Viewing profile — bluescrn

TV shows on the other hand, have suffered extreme shrinkflation. From 20+ episode seasons every year to maybe 8-10 episodes every 2-3 years. Yeah, budgets/production values are hig…

Retro gaming is rising in popularity for good reasons. And it's not purely nostalgia. A lot of people aren't enjoying modern games (with modern monetization)

TV quality isn't what it used to be, though. Got a fairly expensive LG OLED and after 5 years it's developing clusters of dead pixels down one edge. And even if the hardware doesn'…

There's also 'Drinkflation', the ABV of beers being reduced. (Maybe it's mostly a UK thing due to the tax system, weaker beer = less tax) Pretty sad state of things when simple ple…

At this point, it’s the ExBox :(

Why are cold drinks with sugar and caffeine seen as problematic, while hot drinks with sugar and caffeine are seen as perfectly good?

What I liked about the older, simpler Arduino was that you could move an ATmega328p project from an Arduino board to a chip on a breadboard then to a custom PCB with minimal comple…

It's just down to age. I had a C64 growing up, but it was mostly a games machine. I played with BASIC a bit, but C64 BASIC wasn't great compared to BBC BASIC on the school BBC Micr…

Aside from games, most software is available for both these days

The first one was 8 years ago, in the pre-Covid world.

But their timing was amazing, doing it just days before they announced that they were ending releases of games on physical media.

Retro gaming is an increasingly popular option, too. These days I have more fun messing with Amigas, C64s, and cheap emulation handhelds than big modern games. Retro hardware price…

Consoles don't have true 'generational leaps' any more either, the huge leaps forward in tech used to drive excitement/sales. Now we get incremental improvements, cross-generation …

PC gaming isn't exactly in a healthy place either (at least when it comes to hardware pricing/availability). Post-Covid GPU prices were bad enough even before the AI bubble ruined …

Taking metalworking tools to a very expensive machine with very limited spare parts availability seems rather extreme.

Bad experiences with heat, fan noise, and poor battery life on Windows laptops.

Hearing also degrades over time. In my 20s I was a lot more fussy about audio formats and hi-fi gear. Approaching 50, with less sensitive ears and a bit of tinnitus, I’m happy with…

Yes, building prisons is expensive. But the current UK government seems to treat it as a physical impossibility, while releasing violent offenders early due to lack of capacity.

Somewhat enjoyed the (less-visually-impressive) PC version way back in the day, there weren't many good shoot-em-ups on a 286 PC that could barely scroll the screen, but Silpheed p…

The word 'colonization' has become rather toxic, though. Maybe we need a new word for occupying barren planets where there's no native life being displaced?

Surely those who need refuge from the worst Islamic regimes are the women, not the men? As for the housing market, yes, it'd still be in a bad state with zero migration. But at the…

They thought climate change was the next war-level crisis, and worked towards that. They didn't anticipate the Ukraine invasion, or the Middle East blowing up again.