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)