An intermittent post!

As usual, days turn into months into... you get the picture. Who can find the time nowadays to write random postings on the internet in the hope someone will read them? And no - I don't use m random a lot in everyday speech, like a 13 year old... or Ja'mie from Summer heights High! Best show ever, go torrent it if you've not found it yet...

So, what's like been like recently? So far, it's been a pretty laid back affair. I'm only actively doing one subject - managing biotechnology, which is actually one of the most stimulating subjects ye. helps there's a lot of proper brainpower going in the class, not just a bunch of dozers trying to find subjects that fit with their timetable!

Also planning to go to Shanghai in January 2008 for the Industry Studies in Asia project. Apparently I'm going to be working with melbourne Football Club to help study their China strategy - and of course, how much do I know about footy? Not much, except that I know we don't get a public holiday for the grand final :(

So, I'm working only about 3.5 days a week now, but will go up to 5 days in December for a little while. Yeah, I know, it's a hard life... the main problem is I'm trying to find the time to play the new xbox games I picked up the other day from BigW. Finally got a copy of Forza2 (only $40!) and it's incredible! Not a instantly accessible as PGR3, but something about worthy of GT for the xbox. Though maybe one comment, a little easy to mod up your car to whip the competition. Also picked up Tony Hawk Project 8, as i played the old series on PS2 a lot.

Erm... so what else is going on? We were looking around for houses for a while, around heidelberg/rosanna/northcote/preston area etc, but taking it easy for a bit right now, with the crazy housing market the way it is! I remain a little hesitant to say there'll be the equivalent of the North American sub-prime market collapse; the Aussie market won't go quite the same way!

Oh, and one last thing.. I definitely remember ranting about the overpriced PS3 in Australia. The latest development? A 40gb (instead of 60gb) PS3, deleting 2 USB ports and the memory card reader, and dropping PS2 backwards compatibility. New price? I think it was $699.

Now, if you're in the know, that smaller hard drive and other missing bits doesn't add up to $300, not even including the usual Sony markup. So, what's the reasoning here? To my eyes, Sony knew they needed a price drop, but didn't want to lose face to the early adopters and naysayers. So, by introducing a "new" PS3, they can drop the price with some legitimacy and hope people are fooled into thinking they've got a better deal. This is similar to the practice of harware manufacturers creating may different product lines to distribute to different consumer channels, thus confounding consumer's ability to price match and compare.

On that note, I'll probably drop by Hong kong for a few days after my China trip, and will probably pick up an 80GB PS3 (for the equivalent of approx AUD$550). I figure it's a reasonable price for a blu-ray player at least :)