It's that time of the year again, when we all kick ourselves into overdrive as we overeat , drink way too much , dance like an idiot ,  spill our guts , catch some much needed but short-lived sleep , before starting the cycle all over again until the new year comes, when we wake up from the spell and realise nothing has really changed. We'll still fail to meet our new year resolutions, keep working at that boring and mundane job, drag ourselves to those uni lectures where we sleep anyway, waste our hard-earned cash on grog, and procrastinate as much as we can until we realise, shit its gotta be done tomorrow but we've agreed to go out with mates tonight. Fuck it.

But not next year. Nope, next year's gonna be the year of change, where I'm gonna wake up and instead of prolonging the cycle, I'm gonna break free and forge my own path. Where that path will lead I don't know, nor do I know what that path will lead me through or how far the path will go. What I do know is that it won't be the well-worn, boring, secure, paved one.

And with that, here's some interesting stuff to do in between making ourselves look like an absolute dickhead:

It'll be too late to go get gifts by the time you read this (unless you give someone a loaf of bread from 7/11), but here's some I wouldn't mind receiving (or maybe I'll get them after I return all the crappy gifts we all get every year) - a customised set of casino chips! [via TechCrunch] That's right, you can have whatever you want printed on every casino chip in the set, whether it'd be your poker face, your own logo, whatever. You can even get individual ones as promotional items, gifts etc.

To save my mates some work, here's the design they'd probably get me (doctored in Fireworks):

(note: what actually happened isn't what you think happened, I promise )

Something else that I've been waiting for are wearable Bluetooth earphones that don't make you look like an idiot when you put on the absolutely huge earmuffs. Creative's finally managed to shrink the gadgetry down to a good size, resulting in quite wearable wireless headphones. Better still, they're bundling an attachment that lets you turn your non-BT-enabled music players into a BT-enabled one.

Image from Engadget

While I was doing the required gift-shopping run yesterday, I wandered past Toys r' Us and saw this sign:

Never thought I'd see a decent sale at Toys r' Us, and they drop this amazing discount on us without notice! (I'll admit I don't read the Toys r' Us catalogues though.) By the time I discovered it at Chaddy there wasn't much left, don't know when it started though. But assuming they had decent stock levels, its a pretty good deal, even if they do jack up the prices beforehand (surely they won't jack it 50% above the RRP). Using a Creative Vision: M 60GB as an example - it retails for around $636 normally; under that deal it'd be $318! That's a massive saving, hell I'd buy one just to resell it on eBay and make a decent profit.

Damn you Toys r' Us - why didn't you tell me when it started

With all this gift-giving just about over, we're all probably thinking, "yes, I've made it through another year <sighs>". But as we all know, we're gonna have to do it all over again next year. Is there something I can use to make it easier I hear you ask? Well there is, and its called...

[via LifeHacker]

This nifty service allows you to keep track of all the people you have to buy gifts for, how much you plan on spending and have spent, what gifts you're going to return, whether you've said thanks or not, any gift ideas you come across and your personal wishlist. It works for all holidays, not just Christmas.

Interesting concept, and I think its funny how big a deal returning gifts is. I've personally never returned a gift; just think its rude I guess. Besides, even if I need to, surely its not the norm and I don't need a web app to remind me...

It'd be interesting to see if they ever put any web 2.0 juice into it too, maybe something where people can profile the person their gift ideas are intended for so others looking for presents for similarly profiled people can find them. Then, maybe an area where people can tell others where to pick up that item for the cheapest price, best deal etc., although that maybe be a bit more for the shopping comparison sites out there.

And finally, it looks like the judges have gotten the Christmas spirit too - they've just awarded Microsoft a case they brought against a UK man who sold Hotmail email account details to spammers.

Alright - much of the ever growing and active blogosphere has entered hibernation mode already, and for the first time in my life, I'm gonna join them. Its been a crazy and interesting month for me, launching this blog/website and trying to find my feet in the blogging world. By my standards, the fact that I've gotten someone to read my blog, not to mention link to it, within the first month is an awesome feat, and so this will be my last post for the year as I'm off to celebrate this along with Christmas then New Year.

Merry Christmas and have a happy new year to all! I'll hopefully see all of you back next year in one piece, ready to rock and roll all over again .