Wednesday, October 27, 2004

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

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

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)

Saturday, October 23, 2004

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.

Friday, October 22, 2004

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.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

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.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

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. ;)

Monday, October 11, 2004

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

Sunday, October 10, 2004

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....

Friday, October 08, 2004

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...