Someone shared this with me years ago and I find it increasingly helpful in remembering how much bullshit our economies are built upon.

Link to the Financial Times here - “The parable of the ox” by John Kay

I think much of Geocities remained accessible until 2013/2014 before going completely (apart from Japan 2019 or so).

The soundtrack was fun too

Sniper Elite 5. I played V2 way back and fancied an updated experience. Going reasonably well so far and that x-ray cam experience remains gnarly.

Half-Life was my introduction to FPS gaming; I loved every game in the series that I had the pleasure to play - Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift and Half-Life 2 (Lost Coast, Episode One, Episode 2). I never got round to playing Alyx; I didn’t have hardware that would cope!

Half-Life also spawned the CounterStrike series; I sank way to many hours into them.

My favourite game remains the original; I enjoyed the narrative and the occasional puzzle. I purchased the upgraded graphics pack (which also fixed a few glitches) and prefer the original with this pack to the remastered version of the game (Half-Life: Source).

Things have changed a lot.

And you’re probably right about the crypto thing; if my defection had happened in ‘10 - ‘11 due to price increases that would have been more crypto and less financial crisis. Memory blurs a little.

You used to need to upgrade … every year or two

That’s what took me out of PC gaming; that and a price increase (possibly crypto related, possibly financial crash related).

I’ve got my eyes on AC Mirage.

Super helpful; also thanks for the channel recommendation.

I’ve never actually tried VR; a friend has offered to let me try their console VR at the end of the week so I’ll be taking notes.

I’ve certainly been tempted by pre-build (thank you for the link) but with parts costs (gradually) coming down some are becoming less competitive.

Thank you for the link; will take a look at that as well.

Sorry, I should have specified; I already have the 4K monitor that I would like to use.

The above build (with a suitable NZXT H7 case) can be built for around £3,800; such a generous budget might be doable but deep down I know this build is over the top and that I cannot really justify ploughing that much into something like this. Thank you for the PCPartPicker recommendation; I will try that.

I have little doubt that the above setup is overkill for my purposes. My difficulty is that I am so far behind and out of date in my knowledge of what constitutes a decent baseline specification that I am having to approach this from a position of embarrassed ignorance.

A couple of folks have recommended PCPartPicker so I will give that a go.

It’s on the tip of my tongue; there was a whole series of ghost pirate themed “hidden object” point and click puzzle games. I’ll update the post when it comes back.

Edit: Nightmares of the Deep

It’s funny because it’s true.

I work in a field where the vast majority of the work done requires an on-site presence. But meetings? I log into those. Even when the physical venue is a half dozen offices from me.

They really struggle to understand that all businesses have departments that consume money and departments that generate profit (cost centres and profit centres); not every part of the system makes money, but the parts that do (Sales) need the support of departments that don’t (Human Resources, Accounts, Legal) - get the balance right and you have a resilient organisation that will do well.

Public spending and the public sector are a bit like the cost centres of a business. Having high quality public education, healthcare and transport creates and supports an environment in which free enterprise has access to a skilled, healthy and mobile workforce; the profits naturally follow. Balance that properly with appropriate taxation and the system trundles on…