I'm a bit iffy about writing this blog, as it only has a very slim connection to video games. Apologies in advance if this blog seems a bit of a ramble.

Whilst America has its national holiday (Independence Day) on July 4th, celebrating its independence from the British Empire, Australia has the very originally named "Australia Day" on January 26th, where boats filled with British criminals took over Aboriginal land. One of the few traditions that happen on Australia Day is the Triple J Hottest 100 countdown, a voting contest of Australia's favourite songs that were played on that radio station. It's a bit hard to describe what kind of radio station Triple J is, but basically it's an ad-free station that plays music that no other station plays or plays song before they become mainstream, and the genres they play tend to be varied (at least they used to be).

Anyways one of the songs that you are able to vote for is "Exile Vilify" by The National, an original song made for Portal 2. Seeing this, along with the Civilisation IV or V theme "Babu Yeti" winning a Grammy (although not a main award) it's cool to see that our favourite ever-evolving medium, in particular its hard working composers being recognised. If it does get into the top 100, I'm not expecting it to place high, but it will be cool nonetheless.

I promise that the next blog will talk about a different game, or a different topic, haven't decided yet.

About a couple of months ago I purchased a physical copy of Portal 2 for the PC. After typing in the serial number it came up with a message saying that I need to play the PlayStation 3 version and link my Steam account to it. At first I thought the store gave me a wrong serial number, but after getting another one, the same message popped up.

The reason why I got the stand-alone PC version was because I could it for $7, so I was sure as hell not going to buy a PS3 copy as well. Luckily my local Video Ezy had a rental copy available, so I paid $7.95 for a 3 night rental and performed the Steam link there. Afterwards I was able to install the game on the PC and play along fine.

I don't have a high-end gaming PC, it certainly wasn't high-end 3 years ago either, but it played the game on almost full max specs, with minimal lag. I've yet to beat the game, but I'm definitely enjoying it so far.