Upcoming Anniversary – EyeSpark Weekly (June 12, 2026)

I haven't been that motivated to write recently, so this is my sixth post in a row to be a weekly update. I've noticed I'm getting a pretty bad case of "nobody cares" syndrome with my writing, so I haven't been as active as I would've liked, which is a shame, but I am trying to work through it.

One thing that I think will finally push me to be more active is the fact that this week — specifically on Sunday or Monday depending on when you want to count — is the 1-year anniversary of this blog! Specifically I bought the domain and started actually setting the site up on June 14, 2025, but I published my first post in June 15, 2025. Either way, I'll give the same gold makeover to the site as I did during Centurion Week, and hopefully actually push myself to publish stuff again, as I have had stuff in my mind but no real motivation.

Anyways, the header image of this post is the screenshot I took when I published that first post! I'm very glad I found it.

For the usuals, I watched the Behind the Scenes of the previous Game Changer episode, which was super fun (here's a clip), and this might actually be my new favourite episode now that I've let it sit in my mind. I also really liked Yahtzee's review of 007 First Light, which is a fitting game to come out as I caught up with From Rewatch with Love. Lastly, I caught up on Series 21 of Taskmaster, and watched the finale last night, and it was so good! All of the last tasks were very good, especially the final team one, and my winner pick since before the series started won, which made me very happy! Quite excited for Series 22 too.

Marty Sliva of Second Wind published a video about the "pay to play early" epidemic in modern games, and why he finds it scummy, which I personally agree with. It gives some insight into why it has been so common lately and why it actually works on people. Fortunately I haven't fallen for these, but I still can't wait to see this trend die off, and I think the video explains why perfectly. Also congrats to them for reaching 100 million views on YouTube!

We now know that Bill Wurtz is truly back, as he released a new video fairly quickly after the previous one! It's a song (and partially a skit) about nametags for nameless people. Glad to see the humany creatures back too!

This would probably count as one of the usuals usually, but I somehow missed the last episodes of Series 4 of No Rolls Barred's Board Game League, including the finale where they played Settlers of Catan, which I really enjoyed having as the finale! I think since it's a relatively common game it somehow raised the stakes, probably since both the players and audience are more likely to be familiar with it! Great episodes, but shame we are now in the worst timeline /s

I've been seeing a lot more art again! I've also started using the LambdaGeneration forums again, so I have stuff from there too. Here's my favourites this week:

• A very moving poem about the risks of GenAI by Shawn Smucker, which I saw shared around on BlueSky, and genuinely made me quite emotional.
• A drawing of a prehistoric Rosalina by Gonzalo Fraguas Bringas, which I found super adorable, especially the Lumadinos!
• It's Half-Life: Blue Shift's 25th anniversary today, and so I've seen quite a bit of art from it and of Barney specifically! I've especially liked this piece by DurianSkeleton, and this specific piece by Raze, who has apparently been drawing him daily for 3 years‽ Wow.

As for video games, now that I am back home I am slowly getting back into that groove again, and I've actually been experimenting a little bit, though quite mildly.

I finally started playing Mina the Hollower last night, though I have only played it for 2 hours or so, so I don't have much to say, but I've been really enjoying it so far. I also started playing NimbleBit's Capitals again, which they re-released a few months ago, and I've finally downloaded GoldenEye Source, so I can now safely say it is much better with a mouse and keyboard! Hopefully I'll also be playing more multiplayer games in general, as I plan to join in on my first LambdaGeneration Gamenight tomorrow!

And that's about it for today! Hopefully this week I'll actually have more to share, but if not, I hope you at least enjoy the sparkles while the site is gold for the next week.

I don't really have anything else to add, so I better sign off, but I'll leave a silly photo I took today of two of my cats.