It’s hard to comprehend the passage of time. The past year and a bit has been pretty jam packed with life stuff. Quite a bit of ill health, especially for Lottie, who I married in December of 2022, and which almost had to be postponed for the aforementioned illness. We spent eight months of last year attempting to move house too, which failed miserably (and quite expensively) after living our lives mostly packed in boxes for 6 of those months. Lottie was ill a second time this past winter, and has undergone a lot of change in her work, which, unlike the health and house stuff has been incredibly positive, so that along with the wedding means there has at least been some good haha. But I ended the year with more bad health as well and despite the good we have had (some lovely trips interspersed amongst all this too), we were both quite happy to have put 2023 behind us. Through this the blog has given me a bit of focus, something to think about when at work, and something to do when I’m not inspired to chip away at my other writing projects. It has also given me a good excuse to get back into gaming a little more, and so far, I have absolutely loved doing it. I hope you have enjoyed reading it so far too - so here’s to the next 12 months of posts!
The point of ‘Patch Notes’ is to provide an update on things here, and while this post is more of a look what’s happened so far kind of post, I have also been thinking a bit about the frequency in which I publish on here. In an ideal world I’d do one a week, and for most of the past 12 months I’ve managed at least 3 a month, but going forward, I think that might be a bit of a struggle. So rather than over promise and under deliver, I’m going to try and aim for a post once a fortnight. There may be more on occasion, and I’m still thinking of ways to add value to the Patreon, but this should give me time to complete more games, and perhaps go into a little more detail. The same assortment of posts will be on the docket, but just a little more spaced out. I’ve also changed things up a little with the blog. TYPEDBYTOM.COM now points to the newly created WordPress website - it’s a bit of an experiment at the moment, and I’m keeping things going here for the foreseeable.
Anyway, on to the main point - a year of TYPEDBYTOM. There are now 42 posts (including this one) on the blog, totalling over 80,000 words. Some posts vary in their readability, but hopefully most of them are worth at least flicking through! After a year of writing here, I’ve almost got enough content to create a (thin) magazine, so here we go, the first annual release of the TYPEDBYTOM mag! I’m only going as far as the cover, just to summarise things, and also because making an actual magazine sounds dreadfully stressful - you can just imagine the rest haha. Also, as you can see, it’s a cluttered mess, so an entire magazine would be an eyesore. Hereafter is a list of this past year’s posts, perhaps you missed some, or perhaps you’d like to revisit? Either way - they’re all here in one place! I didn’t actually use this amazing piece of work by Donato Giancola in my Star Wars Galaxies post, but after having listened to lots of episodes of The Back Page Podcast (give them a listen by the way - excellent stuff), I’ve learnt that putting Star Wars on the cover of something is a sure fire way to success - and to be fair, I have mentioned Galaxies quite a bit this past year.
'THOUGHTS ON'
While there haven’t been too many of these, this series is probably, at least in my opinion, the most interesting. I don’t know how many thoughts are left in my head, but I’ll keep on squeezing them out as long as I can!
'QUEST LOG'
By far, this series of posts have been the most numerous, and often the most fun to write. Lots more of these to come, I’m sure.
'A JOURNEY INTO THE VIRTUAL WORLD'
When I started this series, I thought that perhaps I’d get a little further into the work, but we’re still on the second project… Lost more of this to come, and after I’ve caught up, I have new projects ready to go - exciting times!
‘/CHAT’
I only managed to get one of these interviews done this year, but hopefully there will be more to come. Sit back and enjoy Chris’ words on how he started RaiderCast, and how his thoughts on Tomb Raider.
'GAME SCORE'
Same with the interview series, I only managed to get one of these done, but there will definitely be more.
'PATCH NOTES'
Not the most interesting, but if you’re reading this, that means at least one of them has been looked at…
'CAMERA FINDS'
These were on the docket when I wasn’t quite sure what this blog was going to be. It was firmly a videogame blog for a few months there, but with the addition of some more photography content coming, perhaps these will occasionally crop up in the future a little more. I have at least one up my sleeve which is relevant to the ‘A Journey into the Virtual World’ posts anyway.
'TALES OF IMAGERY'
Similar to ‘A Journey Into the Virtual World’, these posts will be limited in scope and sporadic, focusing on my time as an editorial fashion and portrait photographer. Within these posts I’ll feature some of my work and give a little context and behind the scenes.
'POST-TRAVEL'
I’d like these to be more numerous, as that would mean that I’m going on holiday more often haha. So far I’ve tried to tie these into videogaming somehow, but I’m not sure if I can keep that up. Maybe I’ll include more board games or something, or perhaps I’ll use my Steamdeck more for more gaming on the go.
While you’re here, there have been a few changes since the last update post. I’ve made alterations to the Patreon, it’s not really in use at the moment and I think I was somewhat premature in creating it - rookie error! I’ve decided to (at least temporarily) disable all but one of the tiers. My dilemma is that I want to keep the content free, so the £1.99 TOMATO tier remains mostly as a means of support, although the Patreon will now be the only place that my TALKBYTOM audio posts will be available. I don’t expect anyone to donate via this method, it’s just there as an option - any money that is raised there will be used to improve the content here, but if you really want to help out, sharing the blog is absolutely the best way! If you have a friend who likes videogames, photography, a touch of travel, or a mix of these, send them a link.
And last of all, I’ve updated the logo for the blog! Not a huge change, but it seemed a little bit off having a GameBoy cartridge for the logo - I’ve yet to even talk about the GameBoy! I will, of course, at some point… But for now, I think this suits the blog a little better. It also doesn’t discriminate against the photography/travel content here (of which there should be more in the coming year) - perhaps I’ll add a keyboard at some point too, as writing is the main thing.
I’ll forego the links to the Patreon and previous posts this time for obvious reasons. Thanks for reading, and here’s to another year of posts!