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So I kind of got into a hurry making a post for 2009.  I wanted to spend some additional time talking about some things in more detail.

Gaming

I spent a lot of time exploring different interests in gaming through the year.  In 2008, I covered my interest in this a lot better, and I want to get back to that.  A quick look at my Raptr profile shows I’ve been pretty busy:

http://raptr.com/XingYuen

There’s some games there I finished and need to review, some that are an ongoing interest and some that I’ve stalled on and need to get around to finishing.  One thing I do want to point out about my reviewing; that is that I am a cheap ass for the most part and it’s very rare for me to fork over $60 for a single player game I’d probably beat once and never come back and play again.  Couple that with the fact I’m still years behind on the console gaming scene means the stuff that I’m playing and is new to me, will be old news to most people.  Don’t say there wasn’t a warning.

Games I finished in 2009 that I am going to review for sure:

• Warhammer 40K: DoW2
• Left 4 Dead
• Fallout 3
• Titan Quest
• Torchlight
• Plants vs Zombies
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance
• Company of Heroes
• Burnout Paradise

Games I’m still playing that I will write something about at some point:

• Street Fighter 4
• Tekken 6
• Left 4 Dead 2
• Guitar Hero series
• Mass Effect
• Assassin’s Creed
• Various 360 Arcade titles
• Borderlands
• Halo 3
• Bioshock

Other topics of interest:

• Various MMO experiments
• Call of Duty series and why they can suck a goose egg
• Hellgate London (die already!)
• Steam and digital distribution
• MMO’s in general
• More up to date progress in WoW/EVE (yeah EVE)

As you can see, this will give me plenty of subject matter over the year.  If I can get half of it done, it’ll be a huge step in the right direction.

Music

Quite honestly, I have been completely stagnant on this interest for the past couple years mostly.  I grew pretty tired and uninterested in the digital sampling production methods I had been using and felt blocked creatively.

I’ve thought about trying to pick up an actual instrument of some sort and explore that interest.  We’ll see where this goes.

Professional Life

Things in my professional life are going well.  I am working for RestorePro in Sandusky, OH.  They are a disaster damage restoration company and have been kind to me and given me a great opportunity to support their IT infrastructure from within the company and help develop some marketing solutions all while trying to keep up with the insane speed of web technology development.

Personal Stuff

As for personal stuff, I keep this pretty simple on purpose.  As always, I despise drama and bullshit in my life so this is pretty straight forward.  Sorry, no Springer to be had here.

Going on two years with my wonderful girlfriend Michelle.  Things are great on that front.

Got a new Jeep Liberty in the fall to get ready for the frozen tundra that is Ohio during the winter months.  So far this has been a good investment as last Saturday’s 4 foot snow drift in my drive way proved.  Fuck you snow drift.  Jeep > Snow Drift.  The downside of course is the thing sucks down gas like a crack head on the first of the month.  Guess that’s the cost of not pushing my car through a Blizzard.  So be it.

I started a weight loss regiment 6 weeks ago.  Down 30+ lbs so far.  Not too bad.  Moving into the IT industry 10 or so years ago did a number on my health but I’m going to fix it while I still can and so far things are progressing as intended on that front.  I’d like this to lead back into picking up my training in martial arts where I left it.  Still got a ways to go.

That should just about do it for now.

It probably qualifies as pretty cliché to blog about how fast time goes.  Never the less, it’s been on my mind lately how much things in my life have changed over the last 10 years.  I guess that sort of wound up in my last track.

Fragments In Time

While playing with some new effects and techniques I ended up mutating a classic along the way.  Oh well, turned out alright.

Everything I Do

A couple weeks ago Nine Inch Nails released another new album on their website (nin.com) for free.  The Slip comes only a short time after NIN made a lot of news by releasing part 1 (of 4) of Ghosts on ThePirateBay.com bittorrent tracker and offering the whole album for a $5 digital download, a $10 double CD set, a $75 deluxe edition set and a $300 Ultra-Deluxe limited edition package, which sold out all 2500 copies.  The whole process didn’t involve a record company at all.  Trent Reznor set it all up himself.

Ghosts was the first album I’ve bought in years.  I did it because I knew the money was going to the artist I like.  Will other artists and the record companies take note of this or blow it off?  I kind of feel like they’re going to take the “if we ignore it, it will go away” approach.  Even though NIN has proven it can work, I’m not sure it will matter.  At least not now.  Most music artists don’t have the technical knowledge to launch a download service, find their own companies to print and label CD’s, etc.  They depend on the record companies for these aspects and as such are limited by them.

So I believe that what NIN is doing is good, but I don’t think we’ll see the results of it in the industry for a while yet.  In the meantime, at least I have another awesome ‘nails’ album to listen to.