• An eternity of torture and suffering for every printer executive who decided I needed to replace the Magenta ink cartridge to print in black and white. Seriously, I hope your afterlife is as cruel and unforgiving as the printers you sold me.

  • Online shopping at EBGames is one of the worst experiences I can think of.

    During the sales, I found a heap of great discounts. Added to cart, went to checkout and was hit with something like $30 in shipping fees because it was coming from different locations.

    Eventually gave up a bunch of items to get it down to one delivery, and one delivery fee.

    So naturally, they shipped things separately. šŸ˜³šŸ’€

  • Today as I was pulling together my entries for the ITJourno Awards, I discovered that across TikTok and YouTube Iā€™ve had over 100,000 views.

    Obvs the numbers donā€™t reflect people actually watching my vids, but it was still cool to realise that Iā€™ve passed that milestone.

  • The kids are on school holidays now, so I don’t have to get up early to get them out the door. I switched off my morning alarm…

    And awoke at 9.

    I am so far behind schedule today.

  • I was not expecting this result. Absolutely for sure 100% definitely thought Jedi Survivor would be my most played game. Shocked.

    My PlayStation 2024 wrap up summary that shows I played way too much FC24.
  • Hey Bing, could you _be_ any worse?

    Since I migrated domains to BTTR.reviews, I havenā€™t been indexed by Bing. Iā€™ve read the webmaster guidelines, but canā€™t see anything that would exclude it from Bing aside from (at a stretch) the membership gate. But a lot of stuff isnā€™t gated at all, and nothing is appearing in Bing results. So, I ā€¦ read more

  • Perfect gift for a middle-aged Star Wars geek, really.

    Selfie while holding my birthday present - the Star Wars Lego Luke Skywalker Red Five helmet.
  • Another year, another lap around the sun. Safe to say, this hasn’t been my favourite orbit.

    I’ve officially hit the mid-point of my 40s! The verdict so far? The 40s and I arenā€™t exactly best mates. But hey, I’m hoping the second half of the decade picks up. šŸŽ‰

  • I’ve been stewing on this piece for months. Trying to find the right approach to talk about how I feel about Gizmodo Australia disappearing. Because it is such a personal thing for me: I put so much of myself into that website, and now it’s gone. https://www.bttr.reviews/gizmodo-australia-eulogy/

  • I have decided, out of a sheer sense of despair at allā€¦ this (gestures wildly), to try and write a weekly ā€œgood tech newsā€ story on BTTR.

    I am a bit lost at where to begin though.

    Has anybody got any good stories about tech? Preferably with an Australian angle.

  • Played Back to the Future: Back in Time today with my daughter. And just as we were getting a rhythm, Marty disappeared from the photo and we lost.

    Next time.

    A photo of the Back to the Future: Back in time board game after we lost.
  • I’m looking for a privacy-friendly (no cookies, at the very least) alternative to Adsense that I don’t have to pay for as a publisher.

    I can’t find anything that fits the description… Anyone have any ideas?

  • Got concerned when I heard scratching at my back door today. Just this guy saying hello.

    Just a friendly blue-tongued lizard looking at me through a glass window.
  • How can a platform for ordering textbooks be so bad?

    I’m looking at ordering textbooks for the kids for next year, and the Campion ordering platform is a wonderful example of an awful user experience. Let’s start with the onboarding. You’re prompted to start with your child’s email address. Easy enough, except that when you ā€¦ read more

  • Tonight I picked up my guitar for the first time time in a very long time to try to play some Taylor Swift with my daughter on her birthday. My fingers ache!

    Weā€™ve agreed our goal is to duet ā€œExileā€ by the end of the summer holidays.

  • I am currently testing a robot vacuum that heavily promotes its “AI” features. It has just spent 10 minutes in a carpeted bedroom while on the “mop” setting.

    My cheap old entry-level robot vacuum never tried to mop carpeted bedrooms. Is “AI” making robot vacuums stupider? I think it might be.

  • Purgatory is just clothes shopping for your kids at Christmas time.

  • Daughter has her piano exam on today. A year of playing the same three songs is about to come to an end.

  • One of the fallouts from the Google shenanigans this year is that, for me at least, affiliate revenue isn’t really there in any sustainable way.

    This means I am putting very little effort into Black Friday this year, and will likely stop covering deals/shopping stuff entirely moving forward.

  • The roof was leaking. I could hear a steady drip outside the laundry. So I crawled up inside the roof and discovered that the tv antenna I havenā€™t used since we bought the house 18 years ago had shifted and water was slowly creeping in. Hopefully fixed now, though tomorrow will be the real test.