Will

I LOVE my new job. OK, so Singapore is not the most interesting of places in the world but the move from Tokyo has been well worth it. The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of getting to grips with everything going on here and the many many different business units we have. There is so much opportunity and learning about the South East Asia market is totally new for me so very interesting. I'm currently heading up a number of initiatives, our outsourcing services, some huge publishing projects and our advertising SDK. I'm fairly sure things are only going to get busier but that's the way I like it. Really could not have wished for a better place to work. Just need to get my living situation sorted out and all will be well.

This. I was hoping they would at least keep an industry only day as they do with TGS. TGS is awful on the public days but great to attend when it's just industry. I think this move, if they don't change anything, will make E3 absolute hell. Have been wondering if I should bother going this year, this news makes me less likely to, but will depend on what the exhibitor attendance is like I think.

I'd love to be called up for Jury service. Of course it would be nice to be doing the right thing for society but the reality is I just want to do it for the sake of doing it, I think it would be tremendously interesting. If I do get called up I'd do everything I could to be able to take part in it. @ReZourceman- with your final case where the guy got the long sentence, do you know what happened later? Did it get cut down or did he end up having to serve it?

In recent years I've really tried to move away from buying Physical stuff. All of the games I really want on PS4 are downloaded, the others I bought cheap when I got the machine. Ideally I won't buy any more physical releases for it. Same will go for Switch and any other consoles from now on. As a kid I would constantly trade in old games to get the next big thing, I'd usually keep everything through the generation and then take a ton of stuff to EB/Game and get myself whatever the next system was. No doubt lost a ton of money on all of that but more than made up for it when working there and taking advantage of the system to get anything good that came in for a fraction of the value. When I left San Francisco I sold/gave away everything I had. Just too much hassle to bother moving it half way round the world and I wasn't really attached to any of it. I think the only thing I kept was a Dreamcast Modem as they seem to be fairly valuable. Nowadays I have a lot of old stuff at my parents place and Japanese Saturn and Gamecube collection that I've pulled together over the last few years. Don't think I would ever sell those. So I guess as of right now I'm in the keeper group.

I'd say sell them. From the reasons you give you're not really looking at this as any sort of savings plan, it's more a maybe you'll hit the jackpot on some money that doesn't matter so why not take the risk. I don't really see that happening anytime soon with RBS so I'd pull the money out and get something you enjoy with it.

I love my 2011 macbook air, as a casual content consuming device I really don't think there is anything better. If I need to do anything more taxing than I prefer a windows machine. I'm waiting on delivery but my new work computer will be a Surface Pro 4 and once the next cycle of MacBooks launch I intend to finally upgrade my home computer to one of those. I think as long as it fits what you want to do with it then go for it.

Actually your current total is probably correct. It seems like they did a reverse stock split in 2012 where they replaced 10 old shares with 1 new one, upping the value of an individual share but leaving owners holding less shares.

I've always been good at saving, but I've also always had a target for the money and spent it all after a few years. In London I saved up and then made some lucky investments when the banking crisis hit and ended up with a decent amount of money. I spent it all on buying a car. In San Francisco I saved up so I could move to Japan to study Japanese and not need to worry about work. I'm not 100% sure how much life is going to cost here but I do like to set a budget across Rent, Savings and then spending. My current plan is Rent - 36%, Savings 29% and the rest I'm free to spend as I like. Ideally I'd like the rent and savings to be the other way around but I'm not sure how practical that will be. Hopefully I spend less and can top up the savings each month. I'd like to buy a house/apartment at some point this year. Something I can rent out back home just to have my foot on the ladder and start building up from there. I had been trying to buy in Tokyo before moving here but just wasn't feasible at the time. Had I of stayed another year or two it would have been pretty easy to do.

I'm functionally proficient in Japanese following my time living there. It's more broken than I'd like but I wouldn't worry about being able to communicate whatever I need to in pretty much all normal everyday situations. Now I've left I hope I can keep up some level of this but I fear I'll not have enough time to properly keep it fresh enough to use.

Bump into her at her workplace, make small talk, suggest catching up properly over a drink/dinner/whatever. Job done.

I had a combo washer/dryer a couple of times back when I was in London and they were terrible. It was a long time ago so might be better now but it really put me off them. It would take hours and hours for them to dry anything. My Mom has one of these and it's really good. It folds away pretty small when not in use and she just sticks it up in the bathroom out of the way when needed. Dries clothes pretty quickly and because stuff is hung up inside it they don't come out crazily wrinkled. I'd reccomend it.

At school we used surnames instead of first names and mine was always changed to Coxy, which was fine. No one calls me that now. Nowadays I'm just Will to friends and Will-chan to the guys at work, now I find it weird if someone doesn't use Will-chan in the office. I like nicknames a lot, as long as they come out naturally and everyone is happy with them I think it makes a nice bond between people.

I'm going for the red/blue and then buying the blue/red joy-con set so I can switch it up however I like.

I didn't get a chance to play this today but I did manage to get the video below. To me this is basically a sequel to Wii Boxing. It does look fun but I'm not too sure I'd get much out of it.

The event is absolutely packed, there must be housands of people here. The line for splatoon 2 is already full and the others look pretty close to that too.

The general consensus of the guys in the office was that while the console itself looks pretty cool there aren't enough games of interest to justify getting one at launch. I think most people will wait until Mario comes out to pick one up with a few titles. I haven't read any articles on it from here but will try to look into it more. I imagine the people at the event today will be far more positive on it though.

I'm heading over to the event in Tokyo today. Anything I should try to investigate while I'm there?

I think the hardware looks great but I'm disappointed by the launch lineup of titles. I'm still going to get one at launch but I don't think it will be truly worth it until later in the year when some of the bigger titles are out.

As long as it's one of the things they will ship abroad then it would be tax-free at the checkout but you'd have to pay taxes on it when it arrives - so it would actually end up even more expensive. There is a chance it would sneak through customs but I wouldn't want to risk that.

Glad to see they look like they're fixing the battle mode. With that and a few extra things I'll definitely pick it up.

They're from the same development team but with a fair few differences in the design process. The original wasn't really designed as a free to play game originally and had lots of development hacks (such as the QTE's hiding level loading) to handle the lower spec'd phones of the time. The two Sonic brands are managed a little differently too which leads to certain design elements being viable in one vs. the other. In theory Boom should be the deeper experience but for me it just lacks a little of the charm of the original.

Finally got a PS4 late last year so hoping to get back into gaming a somewhat this year. Not sure how much time I'll end up having to do this but will try and get through a few things. I do tend to get through a fair few iOS games so will track those too. Currently my main challenge is F1 2016 on expert career mode with the target of winning the title. It's definitely a challenge and will take me a good amount of time to get through but great fun.

If they really manage 25,000 Yen then that's ridiculously cheap over here. So much so that it would suggest they're going to push it more as a portable than a home console, which would make sense given the make up of the user base over here. Not sure the same positioning would work everywhere so it maybe they won't go with any sort of direct pricing parity. Could see it being $300 in the US and whatever that works out to in Europe (so probably just 300 everywhere as things are).

Happy Birthday N-E! Congratulations to all the staff who have made this possible and the members that make it such a good place to be. Have very much enjoyed being a member here. Here's to the next 19!

Pair of Sony MDR-1000X for traveling