The Aspie #15 – Being Thankful for… Toastmasters

Having gained confidence in Student Radio, this Worldwide Organisation seemed to be the place to build it up some more.

Between 2022 and 2023, I enjoyed a spell on Student Radio. And in between, I discovered something that allowed me to build on the confidence gained from doing it and a whole lot more besides. In the second part of this Easter’s Double Bill, I’m going to talk about my journey so far in the international organisation known as Toastmasters. From how a typical night goes, to what I’ve accomplished so far and most importantly, why I’ve kept doing it for over two years with many more years to come, I hope.

So, Toastmasters is an international organisation specialising in the development of two things: Leadership and Communication. It’s been in existence for 100 Years and yet I only heard about it in January 2023, let alone the existence of a club here in Limerick City. Now, your mileage may vary in how a club meeting is run but generally, a typical night at Limerick Toastmasters has a more relaxed tone and attire but still has the three fundamental parts of one: Three Prepared Speeches by club members engaging in a Path (more on that shortly); Evaluations of those speeches; and Table Topics which practice the skill of Impromptu Speaking. There are also five roles that are mostly filled for every meeting:

  • Toastmaster of the Evening, who chairs the meeting, introduces Speakers and the other roles and transitions from role to role.
  • Speech Timer, who times Speeches and Evaluations using a Tower of Lights.
  • The General Evaluator, who manages the Evaluations and gives feedback on the meeting as a whole.
  • The Topics Master, who prepares and asks questions for Table Topics.
  • And the Grammarian who monitors the use of Crutch Words and picks a Word of the Day that everyone is encouraged to use wherever they can.

On the point of Paths… Every member delivering a Speech does so by way of Pathways by Toastmasters. There are six different paths to pick from (it was about 12 but cut in half last year by Toastmasters International after a system wide review and feedback from members across the world). The one I’m currently engaged in is Presentation Mastery, because I treat it as learning the fundamentals of Public Speaking and then some. Each path has five levels, which each require a series of Speeches to be delivered at club meetings. A speech can be about anything you want but… It must incorporate the objectives of each speech project. The first two levels have projects that are all compulsory. From Level 3 (which is where I am right now) onwards, you have one compulsory project to be done and then a minimum number of electives to be completed on top. In my current level, I need to accomplish two out of a total list of 14. And call me crazy… But I’ve got a vision to do ten of them! And that’s because a lot of the projects appeal to me and I want to expose myself to a variety of speech types since you never know when you might need some of them in life.

Besides Speeches and Meeting Workshops, all Toastmaster Clubs have Officer Roles that need to be filled year after year. For the last two full seasons (I joined in the middle of season 2022 / 23. A full season, at least in my club, is from September to May / June, which marks season 2024 / 25 my second full season), I’ve been in the role of Treasurer, basically the manager of money coming in and money going out. The other Officer Roles are the following:

  • Membership Officer, who is responsible for setting up people on TMI and keeping the list of members of our club current.
  • Education Officer, who is responsible for ensuring roles get filled for each meeting and people complete their speeches and paths in a timely manner.
  • Sargent-at-Arms, who is responsible for setting up the Meeting Room and meeting and greeting all members and guests.
  • Public Relations Officer, who is responsible for promoting the club through PR and things connected to it.
  • Secretary, who is responsible for basically making meeting minutes and being there at meetings of Club Committees.
  • And the President, who basically represents the Club at Town Hall Meetings and things like that which I’m personally not too bogged down with.

So that’s the Club, but what about my experience in it so far?

The Analytical Aspie #1 – In Defence of VHS Archives

I love Content Archives. And I think they should continue to exist, regardless of what YouTube says. Here’s why I think so!

Welcome to The Analytical Aspie at long last! I’m mostly here to give my two cents on anything that interests me. And in my Aspie post on YouTubers I do like, I mentioned a fourth category of content I consume on the regular but felt was worthy of its own post: The VHS Archivers. Why? Well, did you ever come across channels called jflitter, KillianM2 or the JMX TV Archive? I certainly did. And I use the past tense for a deliberate reason. They don’t exist as individual channels today. And I blame that on YouTube’s VHS Vexation. Today, I want to explain why I find that utterly frustrating, the main reasons why I think this genre should keep on existing, as well as my own views of the issues that cannot be avoided if you’ve ever wanted to jump into this niche hobby. Which might soon find itself on life support unless appropriate action is taken.

Before I get all apocalyptic, let’s start by explaining who I think qualifies as a VHS Archive Channel. In order to attract my attention, a channel like this needs to be run by someone who discovers VHS Tapes, digitises the content recorded on them and uploads either the full tape or appropriately edited fragments onto YouTube. I’m not interested in channels who simply re-upload clips from existing TV Continuity Archive Websites but I’m okay for things that obviously don’t come from places like that to be put onto YouTube for reasons I’ll expand on later. And I’ll let The Curious Aspie take care of the technical side of archiving if people want to open my eyes to it. In terms of what I often look for, it’s an abridged list of the following and then some:

  • Continuity and Adverts from Rádió Telifís Éireann (RTÉ) and UTV, especially the latter which I frequented the most growing up as a backdoor to programmes from ITV1. Although I might consider adding Sky One, at least during the mid-to-late noughties because of it being the go-to channel for new episodes of The Simpsons and other things that caught my eye.
  • UK News and Continuity from the 1990s and 2000s because I find watching the news from yesteryear in 2025 fascinating. And my favourite styles of on-screen presentation were in place, especially from ITV.
  • Any National Lottery Draws and Result Slides, especially during the midweek since I was never able to catch most of them, primarily because of School Nights.
  • Any TV Shows, big or small that I watched (sometimes for ungodly reasons!), as a kid! The vast majority that I could list here have been discovered and uploaded onto YouTube in some form, but there are others that I have heard of that could be lost media. Forever.
  • And Idents of TV Channels that I watched in passing, my mother watched idlily or enjoyed the most growing up. Especially those produced by UTV and Sky One.

Now, as far as I’m aware, there are three types of channels that co-exist (or at least try to). The first type are channels that have a clear design in their presentation, and a rhyme and reason for their accumulation of content. Two perfect examples of this (for me at least) are the VHS Archiver and the TV Curator. Their respective cover photos give a very clear picture of what content they have on their tapes and thus, what a viewer like me should expect, although there may be the odd surprise along the way.

Which brings me to the second type, what I call The Potluck Archives. Basically, these channels clearly state in their bio that they have no firm idea what they might find in the tapes they have collected and that viewers should expect surprises. Which is quite true in practice! For example, take The Ted Taylor Files. Who would have expected him to discover bits and pieces of Fame Academy’s second series, which someone should really try to piece together in a few neat packages if possible. In fact, if I were to break down the list of VHS Archive Channels I’m subscribed to by category, I would say Potluck Archives make up the largest slice by some distance.

And the third and final type of archive channel that I know of are what I would call DCAs: Deactivated Channel Archives. Basically, their goal is the preservation of as much of a deleted Archive Channel as possible to keep the content alive and accessible. The main example is It’s so Archivious (UK), who has preserved some videos from two of the channels that I definitely watched that are now in the VHS Graveyard. And I think that despite many challenges that inevitably come with trying to be a DCA, they have an important part to play in making sure this whole ecosystem is alive and thriving. But before I expand upon what I mean by that particular sentence, let’s talk about why I am personally obsessed with it in the first place.

The Aspie #12 – Being Uninterested in… Bad YouTubers

I may be a YouTube Binger, but there are certain creators and categories I wouldn’t touch. Even in Incognito Mode.

Previously on… The ADog Blog: But let’s not be complacent. Especially since, truth be told, for every masterpiece of a video that is published, some are at the bottom of the barrel either because they represent everything my favourite channels are not, the creator behind them has a dreadful personality, or the genre they belong to does not appeal to me, personally. That was how I concluded my post on YouTubers I like. Now it’s time to explain who qualifies as YouTubers I don’t like.

I’m not going to rehash who is and isn’t a YouTuber in my eyes. Read my last post to understand where I’m coming from on that point. Instead, I’m just going to get straight into it with the YouTuber of the Moment who exemplifies everything that makes a YouTuber terrible in my eyes. And that’s MrBeast, who needs no introduction, especially if you’ve seen anything he has produced over the last 7 Years at least. And that’s where I’m going to fire my opening shot.

You see, whenever I see the cold opening of any MrBeast video, two words come to mind: Sensory Overload. Instead of a gentle glide into the madness or a snappy but concise explanation of the video’s objective, it’s straight into the action. From there, that action is non-stop and wall-to-wall with no room to absorb, no time to properly understand where the narrative is heading, nor why, and no idea where individual players’ heads are really at in any particular moment. And while this method of presentation may deliver exactly what the title implies, it also makes me wonder if the participants were forced to drink a whole crate of Monster Energy beforehand. Especially since, in reality, most people don’t talk at the speed & pitch MrBeast does for a sustained period of time. They don’t attempt challenges on the scale MrBeast does, especially in the time frames he sets. And they probably wouldn’t even attempt to accomplish those same crazy goals unless the money on offer spoke louder than he does.

Compare this to most Sidemen videos. A prime example that comes to mind is when they played The Chase for the first time. Ethan is asked a Bradley Walsh Question (the kind of question that almost guarantees Bradley will lose the plot for our amusement), namely: What do cows drink? He puts the Milk they produce as his answer! This causes a chain reaction of Harry screaming “YOU FUCKING IDIOT! YOU IDIOT!”, Tobi literally rolling on the floor in hysterics, Vik the Chaser guffawing “You’re joking, you’re joking!”, Josh telling Ethan to stop ‘flexing’, the rest of the Sidemen piling on top of each other in disbelief and Vik adding the cherry on top with the line “That has to be the best way anyone has lost 50 grand in their entire life!” After several minutes, order is restored, and Vik reveals the correct answer he needed to catch and exclude Ethan from the Final Chase. My point is that in this example, it was an over-the-top reaction that was allowed to flow like lava and give everyone watching a good laugh in between some mediocre quizzing. With a MrBeast challenge, the opposite is the case. And I think the YouTuber Donna said it best in her video about the genre where she identified what MrBeast videos lack:

“As I watched upload after upload [from OGs like Casey Neistat and Emma Chamberlain], it became clear that the MrBeast genre feels empty because they are missing two components that allowed YouTube to break into the market in the first place: Vulnerability and Authenticity. … If all we really cared about was spectacle and being entertained, television and film would have gone parabolic.”

And when I think back to the Sidemen in general, even if you don’t like the current direction they are heading in, she’s not wrong. Yes, some of their videos are a spectacle of sorts in terms of location and execution, but the general runtime appears to be sufficient so that a lot of things that a MrBeast video does not carry can exist. This, to me, includes chaos, whether intended or not, being absorbed by the audience in a decent amount of time before the next wave hits. The characters they play for the purpose of a video being consistent and only breaking whenever someone (usually W2S) drops a one-line howler you have to be literally stone-faced not to laugh at! And each individual Sideman having a base personality that distinguishes them from each other.

Can you honestly think of a MrBeast video where any of the above applies? Probably not. Unless you were consuming his content around the time that some narrative arcs, as pointed out by some commentators, did persist. But I think that was more in an era when MrBeast and those that featured regularly seemed like genuine friends pushing concepts beyond practical limits. Nowadays, it looks to me like it’s just Jimmy making the top lines (views and retention) get bigger and bigger with each upload while trying to fulfil his ultimate dream of dying with practically nothing in his Bank Account. But at least he is pursuing it ethically, right?

The Aspie #9 – Being Nostalgic for… Flash Games

My early Internet usage concentrated on them. These are a few of my favourites.

Right, so… Have you enjoyed December 25th, 2024? If you have, I’ve a funny feeling that talk at the Christmas Dinner Table touched on childhood memories. And if you grew up around the same time as I did, something that probably hooked you as a child were those online games supported by Flash. At least until 31st December 2020, which only made that whole year 10 times worse! I played my fair share of those growing up across many websites. In recent years, some of them have been restored and / or remastered on platforms like Steam and the Google Play Store. In this fifth and final part of my Post Blitz on gaming, I want to talk about some of the Flash Games I played that I wish joined those that I have rediscovered.

It’s not just Flash Player Games that have made their way into the Steam Vault, but I’ll touch on some of them in a moment. First, these are the Flash Games I am aware of on both platforms and have also purchased myself:

  • Cube Escape: A series of eerie Escape Room Puzzle Games. They were originally released as individual games between 2015 and 2018 before the first nine were released as a single collection in 2020. I’ve also discovered through this page of the Rusty Lake Wiki that there are also Premium Games that are set in between free-to-play games so my collection clearly isn’t complete! At least this side of Christmas.
  • Don’t Escape Trilogy: Developed by Script Wielder for Armor Games, this trio of 8-Bit Horror showcases the best of Kevin MacLeod’s music! My personal favourite was number three, set in a spaceship tasked with investigating the disappearance of another ship near an unusual crystal. But something went terribly wrong and with life support on the verge of collapse, it’s up to the player to figure out the truth and decide the best course of action to take. Number four in the series was published exclusively to Steam, but it was very kind and convenient of him to bring the previous three together on the same platform!
  • The Henry Stickmin Collection: If you’ve watched Breaking the Bank or played Stealing the Diamond somewhere, you’ve technically consumed a Henry Stickmin game. Now, here’s your chance to play all of them together! And see if Henry can finally complete his mission, which seems to have been curated by a multitude of crazy actions taken by the player on his behalf.
  • Papa Louie: I’ve come across a couple of Papa Louie games on various websites. Basically, it’s a series of mid-2000s simulators of various restaurant types that see you serving a multitude of customers to earn money, unlock ingredients and decorate the restaurant to (your taste) maximise customer satisfaction. How many days can you keep the business up and running? Even if it wasn’t something you planned on starting yourself. This page from the Flipline Studios Wiki, the studio that created the series, indicates that most of them have been remastered under the To Go subtitle on Google Play and Steam, but I need to double-check just in case the originals are still playable on places like Kongregate.

As well as this quartet, I have also found most of the Worms games remastered and available on Steam, as well as Puzzler World and Puzzler World 2011 (called Puzzler World 2 on Steam) interestingly. There are probably more out there that I am not aware of at the moment, but right now, here are five Flash Player games I played that I wish would join the Steam Vault, mostly for preservation’s sake.

The Aspie #8 – Being Neutral towards… Online Games

It’s not just Roblox where you can game online without paying an arm and a leg for the privilege. Unless you really want to!

Right, so… Have you unwrapped your presents and gobbled down good ‘ol fashioned Christmas Dinner of Turkey and Ham (your mileage may vary if you celebrate Christmas differently)? Good, because it’s now time for the fourth part of my Posting Blitz on the hobby of gaming. I’ve already talked about my taste in Roblox Games, which is a platform accessible online. This time, I want to focus on games and platforms besides Roblox that I have dabbled in, mostly as temporary relief from the mental pressure of the Pandemic in the early part of this decade. And because these are other ways to access games that I wasn’t familiar with! Until I found myself mixing and mingling in the right circles.

Jackbox Games

Let’s start with the most obvious, even if you’ve only heard of the words Smitty, Quiplash and Trivia Murder Party. If you’ve been living under a rock and have never heard of a Jackbox Party Pack, they are essentially online-based party games where players join in a room via Mobile Phone and play along to see who comes out on top. I’ve seen my fair share of action on small-town Twitch Streams which means I’m in good standing to declare my overall favourite game as Quiplash and my overall least favourite as Trivia Murder Party. The former because of how out there people can be with their quips and the latter because of the horror theme, which I loathe, and also the standard of questions being way out of my comfort zone, even if they toned down the US-centric-ness in the second version.

Among Us

It’s funny how this social deduction game became one of the biggest winners of the COVID-19 Pandemic despite having been released a few years beforehand to pretty much no fanfare or ceremony. And, when you have the right mix of players, it can be a cause of brilliant chaos! One of my best performances was on a Twitch Stream where, during a round on the Skeld, I was an Imposter who sabotaged the Oxygen, which the rest of the crew couldn’t figure out and when the timer ran out and it was revealed that I was the Imposter who done the deed, I felt very good about myself and it gave me a high!

That’s something I don’t believe would ever happen if I played games of a similar nature that you can play online, on Steam or recently via consoles like Fall Guys and Fortnite. Not only does the sunk cost of purchasing Seasonal Skins and stuff really put me off but every time I think of the former, I can’t help but always think of those TimtheTatMan Meltdowns and how he would take out his frustrations on his poor penguin plushie who’s just… There vibing and thinking to himself, ‘Not another fail…’ They also remind me of me when I was a young buck majorly struggling to complete the second part of Set to Kill from The Simpsons: Hit & Run and how every time I failed, especially when I was just getting up the hill… I got more and more frustrated and occasionally boiled over. And I think playing Fall Guys would bring those same emotions out.

The Aspie #7 – Being Confused about… Console Games

Consoles were all the rage when I was growing up. Unfortunately, I only had access to one. That wasn’t part of the Console Wars.

Right, so… Welcome to Christmas Day! It hasn’t been my favourite day of the year for many years but when I was younger, some of my favourite presents were Consoles and the games that could come with them. So, in this part of my Posting Blitz regarding gaming, I want to talk about the games I have played on consoles. Well… One family of consoles anyway. As well as others that I have come across on other platforms. Including, surprisingly, PC!

Now that family of consoles I’m relatively familiar with comes from Nintendo of all places! It started with the original Nintendo DS when I was 10, followed by the Nintendo DSi and then the Nintendo 3DS. And no, I haven’t evolved into the Nintendo Switch and might wait until Nintendo Switch 2 comes out so I can be right up to date. Unless reputable reviewers deem it trash. In the meantime, I still have my DSi and 3DS, one of the benefits of which is ensuring I can keep on playing the Nintendo DS games I have accumulated over the years.

In fact, one of the first ever games I played on the original DS was Brain Training. I literally tried to keep on training every day, sometimes playing a rotating set of exercises and doing Calculations x20 and x100 on weekends. There was also a Sudoku section which is where I grasped the basics of that puzzle at all.

I then found More Brain Training where, at the very bottom of the Daily Training page was Germ Buster, which might remind you of Dr. Mario if you played games that far back!

Much later, I found Devilish Brain Training. A completely different set of exercises, some I grasped much quicker than others, as well as the best exercises from both original Brain Training games and puzzle games such as Klondike and Spider Solitaire. It also had an Instrumental Break full of all the songs used in the game and original compositions (I think). If you just want to listen to those, I’ve taken the liberty to put them all into one YouTube Playlist, accessible here. Probably the biggest benefit of still having my 3DS on hand and a charger to keep it juiced! Even if the wire covers are worn out.

The Aspie #6 – Being Keen on… Roblox

Yes, it may be a platform aimed at Kids, but I find some of the Games created quite enjoyable!

Right, so… Apologies for the massive delay in getting this post out! With Christmas just around the corner, my house had to experience upheaval so it could be decorated. Anyway… Welcome to Part Two of my five-part chain of posts on my second-favourite G-Word: Gaming. Last week, I covered my Tablet full of Mobile Games. However, there is one game I didn’t have room in that post to talk about. Well, it’s more a platform than a game. And it’s called Roblox. Most of you have no doubt heard of it and probably dabbled in it as a player growing up. I first caught word of it via a cousin who used to play it on a desktop computer. I kept removing the launchers because I didn’t know what it was at the time, and I didn’t allow anything like that to be stored on the computer. Until I joined the platform myself. And since I registered on June 3rd, 2013, I have played a wide variety of games. And I have quite a few of them marked as Favourites right now.

Those favourites fall into one of three categories: Simulators, Tycoons and Unique Places (in my opinion, anyway), which I’ll go through one by one in a moment. As for what I don’t like playing, you can forget the Horror Genre in general, as well as those that have zombie mechanics at a minimum, general free-for-all shooting games, and anything mass multiplayer survival because they bring out a competitive side in me, which I consider one of the worst sides of my character.

Also, I am acutely aware of controversy and scrutiny around the platform (For example, this video produced by KiraTV’s second channel), which would naturally make one question why I would be on a platform shrouded in it, especially at the age of 26. However, as you’ll see in Part Three next week, Roblox has generally been my main source of games outside of just one console I’ve played on and off most of my life (at least until Mobile Games creeped in). Plus, just like Mobile Games, I like to play them by myself, for myself and for stimulation and relaxation. Not for ego, not to make friends (like I would want to on this platform anyway) and certainly not to be someone notable in the gaming scene (at least at this point of my life). Although, I think there might be plenty of scope for a series of posts into Roblox under the hood. Because I don’t know about you… But maybe I am viewing the platform with rose-tinted glasses and should be just as conscious about where I play games, and not just what I play.

Anyway, here’s what I regularly play on Roblox at the moment. All games mentioned will be linked straight to the page on Roblox they are on.

The Aspie #5 – Being Keen on… Mobile Games

I tend to find stimulation and solid mental workouts in this collection of Mobile Games that appeal to me.

Right, so… If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been most of this month, I work in an accounting firm and in Ireland, around the middle of November, there is this thing called Income Tax that needs to be filed. And our firm has been doing that on behalf of lots of clients for the last few weeks. Now that it is out of the way, at least for this year, let’s talk about something I do to take my mind off it after 5:30 in the evening: Games.

Most of us play them in one form or another. Mine have mostly existed on screens since I was about 9 or 10. And in the first of a chain of posts up to Christmas, I want to explain where my tastes lie in the five types of game that I’m aware of being primarily on a screen: Roblox, Console, Online, Flash (when that was a thing) and first up tonight, Mobile.

Let’s face it, a mobile phone is man’s third best friend besides his Dog and his Umbrella, at least in my mind. And there is also no getting away from the reality that some of us cannot really function in real life without some kind of mobile phone. The Pros and Cons of mobile phone use for certain tasks could be something for me to weigh up in my own head another time but today, I want to focus on one element that I am increasingly entrenched in thanks to my Tablet: Mobile Gaming.

I have played my fair share of mobile games from an early age, mostly via Facebook when you could invite “friends” to be your “neighbours” in games mostly produced by Zynga. Most of them do not exist anymore like PetVille, Café World and the original FarmVille to name a few that I was a part of. But the spin-off FarmVille 2: Country Escape still does, alongside sister spin-off FarmVille 2: Tropic Escape and FarmVille 3, all of which I have dabbled in but have not touched in a while for reasons that will become clear once I go through the games I actively play right now.

Before that, let’s talk about how I approach Mobile Games, especially considering the way some of them are advertised and the avalanche of micro-transactions that exist beneath the ‘Free’ tag in the App Store. I will discuss the ethics of those issues and more in an Analytical Aspie post, but generally speaking, I play mobile games one of three ways, depending on the type of game.

The first is the Scavenger style. If there are Optional Ads for in-game Resources, Boosters and even Premium Currency available, I’ll happily rattle off several of them in the background while doing something more productive. The ads themselves are often the annoying ones from TEMU and those I want to rant about in a future post, but at least I can press the mute button and look at something stimulating while they are whizzing by. I am also a fan of any Wheel of Prizes I can spin for anything valuable, even if some prizes require luck. But in general, I play games objectively and try my best to earn resources, boosters and currency by playing normally.

The second style I employ, which sometimes ties into the first, is Resourceful. This involves me making the most of what I have and usually refusing to be tempted by weekly package offers that can add up very quickly. Although some are more worthwhile purchasing than others, such as Removal of Ads packages. And the third style I employ, which regularly ties into the second, is Intuitive. When I play mobile games like Pet Rescue Saga, for example, I always keep on eye on the way the grid develops and if my instinct says a Booster is best used at a crucial moment now than never, I’ll often do so and sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not. Truth be told, you sometimes need luck to break through a particularly tricky level. And instinct is like pure chance, sometimes it serves you well, other times it backfires. But we all have it and use it subconsciously. Mobile Games just happen to be the arena I am most aware of it in action.

So that’s how I play Mobile Games, but why do I play Mobile Games? The answer: Stimulation of my Brain. Firstly, I’m not a sporty person by nature but I also don’t like being idle, even if when I let my brain wander, I have crazy dreams and craft ideas that make me excited downstairs, and sometimes dream up ideas for posts I want to publish on here. Secondly, as someone that has been more slow than resistant to moving with the times in terms of the consoles people play with, the ways people play with each other and, most importantly, the games people play, mobile games have been that perfect way for me to both destress and game on a regular basis. Especially since, thirdly, I do not like myself when I am trying to be competitive. I often feel frustrated and depressed when I am having a bad run of form against randomly assigned competitors in a game that has such a mode available. It often knocks my confidence and makes me question my skills, which is why my stance when it comes to games is that I play games by myself, for myself.

But what mobile games, specifically, do I play?