Xbox 360 - Take 2
I really missed my Xbox 360 that I had to leave behind in Hungary. Alas not only its power supply wouldn't work on 110V, even the DVD drive and the game discs were region coded, so it was not worth carrying it over here. Not that I had enough space for it in my suitcase… I brought 3 games that I couldn't even use yet, as I bought them in the USA before I knew about the regions, so all I had was my achievements on my Windows Live account. But now the wait is over – I bought a new unit and it was a really sweet deal: a new revision of the Xbox hardware with Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 3 theme, 320GB hard disk (instead of 250GB or none), two themed controllers (instead of one) and the MW3 game ($60 value) altogether for $350. Compared to the old one, the DVD easily could be described as silent, the cooling is hardly audible and the hard disk space is just incomparable to my old 20GB disk where the usable space was about 13GB. I need it only to install game discs on it for faster (and silent) reading and to store game content, so I guess I won't run out of space anytime soon. I ordered some games too that I wanted, so my current library is like this… CoD MW3, Forza Motorsport 4, NFS Hot Pursuit, Assassin's Creed, Tropico 4, GTA 4, Mirror's Edge. I've got some other games in the pipeline but first I'd like to get bored with the ones I have.
My other gaming platforms are the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DSi, where I mostly play with platformers, currently I'm trying to beat Rayman Origins which is friggin' amazing!
Doesn't it bother you that Wii U is almost here and a new Xbox is to be expected in 2013? Nope. I don't think I would buy the Wii U anytime soon, there are (and perhaps will be) plenty of games for the old device that I'd like to play with. As for the Xbox, it's like 2 years from now, initially it will be much more expensive than later and for quite some time it will lack games that could really make the hardware sweat. I've got so many games I want to play with, and much more will be released before it reaches the end of its life cycle… So, nope, don't care about depreciation that much. It would be too mean to bring up Android here so I won't do so. :-)
Meanwhile in the Man Cave...
Update: I've beaten Portal 2 in two days, it was a great fun! And today I noticed something went wrong with the captcha code in the comment form, it's been fixed, in case you need it. :)
Changes All Around
Now that we just started a new year, I decided to change a few things around the site. First of all, there is a new design, if you haven't seen the old one, trust me, you didn't miss a thing. I'm very satisfied with this one so far, so I don't expect big changes in this department for a good while. I managed to finish some of the basic functionality that was missing, so now there is a page switcher, category assignment and filtering, quick links, social media integration, comments and a little achievement system for myself. Additionally I created a new article editor, you don't see that of course, but it makes text editing much easier for me and renders a better output specifically for the RSS feed and plain text for the search which will come later on.
As for the content, I realized that if I stick with my original plan of writing primarily about useful technical information, my chances for ever posting anything are rather limited. No more tied hands, the blog turns into a more personal one from now on, with technical stuff whenever there is something new to share with you. I'm still in a big debate with myself whether the site should have a Hungarian mode with a flag switcher where the interface and all the articles would be displayed in Hungarian. My web application code can handle that without any problem, but I'm not sure if it's worth the time and effort creating all the content in Hungarian too. For now all I can say is, if you're Hungarian and feel like leaving a comment on an article, you may use any language you want, as long as I can understand it.
With this new spirit, I've got to tell you I went to see my dentist today. During the holidays a friggin' rock in a hazelnut Milka chocolate demolished a tooth's outer shell and it needed to be fixed. I had an appointment previously set for today right before Christmas and as it didn't hurt much, I decided to wait until I have to see my dentist anyway. His name is Gergely Balaton and I simply adore him. Like most people, I used to be afraid of dentists, especially because I've got so many problems with my teeth all the time, and I always ran into butchers and idiots, claiming that "if it hurts, well, it has to be pulled out". This approach made me stay away from dentists for a really long time, until 10 years ago when I got a problem that needed immediate attention and a good friend of mine introduced me to his buddy, the doc. He's a nice chatty guy in my age, a children's dentist who is very friendly, calm, reassuring and always can fix anything. Not surprisingly he owns a Saab, too, like most European dentists do. He fixed up all my teeth and in the past couple of years whenever I went to see him for a check-up, I was surprised to hear that everything is fine, no work needed, I can stay away from his cozy chair for some more months.
So today he fixed my tooth, easily as usual and I got a new appointment for next week for a crown replacement that needs to be done before I leave to the USA. On the way home I went to get a new toothbrush, a Signal White System, it's my favourite kind. I'm afraid it's not available in the USA so I'll have to take a year worth of supply with me. I also got a little award for myself, although I decided not to buy any more games since I'll have to buy everything again after moving due to the totally unnecessary XBox DVD region codes, but I wanted this one for a long time and now, being a bit dated, it was just dirt cheap. Happy gaming!
