Published: 30 Aug 2026
From my first blog post Creating a New Hugo Blog From Scratch… back in late August 2024:
I’m planning to both get back to my regular writing schedule, with the extra focus on trying to get a blog post out every few weeks discussing whatever comes to mind. That was the one thing that was rather neglected in the last iteration due a lack of an obvious theme - my hope is making the ploy of saying “I will do this” into the void, pretending lots are reading this will be enough of a placebo effect to get that part of the engine going.
Better late than never, right?
As much as I enjoy writing, I’ve tried (and failed) to get any sort of blogging get off the ground for a few reasons - mainly down to a few basic reasons, finding it hard to write without a specific focus and thus difficulty identifying topics that I could construe as “interesting” combined with retrospectively writing about my previous job as a coping mechanism, and I’m in a much happier and more boring (in a positive sense) place right now. However, this empty section has really bothered me and combined with being in a little bit of a rut of writing my reviews, I’d thought of trying something new but still along the same lines, giving a recap on what I’ve done over the last month with the same (as a bit of internal self-advertisement), primarily-review focus on Music/Books/Games etc. but with slightly less formal/heavyweight structure of writing a full review for each from scratch, and then by-proxy an “excuse” to tack on any ideas I might have, either just extending my current reviews to more mediums (e.g. Anime/Films/Game Reports) or just other interesting things that I can’t justify for myself to write a whole new blog post about just yet, again likely to be on the same vein as my other hobbies - I’m currently a few years deep into playing a TCG, Flesh and Blood, and trying to make the very awkward, difficult step of trying to take the game more seriously and more competitively (or at least, casually competitive, if that makes any sense), and so I’d like to try my hand at returning to the grand tradition of big MtG-esque written articles… at some point. With all that out of the way, let’s outline the first, of hopefully many, recaps of what I’ve been doing over this last month.
Music
- Despite being the subject of what kick-started my writing in the first place, I’ve been instead just settling for “pure discovery” of music and/or indulging in old favourites, mainly due to my aforementioned review rut. Regardless, my listening backlog never seems to shrink… but for this month I’ve been listening to:
- goreshit, partially due to some chance reminiscing of the (good?) old days when I played the rhythm game osu! for a bunch, and breakcore (and adjacent genres) was prominent - so its been an interesting revisit to hear some of these songs either again or in their album context. Definitely not for everyone, especially the earlier, more aggressively anime-themed work which is very hit and miss but some of the more atmospheric and classical infused breakcore (albums such as Wish I Was Here (or How Things Went Wrong) and Semantics: The Benzo Chronicles) have been a great addition to my admittedly very rudimentary knowledge of the world of electronic music.
Games
- After an (accidental) few month break, I’ve finally gotten around to picking up and finishing Myst 3: Exile, off of the back of enjoying the first two games in the Myst series. After spending a fair bit of time ruminating on it, I’ve written my review of it too, see Myst Series
- I’ve also started Uru: Complete Chronicles, the single-player part (?) of what was intended to be a Myst MMO - something which just seems totally baffling as a concept, and its history seems both quite messy and old enough to be difficult to pin down many years after the fact - my understanding is that this was in development by Cyan after Riven and released post-Exile, and that I should probably play it due to my intentions to complete the Myst series and its connection to Myst 5 (which presumably tries to tie everything up?). Either way, Myst as a concept and an idea still has enough going for me that I’m willing to explore it further towards the more under-discussed and (apparently) weirder entries toward the back-half of the series.
Books
- For books, I usually have at least two “on the go” at any one point, one being read normally with another being re-read with a more analytical, note-taking eye for review purposes (more for non-fiction, much less so for fiction). Over the course of this month I’ve…
- Finished reviewing Vaclav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless, see Václav Havel
- Making notes to review Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine.
- Read Matt Alt’s Pure Invention, a pseudo-selfish read that I knew would be right up my alley topic-wise. A breezy, enjoyable read, even with the range of topics spreading the book a little thin at points.
- Began reading Thomas Pakenham’s The Scramble for Africa, a massive 700+ page tome that I’ve attempted to read before but was rather intimidated due to its length - however it at least gives me some time to catch-up on my book review backlog (which has been stubbornly long, just like my reading list.)
Meta/Website
- Nothing much than the usual (minimal) maintenance.
I hope to make this a monthly instalment, and then use this as an excuse to hang any other bits and pieces I may want that I don’t believe deserves its own post, but we’ll see what the future holds.
