Just like we all enjoy gaming more and in larger dosages than the average person, most of us also spend plenty of more time surfing the internet. What exactly are our benefits from watching the latest Smosh video or joining a new Facebook group and what else could we do with all that time?

I'm not saying that we all should stop using internet from this point onward, but maybe cut down the list of useless places we visit every day. Heck, I would probably feel smarter if I didn't read every fanboy rant on System Wars. There must be something you wish you had more time to do like read something intellectual (no offense intended to the great bloggers here) or do something about that morning jog routine you were supposed to start three years ago.
The biggest way I've tried to save my time is avoiding mainstream social networks. I haven't registered on MySpace, Facebook or the Finnish IRC-Gallery, which has 500,000 users in a country of five million – that's a whopping tenth of all Finns. I even stopped using MSN Messenger for couple years because of the time waste it was. It felt like whenever I open my PC, at least one pointless chat window pops up with someone giving me random links I couldn't care less about. Especially when the url starts with 'iambored.com'.

I've been an internet user since the very late 90's but it took a long time before I got interested in discussion boards and even then a good while to find a place to dedicate myself to.

My first adventure to the world of forums started with the website of a Finnish gaming TV show called Tilt. Some time later I discovered Battlefield Pirates modification for Battlefield 1942 and for over four years now, I've been an active member of the small but dedicated community. (Un)fortunately Battlefield 1942 and its mods have been slowly dying over the years and my activity hand in hand with them. For some time I inhabited Pure Pwnage, MMORPG.com and YouGamers but after discovering GameSpot, I was left with ever diminishing time to visit them. As my obligations here grew larger than in other places combined, I removed my previous addictions from my bookmarks and focused on GameSpot.

What most of the sites I mentioned have in common is the family-like community. Isn't it great when you feel like you are part of something? To become part of the family, you have to get to know the people behind the avatars. Forums alone are rarely enough for that so you have to use other ways like blogs and instant messaging to your advantage. Of course all sites don't have blogs and people willing to share their MSN addresses and those were the main reasons why I couldn't feel at home on MMORPG.com. With a site as large as GameSpot, you can only become acquainted with a fraction of the community and even then it wouldn't work without the great community tools. At first I had a great time on YouGamers thanks to the very small community where everyone knew each other - including the staff. I sure felt special when Joe mentioned me twice in their news. Then it all changed with YouGamers merging forums with Futuremark. Suddenly I didn't know anyone and I felt like an outsider.

Like you might have noticed, I've talked about addictions throughout the blog. How many of you could see yourself living without games or dare I even say, internet? We all have our commitments in the virtual world. How often have you apologized for not blogging or responding to people's blogs? I know I'm guilty of both. Internet addiction may not be as obvious as obsession to certain substances because it's missing the physical withdrawal symptoms but it is still there. How long can you be internet-less without craving for it back? If I'm on a vacation, a day rarely goes by without me I thinking about GameSpot. And I don't believe I'm the only one who has skipped a real life activity to spend more time in front of their computer screen.

I hope even some of my mad rambling made sense. If this blog has a meaning, it's reminding people that real life always goes over its virtual counterpart. Maybe we should stop apologizing for being less active than usually. After all, we all should know how important real life is. If you have real life commitments, there's absolutely nothing to be sorry for.

Don't worry about me disappearing from here. I'm not going anywhere but rather try to get rid of my bonds in other places as it's usually less time consuming to focus on one place. If I'm going to be addicted to a website, I'll be glad for it to be GameSpot.

It's been a while since I last blogged and I apologise. After returning to Helsinki, I simply haven't feeled like blogging and still don't. I'm just doing this short update so you know I'm alive and doing fine.

Super Smash Bros Brawl

The long wait for the European release drastically ate my hype for Brawl and when I finally got my hands on the game I didn't really feel like playing. As you might remember, I bought Mass Effect with Brawl and ME completely stole my free time for a week. Now I've finally started playing through Subspace Emissary in co-op mode and like expected from SSB, it's a ton of fun.

FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage

Most of you probably haven't even noticed that this 360 arcade racer made its way to PC. I'm one of the rare Finns who hasn't owned a FlatOut before so I picked up the PC version just to see if it's worth all the praise it gets in Finnish media. So far I can only say that it's a fun arcade racer. I'm just not too sure if PC is the right place for Ultimate Carnage as it's supposed to be a high-definition version of FlatOut 2, which already happened to be high definition on PC. Hopefully this will keep me entertained for longer than Sega Rally Revo.

Monkey Island Saga

During the Retro Revival Week I started playing through Monkey Island series again. Now a month later I'm finally done with all the four and I have to say they are as fun as ever. If you haven't played them before, I recommend picking up Curse of Monkey Island as it hasn't aged one bit - even the graphics are still great. Just give it HD support and you could release it as a new game.

Planescape: Torment

Like a great book, this game can be replayed (or reread) again and again. I played both Baldur's Gates earlier this year and I have to say that Torment has aged a lot better. That's probably no wonder as PST has always been the superior D&D game. Not that Baldur's Gates are bad, Planescape just happens to be bloody fantastic.

P.S. Darn blogs feel short with this new wider layout.