We all got ourselves stuck in the quicksand of the Google suite of products because of the original convenience benefits of linked services working together in fairly smart ways. I remember the enjoyment of seeing location metadata embedded into my photos so that I could see a cool 'journey' of my holidays as I trekked between cities. Being able to set reminders & tasks based on specific sentences in my Gmail emails seemed sensible enough. But over time we've all felt the creep factor increase more and more. With the huge amount of information captured from mobile phones over the last decade or so, the data collection ecosystem has gone into overdrive.

For many people I know, the penny drop moment often came from the serving of ads that went a bit too far. It was usually about seeing ads on a laptop or desktop, after discussing it earlier that day while their mobile phone was in earshot. That lightbulb moment people often get is the realisation that Google (and other big tech companies) are always listening. It was the initial reason behind why I wanted to de-Google my life – I wanted to simultaneously stop being treated as a consumer (which is how Google makes their money off me) and I wanted more control over my digital identity more generally.

My goals have shifted over time as well; I'm now keen to break away from all of the (mostly US-based) large commercial technology companies, as companies such as Meta, X, Spotify, Microsoft, Amazon & others seem to act in the same way as Google.

My current de-Googling status

I've been slowly de-Googling my life for two and a half years now, starting with the migration of my personal email account in late 2023. I would recommend it as the best place to start, since a lot of accounts tend to stem from your email address and I think migrating your email address is a gradual change; it isn't something you can finish in an afternoon.

Before getting into what I've done so far, I'll mention that it's always surprising to see the range of products you need to adopt if you want to break away from Google. Google ties in a huge number of services to one single account and the convenience & simplicity of an all-in-one service is really tough to overcome.

But if you're reading this, you're already intrigued by the idea of not letting the Big G have a monopoly over your digital identity and you're tempted by the ability to take action.

With that all said, here are the list of actions I've taken to remove myself from Google's ecosystem to date:

• migrated emails from Gmail to Proton Mail (here's my personal Proton referral link if you're interested)
• shifted from Google Search to DuckDuckGo on my phone and PC
• removed all location tracking from my phone and Google Maps (try this)
• started using Proton Drive for documents & spreadsheets instead of Google Drive
• moved away from Google Tasks and started using Todoist (this had the added benefit of getting a synced task list with my wife for shopping and other tasks)
• reduced my usage of Spotify and cancelling my paid plan, in favour of my self-hosted Plex server with my own media collection
• switched from Google Authenticator to Authy
• deleted my Reddit account (I thought I did this years ago, until I got a 'someone is trying to reset your password' email a few weeks ago!)
• deleted my Twitter account
• deleted my Instagram account (technically it was my dog's account but it was tied to my email)
• progressively deleted a bunch of information & connections on Facebook, including mass unfriending of old acquaintances and unliking pages

It's been a good, satisfying journey so far, and I don't think my day-to-day digital life has become more complicated – with the exception of not using the “Login via Google” button for some accounts. I've tried not to burn myself out by changing too many things at once, and mainly I've been spending an hour here & there whenever I have the motivation.

The biggest shift was changing email providers, which triggered migrating a huge range of miscellaneous accounts from my old Gmail to my current Proton Mail address. That in itself triggered a lot of questions of “why do I still have this account” which allowed me to delete anything that hadn't been used in years. It was a great way to clean up my digital footprint.

Current de-Googling goals

I've got a few immediate goals that I want to get through during 2026 – let's see how I go with these:

1. Migrate old Google Photos to Synology Photos – I've been starting with migrating old photos around 2010-12 to my NAS, and deleting them from Google Photos accordingly. I don't know if I'm ready to stop using Google Photos completely, as there are a bunch of shared albums with friends that are useful. I'm also open to shifting away from Synology Photos and using another photo management tool, but just getting the data away from Google is the first step.
2. Clean up my Google Contacts list, and find a replacement to store & back up my contacts – I haven't seen a good replacement yet but I'm sure there are a few options out there.
3. Continue to migrate documents out of Google Drive. With Proton Drive adding a spreadsheet tool this is now possible (most of my GDrive usage is spreadsheets). I also have a folder full of Google Docs files with Recipes that is shared with some friends that I don't know how I'll migrate. Might just have to leave an old version there and maintain a live version in Proton Drive.
4. Keep reducing my Facebook usage, eventually being in a position to delete my Facebook account entirely – I don't know if I can do that when some features are useful & important to me. The main ones are Marketplace for buying/selling second hand items, and connecting with local community groups. It's also a good way to hear about good local events that I wouldn't hear about otherwise.
5. Use Freetube on my personal desktop, to replace Youtube – this has been good, but it's not a full solution since there's no mobile equivalent that I've found. On the other hand, using Freetube only on desktop might reduce my tendency to spend time watching videos in general which is always a good thing!

Future steps to take & problems to be solved

For some things, the convenience & usefulness of some Google apps is too much to overcome, at least for now. These are the products I think I'll stick with for the foreseeable future:

• I have a shared Google Calendar with my wife and I don't think I can break away from it. Can I maintain a shared calendar with her if I move to Proton Calendar and she wants to stick with Google? Doesn't seem to be possible.
• Google Maps is too convenient for navigation and the live traffic information is pretty crucial. I'd like to switch to OSM Maps but will take me some time to get used to.
• My phone OS is still Android and therefore has some background data being sent to Google. I should consider changing the OS on my phone to get rid of that
• think about shifting my home PC from Windows to Linux? Maybe I can have a dual-boot approach initially which will make transitioning easier. With the upcoming arrival of Windows 11, it feels like now is the time. Game compatability might be the only major concern.

The barrier to entry

It's easy for me to write out a list of alternate services and recommend “just do this” but in reality de-Googling requires a lot of work, both initially & ongoing. These services are designed to be difficult to break away from, so prepare to be frustrated at the inability for some things to be migrated. For some, the feeling of starting fresh might be a good thing but if you've personalised and curated your personal information or preferences in a certain way, losing that isn't acceptable.

I also recognise that some of the above steps can be cost-prohibitive. Notably, the cost of buying & configuring a NAS to manage a media library isn't achievable for most people, especially when you consider the cost of buying terabytes of physical storage – all to save paying for a few monthly subscriptions. Financially, the maths doesn't work out or has a really long time to pay off – let alone the time you'll spend maintaining your own hardware & software. If you're only looking at the financial outcome, you'll never justify it. I also don't think it's economically or environmentally viable for every household to have their own NAS either. To that point, all I can recommend is to look at pooling resources together with friends or family so that you have a shared media library, as you still get the benefit of not being tied to the tech giants.

Some other good reads about de-Googling

https://brunty.me/post/de-googling-my-email-contacts-calendar/

https://tuta.com/blog/degoogle-list

#deGoogle #technology #SelfHosting

I had held onto an old 1TB external hard drive which had my music collection and a smattering of ripped DVDs and TV series, so I wasn't starting from zero. In my opinion, this is the biggest requirement for someone to consider getting a NAS. If you don't have a large collection of files, just stick to your desktop PC or laptop.

Despite being fairly old (it released in 2015), the DS216se was good enough for me to set up a Plex server and play music within my home network or on the go, but it struggled at video playback. Only SD-quality movies with certain video codecs were playable, as the fairly weak processor didn't support hardware transcoding. I don't watch a lot of TV shows or movies so it wasn't a dealbreaker, but when a decent portion of your media library is inaccessible it was still frustrating. Regardless, getting a cheap NAS gave me some handy experience in managing a home server and understanding how much processing power you really need to do what you want.

After the Plex server was in a good place I didn't have to set up much else – the only point of note was that I had to call up my ISP and get them to remove the double-NAT configuration on my account, which allowed me to access the Plex server remotely.

More recently I started to migrate old photos out of Google Photos and onto the NAS, using Synology's own Photos application.

Upgrading to the DS225+

I had been looking at upgrading the NAS over the last 4-6 months, using the Plex compatability list as a reference for which Synology models would support which video formats. I wanted to stick with Synology mainly for the DSM operating system; it's quite user-friendly. My focus was on improving the server performance, not giving myself a huge to-do list of server configuration & maintenance tasks.

I bought the DS225+ for a bit over $AUD500, and after performing a full backup of all my data (and transferring it onto my home PC) I took the hard drives out of the old NAS, and into the new one. I followed this process on Synology's website, which was helpful in understanding model & hard drive compatability.

I was concerned that the data on the drives would get blown away and I'd have to restore data from my backup, but fortunately after identifying the new device it immediately read the drive as 'Migratable', so it could use that data immediately. Huge sigh of relief! After updating the OS to the latest version, I was able to jump in and confirm that everything worked correctly.

As far as my home network was concerned, I only had to enforce a static IP address on the new NAS, update the port forwarding for the Plex server for the new IP address, and update a few bookmarks. Everything else was retained. As per Synology's own recommended process, I had taken a backup of the system configuration (into a handy-dandy .dss file) but the setup process was able to maintain the configuration from my old NAS, so that was one less step before I was up-and-running.

Dealing with Synology enshittification

It wasn't perfectly smooth sailing, of course.

I mentioned at the start of the article that I wanted a stronger home media server to play videos at higher qualities, so there was a few furrowed brows and slight frowns when I jumped into Plex and started testing out some HD movies in my library. I'm sure most people have had that disappointing feeling of spending lots of money on technology assuming it'll do what you want, and then realising after you open up the box at home that it's not the full story.

Almost every movie or TV show I opened in Plex presented the haunting error: “This server is not powerful enough to convert video.”

After a few minutes of confusion and testing different videos, I remembered that during my purchasing research I came across a recent change by Synology that disabled hardware transcoding on some of their most recent models. It wasn't a hardware limitation; it was something disabled in the kernel that stopped clients accessing the transcoding feature. The DS225+ that I bought was one of those affected models.

Fortunately, the self-hosted community out there on the Internet came to the rescue – there is a script that you can run that enables transcoding, and you can set it up within DSM to run on startup. All of the details are in this article.

It only took 5 minutes to sort out, and after restarting the NAS and confirming that the task ran the script successfully on bootup, all of my videos were playable. Hooray!

Future improvements

So while I've got the performance boost that I wanted (accessing the server is super-fast compared to the 216se), there are still some other improvements I want to make:

• I need to look into the fan sound; it's definitely louder than the old model. Apparently there's some noise deadening I can do by putting velcro on the feet of the case, or some other acoustic shenanigans around where it's located in the house. It might even be that the processor is running at a high baseline, even when it should be idle. Don't know yet.
• It's definitely time to get a regular backup task going, and ensure I'm backing up the data offsite (working towards following the “3-2-1” approach!) – it doesn't need to be more than monthly.
• The NAS, router & modem are neatly out of the way but the cable management & airflow around them could be improved. They are off the ground but they still collect dust which isn't ideal. A generic case of some description will do the job, or maybe I can get a friend to 3D print something bespoke.
• Work out what's wrong with my 2nd hard drive – I had one Seagate drive that I got replaced under warranty, but the replacement drive also doesn't seem to work. It's readable by the NAS, but it fails to add the drive to the storage pool for some reason. Fortunately it's only a backup drive (I'm aiming to set up RAID 1 configuration) and doesn't affect day-to-day operations, but it'd give me more peace of mind incase the other drive fails (which it will, eventually).

But for now, I've got a bunch of old TV shows to rewatch! Here's to self-hosted media libraries!

#SelfHosting #deGoogle #SynologyNAS #Plex

Of course, this means that Spotify still gets the same money overall, but hopefully my spot on the Family plan will replace someone else's subscription, so there's a net loss of revenue for them.

Either way, they won't get any more data or money directly from me.

I had already been decreasing my Spotify usage over the last 12 months, but hearing that the CEO was investing crazy amounts into military AI technology was a big nail in the coffin for me personally. I'd also been concerned about the small amounts of revenue that artists get from the platform, and definitely noticed the artists jumping ship and taking all their music off – Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Massive Attack and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard being some of the biggest announcements.

At the same time, I've been slowly removing my liked songs from the platform whenever I buy or acquire the songs and save it in my personal music collection. I started with about 1200 liked songs and I'm down to 400-ish, and the remaining tracks are miscellaneous single tracks that I picked up via the various discovery methods that Spotify offers. I'll have to work on deleting or migrating my playlists out of there as well, as well as the artists I'm following. I'll chip away at it.

My replacement for music streaming is my self-hosted Plex server, which has a bunch of historical music that I've bought and ripped to mp3, or more recent digital purchases. Once my Plex library was up & running and I put Plexamp on my phone, I found that playing music was far more enjoyable when the algorithmic nature of Spotify wasn't guiding my choices. When I put a playlist or a genre on random, I know I'll get an even mix of tracks, instead of being biased to music I've played more recently.

Music discovery is different for me now, and it has been for a while. It feels more intentional and human-centric, instead of fed to me through a platform. In the Spotify era, it's all too easy to fire up my Discover Weekly and hear some new artists based on what people with similar tastes have enjoyed, but as a result there's no conscious connection to the artist.

Infact, with Spotify do you notice it's never an artist recommendation, it's always about the track, i.e. the commoditised, quantised portion of an artist's output? Cohesive pieces of work (i.e. albums or sets) aren't recommended – it's just the song. You just end up collecting them like trading cards, but your mental & emotional relationship with the songs you like is often surface-level. Looking back at my Liked Songs list in Spotify is looking at a wasteland of single tracks that sounded nice at the time and maybe went into a playlist or two, and never gave me much more than a momentary dopamine hit.

Now my music discovery actually requires exploration. Seeing live music and checking out the support acts (and the band t-shirts the musicians wear!) provides a real-life recommendation that is more meaningful than a result from an algorithm. Reading an album review by a respected critic might deter me from checking out an artist, but it's just as likely to encourage me to try out a record that I would have normally ignored. And how often is it that those little hunches end up becoming some of your favourite artists? Couple that with regular recommendations from similarly-minded friends, mailing lists from various record labels and Bandcamp music feeds (which have no algorithm behind them!) there's plenty of ways to keep abreast of new releases.

To wrap up: how do I feel about it? Well, a small amount of relief, but in practice I had barely opened the Spotify app over the last 12 months and I've been enjoying a more emotional connection with the music I explore, find & listen to – so today is a symbolic change more than anything else.

I may not be hearing every latest single from automatically recommended artists that are right up my alley, but instead I get greater emotional enjoyment of listening to more music from artists that I've directly supported.

#music #degoogle #Spotify #Bandcamp

I've been apparently listening to a lot of rock & metal this month; you've been warned!

My Fan Favourite: Jack Harlon & The Dead Crows – Inexorable Opposites

Youtube | Bandcamp

The Jack Harlon boys have released their third studio album after touring the hell out of The Magnetic Ridge in 2021. They released a covers album inbetween which took the edge off, but they'd been patiently writing & refining these new tracks for over a year, debuting the odd track here and there in their live shows.

Harlon play some kind of stoner/desert/doom rock, cosplaying as a drug-addled cowboy that goes on acid trips and questions their reality, and flirts with the boundary between life and death. Something like that, anyway.

I headed to their album launch in Melbourne last Friday night and it was awesome to hear the whole record played start to finish. The new tracks still have all the classic components of what made them popular in the Australian stoner/doom scene: heavy riffs with plenty of fuzz & reverb – but the songwriting is clearly getting more mature and is a solid evolution from their older albums.

Standout tracks for me include the opening track 'Moss', 'Dave Is Done' and 'Junior Fiction'.

The Nerdy Project: Phantom Spell – Heather & Hearth

Youtube | Bandcamp

Progressive rock with a distinct medieval/folk tinge to it. This excerpt from the Bandcamp album description sums it up nicely:

Reports of a skulking wizard with a travelling band of roguish bards, appearing only for a fleeting moment before retiring back to the shadows of his tower. Now, the wizard returns with a new set of compositions. Hark!

A good mix of long epics with catchy melodies, pleasant vocals and all-round excellent writing & and song structure. This one takes a while to ease into but the more attention you give it, the more it'll pay you back.

The Wildcard: Angine de Poitrine – Vol. 1

Youtube | Bandcamp

Uhh, weird funky tracks with microtonal tuning, but also with wacky costumes and loop pedals?

This KEXP performance on Youtube will give you a good sense of their live personalities & their dedication to their costumes. The duo from Quebec dropped their first EP back in 2024 but all of a sudden the KEXP live set has thrust them into a bunch of new fans – including myself.

The layering of guitar & bass loops could feel formulaic but the variation of the drums almost obscure the transition from one riff to the next. There's an effortlessness in their whole approach that makes it so enjoyable to listen to.

Favourite track for me is definitely Tohogd.

The Long-Awaited: Karnivool – In Verses

Website | Youtube

I've been a longtime fan of the Perth prog-rockers, obsessing over their second full-length Sound Awake when it released in 2009 – and even though I didn't get into Asymmetry in 2013, I have such a loyalty to the Australian prog scene from my formative years that I was really excited about In Verses finally dropping.

But this album...ehh, I don't think I've enjoying it. Karnivool have matured and polished their sound so much after decades of hitting it hard that when I think about In Verses, I think about a shiny, polished, featureless sphere that looks the same no matter which angle you look at it.

Every track has a fun riff, a cool vocal harmony, a good-enough crescendo that the 'Vool are known for, but the peaks & troughs are just not big or interesting enough to make me want to come back to it. 'Animation' and the closing track 'Salva' will definitely make it into my playlists but otherwise I think this draws the curtains on my Karnivool fan era.

The Gimmicky: Uuhai – Human Herds

Bandcamp | Youtube

Metal with Mongolian instruments!! That's the gimmick!

If you're into any kind of heavy music, you'll likely enjoy a few whirls of these guys. The vocals are really fun (vocals can't be annoying if you don't know the words!) and the traditional instruments aren't overdone. You can feel like they've drawn on Rammstein's approach a lot.

The title track and 'Dracula' are the biggest bangers.

The Comfort Food: Biffy Clyro – Futique

Youtube | Website

I got into the Scottish alt-rockers only recently; I've somehow avoided them over the last decade or so despite hearing about them regularly. I'd heard about them because Oceansize's lead singer Mike Vennart is their touring guitarist (and I was a huge Oceansize fan), but I never took the plunge and gave them a proper listen.

The first thing you notice when you listen to Biffy Clyro is the soaring & elegant vocals, and the next thing you notice is the sheer variety of soft & loud moments throughout the album (Karnivool: take notice please). If you can get past the vocals with its noticeable Scottish accent, you'll be rewarded with a great mix of tracks that give you classic ballads ('Goodbye'), straight up arena rock ('Hunting Season', 'True Believe') and quirky stuff in the middle ('Dearest Amygdala').

If you can get past a singer with a slight Scottish accent, you'll find a lot of fun tracks on this album. 'Hunting Season' is the pick off the album for me.

#music #NowPlaying #AusMusic

Being my first protest since the climate actions in early 2020, I was a bit nervous given the violence at the Sydney protests just a few days prior (Crikey article here, ABC news article here). What made me feel a bit more comfortable was that it was a registered, peaceful protest that Victoria Police had approved.

The Sydney protests on the Monday night were the final trigger for me to join in the march, but other factors had helped out as well. My interest in the actions (and inaction) of Australian politicians had gotten me increasingly angry, and I'd also been frustrated by my own passiveness in not doing enough to stand up for the values I care about.

Being a bit paranoid about geotagging, I put my phone on airplane mode, but in hindsight that was unnecessary. A small portion of the crowd masked up in a clear display – something I interpreted as being done to hide their face instead of avoid disease – but generally people were using their phones openly, mostly organising to meet up with friends in the very large crowd.

When I arrived at Flinders Street, I got a good spot leaning against a fence at a nearby tram stop – and shortly after 5pm the official proceedings started. We heard from five or six speakers, mostly with some kind of story about the war in the Middle East, and giving us plenty of interactive chants all throughout. The one notable exception across the speakers was Gabrielle de Vietri (state Greens MP for Richmond), who pushed a strong anti-Labor message, as Victoria has their state election later this year.

Flag-wise, the vast majority of colours were of the Palestinian flag, with a few Aboriginal flags mixed in as well (several speakers linked Aboriginals and Palestinians through their shared history of oppression, stolen land and colonialism). The banners & placards generally mentioned Herzog and being labelled as inciting genocide by the UN, but Anthony Albanese & Penny Wong were named & shamed in a few as well.

Standing a few metres away from the speakers under the Flinders Street station clocks was the “Jews for Peace” banner. I saw a handful of people in the crowd wearing yamakas, so I can only assume that there was a decent number of people from Jewish backgrounds around. But there wasn't any Israel flags or Star of David-like symbolism being flown around – any signage in the white & blue of the Israeli flag typically had words written in hatred of the Israel government and their actions. Symbolism is a tricky thing: our national flags often represent the official structures that lead our country. For the same reason, I didn't see a single Australian flag. During the protest I empathised with the awkwardness and tension of being a Jew at an event like this; you want to cherish your cultural identity but you also want what's best for humanity.

Some of the speeches referenced those with Jewish heritage in the crowd, usually while making the point that we're all protesting a) against the act of genocide and putting humanity first (regardless of ethnicity), and b) protesting against the horrific decisions that governments (especially the Australian one) are making. I kept thinking of the phrase “no war but class war”; it feels like a lot of my values in recent years unintentionally stem from this phrase.

The speeches under the clocks lasted for a bit over an hour; it was about 6:15pm by the time we were told to start marching down Swanston St, then to turn right up Bourke St, finishing at Parliament. The organisers didn't need to give too many guidelines, but I do remember to “ignore interacting with the people that ignore the plight of Palestine” – i.e. leave the general public alone.

One part of protests that I had forgotten was the chants. It's a bit cult-ish at first but you learn the main chants very quickly, and because you're in such a large crowd it's comforting to scream out the same words over & over. I'm used to screaming out the lyrics to a song I know when live music is playing; chanting at a protest is very same-same-but-different. You learn the words, and therefore you feel like you belong.

I marched with the crowd all the way up to Parliament. There was a few brief pauses in movement (possibly due to traffic clearing up ahead) but it was pretty relaxed otherwise. The chants organically popped up throughout the entire crowd – in some cases you end up being halfway between two different chants so you aren't sure who to yell with. Nobody cares, everyone is just glad that we're all there. Everyone is contributing to the cause by being there and being part of the people power.

I couldn't stay too much longer once the crowd got to Parliament. I listened to the final speaker for a bit, bought an independent progressive newspaper for $5, and then carried on with my evening. I was off to see some live music – VOLA, a metal band from Denmark & Sweden.

Oddly enough, as much as I love going to live music and feeling that fun feeling of experiencing culture, going to the protest and resisting against something made me feel much more alive, present & focused. Instead of passively observing an event or performance, being at the protest was a simple way to actively put your views out into the world, instead of reacting to a post or arguing with people on the Internet. In a world that feels more digital than real, those opportunities & feelings are rare.

#activism #politics #protest #Melbourne #Naarm

It's a survival game set in the eternal winter of a post-apocalyptic Canadian island (named Great Bear Island) where you're the only survivor, battling against the elements and the wildlife for as long as possible. The world is too cold for you to just walk around forever; shelter and warmth are critical otherwise you'll die in hours.

You'll initially get by with lightweight clothing, racing between man-made shelters where you can eat packaged snacks and canned goods to avoid starvation, but eventually you'll need to embrace what's available from Mother Nature; spending more time hunting & gathering, and upgrading your clothing using natural hides from the animals you've killed along the way. In the Long Dark, the only goal is to survive as long as possible, and since permadeath is enabled, one major mistake might end your run forever.

500 days is often seen as the 'finale' of any Long Dark run; if you're able to survive that long then you can essentially survive forever, and it's an achievement that is taken fairly seriously in the TLD community. If you've done that, you've practically mastered the game.

The difficulty level of your TLD run is the main way you can set the tone of how you play: changing it drastically changes the amount of hostile wildlife, the type of loot you can find and the harshness of the environmental conditions – which can either make your life in Great Bear frantic & uncertain or peaceful & straightforward. But regardless of play style, ticking off 500 days in any difficulty still shows a level of perseverance and determination.

There's no denying that the game mechanics can get repetitive after the first 100-200 days; there's only so much you can do in a cold, harsh, mostly-lifeless game world, so most experienced TLD players end up defining their own goals. Kill every single bear & moose spawn in the world. Fill up the jerry cans you find with oil generated from cooking the fish you've caught.

With no goal but to survive, you really do have to choose your own adventure. What's always grabbed me about TLD is the mindfulness of just living in the game world draws out in people. The 'cosy' atmosphere of setting up your base with chairs and rugs while a blizzard rages outside will work for some players, while others will crank up the custom difficulty settings to truly test their skill. You can get seriously attached to your run, especially if you have the intent of playing it without an end date in mind. This game often generates the most heartfelt writing I've seen about a computer game, simply paying homage to a game world that dominated their lives for several hundred hours or more through their personal memories (give this and this a read if you like).

Roleplaying and execution

As for me, I've enjoyed the quasi-cosplaying element of a lone survivor, journalling his thoughts using the in-game note function every few days when he has a chance to collect his thoughts. The solitude element of the Long Dark is hard to avoid; there is hardly any dialogue apart from the occasional complaint of being too cold/hungry/thirsty/tired (although if you want, the Wintermute story mode has plenty of characters to interact with) – and I've found that the journaling aspect is a reasonable way for a lonely survivor to avoid going completely insane.

I almost exclusively play on the Interloper difficulty, which was the hardest difficulty until mid-2024 when the brutal Misery mode was released. On Interloper, loot in general is hard to find, most high-end clothing and food items don't exist at all, and the overall temperature of the game world gets colder over time, affecting how far you can travel without freezing and requiring you to craft good clothing as a high priority.

Nobody would be advised to play on Interloper when starting to play The Long Dark, of course. The world of Great Bear Island is formidable at first, and the variety of regions with their unique challenges mean that if you're unprepared in the slightest your run is over. At the very least, you need to learn the region maps to a general extent if you're going to attempt the harder difficulty levels – at the very least knowing where the main shelters are (and the best paths between them), knowing where to find forges & workbenches, and where certain types of wildlife can be found.

I also enjoy 'loper because of the urgency to execute on a regular basis, otherwise your game run is over. Interloper forces you into forward planning; you need to kill that deer otherwise there's no decent food source in easy access. You need to gather more wood otherwise this fire will die out and you'll freeze too much and then you'll die before getting to the next cave. You need to carefully avoid this bear seeing you, because your arrows are all broken and if it mauls you, you're done for. And so on and so forth.

So yes, the game is completely out to get you (that's the point) but if you put some preparation into what you're doing, you'll stand a good chance. You'll learn what kind of contingency plans work for you, such as carrying a few pieces of coal so you can always warm up with a fire in the toughest conditions, or always having an emergency stim (or two) to get out of a tough situation with timberwolves or a rampaging moose. It's all manageable, at the cost of your precious inventory space.

My 500 day run – the first days

Every TLD run is a hugely personal journey, and many players love sharing key moments & experiences of their survival (or lack of). I've relied on my in-game journaling, and some select screenshots to recall my time during my current run and selected some of my favourite moments of the run.

On Interloper, you get a random spawn – and only in the more challenging regions. However, I was lucky enough to spawn in Ash Canyon, the mountainous region in the north-east of Great Bear:

Needless to say, I was pretty lucky. Matches and a hammer on day 1 is a great start, and heading towards the backpack in the gold mine on day 2 (+5kg of permanent inventory space) was even better. When the cougar was introduced, in Ash Canyon it was placed outside the natural exit of the gold mine meaning that you couldn't easily grab the backpack and exit Ash Canyon efficiently unless you were prepared to kill a cougar, so grabbing it before it spawned on day 10 was a real blessing.

My path out of Ash Canyon was clear & known to me – zip down through Timberwolf Mountain then loot the plane crash, which has a good chance of clothing items lying around.

After this point, the run followed a fairly standard trajectory familiar to all experienced Long Dark players – get all of the various items to make a bow & some arrows, so you can defend yourself from predators and start killing big game for long-term food survival. To do that, you need a hammer to forge arrowheads, you need to cure some birch & maple saplings for the bow & arrow shafts (which can only be cut by using a hacksaw, or by forging a hatchet) and curing some guts from small game that will act as the bow's string.

As you go, you need to start curing hides so that you can craft better clothing to stay warm and better protected (remember, the game world is getting colder as you go), while at the same time you're running all over Great Bear looting all of the major spots and staying out of trouble.

It's at this point that you're incentivised to be as efficient as possible – how many places can you trek to and loot in a day, while also being in a good position to move on to the next region? It feels like you're constantly solving a 'Seven Bridges of Konigsburg' problem, so that you aren't wasting time, retracing your steps unnecessarily, and digging into the reserve food that you're carrying around.

You can easily spend 50-60 days traversing the entire game world, visiting all of the major regions. I ended up travelling through the more central regions of Mystery Lake and Pleasant Valley several times, and planned on 'loops' that visited a few regions, bringing back high-value loot to my home base in the Camp Office in Mystery Lake. The loops included:

• Leaving via the Ravine and going to Coastal Highway & Desolation Point – always a favourite part of GBI given the high amount of loot and the beachcombing loot you find along the way
• Heading through Forlorn Muskeg and on to Broken Railroad – not a high priority but the Muskeg includes a forge which you need to visit early on
• Mountain Town & Hushed River Valley – plenty of houses to loot in the former, and guaranteed high value loot in the latter
• Ash Canyon & Timberwolf Mountain – great for getting the technical backpack and also checking out the Summit, respectively

I left Bleak Inlet and Blackrock for later – you don't want to be fending off timberwolves without a bow & plenty of arrows.

Infact, it took me until day 81 to make my way into the fabled Bleak Inlet workshop, where I was able to use the milling machine and repair my tools:

Round 2, i.e. building up the bases

So what do you do once you've visited all of the regions, you've crafted some pretty good clothing and you're feeling pretty confident in moving around the world?

Well, you visit all those places again.

Instead of the Contiki-like whirlwind tour from the first 60-80 days, it was time to properly build up some bases with food, water and cured stuffs. It's a proper focus on hunting big game, while at the same time looting the out-of-the-way areas. If you're feeling particularly relaxed, you can use some of that charcoal and map out parts of the region you're spending time in.

All of those little trips become mini-holidays in a way – you work on the achievement of building up your stockpiles, spend 10 to 15 days hunting whatever comes around, and all the while the world of Great Bear puts a smile on your face in the oddest moments.

The bear on the tree

Day 100 was spent in the Deer Clearing area of Timberwolf Mountain:

Fun note: that fire underneath the bear kept me perfectly warm while I was on the tree branch harvesting it up!

The first cougar kill

I mixed up the base stockpiling with other mini-goals along the way, such as hunting a cougar for the first time, selecting the Wood Lot in Mystery Lake on day 149 as my first hunting ground:

The beachcombing boat

And I remember the confusion on my face when doing some casual beachcombing along the Crumbling Highway, and seeing an actual boat washed up on shore. And it was lootable!

A lot of people say that The Long Dark is all about the early game – the panicked rushing around of finding the best loot as fast as possible, making snap decisions of which part of the world to visit based on your capabilities, and balancing the risk-reward of battling the weather, your health, and the mere potential of finding the next critical item to help you on your journey.

But the unique memories from Great Bear Island tend to come from later on – when your adventures become more of a meander, and the story unfolds in front of you when you least expect it. You also feel a lot more attuned to the wider world as hunting becomes your primary food source.

I'll share some other logs & screenshots of the rest of my 500 days journey in another post. For now, I hope you enjoy your own Long Dark run, and if you haven't gotten into it, maybe give the game a go yourself!

#TheLongDark #gaming #SurvivalGames

This year, I'll be using the vegetable beds in our front yard to focus on tomatoes and cucumbers. Leanne a few houses down is doing zucchini, and Gareth across the road is focusing on a range of herbs in his front yard. He already has a great rosemary bush that we all take from; he says he's going to plant another one. Noone will be able to get away from cooking minestrone, I guess!

Grocery stores are still crucial, but the fresh food section only stocks items out of season – it doesn't matter how cheap the in-season stock is, it rarely sells because the same stuff available on our street is free (and obviously tastes better). So they only focus on selling the goods that you can't easily get in the current climate. Still, there isn't a huge amount. We adjust our meals based on what's around.

The first big “penny drop” moment for most people came when food manufacturers had to put labels on food which showed the distance that the food had to travel to get to the grocery store. 'From Picked to Placed' was the marketing campaign for the legislation. I remember that ready-to-cook fish fillets was a really large distance, causing us to learn that frozen fish were sent halfway across the world just to get descaled, then shipped back again. Everyone found it ridiculous. The number on the label was also converted into an equivalent volume of carbon using some average figure and displayed below the distance.

I still remember that first conversation while doing my weekly shopping trip (i.e. 'the old way') when the labels started to appear, and hearing a gasp from a fellow shopper which prompted me to strike up a conversation. Everyone had a few of those 'firsts' as we discovered how global our food supply was, and so the trend of home gardening gradually took off.

The thing with most food is that when the harvest comes, you either need to sell it or share it. Because people had to find a seller before the food goes off, it was just easier to put it in a cardboard box out the front of the house. Not too many people minded that they were giving away their hard work for free – most people enjoyed the satisfaction of doing a bit more gardening in their lives. Plus, the pay-it-forward mindset meant that most of the time you were receiving instead of providing.

So we were all amateur farmers & traders, using the space we had available. The simple act of being out the front of our house more often meant striking up conversations was far more commonplace. For the households that didn't have a green thumb, they turned their front yard into a communal play area or gathering area. Ol' Man Jerry (he liked the nickname, enjoyed how endearing it was) built a few workbenches using some wood from the torn down fences and turned his garage into a shared tool library and DIY area. He was happy to keep it clean, manage the sign-in/sign-out sheet and teach a few basic handyman tips from time to time, but often he retreated into his front room and read a book. He was just happy that the garage was being put to good use, especially since he sold his car over a decade ago. I can't remember the last time I had to buy a tool; we've all gotten by on the 'Noahs Ark' of tools. We all had to chip in to replace the lawn mower a few months ago; the collection box in Jerry's garage got the required amount within two days.

I'm especially looking forward to this winter. Arthur & Bea who moved in a few years ago have tried to organise a 'community calendar' to keep things fun during the colder months, and stop us from being in our own homes every night. There's a simple roster of Sunday group dinners that five or six houses have signed up for hosting, and Thursdays are board game nights. In a few Fridays time there will be a bonfire party; me and a few others have promised to each bring along an old favourite whiskey, and do a bit of a mini-tasting event. Play it up a bit, pretend we're experts. Should be a good laugh.

#fiction #TheFuture

The modern world – at least how it appears in developed countries – shows a polished veneer of civilised society full of mod cons and general abundance, but in the back of our minds we're thinking about social inequality, long-term damage to the Earth's environment, late-stage capitalism, and the ease of political division & the erosion of the sense of community that comes with it.

And so the malaise sets in. If you're lucky, you'll know when to turn off the news, look after your mental health and try to get through another day without falling apart. The alternative is to let it consume you to the point of resorting to unhealthy behaviours (doom scrolling, comfort eating, drinking), all of which make it harder for you to get back into a good mental or physical space to look after yourself.

These feelings and experiences have become more familiar in recent years. It's often related to any combination of the global issues facing humanity, which feel abstract, complex, and way too much for a single person to get around. So what do I do? I do what most people do, which is to say “it's all too hard”, avoid taking even the slightest step forward, and hope that the malaise doesn't come up too often. I've done the mental gymnastics enough times that it feels rehearsed, and is now the 'default' response. I've trained myself to push it under the rug.

It's a decision that is rewarded with a sense of comfort (“things are pretty okay for our household right now”), simplicity (“global issues aren't for me to solve, I just need to plan out this week's meals”), and a false sense of confidence (if I keep this up, the future looks pretty good!“).

Of course, it's daylight robbery from your future self. No one wants to be in the twilight of their life, regretting that they didn't devote their most active years doing something more meaningful – perhaps working for a niche environmental not-for-profit, or regularly protesting against governments or corporations, or building up a local charity to help people in need.

But putting that argument aside, there's another solid reason why living within the 'default' approach of ignoring major issues and letting the malaise sink in is bad. It's simply not fun. When you accept that things are the way they are and you can't change them, you lock yourself out of having imagination from your life. You have baked certainty into your future, at the expense of hope, potential and wonder. Out of the infinite possibilities that may lie ahead, you are intentionally chosen the one path where you are on rails, acting passively as the world meanders along it's chaotic, destructive, violent path.

The alternative is to develop a practice of hope & optimism. For the sole reason that it keeps the gate open to all of the other pathways in your future, and lets you imagine “what if” about everything you care about.

This involves developing a habit of imagining your ideal future, regardless of how far fetched it is. Do it once a week, do it daily, do it every time you go to the toilet – the key point is to get yourself comfortable with imagining a different future. You can think about a specific part of the future – maybe your local community being more connected, or a world where air quality is better – or something at a larger scale. Just train the muscle.

It's an easy, first step of whatever rebellion or revolution you'd love to see – just start by imagining it. As that imagination builds up an amazing world in your mind, connections will start to take form. How did your local food co-operative end up being formed? What led the government to halt any future deforestation in your region? The answers will come, but only after you develop the habit of imagining your future.

Don't worry about the next step – at least for a little while. But starting with a hopeful, imagined future that you've created will arm you with the right tools to figure that out.

So that's how I'm approaching 2026: with some optimism, a bit of imagination, and a bit of blind trust that I'll work out the next step when the time is right. For now, I'm imagining what our little suburb looks like in the near future, after a range of cultural changes that range from a reduced reliance on cars, a bigger focus on shared/common spaces, and a more local economy. For now I'm writing some small fictional descriptions, but maybe it'll evolve into something more tactical.

And of course it's only half way through January as I write this, but when these practices get nurtured over a few months they start to take on a life of their own. I can only hope.

#TheFuture #thinking #imagination