Its already been ten years since I graduated high school. Yep, tomorrow will be my ten year anniversary since the day my high school diploma was handed to me. Time have gone by so quickly since that day, that I like to look back at my own life and the technology that was avaliable then and what it is now.

In June 1999, there was no myspace, facebook, youtube, wikipedia, ipod, iphone, core 2 duo, etc... Virtually all the major websites including community based websites isuch as Xfire did not exist, it wasnt even in concept at that time. Yahoo was king and leader of all the search engines and really for me it was the place for me to be. Google had just been founded and it was only a simple website with no gmail, google earth or anything else that fantasy. Penitum II and K6-2 was the main stream technology at the time, while the Pentium III had just came out one month prior. I was still using 56k dial up and heard of cable internet but it was very very expensive and there was no reason to get anything faster because of nothing large to download. Playstation, Nintendo 64 and Saga Saturn were the consoles to get, while Xbox was a complete unknown and it was unthinkable that Microsoft would get into the console business since they were into the PC. Cell phones were just simple phones and not mp3 players, camera, with nice flashy color screens and no text messaging. DVD players had just came on the scene, while VHS still had a large audience. Its pretty easy to see that alot of the new technology was barely or did not exist at all at the time I graduated. So many things to the internet as well have been added to make this place more entertaining.

Looking back at my own life, which isnt all that exciting other then things around me have happened. I am not a very socially active person, so much of my time is at home watching tv, websites like gamespot and playing games. Went through two other jobs before settling down on being a janitor for the past seven years with the same employer. There are alot of people I have met and talk to through my ten years, either at work and the internet, that I have had the pleasure of talking to. My sister have gotten married to a fantastic brother in law and soon I will be an uncle. The car I was driving during the time I graduated was a 86 Mazda 626 that I bought for $2200, now I drive a fairly brand new Honda Accord coupe. My life isnt all that fruitful as to someone who would say they had climbed a mountain and swam the english channel. Its all really simple.

This blog is ment to reflect back in the past ten years of my life after high school. It have been a fun, enjoyable adventure and I hope it would continue another ten years.

http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6210583/crysis-2-ps3-360-pc-bound

LOS ANGELES--After years of hints and tech-demo teases, the Crysis series is finally headed to consoles. This morning, Electronic Arts and German developer Crytek announced the development of Crysis 2 for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. The game will be the first console title that the notoriously PC-centric studio will develop directly for consoles, having let Ubisoft develop the console spin-offs for its groundbreaking 2004 first-person shooter Far Cry. Ubisoft bought the Far Cry IP outright in 2006. No release date was given.

"The development of Crysis 2 marks a major stepping stone for our studio," said Crytek CEO and President Cevat Yerli in a statement. "This is not only the next game in the Crysis franchise, it's the first title we are developing for consoles and the first title being built on CryEngine 3." In March, the CryEngine3 was shown off on the 360 and PS3 to Game Developers Conference attendees.

As part of today's announcement, EA and Crytek also announced that they were extending their strategic partnership forged in 2004. The deal came shortly after Far Cry became both a critical and commercial hit on the PC for Ubisoft, which EA still owns one fifth of. The deal is part of the EA Partners program, which lets developers pick and choose marketing, sales, and development-support services from the megapublisher. Current EA Partners and games include Harmonix (Rock Band), Valve (The Orange Box and Left 4 Dead), Grasshopper Manufacture (Unnamed PC/PS3/360/Wii project), and Epic Games (Untitled People Can Fly Project).

For more on Crysis 2, check out GameSpot's video stream and live blog of EA's E3 2009 Press Conference at 2 p.m. PDT/10 p.m. BST this afternoon, straight from the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6210583/crysis-2-ps3-360-pc-bound. (end of article)

It is true the next game developed by Crytek will be a multiplatform release on the X360, PS3 and PC. That game would be Crysis 2, sequel of Crysis. Crysis was a PC exclusive game that came out in fall of 07. Now Crytek have decided for Crysis 2 they will have it put on both consoles and the PC on the pursuit for more money.

This isnt a surprise at all. Trying to make more money from their products would be the kind of move any business would make. Halo 3 made $170 million on its first day, two months prior of Crysis release and GTA IV made $500 million on its first week. This kind of success happans to many consoles games in large amount of revenue is what Crytek wants. Crytek president Cevat Yerli, discussed piracy of Crysis in an issue of PC Gamer. He mentioned that because Crysis was so heavily pirated it influenced the decision of having Crysis 2 be multiform. For Crytek to say piracy had anything to do with Crysis 2 being developed for consoles and PC, is a complete lie with no inclusive proof. They simply want to sell games on consoles because of major success of Halo 3 and GTA IV had on its first week of release.

EA have reported Crysis had sold 1.5 million worldwide last year. By now it would have sold around 2 million worldwide. There is no way to know if someone who pirated a copy was a lost sale to begin with. Crysis required at a very beefy system to run the game on medium graphic quality at its time of its release. People who would have pirated wouldnt have a system to run the game at all or alot of them are kids on PCs playing WoW. The reason Crysis didnt sell as well as they hoped on its first month, was majority of people didnt have systems capable of running the game at all. Over time, within a year or so, people either upgraded or bought better computers end up buying Crysis.

It was just reported PC gaming is worth $12.7 billion worldwide. In the United States console software sales reported by NPD were at $11 billion in 2008 (1). The days of third party publishers making games exclusively on one system is coming to an end. Making a game just on Xbox 360, for example, a publisher would be missing out sales that could be made on playstation 3 and PC. The only publisher that is continuing to support exclusives are Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo on their own console systems. For Crytek, they are also following the same trend as any other third party developer.

Source:
1. http://www.gamespot.com/news/6203257.html?tag=result;title;2

For a couple of months now I have considered on getting a bigger external hard drive to replace my current one. My western digital external hard drive is only 160 gigs. At the time when I bought it, it was fairly large and I didnt have any need of anything bigger. My needs have grown and so does the files I like to store. While my internal hard drive is quickly running out of space as well, it gives me all the reason to get a larger external hard drive.

Why do I want to get an external hard drive instead of getting a second internal hard drive? Well I have considered on getting a second internal hard drive. However, the advantage of an external hard drive portability what atracts me. I like to have hardware that is portable to move files easily. Two years in the future, I will be using another computer to replace the current one I have. To prepare for that future PC, I like to have a way to store files I want to keep to take with me for the next one.

Today, I decided to order a Cavarly Caum external HDD. This time I order an enormous 1 terabyte or 1000 gigabyte hard drive to hopefully meet my needs for a few years to come.