As is normal in my life, once again I have created an account on a website or game, been active on it for a month or two, then left it for dead. I've done this with 2 blogs and 8 MMOs already.

Well, that may or may not change soon. I'm going to stick around here again for a while, mostly making forum posts and game reviews. Just don't be surprised if I quietly slip away again.

Switching ISPs from AOL can do you a world of good, it seems.

About half a year ago, I was desparately trying every rational thing I could think of that would make my little white stick find the little black box on my desk, but it could only find it for a few seconds before losing track. I hadn't even thought of trying it again after I bought a new little black box, and so the little white stick spent some lonely months wedged between some instruction manuals near the PC desk. I spotted it a half hour ago, thought "Ah, what the hell", and the rest is history.

I no longer have to make a 20 minute car journey or sit in a corner of the local McDonald's restaraunt just to have a few quick races in Mario Kart or some quick games of Tetris. Now I have a reason to make my friend codes available in my Gamespot profile, and finally I have a chance to use the wi-fi features of Animal Crossing DS.

The best part of it all is that I still get a strong signal (one floor above) in my bedroom, so I could play from bed if the feeling took me. On top of that, I will have no problems whatsoever when it comes to getting the Wii online on launch day.

If you couldn't already tell, I'm rather happy right now

If anyone has any friend codes to share, feel free to PM them to me, and I'll reply with my own.

My first submitted video to Gamespot:

Enjoy!

In my life, holidays = MMO games. Last year I spent my time on Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (PSO:BB) and City of Heroes (CoH), but this year I've replaced CoH with Albatross18 ('Pangya' to its players). Think of a standard MMO template; Character customization, friends lists, guilds and a profile card to decorate. Add golf. Add manga visuals. Add a PLOT. Add a fantasy parallel universe and you're just about there. Put simply, this is an insane Korean idea that works. Give it a go and send me a Buddy Request (to 'Da Mainman') if you feel like it.

I've finally upgraded my graphics card to 256MB. Boo. Yah. Now games like CoH should stop lagging so much at minimum graphics quality.

Interestingly, I've never once paid for my CoH subscription; I've instead relied on the free account re-activations they deal out every half-year or so, plus a magazine's free trial of City of Villans (It reactivated the CoH account too). I stoped playing it because: A) My PC could barely keep up with the graphics, and B) I had to wait for 5 minutes at a time for new areas to load, while the rest of my team took 10 seconds to load the area. They would either finish the mission without me or look for another team.

Now that I've quadrupled my graphics card's power (I was on 64MB before) I could probably run the game, but Pangya has ensnared me with it's cute-but-hyper-compeditive-ism. I still can't get over how good the Wii version will (probably) be. Maybe I'll get to play an early build at the EIEF later this month.

If I can also produce a Flash movie and get good grades for my A-Levels, then this will be The Best Summer Ever™. Watch this space.

Here we go then. It's my second blog.

On Gamespot no less.

...

Yep, a blog post.

...Sooooo, I suppose I should start using my Gamespot account a bit more regularly since I've hit level seven. With that little bit of authority about my account , I might just do something worthwhile here. Something beyond the little comments I write at the bottom of Gamespot's news stories. Something beyond a solitary game review of Shadow the Hedgehog (Which I'm considering rewriting). Something beyond the irregular updates to my games collection page.

Or I might just toil away, silently procrastinating across the user videos and forums. But that sounds like a lot less fun if that's all you've done for months. Expect something worthwhile from me very soon.