For years I was adamant that I didn’t like ambient, I think because I’d only been exposed to very boring drone stuff. Then I discovered Solar Fields / Carbon Based Lifeforms and it changed my musical world.

I’m quite horrible at self-promo so sadly it’s just gathering digital dust, but after 20+ years of writing dance music for myself and others, I decided to get heavily into writing ambient / chill. Made a load of trippy animation videos and setup a youtube… if you love Solar Fields, without meaning to sound bigheaded I think you’d enjoy them.

Ambient / Chill by Ain

I love anything by Solar Fields for tasks requiring concentrating, it’s especially good for reading scifi.

Whenever he releases a new album though I have to listen to it a few times, before I can have it on in the background… It’s very beautiful and intricate.

Yep has to have no lyrics or I get pulled into the song!

Steam doesn’t kick me out of my single player games when my internet connection drops for a split second. I quite like that

“Don’t say things about someone behind their back, if you wouldn’t be prepared to say it to their face”

I learned not to say things about people behind their back, that you’d not be prepared to say to their face, aged 14.

Cost me a black eye & split lip, also some pride. Valuable lesson though that stuck with me to this day over 2 decades later.

Knoble, sorry for calling you Knobless.

My dad is a pensioner now, and got put in a lovely bungalow by local housing association. It came with with a lovely garden, and he was really excited by the prospect of a cherry tree.

Well, the cherries are ready, and the birds ate the lot!

And if you ever get close to him? … he’ll betray you, too.

My initial response is prob as sarcastic as the others but a thought just occurred to me.

Skyrim, v1. The og release, before all the mods and bug fixes.

Undoubtedly still a better game than Star field. But was it the Skyrim we revere today? Will Starfield be transformed into something fun over the next decade?

What am I on about. Almost certainly not lol.

I’ve had this before, except I was drunk, and it was a kebab.

I really, really do not like kebabs… my friend convinced me to get one. This kebab was like it had been sent from the heavens, I was in shock, never had I experienced a kebab like this.

The next day, I messaged my friend asking where we had the kebab… neither of us could remember. I had a vague idea of what the door looked like, we searched every time we were in the city centre for many years, but in vain.

Yeah they really flopped with that aspect. I saw someone refer to it as ‘loading screen simulator’ and couldn’t disagree. I don’t understand how other devs can make things seamless, but Bethesda couldn’t manage it.

Imo the big problems with the game are because they outsourced so much of it.

Although there were too many fetch quests (imo), generally the game I found to be quite engaging. Just, not very deep systems; load times going into even the smallest buildings meant it’s not even approaching open world; drab procedural planets and outposts in a sad attempt to bulk it up; horrid animations and NPC models that wouldn’t be out of place in a game 10 years ago. Not to mention the horrendous amount of bugs I experienced.

This is why I can no longer allow myself to get excited for new games. I paid £7.99 for a month of PC gamepass to experience Starfield, if I paid full price I’d have been very unhappy. Now we pay to be bugtesters.

‘Thich Nhat Hanh - Heart of the Buddah’s Teachings’. I didn’t become a Buddhist, but it gave me some really useful mental tools to be happier.

I had a bit of a fucked up childhood, left home at 15, was really angry & bitter for a while. I was already many years into a general attempt to let go and be happier, I believe the knowledge from that book has made me happier and more resilient.