suffice to say that I quickly found myself bogged down in the complexities of the subject and thus never completed the blog post.
I’ve participated in every previous Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event. Prior to that I was involved in the Newbie Blogger Initiative or NBI as it was affectionately known. I have therefore written quite a lot of blogging advice and suggestions over the years. If anyone feels disposed to do so, you can access them all by clicking on the “blogging” option on the top menu of this blog. However, it is important to remember that a lot of the ideas I have advocated and written about over the years are purely subjective. Not all advice or guidance works for everyone. People have different ideas about blogging, different approaches to it and different aspirations. This year has highlighted some quite distinct differences among bloggers which has been most illuminating.
Today is my blogging anniversary. I have been writing online consistently for 18 years. My earliest blogs no longer exist, although they can be found via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. My first blog was a Lord of the Rings Online fansite called Misadventures in LOTRO. After a while this morphed into a wider gaming website; Misadventures in Gaming. However, I soon discovered that I wanted to write about more than just video games, so I decided to start from scratch and created Contains Moderate Peril in February 2010. This blog endured and has been my main online presence ever since. It has moved several times for various reasons. For a while I had a sponsor, as well as a reasonably sized audience and had dreams of making money from my writing and podcast. But it wasn’t to be and now I just write primarily for my own peace of mind and amusement.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
The Key to Writing
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
However, I think there is one piece of universal advice that can be given and it’s pretty simple. Be yourself. Write what you think, feel and believe. Write with conviction. I don’t care for the phrase “authentic” as I feel that it has been diminished in contemporary parlance. It currently sounds like a buzzword associated with a grift. So I will use the word “sincere” instead. Being sincere and writing what you genuinely feel gives your posts emotional mass. If you simply knock out a few paragraphs about something you’re not invested in or do not truly believe, it comes across in your prose. Genuine passion bleeds through into your words and gives them resonance. Regular people like sincerity and honesty. As for bullshit, we get enough of that already in our lives from politicians and big business. We don’t need any more.
Now you may worry that such advice is a bit fancy and “highfalutin” and not applicable to your blog about your Rubber Ducky collection. I beg to differ. If you pour love and passion into your blog posts, you’ll find that they become a lot easier to write. One of the things I enjoy immensely about Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is the broad spectrum of subjects that people write about. Often the bloggers themselves are just as fascinating as their niche, specific writings. So to recap, the single most important piece of advice I can share about blogging is to just write like you mean it. Think about the things that you like and as you smile, start writing. Congratulations, you’ve just written a blog post and started a conversation. That’s how communities are built.
It is obligatory to start these sorts of posts by reiterating the standard mantra that you should not be driven by your websites stats and that the data they contain can be unreliable. Although a sound philosophy in principle, it is actually more nuanced than that. Such data can be useful for growth if used wisely. I have never been coy about trying to increase my readership. For me it seems an integral aspect of blogging. Over the course of 2026, the traffic to Contains Moderate Peril has doubled. A lot of that is down to curious spikes in visits which seems to be AI scraping the entire site. Setting aside these anomalies, more people are reading posts and a lot are doing so via the site’s RSS feed. All of which is fine by me as growing the audience for this blog was a goal for this year, I am quite pleased by this development and the ongoing progress. I hope it continues.
There is a subtle difference between being rash and being proactive. Being rash means acting too fast without thinking about the results, while being proactive is a question of acting early with careful planning. Why have I mentioned this? Well prima facie information indicates that recent Blaugust participants are interested in an “official” online presence for the annual festival of blogging, other than that existing Discord server. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not everyone likes using Discord and I do worry that they may reduce its free functionality at some point in the future. With regard to there being a Blaugust platform of some kind, there is a consensus that it doesn’t need to be some sort of sprawling commercially hosted website running on Wix or such like. Those sorts of site require funding, a degree of admin and possibly private data management. It also a bit too “corporate” if you like. Hence the logical compromise is to have a static site. Let it suffice to say, that has been done.
Judging by the posts I’ve read, it would appear that Blaugust 2026: Festival of Blogging has been well received by those who participated in it. That is most satisfying to know, especially in light of the fact that this is the first year the event has been run without our founder who sadly past away in July. It has also become clear that Blaugust is reaching a far wider and diverse audience and most definitely is no longer the exclusive province of bloggers from one particular community. There has been healthy discussions on our Discord server about whether this year event needs to adapt to accommodate the modern blogosphere. Questions such as whether or not there needs to be a dedicated Blaugust website have been raised and explored. Should every site participating have an RSS feed? How, if required, should comments be handled. Inevitably, the subject of the use of AI in blogging still remains a controversial issue.
After a very productive month of writing, we come to the final Blaugust 2026 Group Project writing prompt. It is titled lessons learned and is usually a chance to reflect on the festival and whether or not it has been to one’s satisfaction. Have you achieved your goals? What have you gained from the experience? Those sorts of things. It also poses two further questions; “What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?” and “what’s the best advice you’ve ever given to someone else?” for your consideration. I’ll address the questions shortly. Firstly let’s mull over this years event and assess how it’s gone.
It was my blogging anniversary on the 16th August. I’ve been writing and sharing my post online for 19 years, via various different websites and blogs. This current iteration of Contains Moderate Peril has been around since August 2015. To date it has 2,171 posts including this one. Quantity does not necessarily equate to quality but there are some articles I am proud of and feel that they make their point effectively.
This week’s Blaugust 2026 Group Project writing prompt is an important topic. Namely, staying motivated. I prepared a fairly lengthy post with some advice and ideas to keep people focused and writing. Then I checked it against the post I wrote last year and the year before that, going back to blogging events from 2012. All of these posts broadly said the same thing, so I decided to scrap what I had composed for today and to go with a simpler approach. I shall answer the questions Krikket posed for this writing prompt. Fellow blogger Bhagpuss has also done so and as ever, his thoughts are interesting and well expressed. Here are my answers.
Once again, I have stumbled across an interesting debate that has provided me with an opportunity to write a blog post. Over on the Blaugust Discord Server, I read a comment from AgingGamer regarding RSS feeds and their significance with regard to blogging. This in turn referred me to a post by fyr (don’t you love all these nom de plumes) who wrote at depth about the ongoing community debate about the use of RSS/Atom feeds. The article explored the importance of such feeds with regard to reaching readers and providing accessibility to the disabled. All of which provided me with a great deal of food for thought. Mainly because I use a mainstream website service provider for my online endeavours, so RSS is by default built. I’ve never really considered not having such a facility at my disposal. But the rise in the IndieWeb scene challenges this assumption.
I have written two blog posts today that I have subsequently abandoned. The first was gaming related but when I was about halfway through writing it, I felt like I was covering old ground and just repeating myself. It was also regarding an issue that can’t really be fixed. Namely, how do you ensure that matchmaking in PVP games is done equitably. As there is no solution to this issue at present, or at least not one that all parties can agree on, I decided to ditch it. Similarly a post I was working on about what becomes of my blog if anything happens to me was curtailed. In light of recent events in our community it seemed inappropriate. However, as a result of binning two blog posts, I new idea occurred to me. Do my fellow bloggers self-edit and curtail what they write about? Is your blog totally unfiltered or do you apply a set of rules that determine what content is deemed acceptable?
It is time for the next Blaugust 2026 Group Project writing prompt. This one comes with two lines of enquiry. The first is an opportunity to “introduce yourself”. Over the years, I have written several introductory posts for previous Blaugust events. Rather than repeat myself I’ll just link to the last one, which was posted in August 2023. I haven’t radically charged since then apart from my hair going whiter. The next part of the prompt poses a far more intriguing question. “If you could have one magical power or super power, what would you choose and what would you use it for?”, which offers much for consideration. Having given this proposition much thought here is my response.
A decade ago I wrote a post about blogrolls and the practical and social issues surrounding them. At the time, the version of Squarespace I was using didn’t easily support such things or at least wasn’t able to do so in a manner I liked, so I didn’t have one. Ten years later Squarespace as a hosting platform has far greater functionality, hence I recently decided to add a blogroll. That was in March this year. However it just wasn’t really fit for purpose. So I decided to revise it a few days ago and rather than just have a traditional list of blogs in a side column, I ended up producing a more comprehensive blog directory, which list two hundred plus sites alpha-numerically. I’ve been tinkering with it on and off and I am now finally happy with it. The latest update reflects the international nature of the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging and the fact that we have many blogs written in their native language. Translating text is now an integral function of web browsers, so I see no reason why these blogs should be excluded.
Today’s post is part of the Blaugust 2026 Group project, which features a series of writing prompts set for specific dates throughout the month. The idea being that everyone who wishes to participate can write about the same subject, riff off each other’s posts and enjoy a shared experience. In many respect having a common writing prompt levels the playing field and provides a sense of common purpose among those who take part. Today’s group project prompt asks the question “tell us all about your very first blog”. An unambiguous and interesting question that will hopefully prove enjoyable to write about and informative to others.
I have been writing online for nearly two decades. I don’t claim to be good or accomplished but what I can say with certainty is that the more often you write, the easier it becomes. For those who are new to writing a blog and the Blaugust Festival of Blogging, possibly the biggest hurdle that you now have to get over, is writing your first post of the month. You spent the lead up to this event sorting out your blog templates, fine tuning the backend and possibly banking some ideas. Or you may have decided to just wing it and make it all up as you go along. Both are perfectly valid approaches. However, there is one thing left to do that cannot be put off, avoided or danced around. Writing. At some point you’ve got to do it. Or bail on the event. The proverbial “shit or get off the pot”.
If you take a cursory look at a calendar you will see that the month of July is fast coming to an end. That means that Blaugust 2026 Festival of Blogging starts in a few days time! If you’re participating, or thinking of doing so, the next few days present a golden opportunity to do some practical organising and basic preparation. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Feel free to just do things as they come, so to speak, if that’s your approach. However, for most of us, it helps if we have some kind of plan in place and make some arrangements in advance. I personally prefer this approach and like to have some ideas for blog posts in the bank. It is also useful to have “options” if something doesn’t go to plan. For those who are new to Blaugust, here are a few ideas regarding preparation that may be of use to you. As ever, your personal mileage may vary and ultimately you are best off adopting a strategy that suits your writing style and personal schedule.
Prior to last year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging, I upgraded Contains Moderate Peril to the latest version of Squarespace. There are still some aspects of the site that need fine tuning but overall, I am happy with the appearance of my blog and its respective functionality. With this year’s writing event fast approach, I decided to tackle over the last few days, some of those finer points that need tweaking. I have wanted a post counter on the site for a long time but unfortunately there is no native Squarespace widget for this basic function. I also felt the need to upgrade the blogroll, as the current one didn’t support RSS feeds from certain sites (e.g. Google Blogger) and was dependent upon a third party service, Elfsight, which wasn’t ideal. Both of these issues have now been addressed and I am pleased with the results. There is now a post counter on the Blog Archive page, which seems a logical place to have it and the Blogroll is now far more comprehensive.
Next month the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging begins. Roundabout this time each year, I try to write a promotional post to raise awareness of the event and encourage potential participants. However, as I’ve done this quite a few times before, each year it is becomes increasingly difficult to present the essential facts about Blaugust: Festival of Blogging in an interesting fashion. There’s nothing worse than writing a post and feeling that you’re just covering old ground. So, this year, I thought I’d try something different and present the most important information about this annual event, as if it were a conversation between myself and an interested passer by. Feel free to attribute novelty voices for each party in your own head, while you read this. If it helps, try imagining that this discussion is happening between two celebrities or such like. Both may be wearing exotic hats but I digress. On with the scenario.
I read a blog post by Void recently, about finding a new internet home. He wrote about how he and many others have had to pick up their “digital roots” and migrate multiple times over the years, from one platform to another. It is a position I can sympathise with as I have done likewise. Hence I like the idea of having a place online where I hangout by default. My own blog is an anchor for me but it is not quite the same thing as a platform or online portal where I can find all my friends and colleagues, share content and shoot the breeze. It’s a curious thing, because as I typed that last sentence it struck how such a sentiment may seem alien to others. There may well be people who like to have a finger in multiple pies and who are happy to frequent and flit between various social media apps, Discord servers and subreddits. I prefer to focus my efforts on a single instance. A place that suits my requirements, allows me to put down roots and become part of the furniture. Like a virtual Diogenes Club.
Everyday, once I’m up, I sit at my desk in my office, fire up my PC and log into Feedly. I have various RSS feeds grouped by category, which I slowly trawl through and read anything that catches my eye. I have one curated feed named “Blaugust” named after the yearly festival of blogging event. It has over 250 blogs listed, many of which are former participants. Most of these regularly post. Hence there’s a lot to get through and so I don’t read all of them. However there are a few that I always checkout. Mainly because they’re the personal musings of some of our writing community’s oldest and most prodigious members. The sorts of guys and gals who are part of the furniture. They’ve always been there and it feels like they always will. Posting their thoughts, sharing their enthusiasm and spreading the love, so to speak. One of these blogs, is Tales of the Aggronaut. written by Belghast.
On Friday 26th June, I had another random spike in internet traffic to Contains Moderate Peril. The statistical package that comes with my Squarespace account recorded over 13k visits in less than 24 hours, which is not typical (although I wish it was). However, all of these visits to my blog arrived via the default homepage and spent between 1 and 2 minutes there. Hence, it was obvious that this was not human traffic, as there was no evidence of any searches being made of content that is available on my site, nor of the “visitors” clicking on any of the links on the top menu and viewing other posts. This was undoubtedly AI traffic arriving at the designated homepage and simply parsing the site. I had a similar spate of this sort of web traffic last November. The only difference on that occasion is that the traffic all came from China. This time round it hailed from the US. I suspect that this is something that will happen more often as companies set their AI loose on the net for what is effectively training.
I recently watched a video on Patreon by someone who I actively support as a “content creator” and whose work I enjoy. I shall provide no more detail regarding their identity because they may not want their work referenced with regard to what I am going to say. During the course of their video they briefly referenced the work put into promoting a podcast they are currently producing and the relatively low audience that it has garnered so far. The comments were an aside and most certainly not said with any sense of self-pity. They were simply a statement of fact. Furthermore, I suspect they are far from unique and similar sentiments have been expressed in one way or another by anyone who has created something the published it online, only for it to be lost among the greater white noise” of the wider internet.
When I first started blogging way back in 2007, I maintained a blogroll of all my colleagues and peers’ websites. At the time this was a common practice and a way to support an expanding community. I considered this such an important aspect of the blogging scene at the time, I created a website to aggregate posts from video game blogs, called The Gaming Blog Nexus. It ran for two years and proved quite useful. However, it was tricky to administer and would frequently break as a lot of the back end widgets and plugins were created and maintained by “gifted amateurs”. I eventually shut it down due to the operating costs. When I moved my own website, Contains Moderate Peril, to Squarespace in 2015 I intended to start maintaining a blogroll once again. However, at that time there was no native support for such a thing on the platform. Hence for the last ten years, I have not had a blogroll on my website, which hasn’t sat well with me.
I was speaking to someone recently about hobbies (fortunately it wasn’t Simon Quinlank) and I mentioned that I have maintained a blog for over a 19 years. When I talked about the ongoing cost they were most surprised, as they had assumed that blogging was something that could be done for free. I guess we’ve become so accustomed to the provision of free online services such as email, that this a reasonable assumption. I pointed out that although it is indeed possible to blog for free using Blogger, it was not the optimal approach, especially if you want to maintain some degree of control over your writing. Naturally, the next question they asked was how much do I spend and I gave them a ballpark figure. All of which reminded me that I wrote a post on this very subject a few years ago. So I’ve decided to revisit the subject and see how much it currently costs to maintain Contains Moderate Peril.
Today I started the slow process of auditing every post that has been published on Contains Moderate Peril since 1st August 2016. The goal is to correct any obvious typos and replace all existing images with larger ones. The Squarespace software upgrade I applied to the website at the end of last year has finally allowed me to establish a standard format that I am happy with. Hence the ongoing audit is the perfect opportunity to apply these style rules to all posts. There are also some technical issues and matters regarding functionality that need to be addressed. I need to determine how to embed YouTube videos in such a way that they automatically scale to fit whatever device is viewing them. Another area which needs improving is the website search facility. This needs refinement so that enquiries can be more specific. Older posts also need to be more accessible, although I am still researching how best to achieve this.
It’s nearly two and half months since the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event ended. During that time I’ve maintained a fairly regular writing schedule and I post every two days or so. Furthermore, I finally dragged my blog template, kicking and screaming, into the modern era. I tweaked a few pages and updated the content of the “about” page. The next task is to start going through all previous posts and replacing older, low resolution images with larger, more appropriate ones. This process also presents an opportunity to ensure that all posts follow a uniform style. IE Are appropriately categorised, have links to related posts at the bottom and are SEO optimised. This will be a lengthy task so I think the best approach will be to tackle two or three posts a day. Hopefully this will raise the profile of older content, which generates the lion’s hare of traffic to this site.
I use a browser extension called Control Panel for YouTube, which allows me to determine who many videos are displayed on my YouTube homepage and to filter the content that is shown. At present it is configured to display rows of six. Something that I have noticed of late, is the amount of videos with hyperbolic titles and thumbnail images created by AI. Both of which are design choices made to increase engagement. Clickbait titles are contrived to meet current SEO optimisation criteria and as such feature more and more in search results. The fact that they frequently have no relation to the subject I am researching, seems to be neither here nor there. The same issues arise with regard to AI generated images, which again frequently have no bearing on the matter. The fact that more and more content creators do this, infers that it works and is now an essential part of the process you must follow to be seen and featured in search results.
In the last post in this series, I specified the need for a plan with regard to upgrading my blog. Well a plan has emerged, been refined and has now been formally adopted. Rather than migrate Contains Moderate Peril to a new platform and effectively have to rebuild all the content, I am going to upgrade my existing presence on Squarespace. This decision was made for two reasons. Time and money. Migrating to a new platform will take a lot of time and incur additional costs. Upgrading the existing website will take less time and has no cost implications. That is not to say that it will be easy. It has become abundantly clear that the upgrade process will break stuff and that all published posts will have to be manually repaired. Hence my choice boils down to the lesser of two evils.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has reached an end and it would appear that this event has been well received by those who have participated in it. I believe that there were 168 bloggers taking part this year, many of whom have not participated before. Some were new to blogging, where others simply wished to see if they could increase their writing output. As ever there was a wide variety of blog styles and subject matters and it has been most interesting to read new posts every day. I have attempted to leave comments and positive feedback where I can and I hope that some of these new blogs that I’ve discovered continue to write. Well done to everyone who took part. I hope it has been an enjoyable and informative process and that you have learned from it. I know that at least one blogger has determined that writing online is not for them, which is a valuable lesson.
There is currently a group writing prompt available as part of this year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging which has piqued my interest. It asks the question “what is the oldest draft post you have” and suggests that it is revived in some manner. I have dozens of draft posts in a folder in my Google Drive. Many are film reviews or film related. The oldest of which dates back to summer 2010. Rather than write a straight forward review of Blake Edwards 1968 comedy The Party, I rather foolishly thought at the time that I’d tackle the issue of whether the film is sufficiently racist to make it beyond the pale. Let it suffice to say that I quickly found myself bogged down in the complexities of the subject and thus never completed the blog post.
I’ve participated in every previous Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event. Prior to that I was involved in the Newbie Blogger Initiative or NBI as it was affectionately known. I have therefore written quite a lot of blogging advice and suggestions over the years. If anyone feels disposed to do so, you can access them all by clicking on the “blogging” option on the top menu of this blog. However, it is important to remember that a lot of the ideas I have advocated and written about over the years are purely subjective. Not all advice or guidance works for everyone. People have different ideas about blogging, different approaches to it and different aspirations. This year has highlighted some quite distinct differences among bloggers which has been most illuminating.
Today is my blogging anniversary. I have been writing online consistently for 18 years. My earliest blogs no longer exist, although they can be found via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. My first blog was a Lord of the Rings Online fansite called Misadventures in LOTRO. After a while this morphed into a wider gaming website; Misadventures in Gaming. However, I soon discovered that I wanted to write about more than just video games, so I decided to start from scratch and created Contains Moderate Peril in February 2010. This blog endured and has been my main online presence ever since. It has moved several times for various reasons. For a while I had a sponsor, as well as a reasonably sized audience and had dreams of making money from my writing and podcast. But it wasn’t to be and now I just write primarily for my own peace of mind and amusement.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Blaugust 2025
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
If you’re looking for more specific details regarding Blaugust, then head over to Nerd Girl Thoughts and read Krikket’s very informative post. It has details regarding the philosophy of Blaugust, the simple set of rules (most of which are mainly for guidance) and the various awards and accolades that can be earned by participating. Please note these are mainly virtual “attaboys”, rather than high value items or sacks filled with banknotes. If Blaugust sounds like the sort of thing you’d like to participate in or you feel it could be the first step on a path to global domination, then you can sign up for the event here. There is no commitment or any sort of obligation if you do join this year’s festival. You can do as much or as little as you like. The only standout rule associated with Blaugust is that it celebrates written material created by people. As such, blogs based upon entirely AI generated content are politely asked not to participate.
I have maintained an online presence of some kind or another, for eighteen years. This personal blog, Contains Moderate Peril, has been hosted on Squarespace since August 2015. There are times when I take a break from writing for a while, but I always end up coming back. I have a compulsion to express myself through words. I find writing to be very cathartic and a great way to process my thoughts and feelings. I like being part of a blogging community and gain a great amount of pleasure reading other bloggers’ material. I also consider the ability to express yourself through writing to be an important skill. To be able to think and articulate your opinion, as well as how to collate a compelling and factually accurate argument are waning skills. I like YouTube videos as much as the next person. However, sometimes I want more than just an upbeat summary. I like longform articles that can both inform and analyse.
However, Blaugust doesn’t have to be as “heavy” as that and often isn’t. People write about a broad variety of subjects, hobbies and interests. All of which are very engaging and informative. If there is a single piece of advice that I have learned from my association with Blaugust over the years, it is not to overthink writing and to just do it. Writing is like any other activity in so far as the more you do, the better you become at it. You can also learn a great deal by reading other peoples blogs. There are also specific techniques and processes that you can use that will potentially improve your writing. Furthermore, by becoming part of the blogging community you can often find ideas and writing prompts to help you with your writing. But ultimately, after all the reading and planning you have to sit down in front of your keyboard and start writing. Blaugust is there to give you the impetus to start, or if need be, a gentle nudge.
It is obligatory to start these sorts of posts by reiterating the standard mantra that you should not be driven by your websites stats and that the data they contain can be unreliable. Although a sound philosophy in principle, it is actually more nuanced than that. Such data can be useful for growth if used wisely. I have never been coy about trying to increase my readership. For me it seems an integral aspect of blogging. Over the course of 2026, the traffic to Contains Moderate Peril has doubled. A lot of that is down to curious spikes in visits which seems to be AI scraping the entire site. Setting aside these anomalies, more people are reading posts and a lot are doing so via the site’s RSS feed. All of which is fine by me as growing the audience for this blog was a goal for this year, I am quite pleased by this development and the ongoing progress. I hope it continues.
There is a subtle difference between being rash and being proactive. Being rash means acting too fast without thinking about the results, while being proactive is a question of acting early with careful planning. Why have I mentioned this? Well prima facie information indicates that recent Blaugust participants are interested in an “official” online presence for the annual festival of blogging, other than that existing Discord server. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not everyone likes using Discord and I do worry that they may reduce its free functionality at some point in the future. With regard to there being a Blaugust platform of some kind, there is a consensus that it doesn’t need to be some sort of sprawling commercially hosted website running on Wix or such like. Those sorts of site require funding, a degree of admin and possibly private data management. It also a bit too “corporate” if you like. Hence the logical compromise is to have a static site. Let it suffice to say, that has been done.
Judging by the posts I’ve read, it would appear that Blaugust 2026: Festival of Blogging has been well received by those who participated in it. That is most satisfying to know, especially in light of the fact that this is the first year the event has been run without our founder who sadly past away in July. It has also become clear that Blaugust is reaching a far wider and diverse audience and most definitely is no longer the exclusive province of bloggers from one particular community. There has been healthy discussions on our Discord server about whether this year event needs to adapt to accommodate the modern blogosphere. Questions such as whether or not there needs to be a dedicated Blaugust website have been raised and explored. Should every site participating have an RSS feed? How, if required, should comments be handled. Inevitably, the subject of the use of AI in blogging still remains a controversial issue.
After a very productive month of writing, we come to the final Blaugust 2026 Group Project writing prompt. It is titled lessons learned and is usually a chance to reflect on the festival and whether or not it has been to one’s satisfaction. Have you achieved your goals? What have you gained from the experience? Those sorts of things. It also poses two further questions; “What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?” and “what’s the best advice you’ve ever given to someone else?” for your consideration. I’ll address the questions shortly. Firstly let’s mull over this years event and assess how it’s gone.
It was my blogging anniversary on the 16th August. I’ve been writing and sharing my post online for 19 years, via various different websites and blogs. This current iteration of Contains Moderate Peril has been around since August 2015. To date it has 2,171 posts including this one. Quantity does not necessarily equate to quality but there are some articles I am proud of and feel that they make their point effectively.
This week’s Blaugust 2026 Group Project writing prompt is an important topic. Namely, staying motivated. I prepared a fairly lengthy post with some advice and ideas to keep people focused and writing. Then I checked it against the post I wrote last year and the year before that, going back to blogging events from 2012. All of these posts broadly said the same thing, so I decided to scrap what I had composed for today and to go with a simpler approach. I shall answer the questions Krikket posed for this writing prompt. Fellow blogger Bhagpuss has also done so and as ever, his thoughts are interesting and well expressed. Here are my answers.
Once again, I have stumbled across an interesting debate that has provided me with an opportunity to write a blog post. Over on the Blaugust Discord Server, I read a comment from AgingGamer regarding RSS feeds and their significance with regard to blogging. This in turn referred me to a post by fyr (don’t you love all these nom de plumes) who wrote at depth about the ongoing community debate about the use of RSS/Atom feeds. The article explored the importance of such feeds with regard to reaching readers and providing accessibility to the disabled. All of which provided me with a great deal of food for thought. Mainly because I use a mainstream website service provider for my online endeavours, so RSS is by default built. I’ve never really considered not having such a facility at my disposal. But the rise in the IndieWeb scene challenges this assumption.
I have written two blog posts today that I have subsequently abandoned. The first was gaming related but when I was about halfway through writing it, I felt like I was covering old ground and just repeating myself. It was also regarding an issue that can’t really be fixed. Namely, how do you ensure that matchmaking in PVP games is done equitably. As there is no solution to this issue at present, or at least not one that all parties can agree on, I decided to ditch it. Similarly a post I was working on about what becomes of my blog if anything happens to me was curtailed. In light of recent events in our community it seemed inappropriate. However, as a result of binning two blog posts, I new idea occurred to me. Do my fellow bloggers self-edit and curtail what they write about? Is your blog totally unfiltered or do you apply a set of rules that determine what content is deemed acceptable?
It is time for the next Blaugust 2026 Group Project writing prompt. This one comes with two lines of enquiry. The first is an opportunity to “introduce yourself”. Over the years, I have written several introductory posts for previous Blaugust events. Rather than repeat myself I’ll just link to the last one, which was posted in August 2023. I haven’t radically charged since then apart from my hair going whiter. The next part of the prompt poses a far more intriguing question. “If you could have one magical power or super power, what would you choose and what would you use it for?”, which offers much for consideration. Having given this proposition much thought here is my response.
A decade ago I wrote a post about blogrolls and the practical and social issues surrounding them. At the time, the version of Squarespace I was using didn’t easily support such things or at least wasn’t able to do so in a manner I liked, so I didn’t have one. Ten years later Squarespace as a hosting platform has far greater functionality, hence I recently decided to add a blogroll. That was in March this year. However it just wasn’t really fit for purpose. So I decided to revise it a few days ago and rather than just have a traditional list of blogs in a side column, I ended up producing a more comprehensive blog directory, which list two hundred plus sites alpha-numerically. I’ve been tinkering with it on and off and I am now finally happy with it. The latest update reflects the international nature of the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging and the fact that we have many blogs written in their native language. Translating text is now an integral function of web browsers, so I see no reason why these blogs should be excluded.
Today’s post is part of the Blaugust 2026 Group project, which features a series of writing prompts set for specific dates throughout the month. The idea being that everyone who wishes to participate can write about the same subject, riff off each other’s posts and enjoy a shared experience. In many respect having a common writing prompt levels the playing field and provides a sense of common purpose among those who take part. Today’s group project prompt asks the question “tell us all about your very first blog”. An unambiguous and interesting question that will hopefully prove enjoyable to write about and informative to others.
I have been writing online for nearly two decades. I don’t claim to be good or accomplished but what I can say with certainty is that the more often you write, the easier it becomes. For those who are new to writing a blog and the Blaugust Festival of Blogging, possibly the biggest hurdle that you now have to get over, is writing your first post of the month. You spent the lead up to this event sorting out your blog templates, fine tuning the backend and possibly banking some ideas. Or you may have decided to just wing it and make it all up as you go along. Both are perfectly valid approaches. However, there is one thing left to do that cannot be put off, avoided or danced around. Writing. At some point you’ve got to do it. Or bail on the event. The proverbial “shit or get off the pot”.
If you take a cursory look at a calendar you will see that the month of July is fast coming to an end. That means that Blaugust 2026 Festival of Blogging starts in a few days time! If you’re participating, or thinking of doing so, the next few days present a golden opportunity to do some practical organising and basic preparation. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Feel free to just do things as they come, so to speak, if that’s your approach. However, for most of us, it helps if we have some kind of plan in place and make some arrangements in advance. I personally prefer this approach and like to have some ideas for blog posts in the bank. It is also useful to have “options” if something doesn’t go to plan. For those who are new to Blaugust, here are a few ideas regarding preparation that may be of use to you. As ever, your personal mileage may vary and ultimately you are best off adopting a strategy that suits your writing style and personal schedule.
Prior to last year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging, I upgraded Contains Moderate Peril to the latest version of Squarespace. There are still some aspects of the site that need fine tuning but overall, I am happy with the appearance of my blog and its respective functionality. With this year’s writing event fast approach, I decided to tackle over the last few days, some of those finer points that need tweaking. I have wanted a post counter on the site for a long time but unfortunately there is no native Squarespace widget for this basic function. I also felt the need to upgrade the blogroll, as the current one didn’t support RSS feeds from certain sites (e.g. Google Blogger) and was dependent upon a third party service, Elfsight, which wasn’t ideal. Both of these issues have now been addressed and I am pleased with the results. There is now a post counter on the Blog Archive page, which seems a logical place to have it and the Blogroll is now far more comprehensive.
Next month the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging begins. Roundabout this time each year, I try to write a promotional post to raise awareness of the event and encourage potential participants. However, as I’ve done this quite a few times before, each year it is becomes increasingly difficult to present the essential facts about Blaugust: Festival of Blogging in an interesting fashion. There’s nothing worse than writing a post and feeling that you’re just covering old ground. So, this year, I thought I’d try something different and present the most important information about this annual event, as if it were a conversation between myself and an interested passer by. Feel free to attribute novelty voices for each party in your own head, while you read this. If it helps, try imagining that this discussion is happening between two celebrities or such like. Both may be wearing exotic hats but I digress. On with the scenario.
I read a blog post by Void recently, about finding a new internet home. He wrote about how he and many others have had to pick up their “digital roots” and migrate multiple times over the years, from one platform to another. It is a position I can sympathise with as I have done likewise. Hence I like the idea of having a place online where I hangout by default. My own blog is an anchor for me but it is not quite the same thing as a platform or online portal where I can find all my friends and colleagues, share content and shoot the breeze. It’s a curious thing, because as I typed that last sentence it struck how such a sentiment may seem alien to others. There may well be people who like to have a finger in multiple pies and who are happy to frequent and flit between various social media apps, Discord servers and subreddits. I prefer to focus my efforts on a single instance. A place that suits my requirements, allows me to put down roots and become part of the furniture. Like a virtual Diogenes Club.
Everyday, once I’m up, I sit at my desk in my office, fire up my PC and log into Feedly. I have various RSS feeds grouped by category, which I slowly trawl through and read anything that catches my eye. I have one curated feed named “Blaugust” named after the yearly festival of blogging event. It has over 250 blogs listed, many of which are former participants. Most of these regularly post. Hence there’s a lot to get through and so I don’t read all of them. However there are a few that I always checkout. Mainly because they’re the personal musings of some of our writing community’s oldest and most prodigious members. The sorts of guys and gals who are part of the furniture. They’ve always been there and it feels like they always will. Posting their thoughts, sharing their enthusiasm and spreading the love, so to speak. One of these blogs, is Tales of the Aggronaut. written by Belghast.
On Friday 26th June, I had another random spike in internet traffic to Contains Moderate Peril. The statistical package that comes with my Squarespace account recorded over 13k visits in less than 24 hours, which is not typical (although I wish it was). However, all of these visits to my blog arrived via the default homepage and spent between 1 and 2 minutes there. Hence, it was obvious that this was not human traffic, as there was no evidence of any searches being made of content that is available on my site, nor of the “visitors” clicking on any of the links on the top menu and viewing other posts. This was undoubtedly AI traffic arriving at the designated homepage and simply parsing the site. I had a similar spate of this sort of web traffic last November. The only difference on that occasion is that the traffic all came from China. This time round it hailed from the US. I suspect that this is something that will happen more often as companies set their AI loose on the net for what is effectively training.
I recently watched a video on Patreon by someone who I actively support as a “content creator” and whose work I enjoy. I shall provide no more detail regarding their identity because they may not want their work referenced with regard to what I am going to say. During the course of their video they briefly referenced the work put into promoting a podcast they are currently producing and the relatively low audience that it has garnered so far. The comments were an aside and most certainly not said with any sense of self-pity. They were simply a statement of fact. Furthermore, I suspect they are far from unique and similar sentiments have been expressed in one way or another by anyone who has created something the published it online, only for it to be lost among the greater white noise” of the wider internet.
When I first started blogging way back in 2007, I maintained a blogroll of all my colleagues and peers’ websites. At the time this was a common practice and a way to support an expanding community. I considered this such an important aspect of the blogging scene at the time, I created a website to aggregate posts from video game blogs, called The Gaming Blog Nexus. It ran for two years and proved quite useful. However, it was tricky to administer and would frequently break as a lot of the back end widgets and plugins were created and maintained by “gifted amateurs”. I eventually shut it down due to the operating costs. When I moved my own website, Contains Moderate Peril, to Squarespace in 2015 I intended to start maintaining a blogroll once again. However, at that time there was no native support for such a thing on the platform. Hence for the last ten years, I have not had a blogroll on my website, which hasn’t sat well with me.
I was speaking to someone recently about hobbies (fortunately it wasn’t Simon Quinlank) and I mentioned that I have maintained a blog for over a 19 years. When I talked about the ongoing cost they were most surprised, as they had assumed that blogging was something that could be done for free. I guess we’ve become so accustomed to the provision of free online services such as email, that this a reasonable assumption. I pointed out that although it is indeed possible to blog for free using Blogger, it was not the optimal approach, especially if you want to maintain some degree of control over your writing. Naturally, the next question they asked was how much do I spend and I gave them a ballpark figure. All of which reminded me that I wrote a post on this very subject a few years ago. So I’ve decided to revisit the subject and see how much it currently costs to maintain Contains Moderate Peril.
Today I started the slow process of auditing every post that has been published on Contains Moderate Peril since 1st August 2016. The goal is to correct any obvious typos and replace all existing images with larger ones. The Squarespace software upgrade I applied to the website at the end of last year has finally allowed me to establish a standard format that I am happy with. Hence the ongoing audit is the perfect opportunity to apply these style rules to all posts. There are also some technical issues and matters regarding functionality that need to be addressed. I need to determine how to embed YouTube videos in such a way that they automatically scale to fit whatever device is viewing them. Another area which needs improving is the website search facility. This needs refinement so that enquiries can be more specific. Older posts also need to be more accessible, although I am still researching how best to achieve this.
It’s nearly two and half months since the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event ended. During that time I’ve maintained a fairly regular writing schedule and I post every two days or so. Furthermore, I finally dragged my blog template, kicking and screaming, into the modern era. I tweaked a few pages and updated the content of the “about” page. The next task is to start going through all previous posts and replacing older, low resolution images with larger, more appropriate ones. This process also presents an opportunity to ensure that all posts follow a uniform style. IE Are appropriately categorised, have links to related posts at the bottom and are SEO optimised. This will be a lengthy task so I think the best approach will be to tackle two or three posts a day. Hopefully this will raise the profile of older content, which generates the lion’s hare of traffic to this site.
I use a browser extension called Control Panel for YouTube, which allows me to determine who many videos are displayed on my YouTube homepage and to filter the content that is shown. At present it is configured to display rows of six. Something that I have noticed of late, is the amount of videos with hyperbolic titles and thumbnail images created by AI. Both of which are design choices made to increase engagement. Clickbait titles are contrived to meet current SEO optimisation criteria and as such feature more and more in search results. The fact that they frequently have no relation to the subject I am researching, seems to be neither here nor there. The same issues arise with regard to AI generated images, which again frequently have no bearing on the matter. The fact that more and more content creators do this, infers that it works and is now an essential part of the process you must follow to be seen and featured in search results.
In the last post in this series, I specified the need for a plan with regard to upgrading my blog. Well a plan has emerged, been refined and has now been formally adopted. Rather than migrate Contains Moderate Peril to a new platform and effectively have to rebuild all the content, I am going to upgrade my existing presence on Squarespace. This decision was made for two reasons. Time and money. Migrating to a new platform will take a lot of time and incur additional costs. Upgrading the existing website will take less time and has no cost implications. That is not to say that it will be easy. It has become abundantly clear that the upgrade process will break stuff and that all published posts will have to be manually repaired. Hence my choice boils down to the lesser of two evils.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has reached an end and it would appear that this event has been well received by those who have participated in it. I believe that there were 168 bloggers taking part this year, many of whom have not participated before. Some were new to blogging, where others simply wished to see if they could increase their writing output. As ever there was a wide variety of blog styles and subject matters and it has been most interesting to read new posts every day. I have attempted to leave comments and positive feedback where I can and I hope that some of these new blogs that I’ve discovered continue to write. Well done to everyone who took part. I hope it has been an enjoyable and informative process and that you have learned from it. I know that at least one blogger has determined that writing online is not for them, which is a valuable lesson.
There is currently a group writing prompt available as part of this year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging which has piqued my interest. It asks the question “what is the oldest draft post you have” and suggests that it is revived in some manner. I have dozens of draft posts in a folder in my Google Drive. Many are film reviews or film related. The oldest of which dates back to summer 2010. Rather than write a straight forward review of Blake Edwards 1968 comedy The Party, I rather foolishly thought at the time that I’d tackle the issue of whether the film is sufficiently racist to make it beyond the pale. Let it suffice to say that I quickly found myself bogged down in the complexities of the subject and thus never completed the blog post.
I’ve participated in every previous Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event. Prior to that I was involved in the Newbie Blogger Initiative or NBI as it was affectionately known. I have therefore written quite a lot of blogging advice and suggestions over the years. If anyone feels disposed to do so, you can access them all by clicking on the “blogging” option on the top menu of this blog. However, it is important to remember that a lot of the ideas I have advocated and written about over the years are purely subjective. Not all advice or guidance works for everyone. People have different ideas about blogging, different approaches to it and different aspirations. This year has highlighted some quite distinct differences among bloggers which has been most illuminating.
Today is my blogging anniversary. I have been writing online consistently for 18 years. My earliest blogs no longer exist, although they can be found via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. My first blog was a Lord of the Rings Online fansite called Misadventures in LOTRO. After a while this morphed into a wider gaming website; Misadventures in Gaming. However, I soon discovered that I wanted to write about more than just video games, so I decided to start from scratch and created Contains Moderate Peril in February 2010. This blog endured and has been my main online presence ever since. It has moved several times for various reasons. For a while I had a sponsor, as well as a reasonably sized audience and had dreams of making money from my writing and podcast. But it wasn’t to be and now I just write primarily for my own peace of mind and amusement.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
I don’t really celebrate New Year’s Eve anymore. By that I mean, I don’t go to the pub or any other social gatherings. Nor do we have guests ourselves. Mrs P often doesn’t stay up to midnight. Mainly because she tends to go to bed relatively early, by default. One year changing to another seems a somewhat arbitrary excuse for a celebration to me. However, I realise that New Year is a big deal for some. I used to work with someone who said, very philosophically, that Christmas was for the children and New Year was for the adults. He was of Scottish antecedents and so New Year’s Eve was of more cultural significance to him. Also if you’ve had a difficult, problematic or traumatic 2025, then I fully understand that you may well be happy to see the back of 2025 and look to 2026 to be a significantly better year. Or at least, not to be as shit.