I got back from my week in Portugal yesterday: the overwhelming thought is how much I appreciate drinkable tapwater. As I mentioned in my last blog I'd never travelled outside of the UK before, and when we got there we (self, brother, mother) were advised not to drink the tapwater because it has a lot of chemicals in. Bottled water is expensive, and the bottles are tiny!

Anyway, besides water related gripes, it was a nice place. Resort and hotel were good, retaurants were great, nice and sunny, though being away makes me appreciate home Lots of stuff I missed (besides drinkable tapwater). Might put some pictures up sometime. And on a (random) concluding note, Andy Murray has reached the US Open Final! Tremendous win over Nadal, all the best against Fed today.

Hey all. I think this has been the longest gap between blogs since I started the whole thing... so I thought I'd use news of a pending holiday to correct that. I'll be off to Portugal for a week in about two weeks or so, and it's going to be a number of firsts for me (including first time on a plane and first time out of Britain). So much world, and I've seen barely anything... I'll (obviously) be away from the site that week, not that anyone would notice given my inactivity lately.

I know I've missed tons and tons of blogs, but I'm not up to the task of reading, watching and commenting on all of them anymore. Not to sound dramatic or anything but my interest in the Internet, gaming, and reviewing has declined recently. I still read some forums, blogs, and site reviews from time to time, but it's less and less now. That was the primary reason behind giving up the mod-job.

So, thats all. I'll see you all around the place (albeit less often ).

So, I decided to resign my position as a moderator here at GameSpot. I've had less and less time to spend around the site, and as a result, I thought it wouldn't be fair if I couldn't do my share of moderation duties. It's an unfortunate coincidence that this comes around the same time as GiantBomb launches, but this isn't a defection of any kind. I'll still be at GameSpot, but I'll also be around on GiantBomb to see what Jeff and co. get up to.

Anyway, it was really great working with the community team and the rest of the moderators. It's not an easy job and I often see them get criticised in Ask the Mods, but they put a hell of a lot of work in (that often goes unseen) to make the site better. T'was a pleasure to work with you all