Beginning university

I started my course for real this week. It's been fun so far, but hard, meaning I have to study quite a lot outside of the lessons. I also joined the Japan Society and I've already enjoyed being part of that. There are some other cool societies (I think there's a Deal or No Deal society) but I didn't want to join too many. I've found that I have little time on my hands, but maybe things will settle down soon. Meeting loads of cool people has also been fun.

We're still working to print up my band's CD, and looking forward to releasing it and seeing people's reactions. It's been quite a lot of work, especially mixing, but it should be worth it. It sounds pretty cool, way better than our demo which we recorded earlier this year. It's funny how 6 months can really change things technically and musically.

Birthday

It was my birthday yesterday. It was probably the most un-birthday like birthday of my life so far. I worked for some of the day, was locked out of my house for another part of the day and opened my cards in the evening. I suppose birthdays start to get more boring the older you get. At least now I have some money to spend, and I'm having some friends round tomorrow.

In other news, album recording is going fairly well. We hope to have it finished soon so that we can work on producing the packaged CD. The cover is being drawn by a guy name Chris Berdoz and it looks amazing so far.

I start university also this coming Monday (well, it's Freshers' Week). I've started to learn the Japanese syllabaries of katakana and hiragana for my course. I think we have a test on these before we start lectures. Memorising information isn't one of my strengths, but I've found the easiest way to remember the sounds for each symbol is to associate the shape of the symbol with the same letter in English. I'll see how that method works out.

HaHa Sony

I really do wonder whether the Playstation 3 is a joke. Sony have practically done everything in their power to make sure that the console fails. It's a marketing comedy. The three big mistakes:

• Copying the ideas of Nintendo and Microsoft on a grand scale.
• Ridiculously overpricing the console.
• And most recently, not releasing the console in Europe until March 2007.

It's seriously funny to watch.

Here in the UK the Playstation has been the dominant console for probably nearly a decade, but I'm quietly confident that this could be the generation where the Playstation fails, not just here, but worldwide. The Wii has already won in Japan, and I would say the Wii and the Xbox 360 will fight it out over here - one thing the Playstation had going for itself in the UK was the low price and there's no chance of that being the case for a while. That only really leaves America.

The PSP is failing against the DS and the lack of decent games on the any of Sony's systems might just count this time around. I've always hated the brand, and for a console that was created from the remains of a partnership between Nintendo and Sony it is only right that Nintendo crush them during this generation.