2009 was a year of ups and downs for me. The major downer of the entire operation is that i got mate redundant in early August from my very cushy job that paid me a great amount of money to do something that could be done in my sleep. I did get a nice redundancy payout despite them not needing them to give me one so I can't really complain but I would like to have worked up until the point I leave the country. Left on my own terms rather that someone else's but evidently the universe was getting revenge on me for blaming everything on it. 

A highlight however was the fact that I finally graduated.... 7 years after I first started my university education. That said I had taken time off in the middle of it to decide what I wanted to do but still, 7 years is a long time and whilst I had eventually gotten into the whole routine and enjoyed uni, I am glad to finally have finished. 

Next I was able to make the life changing decision to make the move to the UK. It's somewhere I have wanted to do fort a long time and now I am financially able to do it, even more so once I sell my car... which is taking an annoyingly long time. The move however is done now; I have flights booked, the lease for my apartment is being taken over and I have nothing tying me down to Australia now. 

Overall 2009 was extremely meh for me. I did what had to be done, did some "smash head on counter top" stupid things and lost my job. Despite the bonus of my graduation, I can't help but  think that 2009 for me would have been better if it stuck its head down the toilet and flushed a few times. 

If I am honest, I am slightly intrigued by this new reincartnation of the Doctor. I stand by my statement that following David Tennant as the Doctor is going to be damn hard if not impossible to pull off but based on this teaser trailer, they may be able to pull it off. Really don't like the new Doctor Who logo though.

A couple of weeks ago I got a new laptop. I had my old one for nearly five years and its worked a treat, but I felt the need to upgrade. So now I have a new one and it's very, very good. The laptop is from Dell and the specs are as follows.

Base: Studio XPS 1645
Processor: Intel Core I7-720QM Processor (1.6GHz, turbo up to 2.8GHz, 6MB L3 Cache)
Memory: 6GB DDR3
Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670 1GB
Hard Drive: 500gb
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate
Other: Wireless, Bluetooth, Backlit Keyboard, Slot load DVD-RW drive.

Overall, I am very happy with the laptop. It runs World of Warcraft very nicely along with numerous other games. It should serve me very well in London.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been redesigning this site somewhat and it's going in a new direction.

My original plan was to develop a portfolio site for myself so that I could be very proud of and be happy to show off to a future employer. However a friend of mine, suggested that I would be best combining my blog site with my portfolio. This did, however present several challenges.

Firstly I needed to keep the site looking as professional as possible while still having my own feel to it. I believe that I have done just that, something I am very proud of since I did the design all myself. The design currently on display is the final draft of many that I developed during the creation process. The same friend who convinced me to combine my sites has given his tick of approval to the design; good enough for me.  Secondly the design of the blogging section needed changing. You will notice in this version that blog archives are not divided into gaming and general blogging and have instead been merged into one with an archive list now being included, divided by month. Lastly, my portfolio has also been included. It's not as wide ranging as originally design but I feel it will work well.

Overall I am very happy with the work I have done but more is to come. These will take time and with my impending move overseas, it won't be done in the near future but they will be done. First and foremost will be a commenting system for my blog entries as well as a contact form with captcha on the contact page. I will also be redeveloping my VEEN Player, getting the next version out and get it done properly. There is a lot of work to do but I have some solid goals for the next few months. This is going to be fun.

In 10 days, I will be leaving Australia and starting my journey to the UK. Of course, with the upcoming major trip, my going away party was held last night.

I didn't do all that much, headed out to the pub with a whole bunch of friends for food and drink with drink at the Belgium Beer Cafe. That's it. It's not much but I enjoyed it greatly.

So with the trip coming soon, I am finishing up all my business in Australia. Still have a car to sell but that's the last thing left after finally getting my name off my lease.

Have a few upcoming events to commemorate my last few days. A LAN tomorrow, a wedding over the weekend and the inevitable goodbyes the few days prior to the flight out.

So counting down....10....

Many years ago, I listed Bioshock as my top game for 2007. It's excellent gameplay, brilliant atmosphere and interesting characters earned it's placing. Now with the impending sequel to the game being released sometime in the next few weeks, I got hooked on Bioshock and have recently finished my second play through and since I didn't give it a proper review last time, I thought I would give it a go this time around. Of course this may not be the best time to do it since I have been gaming all night with friends and am currently sitting on 20hrs straight since I woke up, but let's run with it and see how much sense I make.

Atmospherically, Bioshock is what every game should be trying to develop; one that makes you want to keep playing. From the start until about mid-way through the game, you jump up in your seat every time a splicer decides to jump at you or whenever the lights go out, particularly at the start when you are armed with nothing but your FPS necessary melee weapon which you will all of two times throughout the entire game if you know what you are doing. Unfortunately this doesn't last with the inevitable realisation that what used to hurt you can easily be killed in one shot with the shotty or crossbow provided you have done your research. Big daddies which, at the start are depicted as "don't mess with" shit houses that should never ever be poked with a stick, turn into teddies bears that you go up and give a hug in order to get their attention and lead into a series of trip wires that you set up earlier. 4 pieces of wire later and they are lying on the floor and you have a smug look on your face. In the end, once you realise that you have a full inventory of med-kits, eve refills and ammo, any baddie you come up fails to scare anymore.

Following on from this point, the final boss is pretty pathetic with all challenge gone out the window will a completely full inventory and anti-personnel rounds. A machine gun full off these and I was able to take him out in one shot.

Back on the topic of research, why the fuck was this put in? Don't get me wrong I appreciate the extra damage and unique power-ups but how much research do you need to do on something that is humanoid. Everyone in Rapture was human at some point and presumably plasmids don't move the brain from the head to any other location so if you wish to increase your damage on a mob, aim for the head seems like a straight forward solution. Research just seems like a needless chore in the hopes of getting something good. Also there is no end in sight when you do research something. There is only so much you can learn from taking a picture of something and changing the angle slightly isn't going to reveal anything new. But I will end my bitch about that here.

The storyline the game gives to you to string you along is somewhat interesting and even playing it second time through; you get a greater appreciation for all the audio diaries that have been left about. The moral choice mechanic rears its ugly head again but in a manner only allowing for only two real options, goody two-shoes or malevolent bastard, revolving entirely on how you deal with the little sisters. I can see why it might be done as you can't really rescue one little sister and not rescue them all but there were times that I wanted to harvest the little girl after she caught me trying to give a big daddy a cuddle, took offense to the whole scene and decided my insides would look better with a big daddy drill bit through it.

The variety of weapons you get are standard enough, but the variety of ammo and upgrades you can get makes keeps it somewhat interesting although usually you won't be basing a gun on a situation rather, use this gun until you run out of ammo, move on to the next, rinse and repeat. Plasmids are quite fun but the only one you really need is electrobolt as you get enough ammo for your guns that one shock to paralyse and a shotgun to the face is usually all an enemy will need but some of the others like enrage and hypnotise big daddy have their place and do keep it interesting. Tonics are good but will inevitably lose in the "Will I purchase a plasmid or tonic debate."

In near conclusion, I can't let the hacking go by without mentioning the fact that it's more like plumbing with turning steam based robots and turrets but connecting liquid output A into liquid input B. The one thing that really shit me off was the fact that sometimes the plumbing problems that were given to you had no bloody solution. A difficult puzzle is one thing but one that you can't solve is unforgivable. Maybe this was the game developer's way of encouraging us to have tonics equipped that made it easier but the fact of the remains is that when you present the user with a puzzle, you make it possible to solve. My annoyance turned into "hulk smash" rage usually around the time when failure to complete the puzzle resulted in air drones deciding to hunt me down 60 seconds and insisting that I needed to be a corpse on the ground.

Overall any issue I have with the game is over-ruled by the excellent atmosphere, engaging story and overall solid mechanics. I glad I took another tour of Rapture. Hopefully now when Bioshock 2 comes out, I won't be so concerned about the Big Sister's with daddy issues.