I am enjoying my Steam Deck, actually a lot more than I expected. I suppose I expected to think it was neat but not really know what to do with it. And that was so for a while, but then I installed Fallout New Vegas on it and it just clicked. It’s fun. I installed lots of mods to make it a more varied experience than when I last played it (10+ years ago) and I’m enjoying it, but it’s very hard now.
I hadn’t realised this but the Deck has a gyroscopic sensor in it, and you can configure it to act as a mouse movement. What that means is you can be in first person view, hold down the left button to activate it, then spin around and it rotates the camera as if your character is also spinning around. It’s a bit gimmicky but it impressed me. You can also use it for fine aiming. Aiming in general is done with the right touchpad, which you control with your thumb. I found it very hard to use initially but after some practice it feels a bit more natural. It’s nowhere near as easy as using a mouse though, which is one reason the game is so hard.
In totally unrelated news I need to fill out a tax return this year. I made a small amount of extra income last tax year and should legally declare it. …All I can say is I wonder how much tax intake HMRC loses to people who should be declaring side income but don’t want to deal with the hassle of it and the silly test of “we know what these numbers are, but we want to make sure you’re going to put them in right”. There should just be a field saying “I made a bit of extra money on top of all the stuff you already know about, let me just put the number in here and adjust my tax code for next year thanks”. It’s not like they are opposed to fiddling about with my tax code, they do it an average of twice per year for the last few years. I know because I’ve just gone through all the paperwork!
Rambles 