notoriousgrd

[notoriousgrd]

Hello, I am not sure if I will be back here properly or not, but considering situation elsewhere right now, just making sure this is up and running if needed.

[notoriousgrd]

Because I can't really go anywhere much, best friend has been helping me get stuff, mostly Doctor Who related. Mostly toys. He hit the holy grail a few months back when he messaged me asking if I wanted a classic series radio control Dalek, which haven't been available for years and even better, it was the black Dalek supreme from Remembrance Of The Daleks. You can probably guess my answer.

Also, I just need a Leela and I have my two favourite periods of Doctor Who in toy form.

(Two more Daleks from Day Of The Daleks to be added whenever they show up in stores)

[notoriousgrd]

Also April remains healthy and lovely.

[notoriousgrd]

One thing I finally got done, a few months back, when our third lockdown finally eased a bit before we went into one again and kind of forced on me because zi fell at home and the fall was broken by the forty year old plus table, splintering the legs and rendering it unusable, but preventing me from posso ly hitting my head on something, was getting my entire audio visual set up organised.

Whole bunch of old consoles, an Atari Jaguar, Nintendo 64, PlayStation 2.Playstation 2 Slim, XBox and Wii, in adittion to the PC, PlayStation 4, XBox 360 and Switch. My TV unit's shelf broke over a year ago but because of the lockdown and everything, getting it replaced took a while.

So, armed with a new TV unit, table, a brother and a bunch of adaptors to hook old consoles up to modern televisions, I got all the above connected up and ready to be played. If I ever get back to streaming (which I gave up last October due to fatigue and it sometimes being the o ly time of the week I was managing to play games and I kind of needed that time for myself) I can capture just a out everything. Any system can be up and ru ning with just a couple of switches and buttons, which is nice and I wish I'd done it years ago.

[notoriousgrd]

Bloody hell, was it really lady May or June I posted (phone app doesn't show dates).

Er, hello. I kind of drifted away due to a combo of the Tumblr app constantly freezing on my phone, a bout of depression, kind of embracing my hermit status a bit too much and general malaise due to well, the world.

Every few weeks I'd maybe remember try the app again, but it's only tonight it's actually gotten past the blank screen it would stick on.

My health remains pretty much the same, still managing most things on my own with a bit of organising and cj angles to make things easier to cope with.

I didn't see my folks for three months back at the I itial Covid lockdown and I kind of disconnected from people a lot and it turned out I was actually okay with that and not actually finding it a problem, so even as things have gotten better, I've not reconnected with things or people. My attention span is more broken than ever, hence o ly really keeping twitter up to date as posting longer things here and elsewhere just wasn't happening.

Also, kind of just had to isolate/disconnect myself from a bunch of real world stuff otherwise my mental health was goigg to massively suffer.

Me and the family have avoided any Covid related illness, all been vaccinated, brother's been ill for a couple of months, worry was it was ME/CFS like me, but seems to have been a combo of two things, one of which was gone before it was diagnosed, so he's hopefully getting back to normal soonish.

I'm not sure if I'll ever post regularly here again, but just wanted to let people know I'm okay, even if I'm kind of isolated/disconnected from a bunch of stuff now.

[notoriousgrd]

Also, was having a wee bit of trouble making a donation to help things out in the US, in a couple of cases, the place was asking people to donate elsewhere as they had enough donations, others were due to me not living in the US and some thing on the form not being completable, but I found this -

Which not only let me donate from the UK but let me either split my donation equally or allocate it to specific bail funds. I had to do something as felt so helpless seeing what's happening.

[notoriousgrd]

Been having a tough time mentally due to, well, the world. I'm okay though, I'm getting through things.

Scotland is only just beginning to ease the Covid19 lockdown, but I can't see a thing changing much here until at least end of the month.

My foot has healed, last week was last nurse's appointment. Just need to keep an eye on it and be careful, so just the usual really.

Streaming on Twitch for almost two months now has been helping a lot, I'm doing at least two streams a week, two hours or more. Schedule is currently Assassin's Creed:Syndicate (sneaky adventures in Victorian London) on Mondays and Diablo III on Fridays (dungeons and demons) but with random extra streams at weekends if I feel like it. It's helping to both distract me and focus me and honestly, I might have flipped out by now if not for it. Its chill and comfy, even if the games I'm playing aren't necessarily chill and comfy.

The streams can be replayed for a fortnight after, but I'm also archiving everything on YouTube and they're all up there to watch.

It's just me playing games, with one or a few people in the chat room.

I was heartbroken by the news that Japanese wrestler Hana Kimura had died. She was just 22. She was the victim of online harassment and cyber bullying and after worrying pictures of self harm were posted, took her own life later that day. I thought she was awesome and her team', s shout of "Everyome is different, everyone is good!" was lovely and hopeful.

It's been near impossible to find the words to describe the situation in the US right now, just try and stay safe and hope things change and we do get a better world and society. I've honestly been despairing at humanity the last few weeks, as it really does feel like evil is winning.

Sleep schedule is messy again, so might be rambling on here more now.

[notoriousgrd]

A whole bunch of people have newly discovered the joy of Bob Ross thanks to BBC4 starting showing The Joy Of Painting five days a week.

[notoriousgrd]

January 2020:

February 2020:

March 2020:

April 2020:

[notoriousgrd]

Been an up and down week, sleep is a little better but also had one of those annoying days where blood sugar was very high for no apparent reason.

Friday started with me picking up my breakfast/heating things up in the microwave bowl and immediately dropping it, breaking it into three large pieces. Luckily, the supermarket has a decent amount of house stuff and I got a replacement later that morning. It's big enough to fit my chili and rice in so no more heating the chili and transferring it to a larger bowl.

My Animal Crossing pins arrived and went straight onto my hat.

I streamed for two hours on Twitch on Friday night, mostly ZX Spectrum games, so if you ever wondered what I played growing up, that's there. Had a couple of people in chat and took a couple of requests near the end.

All my Twitch streams will be archived on my YouTube channel, either same night or next day, the playlist can be found here.

Plan on streaming as many Fridays as I can at 7pm UK time, with extra streams when I feel up to it or just feel like it. :)

[notoriousgrd]

I have a Twitch channel, well, I've had one for ages but for numerous reasons, I never properly used it. With the new PC, much increased upload on my Internet and finally getting over talking to myself with nobody to bounce off of, I've been doing a few short test streams at - https://www.twitch.tv/gordonrd/

It's a combination of retro games and PC games at the moment but I'm getting a new headset and capture device at the end of the month so I can stream from my PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Microsoft XBox 360.

Streamers have gotten me through some difficult times when I've been too fatigued to play games myself and with all that's going on in the world right now, thought it was time to give back.

Partly inspired by a friend restarting streaming recently and the folks dropping off a big bag of hardware that included some useful stuff to add to my setup, along with stuff I thought was lost during the rapid house moves of 2011, mainly the two foldup dancemat controllers I took to the Gallifrey and Redemption conventions to play a custom DDR game I'd put together.

Also got essential supplies.

[notoriousgrd]

That's been a fortnight now of sleeping even worse and more erratically than usual. More than anything else, that's what is really doing my head in right now.

[notoriousgrd]

March 1st Vs April 1st.

[notoriousgrd]

Been very much escaping from reality with Animal Crossing.

[notoriousgrd]

This was lockdown day five.

[notoriousgrd]

A random selection of stuff from the last two months.

New PC on the right. It's a refurb HP Elite 8300 small form factor, i5-3470 processor, 8gb RAM and a 256Gb solid state drive. I added the graphics card I bought and a 2Tb hard drive I had sitting around and it's a lovely wee powerhouse of a machine.

Lap board the folks got me at Christmas has been very useful.

Got a new Kodi install running connected to the drive I ripped all my movies to.

Animal Crossing is so much fun, this is my room.

And these are the pins that have been delayed, but am happy to wait as they are lovely.

Kingdoms Of Amalur:Reckoning was one of my favourite games on XBox 36p and my new PC runs it at full settings and a higher framerste, it's lovely.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 was so much fun and made this life-long Marvel Zombie very happy indeed.

What time is it Ben?

[notoriousgrd]

Hello, I am okay, my day-to-day life has not changed much since I spent the last five years only going out when I needed to, so it's only the fortnightly trips to see the folks that have stopped for now. But I made sure and gave April lots of pets the last time I was there, which was the day before lockdown.

It's been great seeing her quickly become more and more settled each time I visit. She warms up to new people quickly and at times is playful and bounding about but then decides to snuggle in somewhere. Her tail is almost constantly in motion except when she finally settles in the sun.

Foot is healing slowly but we'll, no problems. My trips to see the nurse are the only time I go out apart from shopping. The local supermarket has been limiting items for a week-and-a-half and been limiting how many people can be in at once. The queue this morning was disheartening but moved quickly and for the first time in a couple of weeks I got everything I needed today. Should only need to go to shops once more this week and that can be the shop round the corner.

Animal Crossing and Disney+ both arrived at just the right time. Already got a lockdown watch list set up of the essential Disney stuff.

My work capability reassessment due in a fortnight has been pushed back to at least Jun 24th and things carry on as normal for now. So I took advantage of having a bigger budget for the next couple of months and the fact I have a decent PC now and bought a bunch of games.

Also things arrived and we're dripped off by friends, the excellent four-and-a-half hour 80's horror documentary, which me and my brother both ordered the Elvira edition of so we got a poster and a pin and our names in the credits. Pin already on hat.

And on Saturday my best friend dropped off a signed Death's Head book and the Doctor Who Season 12 Bluq-Ray re-release.

I have played a looot of Animal Crossing, it is just the lovely, fun, silly, chilled out game that we all needed during these interesting times.

Once again, I will try and post here at least once a week, I just honestly kind of forget about Tumblr.