New Year, New Fortunes ?

It's almost here - the year that the doomsayers and believers in daft superstition* didn't think would come ...

That's right - 2013 is just around the corner, or ... for those of you reading where it's already gone after midnight :

Happy New Year !

*(not all superstition is daft, I have lots of them for cricket. Oh wait, those superstitions are daft too)

I'm hoping that next year is going to be better :

Dryer - we lost a huge amount of cricket this year
Less leaky - I think there's been progress this week with that darn skin condition
Less alone - goes without saying ;-)
Freer - that skin condition again putting limits on what I do
Musical - I still have lots of music to listen to, hopefully I'll keep finding new stuff
New - I get bored very quickly when I fall into routine

The skin thing does seem to be improving, now that I'm back in my own conditions. They're not perfect. On the upside, the skin seems to be improving. On the downside, I get watery eyes. Perhaps I should be using that vacuum cleaner some more ;-). What is happening is that while I'm focusing just on me, I'm avoiding spending the cash. I have a few techie targets, all of which either need me to be in or need me to go fetch them :

Switching to an iPhone - I'm after a 64GB iPhone but don't want to pay £269 plus contract for the privilege of having an iPhone 5. 3-Mobile have 64GB iPhone 4s's on their website but they're "out of stock". I suspect they shouldn't be listed.

Steering Wheel - looks like this will need to be a mail order thing as the local shops (including Novatech) don't want to sell me one. Which needs me being in to accept delivery. There is an option near Coventry (for a pickup on the way past as I go to the parents place) but they're asking for more money to pick up in store than it would be to deliver, which is f**k*ng crazy.

(I don't swear much on here cos I keep it in reserve for when it's really meant - so many people swear as a matter of course, where do they go when they need to emphasize ?)

Powerline networking - I was hoping these would come on sale so I can network my AV kit. To be honest, I've not looked. Perhaps a sale run on Wednesday on my last day of leave before heading back to work. Also, one of the drivers was the interruptions I was getting to my audio streaming. That's not happened since I stealthed the wifi.

However, when you look at it how many of the above are truly essential ? To be honest, none. Although my Android phone is becoming an embarassment.

Any New Year's Resolutions ?

One but it refers to gaming ... I have a huge collection of games now. It's grown over this last few months due to sales. The resolution will be to look again at those games and try to finish a few of them. Because I play the games to relax, I go back to the same ones over and over again. That means I don't have to think to work out how to beat the new game. But that does mean I don't get the value out of all the sales and all the impulse buys.

What games though ?

Currently it's XCom Enemy Unknown - the new one. It's not perfect, it has a bunch of bugs in it. But it definitely has potential as a game, even if it's not finished yet. That's a bit sad, because I'd be more curious about getting the downloadable content if the bugs were fixed. I've not seen many serious ones to be honest. I'm on the last mission now of a play through on "Normal" difficulty after "Classic" difficulty kicked my butt. I've reloaded a couple of times but that's it.

All of the XCom games (including the old ones) are games that run for a long time. That means if a soldier is injured in a battle, they may not be around for the next. If they die, you lose them forever. What happened in the Classic game is that I kept losing my best people, which makes the next missions harder and harder.

Next on the list is Fallout New Vegas, which SteamGirl got me for Xmas (in return for me getting her Mass Effect 2). I also have Borderlands 2, F1 2012, all the D&D games off GoG, Dungeons of Dredmor, Far Cry 3 and a few that I've had for longer (Rage, Torchlight & Torchlight 2, Machinarium and more). Oh and Alpha Centauri and HoMM3 are likely to get bought on GoG very soon ...

Must finish some of those games off :-)

I kinda miss the multiplayer ones. The interaction mainly if not the gameplay. WoW's gameplay was ok, what made me stick around in that one was the people. For so long it was the Mercs, until that guild collapsed in on itself (games can do strange things to people). And then it was Violence Reborn, although a lot of the originals stopped playing. (including the legendary Sandra!)

Wonder if Alex and DT still sing on Mumble ...

Talking of singing - I'm listening to Coexist, the latest album by The XX. There's no real standout tracks on there but it's a great chilled out listen. Definitely enjoying it.