Nikobe’s top 10 of 2008

I couldn’t resist, I know its what everybody does in January but I’m just not strong enough to go against the flow (don’t hit me!).

Here is my top 10 things of 2008…why “things” well I could do games but then I’d have to make another post for all the other cool stuff and I really don’t think anybody wants that, plus even with all the games in the massive surge of gaming that was pre-xmas I prob couldn’t name 10 I really loved.

Starting with my number 1…because I want to and I’m not going to include personal things like I got married this year (which is the true number 1 but of less interest to people who don’t know me).

1. Twitter! – My favorite thing of the year by far and has taken me over more than I ever thought it would, I used to read of people being addicted to twitter and I can see why now. I twitter everything, my first thought on seeing something is to twitter it or take a picture of it and twitter that, its quite shocking just how much I use it now and I don’t intend to stop any time soon.

Actually created my twitter account in Sep 2007 and thought I was a late joiner to the service, my updates were sporadic at best and I wasn’t sure what to write (my second post was about eating twigglets) and then I forgot about it and carried on using Facebook (which I don’t like now).

Initially I just thought Twitter was like a mini blog (or micro blog as they call them) where you just post and forget. Its so much more than that, its more a global chat room based on peoples thoughts..a giant thought cloud hovering over the Earth like some giant smog beast (but lovely and mis-understood). I find myself using twitter to have very slow conversations with friends, linking things I have to share (dancing chimps and the like), following my heroes (link – link – link pewpew) and posting photos through twitpic

2. Fallout 3 (360) – Caused a bit of a stir here with me loving it and Binny buying, hating it and then taking it back.  I clocked around 30 hours on my first run through the game and really enjoyed the story and idea’s throughout.  Its not often I get time to complete games nowadays but I really wanted to see the outcome of this one (which I won’t spoil here).  The game isn’t without its flaws, the developers lied a bit when they said the monsters don’t level up with you as they seemed to lurch from super easy to crazy hard from town to town and bugs and glitches made for some amusing and frustrating times (the guy in the town I needed to hand stuff into fell off a walkway and died forever..the game replaced him with a new guy..who didn’t like me).

3. This blog - A bit biased but really enjoyed writing on here and working on the new design (coming soon..ish) has really helped me learn WordPress.

4. Gundam 00 - Gundam Seed was great but this is amazing, the first Gundam series to be animated in full HD with great use of CG and graphics effects to make the battles really intense.  I’m a huge fan of soundtracks and Gundam 00′s is hugely dramatic and adds allot of excitement to whats happening on screen. The story is as complex as ever with some great characters and some truly grim ends for a few (this is a very dark Gundam series).

5. Dr Horrible – A one off 43 minute musical written by Joss Whedon. Was such a surprise when it appeared on the Internet and became instantly popular. Just have to wait for the UK DVD/Blu-ray now

6. Dropbox – After using box.net for a few years as a way to upload and share files between people and transfer documents and files between different computers I stumbled upon this blog post and realized this was what I really needed so gave it a go. Its a truely awesome little application, what it does is install a folder on your pc/mac/linux called “DropBox” then you put anything you want in that folder using your normal OS’s file manager is synced to the dropbox servers online, then when you login on another computer with dropbox installed and logged in as you the same folder is created and the files downloaded into it. This means I can have a documents folder that is always identical on four computers, I could start writing a word document at work then close it drive home and carry on editing where I left off. The sync is mostly silent and always super fast (unless you decide to dump 1gb in the dropbox), the service is free with 2Gb of space which I’ve never filled. Recommended.

7. iPod Touch 8gb - My single best gadget of the year by far, I already have a phone and believe that you should keep your entertainment and phone separate after having a few dodgy times stuck with no phone in London due to watching one video on my LG Viewty (wasn’t very good). The iPod touch has everything the iPhone has bar phone, which means you can’t connect anywhere but you can connect to any wireless network (like in pubs etc).  The device itself is great, super thin and light with an amazing bright/clear screen which is great for watching videos on. Battery life is really good and the web browser and other software are all top notch, could go on all day but plenty of info online about it all.

8. NXE (Xbox Live update) – I got pretty excited about the big autumn 2008 update of Xbox live, I like anything shiny and they didn’t come more shiny than this. NXE brought in a new pretty interface with avatars and a number of new features, my favorite new feature being the ability to install your games to the hard-drive to make the game load faster and more importantly make the console quieter (allot).

9. Blu-ray – I was one of the early adopters of DVD, I’d never owned many VHS as I didn’t like the quality and how they got worse over time DVD’s made all that better and I was quick to jump on it.  This time around I backed HD-DVD and was proven wrong (though I still have all the films and they all look great) so I got a PS3 and am now enjoying the delights of Blu-ray 1080p visuals.  The difference in some films is huge (The Dark Knight being a good one) with sharper audio to match.  Oh yes and the PS3 also plays games apparently…

10. WordPress – Powers this blog and almost every site I am doing at the moment. Last year I would have put Textpattern and don’t get me wrong I still love it and wish I had something I could use it for but recently the leaps ahead WordPress has made are hard to ignore so I converted.  WordPress just does everything right, its fast, clean, installs and updates plug-ins for you with a single click, contains its sites visuals in themes so easy to backup and re-use and a great admin UI (updated in 2.7 to be even better).  One thing I do realise is that WordPress is not a fully featured CMS and can only be used in the kind of sites that only need one stream of information i.e a blog and not say a shop with lots of categories and products, in that instance a fully featured bespoke CMS or textpattern/drupal (though I don’t like drupal) would be better.

So onto 2009 and will see which of the above survive into the next year