By Well, 2005 has been consigned to the history books and 2006 is now upon us.
From a personal point of view 2005 wasn't a particularly good year; in fact, it couldn't have been much worse. February 10th saw the death of my uncle, who at the time I said was the first member of that generation of the family to die. However, one of my aunts had died in the early eighties. July 2nd saw the passing of my mother. I think we've all coped in our own ways but it's been a huge part of this year. The back end of July also saw both my sisters hospitalised, although both are much better now. And to round out my year, Tasha, my dog, had a stroke at the start of October. She's a lot better now than she was but you can tell she's not the same dog anymore.
2005 saw me see Rammstein twice. I also saw Apocalyptica and went to the Download Festival again. I also got my first opportunity to go and watch Manchester United play and went to Sheffield to watch the WWE live. I also went and saw Touring Cars live during the year.
On the PC front I've done a couple of little upgrades through the year and done a complete system reinstall. BT upgraded my local exchange and I moved over to a 2mb connection. Since then I've moved onto Plusnet's top home user package of Upto 8mb and am now awaiting BT's rollout in March/April.
2005, as usual, saw quite a number of film releases, some of which could be classed as fairly decent, and some of which could be classed as something entirely different. Batman Begins, The Dukes Of Hazzard, Dungeons & Dragons 2, Elektra, Fantastic Four, Hitchiker's Guide and both War of the Worlds movies were all new release that I enjoyed to one degree or another. I also enjoyed Jet Li's Unleashed, Stealth, Doom, Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire and Four Brothers. There's quite a number of other releases from 2005 that I haven't got round to watching yet. In terms of trukeys, nothing I've watched stands out as being particularly bad.
TV in 2005 saw Alias, Battlestar Galactica, the 3 CSI franchises, House and Lost all return in fine form, and I'm early awaiting the American networks to continue their runs in the Spring. New show highlights from 2005 include Bones, Rome and Sleeper Cell. It's been announced that the current fifth season of Alias will be it's last; which is a shame because week on week it's a show I've looked forward to.
Musically, 2005 was, from my viewpoint, a fiarly good year. As mentioned previously I went to 3 gigs this year and enjoyed them all. Discovered Dimmu Borgir, a band not to everybodies' tastes, Lacuna Coil, the best export from Italy ever, Crucified Barbara, a Swedish all-girl metal outfit, Probot, a side-project of Dave Grohl and featuring Lemmy amongst others and Nightwish, a Finnish band with a classically trained lead singer. We also saw a number of release from some of my perrenial favourites. Nothing I listened to in 2005 made me cringe.
PC Games from 2005 which saw regular use include Football Manager 2006, Half-Life 2, the new Prince of Persia game; The Two Thrones, Need For Speed: Most Wanted, Quake IV and Rag Doll Kung Fu. I'm still returing to games such as Diablo II, Neverwinter Nights and Warcraft III. The XBox saw Burnout Revenge, Fable, Forza Motorsport, Halo 2, Jade Empire, Mercenaries, Ninja Gaiden and Sudeki find their way into my collection. The Gamcube saw Metroid Prime 2 added to my collection and the PS2 saw GTA: San Andreas added. First game of 2006 to look out for is Darwinia on the PC, it's quite unique in the field at the moment.
2006 will be better all round. Guaranteed.
