Monday 25 March 2019

Why I Am So Bad At Blogging 2 - Online Gaming

As I said in the first post of this kind I have been looking at why I am so bad at blogging. Not the content, which is a matter of opinion :D, but the frequency. Apart from the obvious - life (and laziness) I have realized that I have many procrastination crutches/distractions, and being the sharing kind, I thought I would share some of my favourites.

This time, let's look at some of my favourite online games. These take up by far the most of my time that isn't spent on writing and working. Oh, and real life...er...maybe. It's funny because my son is a gamer as well, and although it is far too embarrassing to play with your mother, there have been many times when we've sat at opposite sides of the room playing separately. Of course, this might be an autistic thing as my daughter pointed out when we were out at dinner recently and all three of us were absorbed in our phones. After all, once we've caught up with each other's lives what is there to talk about? Aspies are not generally enthusiastic about small talk. If it's not relevant there's no point.

The Sims 4




I remember when my daughter got The Sims when it first came out. She was obsessed with it. I was far more interested in building and decorating houses, and she was obsessed with making people and micro-managing their lives.

I then forgot about The Sims until a friend talked about playing Sims 3 and I took a look. By this time, Sims 4 was out so I got the base game and started to play. Oh my goodness, how wonderful! I struck out with expansions and before long was totally hooked. The difference is amazing.

Not my Pictures





My Pictures









I still like making and decorating houses but now that my characters can be gay and have Woo Woo I have, shall we say, other interests.

Minecraft

The online version of Lego. What more can I say? Yes, there's a game to it, if you want it. You can fight zombies and get blown up by creepers, but if you just want to create things free from monsters, you can. You can dig caves, and build cities, follow tutorials to make the most beautiful structures and watch hosts of YouTube videos to give you ideas. I like to follow tutorials myself to bring the pictures in my head to life - kind of.






World of 

The third and final game I'm going to share, although far from the only game I play, is World of Warcraft, which is an MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game). What this means, for those who have no idea what I'm on about, is a game where the player controls a character they create and go out adventuring in a fantasy world full of quests, monsters and all kinds of weird and wonderful things. It's basically an online Dungeons & Dragons game gone mad.

You can play solo or in a group, explore dungeons and go on raids. You can fly, ride a horse with flaming hooves and meet up with life sized talking pandas. (you can even play as one)

As well as the gameplay, there is a whole body of lore, both within the game and in accompanying books and even a film. I can get lost down this particular rabbit hole for hours.









Saturday 16 March 2019

Why I Am So Bad At Blogging 1 - You Tube

I have been looking at why I am so bad at blogging. Not the content, which is a matter of opinion :D, but the frequency. Apart from the obvious - life (and laziness) I have realized that I have many procrastination crutches/distractions, and being the sharing kind, I thought I would share some of my favourites.

Today, I thought I would share some of my favourite YouTube channels. None of these involve books or writing at all, which may be part of my problem, but they are wonderful distractions and I have learned so many things, including how to work out exactly what I want to happen when I die. Yeah, I still kind of have an obsession with death. I blame my mother for letting me spend so much time in graveyards when I was a child.

So let's jump straight in with Ask a Mortician.

This is the channel of Caitlin Doughty, a young mortician with her own crematorium who is looking to burst the bubble of silence that exists around the subject of death and posts videos of all kinds of things, from iconic corpses to answering questions about the life and work of a mortician. It sounds morbid, and it probably is but Caitlin is a scream and the tone is much lighter than the subject matter might suggest.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi5iiEyLwSLvlqnMi02u5gQ



Description
Mortician in Los Angeles.
You got death questions, we got death answers.
Mortality + Culture.

www.orderofthegooddeath.com

www.facebook.com/OrderoftheGoodDeath

Another great channel is Curiosity Inc. 

This is such an entertaining channel. Alex, owner of a quirky antique shop travels to garages, auctions, abandoned shops and all kinds of places looking for treasure. He does a lot of unboxing and finds all kinds of precious things, including items that are valuable only to history. Recently, he bought a hoarder house that was literally stuffed floor-to-ceiling with boxes and "stuff". He's sweet, entertaining and respectful and I love his enthusiasm as well as learning a lot about antiques.



Description
Curiosity Inc, an antique and collectibles store, a vintage motorcycle dealer and an adventure! Always out looking for cool new finds and finding creative ways to bring new life to old stuff!


This is a great channel! Karolina Żebrowska 

It's about historical fashion with a delightful Polish lady called Karolina Żebrowska who seems to have been born into the wrong century. There are all kinds of topics, from corset design, to critique of films, to myth-busting to recreating modern memes in the style of other ages. I love her and I love the channel.






Description
[EN] just another weirdo obsessed with the past. vintage style and fashion history geek, appreciator of old things in general. 
[PL] historia mody, styl vintage, filmy i starocie. opowiadam o tym, co dawniej i pokazuję to, co dziś z tego zostało.

Then there are Shane Dawson and his friends, Ryland Adams, Garrett Watts and Morgan Adams. They're nuts and I love them. They all link together as well as posting their own things on their own channels. I'll focus on Shane's because it's the biggest and seems to be the hub for the others.

Shane has done all kinds of things from interviewing YouTube celebrities, conspiracy theories, clearing out Jeffree Star's closet, staying on haunted boats, etc. More than anything, he's down-to-earth, funny, and relatable. We see how the other half lives with no pretentiousness and a lot of fun.






Safiya Nygaard is fun. She does all kinds of crazy things and likes to dress like a bat. What more can I say? 

Although it might sound like it from the description, it's not a "witchy" channel in any way. One week she tested "home spa" products, she's investigated Japanese street fashion, tried out all kinds of online stuff and is just generally a super fun person.







Description
Double, double toil and trouble; 
New videos once a week!

I love Sims 4 and the next channel is one of the many who do game videos on Sims games, Clare Siobhan

Watching Clare is like watching a Sims soap. She's run through generations of the same family, which she started with Sims representing herself and her partner, growing up, moving out, having their own children, building extended families and having so many weird and wonderful adventures. She also does challenges and explores all kinds of things like custom content and various extensions. I'm hooked.



Description
Hi! 
I make gaming videos 🎮 The Sims 4, Pokemon and more!
Subscribe and hit the comment section to let me know what you want me to play! :D
🎮 Capture your gameplay the same way I do! 👉  http://e.lga.to/clare

The last one I'll share is one of my favourites, but I'm not going to say anything more about it, other than I've learned a lot from her. She's NSFW so fair warning. 




https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwx8uy7nxohWLwnaPocLsyg