Author: Padraig Fahy

  • Big Brother UK 2024 – Day 0 and 1 Notes

    Big Brother UK 2024 – Day 0 and 1 Notes

    I stopped watching Big Brother towards the end of the Channel 4 run and didn’t watch any of the Channel 5 run. I have been watching the ITV’s run of Big Brother since it started last year. This year, since I am posting these notes in a couple of Discord servers, I will post them here too.

    Big Brother UK – Season 21 – Day 0 – The Live Launch

    • The 16 housemates are in.
    • Each one had to choose a side, once they entered. Red or Blue. Initially no reason as to why they were choosing a side.
    • Results of that were 11 Red and 5 Blue.
    • Big Brother then announced that one team would go into ‘Storage’ and become ‘non-housemates’
    • It was predetermined via a sign hanging above the sides.
    • Blue are housemates. Red are non-housemates.
    • The 11 people on Red will now be in storage until further notice and will be up for eviction this week.

    Big Brother UK – Series 21 – Day 1 (Between 11pm and 4am)

    • Replaying the end of the last nights live show
    • Props in the storage are from previous series of Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother.
    • Lily in DR says “Storage is hell on Earth”. Doesn’t like Sarah – likes the look of Thomas… made some weird growling noise
    • Non-housemates will go head-to-head with housemates. Whoever wins, go into the house, the loser goes into storage.
    • Non-housemate Martha vs Housemate Ryan in a 1v1.
    • There is a cake in the middle of the table. There is also a red button beside each person.
    • If Martha wins, she gets to take 2 people with her into the house. If Ryan wins, he goes back to the house and nothing changes.
    • The cake explodes.
    • Housemate Ali has been chosen as a judge. She must work out who pressed the button.
    • Martha and Ryan have to convince Ali that the other person pressed the button.
    • Ali chose Ryan therefore Ryan lost. Martha now goes into the house. Ryan goes into storage and is now up for eviction.
    • Martha has chosen Hanah and Rosie to join her in the house.
    • “This whole situation [being in Storage] is not ethical at all” ~Lily
    • THE BEDROOM IS OPEN! Only one big bed at one end of the room this year instead of 2.
    • Lily is very loud and a lot of housemates seem to be already done with her.
    • Non-housemate Sarah in the diary room. “Lily is sensory overload”
    • Everyone in Storage is bedding down for the night on camping beds and Lily is still popping off.

  • WWE Bad Blood 2024 Predictions

    WWE Bad Blood 2024 Predictions

    It is nearly 27 years to the day since the first Bad Blood event, and WWE has brought it back for the first time in 20 years.

    Titled as Badd Blood: In Your House, this event in 1997 saw the debut of ‘The Big Red Machine’ Kane who ripped the door of the ‘Hell in a Cell’ to attack his brother, The Undertaker, which allowed Shawn Michaels to pin him and win the WWE Championship. This was also the first ‘Hell in a Cell’ match in WWE. To date (including this show), there has been 53 ‘Hell in a Cell’ matches.

    Kane?

    Kane is The Undertaker’s brother (in storyline only… they are not related in real life) who have both teamed together as ‘The Brothers of Destruction’ and against each other… Think of it like Oasis, but if Liam and Noel were not related. Oh, and he burned his parents to death.

    Where is he now?

    Kane (Glenn Jacobs) has retired from in-ring competition. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2021. He is currently the Mayor for Knox County, Tennessee, holding that position since 2018, being re-elected in 2022.

    The Undertaker?

    He is an undead wizard that can shoot electricity from his hands. His ‘Manager’, Paul Bearer would accompany ‘Taker to his matches with an urn, which he *checks notes* “raised in the air to transmit supernatural healing powers to the Undertaker; this typically resulted in the Undertaker recovering from attacks and counterattacking his adversaries” – The Undertaker has also held the longest undefeated streak at WrestleMania winning 21 matches at the event before it was broken at WrestleMania 30 (2014) by Brock Lesnar.

    Where is he now?

    ‘Taker (Mark Calloway) has also retired from in-ring competition. He is married to former WWE Superstar Michelle McCool. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2022. Since his retirement, he has been doing podcasts, interviews about his career which was something he never did while working in the WWE.

    Shawn Michaels?

    Shawn Michaels was part of a tag team with Marty Janetty in ‘The Rockers’ in the 80s until the team was split in 1992 by Shawn placing a ‘Sweet Chin Music’ on Janetty which sent him through the barber shop window. Shawn would go on to be part of D-Generation X along with Triple H and Chyna (Along with some others along the way). He would be coined as ‘Mr. Wrestlemania’ for having several prolific matches at the ‘Grandest Stage of them all’

    Where is he now?

    Shawn is also retired from in-ring competition but still works for WWE as the ‘Senior Vice President of Talent Development Creative’ and heading WWE’s development brand, NXT.

    Anyway, with the history lesson out of the way, let’s look towards this year’s show,

    Arch rivals are now a tag team? Cody Rhodes is tagging with the man who he took the WWE Championship from at WrestleMania, Roman Reigns to defeat ‘The Bloodline’

    Also, The Judgement Day comes to blows as former member Damien Priest takes on Finn Bálor

    Let’s predict!

    Title Matches

    • Nia Jax (C) vs Bayley in a singles match for the WWE Women’s Championship
      • Prediction: Nia has honestly been killing it since winning the title. I don’t believe that Bayley nor Nia is walking out with the title as Ms. Money in the Bank, Tiffany Stratton has teased the cash-in. Even last night, the trigger felt like it was going to be pulled, but it wasn’t to be. Nia to retain, but Tiffany to also cash in and win the title.
    • Liv Morgan (C) vs Rhea Ripley in a singles match for the Women’s World Championship. Dominik Mysterio will be suspended above the ring in a Shark Cage.
      • Prediction: Rhea and Liv are going to have a great match like what they did have at SummerSlam, but hopefully without the interruptions from The Judgement Day. I don’t see this working out for Liv though and would lose this match. Rhea to win and become champion.

    NoN-Title Matches

    • Damian Priest vs Finn Bálor in a singles match
      • Prediction: The other members of The Judgement Day in action. I don’t have high hopes for Finn winning this match, as Damian needs to come out strong, if he is to challenge for the World title at any point in the future. Damian to win.
    • Cody Rhodes & Roman Reigns vs The Bloodline (Solo Sikoa & Jacob Fatu) in a tag team match
      • Prediction: This is going to be an all out brawl, but I do not see Roman and Cody winning it and here is why. Solo is gunning for the Championship, and it would make The Bloodline weak if they lost here. You will want the big payoff and possible title change at Survivor Series. The loss would anger Roman and Cody to the point that we may see a rematch at WrestleMania but that ain’t going to be for another 6 months yet… The Bloodline win.
    • CM Punk vs Drew McIntyre inside Hell in a Cell.
      • Prediction: This could well be match of the night, but I hope that this is the end of the rivalry for now, as it is getting a bit long. I expect this to be a gruesome match with some bloodshed and hopefully an appearance from AJ Lee.

    And those are my predictions.

  • Gaming News – 3rd October 2024

    Gaming News – 3rd October 2024

    • Davide Soliani, the director of the Mario + Rabbids franchise has launched a new studio called “Day 4 Night” which also include Christian Cantamessa (Red Dead Redemption) and other members of Ubisoft Milan, Cristina Nava, Gian Marco Zanna and Luca Breda. Cristina left Ubisoft after the release of Star Wars Outlaws
    • Horizon Zero Dawn has been delisted from Epic Games Store ahead of the release of the Remastered version, which release on October 31st.
    • Depending on the perspective that you play, would depend on how difficult Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will be. If you opt for the new “third-person visual perspective”, it will be easier compared to the original “fixed perspective”
    • James Allard, the co-founder of the Xbox, has joined Amazon as a VP of its devices and services team. After leaving Microsoft, he created “Project 529”. A service to prevent bike thefts and advocating for cycling.
    • Riot Games is currently working on transitioning VALORANT to Unreal Engine 5 and that there would be new “playable experiences” coming to the VALORANT universe.
    • The CEO of Level-5 was convinced by Nintendo to make another Professor Layton game after the series came a conclusion. Professor Layton and the New World of Steam was announced back in February 2023 and is set to come out in 2025.
    • Krafton (PUBG Studios (PUBG: Battlegrounds) and Striking Distance (The Callisto Protocol)) has signed a licensing deal to bring Palworld to mobile.
    • Microsoft is discontinuing the HoloLens MR headsets
    • Square Enix is looking to bring Final Fantasy XVI (16) to Xbox consoles, but the director Naoki Yoshida couldn’t share anything specific about the release.
    • Shutaro Ida (Designer for Castlevania and Bloodstained) has stepped down from the development of Bloodstained 2 as he was diagnosed with cancer.
    • Tango Gameworks was already 6-months into developing Hi-Fi Rush 2 before Krafton and Tango met. They say that the game is currently on hold until Microsoft has transferred all the related assets to Tango’s new owner.
    • Games coming to Xbox Game Pass
      • MLB The Show 24 – Console – Out now
      • Open Roads – Console – Out now
      • Sifu – Console, Cloud and PC – Out now.
      • Mad Streets – Console, Cloud and PC – Out October 7th
      • Inscryption – Console, Cloud and PC – Out October 10th
    • 72 out of the 84 staff that work at XR Games are set to be laid off following the poorly-received release of Hitman 3 VR: Reloaded – It is unclear if other projects such as Zombie Army VR and Starship Troopers; Continuum are affected by this.
    • A co-op mode for Assassin’s Creed Shadows in currently in development.
    • Fallout TV show has become the 2nd show on Amazon Prime Video to have been watched by 100 Million viewers. The only other show to do this was Season 1 of Rings of Power
    • The new season of Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League has been played by less than 300 people on Steam.
    • Epic Games is now “financially sound” after their mass lay-offs, which saw 830 people leave the company.

  • [The JukeBox] #97 – Flip and Fill FT. Karen Parry – Shooting Star

    [The JukeBox] #97 – Flip and Fill FT. Karen Parry – Shooting Star

    Dance music from the early 2000s resonate with me quite a bit. It was something that was always played while at home or at school. Especially whenever I went to secondary school, some classmates with their phones (that we weren’t supposed to have) were banging out the likes of Darude, Scooter, Cascada.

    At home, my father really enjoyed his dance music and would put on ‘Kiss’ or ‘The Box’ on the TV and if we were in the car, it was a pirate radio station, Energy 106.

    There would be a rotating playlist on the TV, radio and my classmates phones which included ‘Shooting Star’,

    Released in 2002 and appearing on the very first Clubland compilation album released in the summer of 02, it has always been a great song to sing and dance to.

    YouTube
    Spotify

    Lyrics:

    Where were you to hold my hand
    Do the things that we had planned
    Yes I need you by my side
    When things go crazy

    I just need to know you care
    Guarantee that you’ll be there
    When I wake up in the night
    Will you be my guiding light?

    I don’t care how far
    I’ll take you there tonight
    Just tell me where you are
    And everything’s gonna be alright

    Just tell me where you are, where you are, where you are
    Like a shooting star across the midnight sky
    From far from afar just to be with you tonight
    Like a shooting star across the midnight sky
    From afar from afar just to be with you tonight

    Where were you to hold my hand
    Do the things that we had planned
    Yes I need you by my side
    When things go crazy

    I just need to know you care
    Guarantee that you’ll be there
    When I wake up in the night
    Will you be my guiding light?

    Like a shooting star
    Like a shooting star across the midnight sky
    Wherever you are you’re gonna see me fly
    Like a shooting star across the midnight sky
    Wherever you are you’re gonna see me fly

    Where were you to hold my hand
    Do the things that we had planned
    Yes I need you by my side
    When things go crazy

    I just need to know you care
    Guarantee that you’ll be there
    When I wake up in the night
    Will you be my guiding light?

    Where were you to hold my hand
    Do the things that we had planned
    Yes I need you by my side
    When things go crazy
    I just need to know you care
    Guarantee that you’ll be there
    When I wake up in the night
    Will you be my guiding light?
    Spoken with you to hold my hand

  • Gaming News – 25th September 2024 & PlayStation State of Play Notes

    Gaming News – 25th September 2024 & PlayStation State of Play Notes

    • Assassin’s Creed: Shadows has been delayed from November 12th to February 14th 2025. It will no longer include the Season Pass. Starting in February, all Ubisoft titles for PC will be released on Steam on Day 1.
    • In Japan, the $1300 collector’s edition of Monster Hunter Wilds comes with a bike! (pictured below)
    • Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury is now available in Street Fighter 6
    • PlatinumGames (Bayonetta) have acquired the trademark for The Wonderful 101 from Nintendo.
    • Behaviour Interactive (Dead by Daylight) is acquiring Red Hook Studios (Darkest Dungeon)
    • Stardew Valley is to get Version 1.6 update on 4th November.
    • Star Wars Outlaws is coming to Steam on November 21st.
    • Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1 version 2.0 is now available on Steam which includes resolution/upscaling options, control settings, Steam Trading Cards support – Notes

    State of pLay notes

    PlayStation State of Play Notes

    • New content for Astro Bot announced including new speed run levels and 10 new bots, coming later this year. – Trailer
    • The Midnight Walk announced for PS5 and PSVR2 – Trailer
    • Trailer for Hell Is Us for PS5 – Trailer
    • Metro game for PS5 and PSVR 2 – Metro Awakening VR coming November 7th – Trailer
    • Trailer for ArcheAge Chronicles Releasing 2025 to PS5 – Trailer
    • Trailer for Palworld – Coming to PS5 today! – Trailer
    • Lunar Remastered Collection Coming to PS5 and PS4 in Spring 2025 – Trailer
    • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Shredders Revenge Radical Reptile DLC and OST update coming today! – Trailer
    • Trailer for Sonic x Shadow Generations – Sonic 3 Movie Pack which has Keanu Reeves VA for Shadow – Coming December 12th
    • Fantasian Neo Dimension coming to PS5 and PS4 on December 5th – Trailer
    • New gameplay trailer for Dragon Age: The Veilguard – Releasing October 31st for PS5 – Trailer – Mage Deep Dive
    • New trailer for Alan Wake 2 The Lake House expansion coming this October – Trailer
    • PSVR2 trailer for Hitman World of Assassination coming this December. Trailer
    • **Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered ** coming December 10th on PS5 and PS4 – Trailer
    • Fear the Spotlight from Blumhouse Games coming October 22nd on PS5 and PS4 – Trailer
    • Towers of Aghasba early access this November – Trailer
    • Split screen update for Lego Fortnite update coming. New Fortnite themed controller also announced Ad
    • Dynasty Warriors Origins launching on January 17th for PS5. Trailer
    • New trailer for Monster Hunter Wilds – Releasing February 28th 2025. Trailer
    • Trailer for Lego Horizon Adventures November 14th for PS5 and PC. Trailer
    • Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered announced for PS5 and PC on October 31st 2024. PS4 players can upgrade for $10 – Trailer
    • Photo mode coming to Steller Blade – OST available today on streaming services. Steller Blade x Nier Automata collaboration coming later this year. Trailer
    • WWE 2K24, Dead Space (Remake) and Doki Doki Literature Club are going to PlayStation+ in October
    • Dino Crisis and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is coming to PS1 classics
    • The Last of Us Part 1 to the PS+ game catalogue for Last of Us Day
    • New controller colours and console covers coming titled “Chroma Collection”. Ad
    • Advert of games which have been enhanced for PS5 Pro. Ad
    • Ghost of Yotei announced. Coming 2025 for PS5. Trailer
  • My time with Ghost is at an end…for now!

    My time with Ghost is at an end…for now!

    I have to be very clear from the outset, that I am not referencing the Ghost devices that were seized as part of a multinational raid, but rather the Ghost blogging software.

    I switched to Ghost for a 2nd time back in March 2021 after they released Version 4 and I have been using it quite a bit between then and now.
    I just wanted a simple way to blog without having to deal with plugins. The editor was quite powerful and it was a great experience,

    So why did I change?

    In the more recent updates, Ghost has been adding features to the editor that would help with linking posts to old post and edit images directly on the website. But I couldn’t. The linking of old posts feature was breaking with no helpful warning, so I hoped that the next versions would help [They didn’t] and their image editing tools were made available for free for Ghost Pro subscribers but not for people that are self-hosting.

    And that is another thing… Ghost really don’t want you self-hosting the software for Production. They do not provide support for self-hosting installs, and that is a disappointing factor that I had to deal with, and was the ultimate reason for changing.

    So here I am. Back on WordPress.

    I did ask on Mastodon if there were alternatives to try out.

    I really wanted to try WriteFreely, but no matter what I did… I couldn’t get it to work at all. I probably didn’t have any patience to troubleshoot it. I will revisit this one day and try and get it working.

    I was advised to check out ClassicPress. While it is cool in theory and would probably work for certain setups, it was not for me. Thankfully, I was able to convert the work that I did on ClassicPress to WordPress via a Manual Update and everything has been working great.

    I am not a fan of Gutenberg, but I put some time and effort in and managed to re-create the home page and the posts pages to be very similar to my Ghost site.

    padraig.blog on Ghost
    padraig.blog on WordPress

    You may see references to “signing up for a newsletter”. No one signed up. And that’s OK.
    This blog is a hobby and I do not rely on it to pay my bills at the end of the day!

    I am using 8 plugins on this WordPress site, and at the moment, I wouldn’t need any more to (mostly) re-create the experience that I had in Ghost.

    • ActivityPub – This one was given. While Ghost are actively working on ActivityPub, (which I appreciate), I have my fears that it would only be available to their Pro users and will provide Zero support to people on self-hosting.
      • You can now follow this blog, either put the URL for this site, or @padraig@padraig.blog into the search of your Fediverse client, and you can see when I release a new blog post!
    • Connect Matomo – This is for website analytics. I switched from Google Analytics to a self-hosted Matomo install in 2022. This was done when I no longer wanted to be shackled into Google’s ecosystem.
    • Instant Images – I love Unsplash and I have used them quite extensively on this blog over the years and I do not plan on changing this. It also has support for Openverse, Pixabay and Pexels.
    • Shortcorder – I used ‘Snippets’ in Ghost which was like canned text. It is used for the footer of my posts.
    • Spectra – This is a plugin that gives you access to more blocks for Gutenberg. It is mainly used on the home page for the posts layout. I try to use WordPress’ own blocks where possible.
    • WP Dark Mode – If users want it, there is a 🌙moon at the bottom of the page that will switch it to a Dark Mode.
    • Redis Object Cache & WP Super Cache – For object and page caching, respectively.

    The new WordPress site is only a few days old, and I am still tweaking it to my liking!

    If you have suggestions on how I can improve the look, feel, functionality of the site, please let me know on the Fediverse.