Big changes, familiar faces - The future of Elite Bastards

I mentioned a couple of days ago I'd reserve a separate post for some Elite Bastards-related goodness, so here is the news as promised.

As of Sunday, I officially took over the financial support of Elite Bastards. I now pay the bills and the server is in my name so, officially speaking, I'm the new owner (and/or Editor-in-Chief if you prefer) of the site. This won't really have any obvious impact on the day-to-day running of the site - Zarathustra will still do his thing when the server needs it, Quinn is still webmaster and all round 'making things look pretty' guy, and I'll be churning out news and content as much as possible. The big change really is that obviously running a web site such as ours isn't always a cheap business, and my recently changed circumstances mean that I can offer the site both the time and financial stability it requires to grow and prosper - Good news I'm sure you'll agree.

My first act after making this change was to sort out an issue that has plagued the site for some time - Its lack of RAM. I'm sure many of you have noticed periods of slowness or inaccessibility after new articles had been published, and this was due to the lack of memory required to handle a large number of concurrent connections. I've now had the amount of RAM in the server upgraded from 512MB to a much healthier 1.5GB, and even before we've tweaked the configuration of the server to make the most of this new memory things are looking far smoother. Our next priority is to move to a new Content Management System, but I wouldn't want to say when that'll be finished, seeing as it was originally slated for this Summer. ;o) Beyond that, I have a few ideas of things I'd like to see happen at the site, but that's one for the future.

To close, I'm sure you'll all join me in thanking Zarathustra for the considerable time and money he's ploughed into the site thus far, without which we wouldn't be here right now. And of course, thanks to all of the staff for their contributions to the development of Elite Bastards.

I'm always open to suggestions as to improvements or changes to the site from any angle, so if anyone ever has any ideas, you know where to find me.

It's my birthday, no-one here day, very strange day...

If the subject title isn't clue enough, today is my 26th birthday. It isn't quite the day I was expecting it to be a few weeks ago, but oddly enough I feel very content about the whole thing. It's been pretty much an ordinary day spent at work, then coming home to cook myself a fantastic meal (If I may say so myself! I tend to hugely downplay my abilities in the kitchen due to the simple fact that I don't really like cooking), just generally relaxing for a bit, and soon I'll be settling down with a stack of anime and a bottle of wine. I really can't find cause to complain about that... :oP

Aside from Tara leaving at the end of last week, I was also saddled with a nightmarish cold (Which still hasn't disappeared completely) which has left me pretty drained for a few days now. Thankfully, it didn't stop me crawling out of bed to deal with answers to an interview I organised some time ago. It turned out to be one of the best, most well-received articles I can remember at Elite Bastards, which is always pleasing, although to be honest most if not all of the credit should go to Voudoun and John Reynolds for their work in compiling the questions. Let's be honest, it's the questions and answers people read these things for, not any nonsense I spout by way of an introduction! There is another point of Elite Bastards business which should be mentioned here, but I'll save it for another day and another post as it's too important (to my mind) to bury in with everything else. It's good news though, mark my words. :o)

The joint mess of separation and cold have meant not a lot of benchmarking has been done lately, and to make things worse when I did go to crack on with it yesterday my test rig which I was trying to rebuild was playing up something chronic. I've left it to it's own devices today, but tomorrow I'll attack it with vigour to hopefully get back on track. What makes it more frustrating is that my current testing project isn't even for Elite Bastards at all, but for another site I've written for in the past, that doesn't begin with H. ;o) Ah well, fingers crossed it'll behave tomorrow.

Anyway, enough rambling from me for today. Now, where's that bottle opener...

Everything changes... Everybody hurts

I'll keep this post short and to the point, as it isn't something I want to dwell on - My wife has left me for another guy, and is moving out of our house on Thursday. To make things worse, the guy in question didn't know she was married, and in fact still doesn't believe the fact despite my protestations to him. So, it came down to a simple 'Me or him' scenario, and Tara chose him.

So, that's it... It's over. I'll be moving back into my parents place as soon as possible, a move which will actually have previously unforseen benefits for Elite Bastards. Even the darkest clouds have a silver lining, I suppose...

"When the truth dies...

...very bad things happen"...

A productive few days

It's been a pretty busy time for me Elite Bastards-wise one way or another lately, but Tara was away in Southampton visiting a couple of friends at University there over the weekend, which left me as master of the domain and thus offered me the opportunity to plough through editorial, which I grabbed with both hands. At the tail end of last week I squeezed out a technology preview of ATI's Radeon X1000 series, which turned out pretty well I thought if I may say so myself. This left me the weekend to focus on a couple of articles - Firstly, a review of Club 3D's Radeon X800RX, which I published today, and another piece which should go live later in the week. With any luck this should let me refocus on the GeForce 7800GT review, but I get the feeling that more distractions will be coming along soon. They should be good distractions though, so don't worry. ;o)

Away from writing-related stuff, I took some time on Saturday to chill out and watch the England game (althought the words 'chill out' and 'England game' invariably fail to gel particularly well in the same sentence), and also did a little catching up anime wise, taking in the latest episodes of Bleach and Full Metal Panic : The Second Raid as well as continuing to work my way through the first series of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Upon Tara's return on Sunday afternoon we also sat down to watch Sin City together, and I have to say the second viewing was at least on a par with the first. It's still my movie of 2005 so far, no doubt about that.

Continuing the movie theme, I went to see A History of Violence with the wife last weekend - Not a bad movie, and decent entertainment, although to be honest I think I enjoyed it more than Tara did. Music-wise, I'm still hopelessly addicted to the new Boards of Canada album, The Campfire Headphase... I'm not even going to attempt to desribe its musical genius, you just have to find it and listen to it anyway you can. It's quite possibly one of the best albums I've ever heard. Period.