19 January 2026

Do we really have things so much better now...?

 

 
You may have noticed that I'm a grumpy sort of person - easily annoyed into rolling my eyes and huffing when things are done which rub me the wrong way. You might even have seen a few tweets of mine on certain "trigger" topics, such as "inflation affecting the pricing of high technology products"*. Well, welcome to a new entry on that list: "modern buyers have it better".

On the face of it, this is a basic truism (or at least we hope so!) but on the other side of the coin, this is, in my opinion, a bad faith argument.  
 
Let's get into why I think that...
*It has negligible effect on the overall consumer price for high technology products. The forces which make a loaf of bread more expensive do NOT act on how much it costs to produce all the components and package a CPU/GPU... They are primarily priced based on COGS and how much the market will bear...
 

29 December 2025

PC Building Advice... or How to buy a PC in 2026...

Hopefully, your PC will look a little better than this one did...

I spend a lot of time on Reddit giving advice on PC building and troubleshooting. I recently saw some build guides on YouTube that are great but don't address many of the common questions that new or inexperienced users have. 

Additionally, many websites and YouTube hardware enthusiasts focus purely on the theoretical performance per part and, in my opinion, while the scientist in me loves that data, it doesn't necessarily help these segments of the consumer base make legitimate purchasing decisions.

So, I've decided to put together my own little list of...

28 December 2025

Looking back at 2025 and predictions for 2026...



Once again, the end of the year approaches and it's time to take stock of the follies I've so foolishly written down last year. Perhaps I'll also spend a bit of time attempting to prognosticate the future in this incredibly volatile world we currently live in, too...

25 December 2025

Analyse This: The Steam Machine's Specs are bad, no matter what Valve might say...

 
Mana from heaven or a gift from the devil?
 
Much has been made over Valve's reveal of the Steam Machine. With opinions varying from gaming saviour to irrelevant devil. Okay, maybe things aren't quite that polarising - I'm trying to make the intro a bit spicier! However, it's clear there are two main emerging narratives surrounding the soon-to-be-released Steam Machine - one positive, one negative. 
 
Personally, I lie on the negative side of the equation for a couple of specific reasons with orbit around the fact that it's just not good enough
 
So, let's get into why I feel that way...

20 December 2025

Next Gen PC gaming requirements (2025 update)


On time, again!

It's that time of year where "best of" lists start falling like cats and dogs. So, here's my contribution to the year round-ups: trending of the recommended game requirements for games released this year...