New Year: Taking Stock of Your Life
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 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.
However, one positive thing New Year does offer is an opportunity to take stock. I’m not talking about trite resolutions that the tabloid press are so fond of championing at this time of year. “New year, new you” sort of bullshit. I mean being brave and looking at your own life and giving serious consideration to what you can do to improve matters for yourself and possibly other people. You may also want to take a look at the state of the world. Be careful with this one as it can be a bit depressing. Although you may not be in a position to make any major changes there are lots of smaller scale things that we can do to help make life a little less shit. Taking stock should not be feared but embraced. A simple and honest audit of your personal status quo with a view to making some alterations. A chance to set some realistic and obtainable goals as well as a means to improve your state of mind.
I took time out from my usual activities at the end of April 2025. I went away for a short break to the Kent coast and was fortunate enough to have experienced some pleasant weather. I explored the picturesque town of Whitstable and relaxed at Margate Harbour. It was exceedingly restful to have a change of scene and be somewhere else for a change. During this time I candidly took stock of my life and the wider world in general. I am now a 58 years old man with more time behind me than I have in front of me. The world is also changing and I would argue not for the better. So I’ve been reflecting on both the past and the future. It has proven to be a valuable exercise and I feel better for it as I now have some clarity as to where I’m going. I have also made some decisions. Hopefully decisions that will address some of the things concerning me.
I won’t bore you with my various plans to improve my health or pursue various new writing projects. Because those aren’t really radical challenges. Improving my health is an imperative and therefore will be addressed simply because I fear the alternatives. The writing and associated projects will be done because they are a major source of pleasure and a creative outlet for me. The real and potentially challenging change I wish to make is to simply be more positive in my outlook on life. To make a concerted effort to find the good in situations and people and to dial back the skepticism. I want to be the person who after identifying an issue or problem, then has a cunning plan to address it. I believe this to be an important goal because legitimate concerns over what might happen both in your own backyard or globally are causing good people to retreat into their own personal inland empire.
I fully appreciate why disengaging from aspects of the world is a means to protect one’s mental wellbeing but it can also be part of a wider retreat from life. This concerns me because I keep coming back to the famous quote attributed to Edmond Burke. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. My gut is telling me that 2026 is not the year to do this. I think we need to hold the line. I’m not saying that we all need to become militant, firebrand activists. I just think we need to do what we can within the context of our own lives. Speak out if appropriate or undertake small acts of kindness. Praise those who merit praise. Admonish those who don’t. Be kind. Be strong. Be true. At the very least don’t be an asshole. There are far too many of those already. I’m certainly going to give it a go, although I have no idea how it’s going to work. In the meantime “Merry New Year” as Eddie Murphy said in Trading Places. Take stock and act. See you in 2026.
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 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 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 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.
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.
In the wake of Disco Elysium, I’ve been playing through several other games that have a focus on narrative and plot. I began with Call of Cthulhu which I shall write about in a separate post. Let it suffice to say that although I enjoyed the game, I wasn’t quite satisfied. This is not necessarily the game’s fault, as it makes a good attempt at depicting Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror. It’s just that any game following hard on the heels of one of the best RPG’s I’ve ever played, is likely to come up short in comparison. So I looked through my game library and found that I had Still Wakes The Deep, which enjoys a good reputation for having a strong story. I subsequently played through the game over two late night sessions and was left suitably impressed. So much so that I’ve bought the additional DLC, Siren’s Rest, in the hope that it maintains the quality of its predecessor.
I frequently see advertising and promotional material for Roblox. For example, they have gift cards for the game at the supermarket checkout, along with similar products for Minecraft and Fortnite. However, I’ve never really paid any attention to it because I’m not the target demographic. This changed recently when I asked my ten year old, twin granddaughters what they were playing on their phones. They, like countless other children their age, play Roblox, so I did a quick search online to see what all the fuss was about. Apparently, Roblox has approximately 111.8 million daily active users and 380 million monthly active users worldwide. In light of such a prodigious playerbase, I thought I should look into this game further. So I installed Roblox on my PC, via the Windows Xbox app and asked the twins to give me a tour, as well as their thoughts on things.
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.
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.
Goodbye 2024
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.
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.
As for 2024 it hasn’t been an especially good year. Mrs P and I have had a lot of health issues which hopefully have now been addressed. We want to get back into the habit of having an extended weekend away each quarter in 2025. It’s nice to have social activities and events of your choice on the calendar and have something to look forward to. On a personal note my return to writing has been beneficial for my mental well being. I like setting an alarm and getting up early to write while my brain is still fresh. Once the seasonal celebrations are finally over, I am aiming to write every day in 2025 if possible. I also have some other projects to pursue which require learning new skills. It is important to keep the mind active and not to lapse into a purely sedentary and unchallenging lifestyle.
Outside of my immediate life 2025 is not looking like a good year with regard to geopolitics. However, I am not going to allow myself to be excessively anxious about it. Mrs P and I have discussed practical things that we may have to address, such as shortages or increasing inflation. Beyond that it’s really just a question of battening down the hatches and weathering the storm. By storm I mean the tsunami of bullshit that is going to hit the news cycle and the consequences of it. However, there are also some simple steps you can take to improve your state of mind and stay positive. Limiting your time on social media. Reading only the news headlines, rather than wallowing in the endless speculation and negative conjecture. I find keeping busy also helps. Sometimes, it’s best not to look too far into the future. Instead just focus on the present and take things one day at a time.
Happy New Year.
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 Gaming
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.
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.
I started the year playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare III, the 2023 entry in the never ending franchise. These games have a 12 month lifecycle and frequently “evolve” during their quarterly updates. Hence many of the aspects of MW III that I liked when I started playing, were altered, nerfed or simply removed, six months later. The community is also vile and seems to be a magnet for the emotionally dysfunctional. This doesn’t help, especially when trying to find information on builds and tactics via the games subreddit. I found myself in a minority as I actually liked the open world approach to the Zombie play mode. The latest iteration of the game released in October has returned to the traditional round based approach, which I don’t like. So roundabout summer, I stopped playing as the game no longer yielded sufficient fun. I uninstalled it a few months later.
I fancied playing a traditional high fantasy RPG this year and found exactly that in Dragon’s Dogma 2. I quite liked the fact that the game deliberately eschews fast travel and is designed so that the player has to travel slowly around the world map, fighting as they go. I also liked the pawn system in which you could hire up to 3 NPC companions from multiple classes. These can be either prebuilt pawns provided by the game itself, or ones that other players had created. I got quite attached to some of them with their quirky names and dialogue, until I outlevelled them. The combat was more challenging than I had expected but I liked the fact that you could climb onto some of the exotic beasts you fought and attack vital areas. Some players were disappointed by the story, claiming it was somewhat generic. I felt it was adequate and often wonder if games such as these, made by international developers, lose something in translation.
I returned to several MMOs this year. Star Trek Online continues to be a mainstay, due to its continuous calendar of short term events. Such an approach is not a real substitute for longer, story based missions which are becoming more infrequent these days. But STO does afford the casual gamer a quick fix and a means to jump straight into some action if you have limited leisure time. I also resumed playing The Lord of the Rings Online having one update and an expansion to catch up with. I reached the new level cap with my primary character and weathered the ill conceived changes that were made to the Lore-master class. When will developers learn that if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it? LOTRO still benefits from well written and innovative stories to underpin all their quests. It also has a knack of creating interesting zones. Overall the game does sufficient to keep me engaged.
For reasons I can’t quite articulate, I decide to revisit Age of Conan. I found my original character from 2011 along with an MMO that is in maintenance mode. It still has players although they tend to congregate in the cities and most of the time, you’ll find yourself alone when out questing. As such, it can be played as an RPG but I decided not to pursue playing any further than satiating my thirst for nostalgia. Instead I opted to dive back into Star Wars: The Old Republic as there were three classes that I hadn’t played. To date, I have now completed the Sith Inquisitor and Jedi Consular classes and am now focusing on the Judi Knight. The great thing about SWTOR is that each class has a unique story, as does each planet in the game. Hence there is always something new to return to.
2024 was certainly not a standout year for gaming, at least from my perspective. Video games still provided an entertaining pastime but nothing really loomed large and made an impact upon me such as Red Dead Redemption 2 or Skyrim. Such games are becoming increasingly rare. MMOs once again proved to be a comfortable form of gaming and I am still enjoying my return to SWTOR. I also have the latest LOTRO expansion to play through, which I am keeping in reserve for the moment. I have my eye on the new Indiana Jones game in the New Year along with the latest instalment of Sniper Elite. However, the cost of buying new titles is becoming quite expensive. Especially if you want the most comprehensive version of a video game. However, I have a potential solution for that problem but that is a blog post for the New Year.
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 Movies
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.
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.
My personal cinema experience has greatly improved of late due to the opening of a new local independent cinema in Summer 2023. The Sidcup Storyteller has three screens which are best described as “petit” and “bijou”. However, this is advantageous as it tends not to attract a youthful audience seeking the latest multiplex fodder. Instead customers tend to be of an older age group who still cleave to old school cinema etiquette. The seats are roomy and the sound system is not turned up to 11 but instead is actually configured so dialogue is audible. Films are shown throughout the day which is convenient if you want to grab something to eat afterwards and still be home at a reasonable hour. Ticket prices are acceptable and on average are about £10, although there are often discounts and promotions that can reduce the price as low as £6.30 which is very reasonable.
I went to the cinema 3 times in 2024, which is possibly an all time low. A decade earlier I would go at least once a month and could always find something that I wanted to watch. Sadly this decline all comes down to the content that monopolises cinema chains these days. I’m tired of being charitable and advocating a live and let live policy. Franchise moves are a blight on quality film making. They indirectly condition their audience towards spectacle, rather than dialogue and story. Furthermore, they foster short attention spans. Through no fault of their own modern audiences are often incapable of watching anything outside of a narrow spectrum of material and are effectively cinematically illiterate. It is a sorry state of affairs and ultimately it’s the audience that loses out.
As for the three films that I saw at the cinema this year, they were as follows. One Life about the British humanitarian Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins) and his involvement in the Kindertransport during World War II. It is a very low key film with the focus on performance. It doesn’t overreach itself by being too epic in scope and makes its point perfectly. Back to Black is a biography of singer Amy Winehouse. The plot is somewhat factually spurious but the central performance by Marisa Abela is sound, especially her singing. Finally, the last film of the year was Paddington in Peru. Not quite as good as the first two movies but it is still entertaining, mainly due to the strong supporting cast. Antonio Banderas being especially droll. I considered going to the cinema to see Blitz, Alien Romulus and Gladiator II but ultimately chose to watch them all at home.
Despite a decline in mainstream cinema, there are still plenty of good quality films available. You just have to look a little harder to find them. They are often buried in the streaming menus and need to be sought out. I find that word of mouth from friends and critics that I know and respect is often a reliable heads up. I found Robot Dreams that way, along with Longlegs. Both are entertaining genre offerings but very different films. Another solid film recommended by a reliable source is Juror #2, directed by Clint Eastwood. This was released without much fanfare but it is a no nonsense courtroom drama, filmed in Eastwood usual matter of fact style. It achieves exactly what it sets out to do, delivering a strong indictment of the US legal system. The fact that films such as these three are still made does give me hope that quality mainstream filmmaking is not quite dead and that good stories still appeal to audiences.
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 TV
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”.
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”.
Yet there are downsides. The most obvious one is the fact that most people cannot subscribe to all the platforms they would like to and that there are simply too many competing services. So we all make tough choices based on what permutation of subscriptions offers us the most choice and then use other family member’s login details to cover the shortfall. Then there is the concept of “TV poverty” for those on low incomes who have no other recourse other than what is available for free. Internet access is still poor in some regions of the UK, meaning that streaming is not always the best option available. It has been mooted that the UK government intends to phase out digital terrestrial television by 2030 and replace it with streaming exclusively but until the internet divide is addressed i cannot see this being viable.
Freely, the proposed streaming replacement for UK digital terrestrial TV
TV has always had a curious relationship with cinema. In many ways they have been opposites at different periods of time. In the fifties and sixties cinema was considered the cerebral medium and TV was the poor, populist relation. At present it is the opposite. Film is driven by franchise spectacles, where TV is the home of complex, well written dramas. That being said, TV is not averse to creating franchises with an eye on long term longevity. This can come with its own set of problems. I started watching From on the understanding that this complex sci-fi horror drama would not make the same mistakes as the TV show Lost. Sadly the plot is dragging and there is little progression. One cannot escape the feeling that this show with its interesting premise and strong cast, is deliberately being dragged out for obvious financial reasons at the risk of the public just getting bored and switching off.
Another issue is time that elapses between seasons of a popular show. If more than a year goes by then it can be a struggle to recollect all nuances of the plot. Sometimes, I will have to rewatch the final episode of the previous season to jog my memory. On a few occasions, I have watched YouTube summaries of the previous series to bring me back up to speed. I find it kills your interest in a show if you have to do homework to keep on top of it. Sadly, some shows just drag on too long and end up diminishing their brand. It is argued that the optimal number of seasons is between five and seven. NCIS is a prime example of a popular show that has just gone on for too long. The most beloved characters have gone and it currently suffers from very poor writing. Conversely, its recent spinoff show, NCIS Origins, is the complete opposite with tightly written, well conceived and minimalist episodes.
NCIS Origins is a far better written show than NCIS
I enjoy good television but if left unchecked it could totally monopolise all my leisure time. Therefore I will make the decision to not watch some shows as I would rather spend the time on some other hobby. Unfortunately, just like the film industry, the current business model for television has an element of “fear of missing out” built into its marketing. Do you want to be one of the “cool kids” discussing the latest episode of a show and thus be part of a shared cultural moment, or will you watch it a couple of years later and discover that none of your mates want to talk about it anymore as they’ve moved on? Another cultural change is whether we “accept” that YouTube is a form of TV? I regularly watch YouTube on my lounge TV and for many, this is what they watch instead of “old school” TV. I suspect that 2025 will have more changes in store for us and will therefore be an equally interesting year in television.
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 Music
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 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.
In a world of “big data”, naturally Spotify has crunched the numbers relating to my usage over the last 12 months and has collated a presentation about my listening habits. My top five artists are a strange mix. I was not surprised to see Rammstein at the top of the list as I find their pounding songs to be an excellent form of stress release. Seeing the late, great Slim Whitman so high in the list was unexpected. I “inherited” my love of this man’s yodelling abilities and his three octave range falsetto from my mother. She adored him and hence I became very familiar with his back catalogue. As for Howard Shore and John Barry, their respective presence is due to my love of sumptuous movie soundtracks. With respect to The Stranglers, I consider them an underrated UK band. A band where there’s more than meets the eye.
Slim Whitman
I apparently listened to 10,558 minutes of music this year. If you assume an average running time of 3.5 minutes for a song, that’s a little over 3000. Like most data presented out of any sort of context, I have no idea if that is a lot or a little compared to other users. It averages out at about 8 songs a day which doesn’t seem a lot. Maybe 30 minutes of music each time. I suppose it all depends on your circumstances. I spend a lot of time at my desk using my PC, so I’ll often listen to something while writing or gaming. Plus I did some travelling at the start of the year, which provided additional time to listen to Spotify via headphones. Overall, enjoying music is certainly part of my daily routine. Just like listening to podcasts and watching YouTube channels that I subscribe to. Having what I want, when I want, without any hassle certainly makes things a lot easier.
Rammstein
Perhaps the biggest change I can see with regard to listening to music, is that I don’t take it quite so seriously anymore. I remember my teenage years and being very proud and protective of the bands and artists I liked. Music being such an integral part of youth culture. I no longer see music in terms of being cool or uncool, mainstream or indie. It simply comes down to whether a tune gets a positive reaction or not. If it does, then I’ll add it to a playlist. As to my wider musical aspirations, it has been a long time since I’ve seen any live music. Perhaps the biggest reason for this is that being a gentleman of a certain age, I like to sit down. Something that is not always viable at a concert. But I feel it is time to see a big, stadium band next year. Mainly because if I don’t go and see anything in 2025, I’ll probably never do such a thing again.
I was recently listening to some music on Spotify when it struck me how poor the sound quality was. It lacked any depth and certain instruments seemed lost in what I can only describe as a somewhat flat and smudged soundscape. Then I remembered that I had recently reinstalled the app on my PC after the search facility "broke" on the previous install. It would seem that any prior settings and customisations that I may have made had not carried over, not that I recollect specifically making any. I consulted Google Gemini to see if this issue was a common one and low and behold it is. The latest version of Spotify, by default, has the streaming bitrate set fairly low to accommodate data capped internet services or low bandwidth connections. In audio terms the music quality sounds poor. Hence I spent sometime nosing around in the settings to see what needed to be changed to remedy this problem. Here is the breakdown of the alterations that I made.
The Guardian news website have a recurring feature in their “culture” section called Honest Playlist where they ask various celebrities about their music listening habits. There are a dozen or so stock questions that they use to grill their guest, although they don’t always use the same ones. I think it makes for interesting reading so its a column that I often visit. As I haven’t published a post based upon an internet questionnaire for a while, I thought I poach this particular line of questioning and have a crack at it myself. I have chosen the ten questions that I think are the best and by that I mean, they have the most scope for interesting answers. I didn’t include the one about karaoke because it’s not something I especially like. Each to their own. Feel free to similarly purloin this set of questions and write your own responses. I’m always fascinated by these sort of things.
I was in a pub last night, catching up with friends before Christmas, when I noticed on the wall something I haven’t seen in a pub for a very long time. A jukebox. In my experiences most of the pubs I go to take one of the following two approaches to background music. They either have a sound system and exclusively manage any music via personally curated playlists from behind the bar. Or they have no music at all. The Wetherspoons chain of pubs broadly follow the latter policy and actively use it as a marketing point. Quiet pubs for clientele that just want to talk can be popular. Hence finding an accessible jukebox was a blast from the past. During the late eighties and early nineties, I regularly visited my local pub and often used the jukebox there, which at the time, was operated by an ever changing store of CDs. The jukebox I encountered last night was digital.
I recently came up with a random writing prompt for the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event. Namely, “what is your favourite bassline in a song”? For clarity, Wikipedia defines a bassline as follows: Bassline is the term used in many styles of music, such as blues, jazz, funk, dub and electronic, traditional, and classical music, for the low-pitched instrumental part or line played by a rhythm section instrument such as the electric bass, double bass, cello, tuba or keyboard. As I thought of this prompt, it only seems fair that I tackle it myself. Hence, here are five songs that I feel have notable basslines, or that have bassplayers that play in a unique style. I am not especially musically talented myself and therefore not au fait with all the correct musical terminology. However, I will strive to quantify why I think each song is a good example.
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.
I currently have over 152 GB of music on my PC. Approximately 26,000 songs or pieces of music. These are in MP3, Flac and other formats. The files have been sourced from various CDs that I have owned over the years and subsequently “ripped”. Others have been bought from Amazon or other similar sources. In the past I have copied music from friends’ collections and vice versa. The files are mainly categorised by artist or name which is sufficient for me to be able to trawl through them to find what I want. I use foobar2000 as my music player of choice, mainly because it is updated by its developer, plays all major file formats and has no adverts. The interface is verging on the spartan but I prefer this minimalist approach, as I do not require an excess of features.
The following is about a cultural change. That is not to say that it’s a value judgement or one of those posts you so frequently read by bloggers of a certain age, that essentially boil down to “things were better in my day”. It is merely an observation and like all observations it is not 100% universal. There will always be exceptions to the rule. I am simply painting with broad strokes a general truism for your consideration. My point being that people listen, experience and enjoy music differently these days compared to how they did three to four decades ago. I’m not talking about the science of hearing or anything complex like that. I am merely highlighting the change in the way we choose to experience music and how that has an impact upon its creation and presentation. So like Anne Elk, presenting her theory on the Brontosaurus, here is the axiom at the heart of this post.
I was reminiscing about the music of my youth the other day which led me to listen to a track by Pro-Pain. The band formed in NYC in 1991 and their debut album Foul Taste of Freedom got some traction in the UK. I lost track of them after the next album and moved on musically. However, because of my recent fit of nostalgia, I looked the band up on Wikipedia and discovered that they were still going. Now thirty years is quite a long period of time and nothing stays the same forever but even I was surprised to see that the lineup of Pro-Pain had changed over a dozen times. The only original artist in the band today is bass player, lead vocalists and founder member, Gary Meskil. As ever this started a train of thought about the subject. How so many bands have made substantial changes in their lineup over the course of their careers and the respective pros and cons of such decisions.
In 2000, I was the proud owner of a Sega Dreamcast. I had a broad selection of games for the console from multiple genres, including Metropolis Street Racer. This was an early example of an open world driving game which is noteworthy in itself. However, what stood out for me was that this was the first game that I had played which had in-game radio stations. Although this is something that is now de rigueur within this sub-genre, back then this was a novelty. The tracks were stored on the game CD but played selectively according to which radio station you were listening to when driving. The sound even broke up if you went into a tunnel. The songs were all original creations, rather than licensed properties. Although credited to faux bands and bogus artists, composer Richard Jacques wrote and arranged them all. I was especially fond of the Oasis inspired band Salford Quays and the track Live Your Life.
I was a teenager during the eighties and the music that I listened to at the time was a major part of my overall experience. My musical taste influenced how I dressed and sometimes even determined friendships. Going to a gig and seeing music performed live was a major rite of passage. Furthermore, due to there only being a handful of TV channels in the UK at the time, meant that certain key programs were responsible for the dissemination of a broad spectrum of musical genres. Hence, while you waited for a band that you liked to come on, you’d sit and be exposed to a wealth of different artists. Something that tends not to happen nowadays as there is far more choice available. My passion for music persisted throughout the nineties and then began to wane round about the turn of the century. Work and the practicalities of daily life made it increasingly difficult to “keep up”. I used to read the music press and know about contemporary artists. I no longer do this. I often don’t even know what the current Number 1 record is.
I try and keep abreast of what's happening and going on, especially in those areas of interest to me such as movies, TV and gaming etc. Occasionally stuff passes me by that I subsequently discover at a later date, often to the refrain of WTF? A few years ago I was idly channel surfing only to discover that a seminal UK children's TV show from my youth, the Mr. Men, had been remade in a more contemporary idiom. Luckily, the source characters were still relatively unscathed, and the revamped show did a competent job in bringing Roger Hargreaves work to a new generation. Still, no one had told me and discovering this, in such a fashion was a bit of a surprise.
Goodbye 2022
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.
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.
Do I have any plans for 2023? Not at the moment. I have some administrative chores to deal with regarding my late mother’s estate, but beyond that I don’t have any specific ideas as to how to spend my time over the next twelve months. For the present I am content to just “be” and in the current economic and political climate, long term plans may not be viable. I suspect that nationally and internationally speaking, 2023 is going to be a very challenging year. I am concerned about the cost of living crisis in the UK and the state of domestic politics. It comes as no surprise that the Collins English Dictionary chose “permacrisis” as the word of the year. I suspect that the proverbial chickens (economically and politically speaking) will be coming home to roost this year and if that is the case, the most one can do is to try and weather the storm.
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.
A Year in Blogging
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.
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.
Bloggers write for different reasons and their motivations are equally diverse. I write primarily for myself but I see no shame in wanting others to read it too. Afterall, the medium is a form of communication and that process is a much more enjoyable experience if it is multilateral. It’s the same with podcasting. It all seems a waste of time if you script, record and edit a show and no one listens to it. So it may be unfashionable to say so but one of the reasons I have become fed up with blogging after 15 years is because I do feel at times that I’m just spitting in the wind. Am I talking about internet fame and fortune? No. As a wise man once said “Fame, it’s an empty purse. Count it, go broke. Eat it, go hungry. Seek it, go mad”. What I am referring to is building a healthy audience and contributing to a community. I used to feel that was the case about a decade ago. It just doesn’t quite feel that way anymore.
However, it is not all doom and gloom. I happily wrote continuously for a month during this year’s Blaugust event. Which sheds some insight into my personal psychology. I will happily fail to meet my own targets and goals, but when I make a commitment to a third party I cannot break it. It’s funny how I’m socially conditioned this way but that is another blog post entirely. Back to the matter in hand, I am currently considering a staged return to writing. This time of year makes it a lot easier because I can write a lot of pieces that are all variations of “a year in (insert subject matter here)”. I am also ruminating upon a new project. Something I can channel my energies into. Perhaps it is time to step outside of my normal comfort zone of writing and podcasting and do something different. We shall see. The New Year is fast approaching.
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.
Goodbye 2021
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.
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.
Rather than focus on the negatives, let’s reflect upon the positives. One of the best things that did happen in 2021 was the Blaugust Festival of Blogging. I really do find this yearly event to be very motivating and it is always a pleasure to see new writers starting out and absent friends return. Trying something new, especially something creative is always a lot easier if you have a community to draw upon for advice, support and friendship. It’s also very encouraging to see over 40 blogs in my RSS feed, still actively writing on a regular basis, sharing their thoughts and ideas. It certainly counters that persistent and erroneous narrative that blogging is dead. Furthermore the Discord server created for Blaugust continues to be active throughout the year, which is also very gratifying. A community that continues talking and sharing after the event is clearly a success.
I managed to maintain a fairly regular writing regime this year although that went awry in December due to illness in the family. I intend to increase my output in 2022 as I still feel that I have things to say on a great many matters and that all too often I miss the opportunity to do so just through poor time management. I shall therefore attempt to return to a morning writing schedule, as that seems to be the optimal time of day for me. I have also planned some side projects that I will be announcing in due course. Often it is all too easy to become more enamoured with planning a project rather than actually starting it. I intend to avoid this pitfall this year. I shall also try to be more encouraging to others. I know so many talented people with interesting ideas, who sadly never follow through on them for one reason or another. Perhaps a little nudge will provide the impetus needed.
Usually the closing paragraph of these sorts of posts are either philosophical, motivational or sarcastic. A pithy summation of events of the previous year and one’s hopes and aspirations for the forthcoming one. Frankly, I’m just keen to draw a line under 2021 and move on. I recently hit 54 and I’m very conscious that I am now embarking upon a very different phase of my life compared to that which has gone before. There are important matters that I need to sort out to ensure that life is both manageable and tolerable. I certainly feel motivated at present and so I need to capitalise upon that. Best wishes to all who have supported Contains Moderate Peril over the last twelve months. It is satisfying to know that I’m not just yelling into the void. I’m going to just keep going. I hope that you do the same.
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.
A Year in Technology
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.
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.
At present, possibly the most redundant piece of tech hardware I own is my Amazon Fire HD 10. It’s a nice size tablet and the specs were fairly robust back in Autumn 2018 when I bought it. But on a day to day basis I simply don’t use it. The Kindle book function was its main selling point but Audible has lured me into the world of audiobooks which I prefer. I would hazard a guess that I’ve probably only turned on this device 3 times during the course of 2021. I suspect I may sell this device in 2022, not because I’m averse to mobile “culture” per se but because my phone already meets all my needs in this respect. My Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, which I had since December 2019, is the most robust handset I’ve owned. It has a large screen and a powerful processor and outperforms the tablet in every respect.
Looking back over the last twelve months most of my technology based purchases have been either replacements or upgrades to existing items. I’ve written previously about how I seem to kill PC peripherals and 2021 was no exception. I had to replace an Xbox controller and a USB microphone this year. Sadly the latter still hasn’t been used in conjunction with the Bluetooth Earbuds. However, I am very pleased with the Soundbar I bought in the Summer and am impressed by the quality of the audio. It has certainly improved the cable management of my office desk. My recent acquisition of a laptop has also proven beneficial as I have had to spend an increasing amount of time at my parent house this year. I must reiterate my surprise at how much laptops have improved in recent years with regard to specifications, performance and weight.
As I write this post, the elephant in the room actually resides on the left hand side of my desk. The jury is still out as to whether the Nintendo Switch was a good purchase or not. It gets used for social gameplay, when we have guests (usually my granddaughters). I relocate the device to the lounge and connect it to the TV. However, I seldom use it for handheld gaming and I’m not even sure if this is down to not finding the right game. Fundamentally, I think that playing video games in this way just isn’t for me. Furthermore, if I were to obtain any other form of console, I suspect that I wouldn’t really get on with them either. For me gaming is done on the PC, predominantly with a keyboard and mouse. Anything else just doesn’t feel “right”. However, I shall keep the Switch and possibly buy a few more social games in 2022. Although I don’t use it that often it is very well received by my grandchildren.
At present, I have no immediate plans to buy any more tech in the New Year. A new television may well be required at some point in the next twelve months as the current one is reaching the end of its lifespan. There is also the possibility of our existing Internet Service Provider offering Fibre to the Premises in April. My dreams of a 100Mbps connection could become a reality. Apparently, I’m eligible for a mobile phone handset upgrade in February. A decade ago this would have thrilled me and I would have spent hours pawing over reviews and comparisons websites. At present the prospect elicits no more than a roll of the eyes. All of which is indicative of a shift in my relationship with technology. A relationship which I am now truly comfortable with. After all “the tail doesn’t wag the dog”.
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.
A Year in Gaming
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.
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.
Hence, I feel that there is now a moral dilemma in buying games from certain companies and that their products are in a way “tainted”. The same way as there is shopping at certain stores that are known for their unethical practises. However, a consumer boycott is not always the most effective form of protest and on occasions can do more harm to those parties one wishes to demonstrate a degree of solidarity with. However, one can still voice one’s unhappiness with the situation and that is what seems to be happening at present. Negative PR seldom goes unnoticed and as and when it impacts upon share prices, the message eventually reaches the top of the food chain. Action gets taken sooner or later but what the Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft and Bungie scandals highlight are a wider societal malaise. The abhorrent behaviour that we’ve read about seems to be ingrained in specific socioeconomic stratas. Fixing that is a much harder issue than just replacing a few managers and CEOs.
Moving on from how shitty the video game industry seems to be, personally speaking this has not been the most exciting year for my relationship with video games. As 2021 draws to an end my PC’s hard drive is filled with games that I’ve abandoned and become bored with. Cyberpunk 2077, GreedFall and Days Gone are a few examples of games that showed promise but became somewhat routine and pedestrian. I did enjoy my first major foray into the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Black Flag proved to have an engaging story and an unusual setting, hence I completed the game. My gaming mainstays, the MMORPGs The Lord of the Rings Online and Star Trek Online, also kept me busy this year. This was mainly due to the way this genre lends itself to “quick fix” gaming. STO in particular continuously runs events that afford the player a reason to log in and undertake a quick task. Yet despite this engagement, I don’t feel I’ve done anything significant in either game.
The jury is still out as to whether my Nintendo Switch has been a good or bad investment. It gets used mainly when my granddaughters come to visit and then Mario Kart is a firm favourite. But personally I have yet to find a game that enthrals me. I think I’m just culturally conditioned to do my gaming on a PC. And in other news, my love hate relationship with Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout continues. There is fun to be had playing this game but the moment specific races and events appear, they instantly kill my passion. I have still yet to win a crown. This failure to achieve this particular goal bothers the heck out of me. I suspect that overall, my relationship with gaming is shifting. As a pastime it is becoming very much like mainstream cinema. There’s no shortage of content but it’s all rather generic, formulaic and mediocre.
As for 2022, well for the present I shall just continue to push on with LOTRO and STO. I have nearly finished the new expansion in LOTRO, Fate of Gundabad and have reached the current level cap of 140. I finally got on top of the new Legendary Item system and have managed to create a rather robust new weapon. I think I may soon make a return to The Elder Scrolls Online and see what content I have waiting for me. I usually enjoy playing for a few months continuously and feel that subscribing improves the overall experience. I shall also keep a weather eye on the video game industry to see if and how it bounces back from the recent scandals assailing it. It already looks like the player uptake of NFTs is not going to be as easy as some publishers have anticipated. Maybe I’ll chance upon some hidden video game gems in the next 12 months and my enthusiasm will be restored. Time will tell.
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.
A Year in Social Media
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.
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 decade ago, I thought that using social media to promote my writing would be an invaluable tool and have positive results. Reflecting upon that now, I can't help but raise a wry smile at such naivety. Over the last twelve months, the amount of traffic to Contains Moderate Peril which is directly attributable to social media is just over 1%. Thus as a promotional tool, for me at least, it isn’t really worth the bother. Occasionally a Tweet about a game specific story may get a degree of traction with its player community but even then, it will only result in 100 or so additional visits to the post. Google is the primary source of people finding my writing and social media promotion has proven ineffective. Plus writing a blog doesn’t really lend itself to a presence on TikTok or Instagram. Platforms geared towards brevity and the concise delivery of targeted content, don’t really suit long from written material.
So after dabbling with instagram, I’ve ceased to actively participate on the platform. I mainly use it now to keep up to date with what my immediate family are doing, especially my granddaughters. Facebook is another medium I no longer use or check. I think the main reason I stopped using it was because rather than being a means to cross promote material, it simply became its own ecosystem which wasn’t especially helpful. As for older forms of social media such as forums and subreddits, they seem to be rapidly falling by the wayside. Many of the ones that I’ve used over the years, associated with specific games or types of fandom, have either closed down or dwindled into insignificance. Or they just become monopolised by a small cadre of dedicated posters who treat it as their own personal fiefdom. It often leads to an extremely partisan environment and hardly a suitable medium for debate and discussion.
Discord continues to be somewhat of a paradox, from my perspective. It’s a great way to chat and answer immediate enquiries. It’s also a solid foundation for a social group. However it is not exactly useful for archiving discussions and information. I feel it is a medium that deals in the here and now and although very useful it ultimately is very ephemeral. Yet many traditional gaming communities are moving to this platform, which I find somewhat confusing. Because it doesn’t offer the range of services that a traditional forum does. You can organise and manage events perfectly on Discord. But you cannot curate information and easily search for older content. I also feel that a Discord community over a certain size of active contributors is too hard to keep up with. You either follow it 24/7 or it eludes you.
As the year nears its end, I find myself using Twitter as my primary social media platform. I stopped following numerous twitter accounts earlier in spring, especially those associated with political and social commentary. I find that not having vast amounts of controversy and daily brouhahas flooding my timeline is extremely good for my psychological equilibrium. I mainly use Twitter now as a means of staying in touch with my online friends whose company I enjoy immensely. Overall, I’m finding the novelty of social media to be ebbing away and its practical benefits are overrated. Reaching large groups of potential customers is fine for business. Being exposed to excessive amounts of random members of the public is neither edifying, desirable or fun. I suspect that I shall continue to refine my social media experience in 2022.
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.
Goodbye 2020
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.
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.
In April I fell ill with COVID-19. My symptoms were not sufficiently bad enough to require hospitalisation but it was a singularly unpleasant experience. The feeling of having restricted breathing as if I was being held in a perpetual bearhug, was most disconcerting. My biggest fear was infecting Mrs P who is unfortunately in a high risk group due to her heart condition. The initial symptoms burnt themselves out within two weeks but it took at least another three to four months before I felt healthy again. And then in late August my 90 year old Father became ill and was hospitalised. He endured four years of very poor health after several strokes and frankly he was fed up with it all. He passed away on September 16th. Due to COVID -19, I could only visit him once in hospital. It then fell to me to sort everything out. I still to this day do not feel I’ve grieved “properly”. Every time I think I’m coping well something trivial reminds me he’s not about anymore and I suddenly become aware that I miss him profoundly.
Another terrible weight that many have laboured under, here in the UK, has been the state of contemporary politics. Irrespective of whether you specifically voted for the incumbent government, one naturally expected them to rise to the occasion when faced with a national crisis. Because COVID-19 and Brexit are issues that should be considered above petty, partisan politics. Sadly that has not been the case. Boris Johnson has handled both issues poorly and is surrounded by an equally inept cabinet. The country is still terribly divided and he’s made no attempts to build bridges or pour oil on troubled waters. He is untrustworthy, a liar and shambolic in his rhetorical style. His paucity of talent, along with his dishevelled appearance, denigrates the office he currently occupies. He lacks principles and conviction which means he will never commit to anything that requires him to maintain a position. Hence he is late to deal with things and does so in a weak, non-committal fashion. Sadly, we have to endure this inept, coward and his craven government for another four years.
Mercifully, it hasn’t all been doom and gloom. 2020 has shown that there are still plenty talented, focused and empathetic people in the world. From healthcare professionals to the staff in the supermarket and delivery drivers. While some of our so-called best have proven to be dull and tarnished, some everyday folk have pulled together, gone the extra mile and truly shone this year. Another positive event to reflect upon is that Trump lost the US election and the entire world will not have to endure his insane ramblings in 2021. His departure certainly doesn’t fix the broken state of US politics but every journey has to begin with a first step. And on a personal note, I get to meet my new Grandson in February. So the next twelve months have some positive aspects already. The COVID-19 vaccines won’t solve everything and I’m sure the immediate future is going to be tough. But as Churchill may or may not have said, “if you're going through hell, keep going”. Wise words. Onwards and upwards I say.
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.
A Year in TV
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?
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?
Naturally, I am not the only blogger to have regularly written about their revised viewing habits this year. Wilhelm Arcturus has also been doing so and recently he posted a very interesting summary of his experiences and posed some very interesting talking points. His thoughts have inspired reciprocal blog posts by Bhagpuss and MagiWasTaken, both of whom have given their own perspective on the issues that he has raised. So I’ve decided to follow suit, as I think that we are seeing a gradual sea change in the way we consume TV content. I’ve written in the past about so-called TV Poverty and the notion that unless you pay for content, your choice will ultimately be limited. Can traditional broadcast television maintain its audience and more importantly, advertising revenue, indefinitely? I think not. The cosy and somewhat quaint notion of the nuclear family, gathered around the TV, enjoying a shared experience is fast becoming obsolete.
Here are the bullet points that Wilhelm collated in his original post. I shall address them accordingly:
“No commercials is pretty nice”. Yes, I agree. I hate commercials, on screen graphics, promotional banners about what is on next, continuity announcers talking over program credits and basically anything that intrudes on a TV show. All of which are absent from premium streaming TV services. However, commercial channels often have on demand players and these sadly still have advert breaks etc.
“I still won’t buy pay-per-view”. I will only pay to see something if there is a pressing need to do so for review purposes and if it cannot be sourced elsewhere. For example, I took out a free trial to Shudder so I could see the Zoom based horror film Host. I subscribed to BritBox so I could evaluate the new series of the puppet based satirical comedy show, Spitting Image. But I seldom pay to watch a new release film. I have more to say on this subject in my thoughts on the next point.
“There are too damn many streaming services”. Yes there are. New ones seem to be appearing every day. Furthermore, you cannot subscribe to all of them. I have a budget for such leisure activities and it can only sustain so many streaming services. At present I subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Prime and BritBox. However, I indulge in that phenomenon that is “subscription sharing”. Most services allow you to access content from several devices, so myself and other family members “share” login credentials. Hence I can access Disney + and Now TV. In the past when Contains Moderate Peril was a bigger concern I got myself on the press list for a few marketing and distribution companies. This allowed me to see films and other content for review purposes. Let it suffice to say I still have access to some of these industry channels.
“Finding things is hard”: Never a truer word spoken. You can waste hours of your life, slowly trawling through various categories or pitifully typing via the TV remote control, the name of a show or film that the streaming service in question doesn’t have. I find the easiest thing to do before watching is to search what content is available and where, via a web browser on a phone or PC. I then add the program I desire to my “wish list”, so it’s waiting for me when I watch the TV in the lounge. I see that Amazon’s Alexa has an add-on device you can attach to the TV, that can search through all your subscribed services but from what I’ve seen, it’s not especially reliable
“I am torn on weekly versus all at once content”. I’m not. I’ve never liked waiting so having an entire season available as soon as it’s launched is fine with me. I also find that binge watching greatly helps me keep up with a show’s plot, especially if it’s complex. Again, being able to watch a season in its entirety makes reviewing it a lot easier. Waiting for weekly content is consequently a nuisance. I’m currently waiting for all episodes of Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery to become available so I can binge watch it. The weekly wait for The Mandalorian was frustrating, although I can understand why Disney made such a decision.
“We have been biased towards shows versus movies”. Mainstream cinema has become somewhat bland and safe. Especially the major studio output. TV on the other hand is becoming experimental and diverse, although that’s not always the case. For example, if a fantasy based TV show is successful, then the following year you’ll find a wealth of others. However, the scope and quality of TV shows on streaming platforms has become broader. From an actors point of view, a feature film may offer you a two hour window to develop a character. A TV show can offer ten or more. Plus cinemas are often havens for assholes who are hell bent on doing absolutely anything other than sit quietly and apply themselves to a film. At least at home you can control this problem. And if you can’t, then those assholes spoiling your viewing are your own family.
“I could cut the cord were it not for sports”. Although we have cable services in the UK, satellite was the first to corner the subscription market. And hence this is where a lot of the sport “is at”. The BBC struggles to secure broadcast rights for major sporting fixtures due to the bidding wars that have come along with the advent of third party broadcasters with much bigger content budgets. Either way, it’s irrelevant to me as “I don’t do sport”. Our household said goodbye to satellite TV circa 2006.
“It really sucks when the internet goes down”. British Telecommunications is my ISP and I live 15 minutes walk from the local exchange/data centre. I pay for a “fibre to the cabinet” internet connection, with the bridging connection being over copper phone lines. The cabinet is at the end of my road. Thus I have a robust connection. I’ve endured one internet outage that lasted under 3 hours, over the last 5 years. I can’t vouch for other countries but in the UK, if you live in one of the major cities, then the internet connections tend to be pretty stable as they have to serve the needs of numerous domestic and business customers. Out in the rural areas it is another story altogether.
“It does not replace the theater experience”. Viewing at home does not replace cinema viewing. I enjoy going to film festivals and the National Film Theatre where audiences are civilised. I don’t miss my local multiplex where often the films are shown out of focus, in the wrong aspect ratio or with the lights still left on. And some audiences just cannot behave. Why go to see a visual, narrative driven medium if you’re going to talk through it or fuck about on your phone (or in my Dad’s case during WW II, someone was sitting in the audience plucking a chicken). In the New Year, we’re buying a 43 inch 4K HDR TV and a new media player that can handle the same format. This may not be comparable to the cinema experience but it’s not far off.
“I still cannot watch exactly what I want on demand”. Despite the wealth of material that is available on streaming services, there’s always something that falls between the cracks and is conspicuously absent. BBC iPlayer has some great, classic documentary series such as Civilisation and Life on Earth. However, Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man is not available. And it is exactly this which is the Achilles Heel of all streaming services. Content is licensed and therefore comes and goes, which is infuriating. However, there are ways to “address this”. An essential pro-tip is to sign up to a quality VPN service. For example, Netflix has a lot of regional variations. Changing regions enables you to potentially access material you otherwise wouldn’t be able to. And for everything else that you may require that the streaming services cannot provide, all I can say is “seek and the internet will provide”.
So what of 2021? Well, if there is a shortage of new content to watch, I’ll catch up with older material I may have missed such as shows like Justified or I’ll re-watch some classics like The Prisoner. Digital terrestrial network TV produces little to enthral me these days. The BBC tries its best to maintain standards but quality has given way to populist entertainment. And for every robust and well written drama such as Endeavour, the commercial stations in the UK produce twice as many reality shows. But the arguments for public broadcasting are not popular at present and if we give way to untrammelled “market forces”, certain content will decline rapidly. However, I’ll cross that bridge as and when we as a nation come to it. In the meantime, I will use the various means I’ve described above to ensure I have access to suitable material in the year ahead.
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.
A Year in Movies
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.
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.
I am passionate about film and cinema. I recognise that seeing a film with the right audience can certainly add to the overall experience. But I only encounter that sort of environment when I go to The National Film Theatre in London or attend a film festival at some niche, arthouse cinema. Viewing at home has the advantage of being in control of both the environment and audience. It is also a lot more cost effective. Audiences are often more forgiving of an average film, when viewed from the comfort of their own home. Their overall opinion may well be different if they’d have to travel to the cinema and pay a higher price in a potentially less pleasant setting. When it was announced that Mulan was to be shown on Disney + for $30, there were initially complaints from some quarters. But once the public considered the cost of taking an average sized family to the cinema to see this movie, then the value of this price became clear. I believe the quick acceptance and uptake of this alternate means of releasing films is highly significant. Perhaps the film industry is finally experiencing a sea-change in its business model. In the same way the music industry did two decades ago.
Shatter AKA Call Him Mr. Shatter (1975)
The closure of the cinemas has not been an impediment to watching quality films. I am constantly amazed by how even the most niche market and obscure titles now get remastered and a Blu-ray or even UHD release. Hence in 2020, I found myself watching films such as Hannibal Brooks, Shatter and The Light at the Edge of the World; all in high definition and a far cry from the pan and scan VHS copies that I originally saw. What times we live in. A quick perusal of forthcoming releases for 2021 show that this trend is increasing. However, rather than focus on the old, I suppose this post should cover some new content. So begin with I like to mention two films that fell wide of the mark but are interesting as they were early examples of big cinema releases going straight to a major streaming service.
Scoob is an origin story for the perennial Scooby-Doo franchise and was obviously intended to launch a new series of movies. The film is inconsistent and alternates between capturing the spirit of the original sixties TV series and veering into modern CGI self indulgence. It’s undemanding fare for children although hard work for adults. However, it proved a success on VOD and certainly pleased Warner Bros with its performance. The World War II naval drama Greyhound was another early release to streaming TV, this time being bought by Apple TV. I think that if this film had been released theatrically in any other year, it would have been a box office failure. Although a tight and technically accurate recreation of naval tactics against submarines, the story has very little character development and Tom Hanks is left with little to do. However, home viewing as opposed to a trip to the cinema, somewhat cushioned the blow of this disappointment.
Host (2020)
However, some films positively benefited by not having to compete with major studio releases at the cinema. His House found a home on Netflix after debuting at several film festivals at the start of the year. This standout horror film covers a lot of ground, offering not only an atmospheric supernatural tale but also an intelligent analysis of UK immigration policy and those fleeing war torn countries. The horror genre has always been a valuable source of social commentary and His House offers both shocks and a chance for reflection upon one of the most divisive subjects of current time. The global pandemic, despite closing cinemas, has also fuelled the creation of home grown horror. Host, a supernatural drama filmed via Zoom, is a prime example of necessity being the mother of invention. Clever, timely and genuinely scary, this is a standout low budget production and a breath of fresh air for the genre.
Despite there now being several vaccines available, I don’t see daily life returning to normal anytime soon. Here in the UK it looks like the New Year will see another period of strict lockdown as we ride out the second wave of COVID-19. As and when cinemas reopen, it will take a long time before I feel sufficiently confident to return to them. Let us not forget that classic scene in Outbreak where the virus is spread via a cinemas air conditioning. And regardless of whether film director’s like it or not, I think we are even closer to same day release across multiple platforms becoming the standard business practise for new films. Finally viewers will be able to see new movies in a fashion that suits their personal preferences. In the meantime, my viewing “to do” list continues to grow bigger and bigger, although it is now predominantly filled with older material rather than just the new. Let us see what 2021 brings.
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.
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.