Heart Shaped Box

Oooh... Looks like I've been slacking on the Blog front, doesn't it? Probably because I have, although at least I suppose it's proof of being busy. ;o)

Anyways, today is Christmas Eve, a day on which it is notoriously difficult to get into a working frame of mind. Which is why I'm sat here, Blogging. As you can probably guess from the lack of updates here, work at HEXUS has given me plenty to do, which is most definitely a good thing, and is still providing plenty of enjoyment on my end. Aside from that, life goes on as normal, aside from the prospect of needing to find a place for me and the wife to live within the next few weeks, a process that will gather pace once Christmas is out of the way. It's hard not to get stressed about that, but I'm sure everything will slot into place in due time.

Today's entry title comes from (obviously) the Nirvana song, pumped to me as I write this courtesy of Last.FM - Possibly the greatest Internet radio service ever. To explain, the site is partnered with another great site - Audioscrobbler. The basic principle of Audioscrobbler is that you download a plug-in for your favourite media player, which then notes the mp3s you listen to and collates them in a central database under an account you've set up on the site, then displaying your listening habits and so on and so forth.

Last.FM takes this one step further by offering you an Internet radio station which chooses what songs to feed you based around the music in your profile. It works incredibly well, and rarely gives you a song that you'll hate. Even if it does, you have 'Love', 'Skip' and 'Ban' buttons to denote songs you really love or hate, and your profile will thus become more specific to your tastes from there. I can't praise the service enough (They have a pay service too with some extra functionality, which I'm seriously considering forking out for), so anyone with an interest in broadening their musical horizons or simply listening to some damn fine music should check it out at least one. See? A Pixies song has just come on. Yes, it's that good.

Finally, this is my opportunity to wish anyone reading this a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I hope you all have a great time, and stay tuned to everything I do through 2005! ;o)

This is traditionally a time to start taking stock of the year just gone by, and I can safely say that 2004 is the best year of my life. Great new job, fantastic wife, and plenty of good friends out there. Some (if not all) of you reading this have played a part, big or small, in making this a great year for me, so to you goes my heartfelt thanks and gratitude.

First day of school

Yes, that's right, today was my first day of full-time employment with HEXUS. And I did I enjoy it? You bet your life I did! ;o)

My first day proved to be pretty fruitful, as I managed to knock out a couple of articles by the day's end, and also got things a little more organised here in my 'bunker' - Which is a good job, as I have a shed-load more stuff headed my way! Oh, and did I mention that Rys is the greatest boss in the World ever? (Seeing as I'm sure he'll read this, I guess this is the online equivalent of giving the teacher an apple, but hey, he's a great guy, what can I say?)

To complete a fine day, I received my Christmas present from Tara today. Of course, no placing of items under Christmas trees on this occasion, I dived straight into the box. :oP All I can say is, that girl has got to stop spoiling me! Oh well, I do exactly the same to her, and have done this Christmas, so I guess we're even.

Half-Life 2 Deathmatch

So, Valve had a Half-Life 2 Deathmatch mode under their sleeves all along then... It got released on Steam yesterday, and I have to say, it's.... Unique. What other DM gametype lets you pick things up and throw them and people? You have to give Valve some kudos for taking the physics engine that helps make Half-Life 2 itself so impressive, and successfully inject it into an online game mode.

Having said that, the enjoyment of the whole thing was somewhat short-lived for me - There's only so many times you can chuckle with glee as you crush someone in a corner with a car, or take them out with a well-placed radiator to the head. After a while, it starts to feel more like 'domestic argument simulator' (Hey, there's an idea for a mod!), with everybody eschewing traditional weapons in favour of simply throwing stuff at each other. It's immensely fun for half an hour or so, but then it starts to feel kind of childish. Maybe I'm just getting old...

Still, now it's out there and at the mercy of the mod community, there's stacks of potential in their, so I can imagine some really great things coming out of it. It's been a long time since I've really found a game I can get into playing regularly online (Battlefield 1942 was probably the last I gave up any real time to), but maybe something under the Half-Life 2 moniker will crop up and grab me.

Away from that, my Leadtek 6800GT and Ultra review (yes, them again!) for HEXUS is done, so I'll throw it into the back-end once I'm done with this. I can't wait until next week when I can start really sitting down and cranking out content, especially seeing as my last few days of my current job are going soooo slowly - There's only so much you can do when you know you're about to leave!

January 21st 2005

Is now the provisional date for when my wife will return to England. Permanently. Nothing much more to say... :oD

I'm incredibly excited, and also tearing my hair out at the amount I need to sort out in such a short period. It's going to be an interesting few weeks.

Now the end is in sight, I'm just tired...

After tomorrow, only one more week to go until I start my new job! Unfortunately, that means lots of paperwork and writing up notes for my successors. Still, I'm pretty much done with it so next week should be relatively simple.

As for Hexus work, I feel a lot more comfortable now I know my way around the back-end and can put my own articles in the system - I can be something of a control freak at times, so having that extra step available to me makes a big difference. :oP Apart from that, review work has ground to a halt thanks to our wonderful postal service - They certainly know how to make losing things look easy! Oh well, hopefully it'll show up eventually... I have a plethora of guides on various things to write now too, so that should keep me out of trouble as well. :o)

Aside from that, things are looking really good for my wife to move over here towards the end of January next year - She's basically all set aside from buying a plane ticket. It might even be sooner, who knows? Of course, this kind of puts the pressure on me to find us a place to live somewhat, so I'll have to crack on with that once I'm bedded down in the new job. Still, all that aside, I really really can't wait. I have a feeling 2005 is going to be a great year. :oD

Heh, it feels weird thinking about 2005 - I remember the Transformers Movie being set in the year 2005 to give it a futuristic feel, and twenty years later, here we are...

Feeling Peaky

All things considered, it's been a kind of busy time since my last entry. The big stress of last week was works attempt to wring every last drop out of me in my final couple of weeks with the company, in the form of sending me all around the UK handing out ID cards - A real "you're leaving, fuck you" job if ever I saw one. Anyway, after plenty of debate and discussion, revolving around me pointing out what an insane idea it was (Why not just send the cards out to the sites for other people to dish out? Handing out cards and getting a form signed isn't rocket science), I finally got my point across and the idea was canned. This leaves me free to concentrate on the important things that need to get done in my final two weeks, thank goodness.

I was in London the whole of Saturday, to see Arsenal's game against West Brom - It ended in a hugely disappointing 1-1 draw, but it was good to be back at Highbury after not being able to make it at all last season. Damn, it was cold though! It was also cool to get my first look at Arsenal's new stadium at Ashburton Grove (aka The Emirates Stadium - ugh), it's fantastic that they found a site so close to Highbury (You can see the new stadium easily from the North Bank). The worst part of my Saturday was the train journeys - Engineering works meant that the trains were taking detours, which meant a 3 hour journey up to London, and closer to 4 hours back!

The number of games I want to make time for is growing ever longer - Inevitably, Half-Life 2 is still my main focus (I can't believe people have completed it already, I could never dedicate that much time to any game in a single sitting), but the Pro Evolution Soccer 4 demo released on Friday has caught my eye too - I didn't like it to being with, but I'm starting to warm to it. Then there's Football Manager 2005 (Which is basically Championship Manager under a different name), which is time consuming at the best of times, and I haven't even installed Need For Speed: Underground 2. Oh, woe is me... :oP

Things have slowed right up on the reviewing front, as I'm currently left waiting for things to show up before I can move on with most of the things I have sat here. But, my second review for Hexus was published at the weekend, which is always edifying. Two more weeks, and I'll be beavering away on this stuff full-time... It just can't come quickly enough!!

Finally, as we're fast approaching December, no doubt you'll all be looking for Christmas presents for me... To make life easier for you, look no further than here. ;o)

Half-Life 2

Last night afforded me the opportunity to play Half-Life 2 for a couple of hours, so it's somewhat inevitable that I'm going to have to wax lyrical about it here.

First off, I know a fair few people had issues with Steam and unlocking the game yesterday, but for me the whole procedure was flawless. I actually ended up unlocking it twice on my two systems, the first at 8:00am as soon as the game became available, and the other at around 1:00pm - Both working flawlessly. I didn't get to fire up the game on either system until the evening, but again it worked on both occasions with no problems. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me personally the whole process was impressively smooth.

So, on to the game itself. The first thing of note is the graphics - The background to the opening menu screen looks stunning, but when you fire up the game you might find yourself a little underwhelmed. I know I was briefly, until I realised why - This game isn't designed to look jaw-droppingly pretty like Far Cry or the like, it's made to look realistic. That means (with the odd exception) no stupid, plastic-looking characters and surfaces, everything has an understated, grittily realistic look to it. And it works very well indeed, to the point where sometimes you want to just stop and admire how right everything looks even in the middle of a firefight.

Then there's the gameplay. Again, for the first couple of minutes I didn't feel right, or particularly immersed in the game. I was expecting another long intro sequence on the train to acclimatise, but no, that was all over very quickly, which left me feeling a little empty. Empty, that is, until I stepped off the train and wandered to close to a security guard, you have me a sharp shove to push me to a safer distance. A small touch perhaps, but enough to pull me into the atmosphere of the game - All of a sudden, I felt intimidated by my surroundings, and it was onwards and upwards from there.

Much as Doom 3 was very much a reimagining of Doom and Doom 2, so Half-Life 2 holds dear to it everything that made the original the great game that it was. This is something of a relief in this world of ever-decreasing sequels. If anything, the introduction of realistic physics as taken Half-Life 2 into the realm where Half-Life wanted to exist but perhaps didn't quite make it. In most situations you find yourself with two options - Brute force, taking out your opponents one by one (and using a lot of ammo in the process), or thinking smart and using the surroundings to your advantage. Okay, so most of the 'puzzles' (if you can call them that) are simple enough, but it all sits together very well with the game itself.

There's a lot to be said for the characters in the game too - When Half-Life 2 was first announced and Alyx unveiled, I started to worry about what this sequel would hold. But, thus far, to my relief the additional characters add to the game rather than distract from it. Having said that, why did they make Gordon Freeman mute? It was bad enough with the Doom 3 marine, but it makes even less sense here.

Half-Life 2 has also surprised me with its stabs at humour so far - They're actually funny. Normally (with a few exceptions), attempts at jokes in most games fall flat on their face, but thanks to the quality of the graphics, characters and voice actors, it works exceedingly well. I don't remember ever laughing out loud at a game before (Not when the developers intended it, anyway).

From the sound of point of view, it isn't as impressive as Doom 3, but still more than acceptable. It doesn't seem to like running on a generic AC97 on-board sound controller though, the game stutters like crazy sometimes when it access a new sound. I'm yet to try it out properly on my Audigy equipped-rig yet.

So, as of right now, I'm truly in love with this game - It's been a while since I've found a game so difficult to drag myself away from, it really does drag you in like something I haven't experienced since... Well... Half-Life. There's still a long way to go, so I might get bored or have something ruin it.. We'll have to see. But, for now, I'm just going to sit at work itching to get back to City 17...

Am I ready for Half-Life 2?

So, tomorrow is the big day - Am I ready? Well, let's put it this way, I've spent the evening setting up a system featuring an Athlon FX 53 and Leadtek GeForce 6800 Ultra so yeah, you could say I'm ready. ;o)

Of course, this is just a temporary test system for the time being, but I can imagine it doing an admirable job with Half-Life 2, so I can't think of a better way to experience it.

I should also point out to all the kids out there ready to drop out of school to take up careers as hardware reviewers that it isn't all fun and game-playing - Indeed, if I get everything I need together by tomorrow evening, I will in fact most likely be spending the evening benchmarking, and not playing Half-Life 2 at all while the rest of you enjoy it.

I had a load of other things I was going to mention in this entry, but firstly I've forgotten them in my excitement, and secondly it's getting late - Time to call the wife before getting some sleep. Maybe tomorrow I'll work out what I was going to say here and put something more constructive together.

The date is set

After a few days of constructive discussion about the terms of my contract, and more precisely my period of notice, we've finally come to a date when I finish my current job - December 3rd. It's a relief that I didn't end up with the whole nine weeks as specified in my contract, so I have to thank my boss for backing me on that one. I may even have some holiday available to curtail the time left in my current position even further.

My other good news is that my wife is now looking at moving over here much, much sooner - We're talking about the end of January now, rather than a year away. It means a lot to think about and organise, but it also means that Andy is very happy and excitable right now. ;o)

Aside from that (If you can have an aside from all these life-changing events), things are actually rather quiet, and just involves a lot of waiting for things to happen. This means that I've had a bit of time to feast myself on Azumanga Daioh amongst other things (okay, I admit I'm still on a streak of playing a lot of FIFA 2005 too). We're a week away from Half-Life 2 now, and I'm quietly looking forward to finally getting to see the finished product after all the hype and delays. It has to be good, it just has to - I need a good, involving FPS to convince me that not all games from now on are going to be unconvincing rehashes and sequels of what has gone before.

Talking of FPSes, I'll have to see if I can coax my wife into bringing her X-Box over to the UK with her, I'm itching to try out Halo 2.... :oP

Times, they are a' changing...

So, about that big announcement - I was going to keep everyone in suspense a little longer, but I may as well just go ahead and come out with it.

Yesterday, I handed in my notice at work. Why, I hear you ask? Because I've accepted a position as a full-time reviewer for Hexus. Yep, that's right, once my notice is up where I am right now (which could be four weeks, or it could be longer, I'm arguing that one out right now), I'll be taking up a post doing full-time hardware reviews.

Am I excited? That would be putting it mildly, yes. Am I happy? You bet I am. To be honest, I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing with my time, so the opportunity to take it up as a full-time concern is a dream come true for me. Of course, the sad side is that this means standing down from the news and article posting side of Elite Bastards, but I'll still be sticking around to some extent whenever I can, so you haven't seen the last of me there.

So, there you have it, not much more to add really. I actually have some other pretty cool stuff to talk about as well, but I'll save that for another day - Don't want to overload you now, do I?!

New beginnings and Boards of Canada

I was going to write a whole load of stuff here on Friday, but Blogger seemed to be dead, as is my memory of what I was going to write. So, instead two random things to think about:

Number one - Everybody go out and listen to a Boards of Canada record. I hadn't listened to any of their material in a while, but most of today I've been rekindling my love for them. If electronic music is your thing, then you owe yourself a look at these guys. Fantastic stuff.

Number two - I should have a big, big announcement to make in the next day or two, so keep your eyes peeled and I'll reveal all as soon as I feel that I can.

A short Blog entry is a pretty rare thing for me, so cherish it. ;o)

Ever had one of those weeks...

Where nothing goes right? Work yesterday was pretty crappy, and when I said to Tara "At least things can't get any worse" - They get worse. Not due to work, but instead thanks to my Mum spending a morning in hospital thanks to some idiotic coach driver slamming into the back of her car. She seems okay thankfully, whiplash and aches and pains aside, but not the start to the day I wanted to hear, it stressed me out to put it mildly. The boot (or trunk, for American readers) of the car is shot to pieces, horribly bent out of shape to the point where it won't close - God knows how long that'll take to get fixed.

Work is also still sucking today - I've had enough work piled on me in the last couple of days to literally last me a year, nobody seems to understand exactly what it is I'm doing and why it can take so long to get things just right. Even when I do get things done I don't remember being thanked for it.

Okay, rant mode over now - Yesterday evening did bear some happy news, with Tara getting together all the forms we need to sort out for her to come and live over here. A small step really, but I can't help but be excited, it's another step towards triggering the domino effect that my life has seemed to line up as to get everything where I want it. Continuing the good news, I'll also be receiving a couple of video cards to review, although there is a strange feeling of deja vu surrounding them.... ;o)

Finally, today is election day in the US. Yes, I'm English, but I guess you could say having an American wife gives me a vested interest in these things - I've taken a much keener interest in US politics in the last four years, so there's a strange feeling of excitement/trepidation about the results. Whatever happens though, life goes on, whatever idiocy the politicans dream up next...

End of an era

Well, I just stood down from my staff position at Rage3D - I simply don't have enough time to keep an eye on the place, besides which it has changed beyond recognition from the place I knew and loved.

I feel kind of sad about it, I remember how thrilled I was when I was offered the chance to be a Moderator there, but times have changed and so must I. It's the best thing for both me and the site - Rage3D is crying out for SuperMods and Admins who are available to deal with things as quickly as possible, and I need to focus on the other things I'm doing with my career over babysitting the forums there. Still, it was a fun couple of years. :o)

Holiday? What holiday?

So, here I am, after a week away from work, sat back at my desk in the office. Nothing has changed in that week - Literally. The work I'd given other people to handle in my absence has been bounced straight back into my queue as soon as I turned up, regardless of the liberal sprinkling of ASAP and URGENT notices in said jobs. * Sighs * And boy is the clock ticking by slowly this morning, roll on lunch time....

Anyway, as for my holiday, it had its relaxing moments, but Tuesday afternoon saw the (unexpected but welcome) arrival of a large box of goodies for review courtesy of Hexus, so I spent some of the week and weekend working on that. Add to that the Far Cry article for Elite Bastards, and it was more or less a semi-working week. Not that I'm complaining though - I absolutely loved every minute of it. I kind of wanted to test myself out by setting aside full days to do review work to see how it felt - Getting up early-ish and getting straight down to it, getting the whole thing done and submitted by that evening. And it all went swimmingly. It reminds me of the line in the movie 'The Road To Perdition' - "To be paid to do what you love - Ain't that the dream?". Couldn't have said it much better myself...

Aside from that, yesterday was my two-month anniversary of getting married. It's weird, it already feels like an age ago that I was in Las Vegas with Tara, not two months. I think I've stumbled onto a new anime love, thanks to BetrayerX at EB - Bleach. It's one of those series where you watch the first episode, and the potential is just overflowing out of every pore. I've watched the first three episodes now (There are four out right now), and it's developing very nicely. I think I'm going to overflow with anime this week actually - I still haven't watched the latest episodes of Naruto and School Rumble, volumes 3 and 4 of the hilarious Azumanga Daioh on DVD should be turning up this week, and I just ordered the first Tenchi movie. Oh well, whatever keeps me out of trouble. :oP

There's nothing worse...

Than your spiritual Internet home being down for close to 24 hours. Yes, the Elite Bastards server is basically down. No, I don't know why. The same thing happened after my original 3DMark05 article, which I understand as it was a 'big thing', but although we got linked a lot of places this time around, the traffic shouldn't be any worse than what we've had to handle before in the past. Once everything is back up and running, I think a post mortem is called for - It's frustrating sitting here not being able to do anything though.

The worst part of all has been doing my usual morning flick through the usual sites I visit, trawling for news - I have loads of interesting stuff, but nowhere to put it. So, to ease my pain, I think I'll make the rest of this Blog entry a little mini-news page, if nothing else to remind me what to post when the server is back up and running properly. So, here goes:

- John Reynolds Radeon X800 XT PCI Express review at SimHQ
- Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault ships early
- Need For Speed Underground 2 demo released
- ATI topples nVidia in card sales

Coming soon to a magazine near you?

I always feel a little... Odd, talking about things which aren't "done deals", especially when they are little more than a "Would you be interested in...?" kind of deal. This one is a little different though - Some freelance work which would end up in a print magazine as well as on the web. I can't say any more, mainly because I don't know any more myself, but it was just an interesting little vignette that dropped into my inbox yesterday evening. It's almost scary how your name get around like it does.. Not that I'm complaining mind you!

Yesterday evening also ensured that at least one morning of my week off work was spent slaving over benchmarks, courtesy of the Far Cry 1.3 patch. It's one of those things that I just can't leave alone - A thought of 'Oh, I'll just take a quick look for myself to see how the HDR effect looks' soon turns into 'Right, I reckon I should benchmark all these features at these resolutions', and before I know it I'm waking up early so I can start work on writing up what I have. I'm not sure if it's obsession, addiction, or just being a glutton for punishment, but hey, I love every minute of it. Talking of these things, my 3DMark05 follow-up is finally taking shape, but I keep getting distracted.

Back to Far Cry 1.3 though - The HDR effect looks awesome, real jaw-dropping stuff. But, it actually gets a bit overbearing at times, and the performance drops together with losing anti-aliasing make it kind of unpalatable for me. I respect the technology immensely, but I don't see it getting wide use until some of those caveats can be rectified in future hardware designs. Always exciting to see something a little more ground-breaking though.

Back in the 'real world', my birthday was uneventful, just like I wanted it to be. More or less just another day, but with lots of birthday cake. ;o) Yesterday was more important for me, and I got to spend plenty of time talking to the wife on our three year anniversary, which all on its own made it a great day for me. She's better than any birthday present. :o)

Quarter of a century alive, three years of happiness

Well, a couple of important dates coming my way as I write this (Isn't it great having a laptop with wirless Internet connectivity, and being able to write an entry while lounging around in bed and eating toast?):

First up, tomorrow (Sunday 24th October) is my 25th birthday... That makes for quarter of a century alive. I'm one of those people who finds each and every birthday more depressing (Given the choice, I would have stopped this whole ageing thing at 21), so 25 years old is a milestone in depression for me. ;o) The amusing thing is seeing my family, wife etc celebrating ecstatically, wanting to take me out for meals, buying cakes, presents etc, while I would happily just brush the whole thing under the carpet. Still, that's where I derive my pleasure from on birthdays - Seeing other people enjoying themselves. :o)

The day after however, is far, far more important - It is me and my wife's three year anniversary since we started going out together. We'd known each other for about six months before that, but the 25th of October was the fateful day when we finally got over the whole 'will we, won't we' thing - Or rather, my wife did, by asking me out. :oP From an airport in Chicago as it happens, but that's a whole other story. On that day, it felt like the happiest day of my life, but the great thing is that over the last three years I've had so many 'happiest days of my life' with Tara that I've almost lost count, and each one has been better than the last. I can honestly say that the last three years have been the best ever, and I'm not even going to try to put into words how I've felt these past few years... The good times I've shared with Tara really are beyond words.

End of Evangelion

After 'The inevitable Half-Life 2 thread', I suppose this one should have been called 'The inevitable Eva thread'. My wife ended up working over-time yesterday, which left me at a loose end for the evening, so I ended up doing something I'd been contemplating for a while - Cracking open my copy of the 'End of Evangelion' DVD and watching the movie complete with audio commentary.

I really should warn anyone who hasn't watched this movie and intends to do so that there might be spoilers beyond this point.

As far as anime goes, Eva is by far my greatest love. I've watched the entire series from beginning to end (including the movie) twice now, so last night was my third time of watching the movie. Watching 'End of Evangelion' along with the commentary actually hit home to me just how disturbing the entire movie is - The themes and ideas expressed are.... Well, pretty depressing. For those of you unfamiliar with the Evangelion canon, it should be explained that the original series ending was two episodes of what can only be described as a pure mindfuck - A fascinating delve into the psyche of the characters in the series as well as the the wider concept of humanity itself. The very ending of these two episodes seems to be a kind of 'happily ever after' moment that left a lot of unanswered questions. This left a lot of angry and frustrated viewers at the time, to the extent of the series creator Hideaki Anno receiving death threats (some of which, ironically, are flashed up for brief frames towards the close of 'End of Evangelion'). So, Anno went away and came back with 'End of Eva', a replacement scenario for those final two episodes which, rumour has it, was nothing more than a big 'fuck you' to fans of the series. But what a great 'fuck you'!!

Anyway, back to the disturbing theme - It actually takes a session with the audio commentary to gain a real understanding of just how disturbing some of the movie's imagery is (although you can get a very good idea without it, some of the more graphic scenes need no explanation), mainly because those most disturbing moments only actually last for one or two frames, or are so subtle that they need to be pointed out. For example, there is a brief montage of flashed through images from Asuka's mind - The first couple of frames depict a vision of her rotting corpse. Later, when Asuka is attacked by the rest of the S2-engine equipped Eva series, her Evangelion is speared through the head (more specifically the eye), at which point we see Asuka holding her own eye and screaming. In the scene that follows, what I'd never noticed before until hearing the commentary was the blood literally pouring from Asuka's eye as she leans forward... This scene is incredibly harrowing at the best of times, but touches like this just make it more so.

Then there is Misato's death scene - At first glance, she is simply consumed by an explosion, but watch the scene frame by frame and you realise that she is actually ripped in two by the explosion.

Throw in all the violence, intense sexual imagery and deep religious roots of the movies ideas, and you have a work of genius that makes for uncomfortable and yet riveting viewing throughout. I'd challenge anyone to find a more thought-provoking movie, you just can't help but spend days after every viewing evaluating the goings-on in your head, from the beginning right through to the movies final words... "How disgusting.." There's so much more I could write about this - Hell, you could make a book out of it.


Anyway, back in the real world, some changes to my first review for Hexus and the completion of my second means that I'm actually well on top of everything I have planned at the moment - It's been a while since I've been able to say that! I have next week off work from my 'real' job, although I don't have anything planned... Hopefully it will just involve a lot of sleeping in and relaxing, although I may have some X800 Pro-based review action coming my way... We'll see.

The inevitable Half-Life 2 post

So, it finally happened - Half-Life 2 went Gold yesterday. And am I excited? Despite over a year of falsely inflated hopes, poor excuses and lax security on Valve's part... Damn right I am!! It's actually kind of interesting to watch the reaction of the community to the announcement (from the Elite Bastards angle anyway) - There was a lot of frustration and (dare I say) hatred towards Gabe Newell and co after the delays and code leak before, but I guess time is the best healer - The enthusiasm for Half-Life 2 seems to be back with a vengeance, and the World and his friend are looking forward to playing it.

I certainly count myself in the 'looking forward to it' camp - Most recent FPS games that have been released recently have been more exciting to me from a technological (i.e. graphics engine) point of view than for the actual game itself (Doom 3 being a perfect example of that). The Source engine is, of course, a potentially fantastic looking one, so yeah I'm excited by the eye candy, but I'm also all geared up to play my way through the game as well. I remember my introduction to the world of Half-Life... Cue dream sequence...

I first encountered Half-Life through my job as an IT technician, back when I used to deal with retail PCs (I really should talk about those halycon days here some time, I still miss them). We started selling and fitting Voodoo Banshee boards to customers, and as part of the bundle (they were Guillemot boards if I remember correctly) they came with a disk labelled simply 'Half-Life: Day One'. Now, this was in the days before I frequented any forums or tech sites on the Internet, so I had no clue what this thing was, but of course I fired it up for a look. And wow.... Everyone in the office soon got dragged into this game, it was one of those moments where you fire up a game to 'test this video card I just fitted' (Heh, we did that a lot), and before you know it the entire department has lost an entire afternoon stood around just watching while you play. Everything about the game grabbed you - The graphics, the sound, the interaction with characters.. It was truly a complete package.

Of course, when the final game was released I grabbed a copy of that through work too. I do have a dark secret though - I never completed the original Half-Life. Shocking, isn't it? My excuse (and I'm sure I'm not the only one to say this) is that I got fed up of the stupid alien levels, the only red mark on an otherwise flawless single-player experience. I also remember a guy I worked with at the time having a Pentium Pro system running Windows NT 4, and I once went round just for him to show me how smooth the game ran on the NT codebase - Quite a precursor to what Windows 2000 and XP would offer from the dark days of Windows 9x I guess.


Anyway, enough reminiscing for one day, so back to the present. I finished my first review for Hexus... kind of. I ended up screwing up by missing some settings (Why do manufacturers insist on hiding these things?), but otherwise it seems to have been quite well accepted. A little more work, and hopefully that'll be published sooner rather than later.

I've also finally kicked off some of the testing for my 3DMark05 follow-up article - A little late, but oh well. I have a DVD-RW full of bitmaps to check IQ on with me right now... So, I guess that's my cue to wrap things up here.

Progress....

It always feels good to get an article out of the door and published, and today is one of those days. Yesterday I finally managed to finish my review of a couple of Leadtek GeForce 6800s for Beyond 3D, and it's now up in all its glory here. I was actually surprised to see it published so soon - I only sent Dave the material yesterday evening, and it usually takes a good few days for any editing, changes etc to be done before we end up with the finished product. This time it was just a matter of hours (and Dave working through the night I would wager - What a workaholic!).

The downside of finishing the article is that I have to send back the two boards I was testing, and you know, I'm really going to miss the GT-based card. Sure, it has a kind of inconvenient two-slot cooling solution, but boy did it overclock like a trooper, far more impressively so than my PNY (basically NVIDIA reference) board. Ah well, such is a reviewers life, and I really can't complain considering most people don't even get the chance to play with half the stuff I've been fortunate enough to look at lately.

So, this leaves me to focus on the stuff I need to get done for Hexus now, it's pretty close to being finished so it just needs a final push. I'm also still short of a couple of photos of the packaging too... Damn do I suck with my digital camera. Or maybe my digital camera just sucks? A bad workman blames his tools...

Away from all the website stuff, my real-life job is actually getting pretty busy too - The project I'm working on is reaching one of those critical stages that relies on me a lot, so I'm having to engage my brain rather a lot. Still, I've got a lot done this week even with other distractions, so I'm making good progress. It does kind of cut into the website time though, which is frustrating. :P I'm really hoping that I don't catch the 'flu at the moment - Both my parents have had it, and it looked like I was going the same way over the last couple of days, getting a sore throat that was the first symptom they had. But, today that seems to have cleared up somewhat, so I'm crossing my fingers that it skipped me. Having said that, it's really cute the way Tara fusses over me when I'm sick. ;)

My name's Andy, and I'm a FIFA 2005 addict...

Okay, okay, so it isn't that bad... Yet. But yes, I did give FIFA 2005 a whirl yesterday. And yes, I did spend basically the entire day yesterday playing it.

EA Sports certainly haven't learned all of the lessons they should have done - There are still times aplenty when you don't feel 'in control' of your players, as though they are acting on autopilot or assisted by the computer. And when that happens, it sucks. However, the match experience in general is much better - Playing slick passing and counter-attacking football is far easier this time around (Perfect for an Arsenal fan such as myself!), better handling of set pieces and so on.

The real reason for my addiction yesterday however is the addition of a proper(ish) career mode, which brings me back to the days of Sensible World of Soccer, where I lost entire months of my life playing through twenty season careers. I love the whole 'Take a rubbish team and build them up until they're the best (Or move to a club who are the best if they'll have you)' mentality, and it's lack is my biggest gripe with most football games. So, my Sunday was spent taking Notts County (no, I don't know why them either) to the dizzy heights of the top of League 2, and within a whisker of a cup upset against Liverpool. This probably means that the game is also too easy, but be quiet, I'm enjoying myself. :P

Aside from all that, I'm now pretty much 100% recovered from the illness I had last week, which means that I've found the energy to make some good progress on my Beyond3D review today - Hopefully I can get it knocked together into a decent shape this week. Should be able to polish off the first Hexus review too in theory, just have loads of niggly little things to do there. Of course, it would all get done a lot quicker if I stopped writing here, wouldn't it?... :P

So much for working....

When I made my last post about getting plenty done this weekend, I had of course reckoned without two international footie games on TV. :P

So, my Saturday instead ended up being very football-centric (Not that this is a bad thing), the obvious highlight being England's comprehensive 2-0 win over Wales. Watching England games are usually something of an emotional rollercoaster, but thanks to an early goal and being pretty much dominant throughout the game it was a pretty relaxing one to watch.

The evening was taking up with France vs Republic of Ireland - And what the Hell is wrong with the French side?! I know they've lost some of their best players (Zidane et al) to international retirement, but they look more than a shadow of their former selves. To be honest, they don't even look like they care...

Continuing the football theme, I picked up a copy of FIFA 2005 which I haven't tried yet, so I guess that is on the agenda today. I really don't like the FIFA series all that much now, the last few iterations have pretty much ruined it for me (especially now we have Pro Evolution Soccer 3 - and hopefully 4 soon - on the PC), but for some reason I can't resist each new version that is released. I'm a hopeless case when it comes to footie games... *sighs* ....oh, some of the turkeys I've bought....

My week....

Well, it's been a crappy one. From feeling absolutely fine on Sunday night to throwing up all day Monday wasn't much fun, and today is the first day this week I've felt even remotely human (Insert jokes here). Even that was only after an hour laying there feeling terrible in the early hours of this morning. I don't get ill often, but when I do, boy do I get it bad...

The really irritating thing for me is that all this has put a dent into the things I wanted to get out of the door this week - I have a half-finished review for Hexus to polish off, and some Beyond3D work as well. Add to that a 3DMark05 follow-up I want to do for Elite Bastards and it's been a wasted week. Maybe this weekend I can start making inroads into this stuff.

Aside from all that, I can't really complain with life as everything else is rosy. Things are fantastic (as ever) with the wife - Indeed, we've been talking this week about her moving over to England permanently sooner than we originally planned (We had been thinking about a year from now to get everything sorted, but we're both kind of impatient on this front as you can imagine). There's a lot to be done before that point though, so we'll just have to roll with the punches and see where we end up.

Well, I finally have one...

Starting up some kind of weblog is one of those things which has been on my 'to do' list for... Well... Ages. It's weird, at times I've found myself really pining for some place to put up my thoughts in a kind of unofficial sense (compared to say, forum or article postings at Elite Bastards, but then other times I shy away from the whole idea - For some reason I find myself feeling uneasy about this kind of stuff.

Anyway, as you can see I've bitten the bullet and finally got a blog up and running. I was thinking about kicking off an introduction of my good self, but then I figured that the only people I expect to really care about reading this are people who know me in some capacity anyhow.

I'm honestly not sure how this thing is going to end up - As a kind of medium between myself and website work, or something altogether more personal. Wherever the wind takes me I guess...