There's nothing worse...

...than being a guy, and being ill. It sucks. Nobody has ever been as ill as I feel now - Or so my brain tells me in a horrendous act of self-pity.

Yet, here I am, sat trying to write an article through a haze of drugs and tissues and bleary eyes. Ugh. Still, my drug-induced writing has somehow allowed me to work some Smiths lyrics into a comparison, so I guess it isn't all bad. :p

Apart from that, things aren't too shabby - We have some very excellent stuff around the corner content-wise at Elite Bastards, I have another review up at UK Anime, and so on and so forth.

Now, I would go to bed to continue my suffering, but the cat's curled up and fallen asleep on my lap while I was writing this. Crap. It's alright for some... :p

If it takes another life, I'll wait for you on the other side...

I have to admit, I have something of a vested interest in the Scissor Sister's second album, Ta-Dah, if only because me and Laura have tickets to see them in November. I have to say though, their second album is largely disappointing. Gone is the biting wit of their eponymous debut album, replaced largely with bland 'pop by numbers' efforts that almost leave the group acting as a parody of themselves. There's nothing wrong with leaning heavily on 80s musical influences as long as you get it right, but from where I'm sitting Ta-Dah misses the mark on almost every count, with the current single I Don't Feel Like Dancin' acting as a warning sign for the watered-down cheese fest that follows.

In fairness, things do pick up a little on the second half of the album, culminating in Ta-Dah's saving musical grace - The Other Side, which turns out to be possibly one of the greatest tracks of 2006, and mixing the shoulder-shrugging melancholy you might associate with The Smiths against the kind of catchy pop sensibilities of Duran Duran and the like at their peak. Simply awesome stuff, but not enough to save this rather disappointing album. I can only hope they focus on their debut album in concert...

Success breeds success

I love it when a plan comes together - Particularly when I didn't even have a plan in the first place. ;o) Things seem to be moving on to yet another level at Elite Bastards very quickly - In the past week, I've had a game developer seeking an interview with us (which is done and dusted, and will see the light of day next week together with exclusive screenshots), two major graphics AIBs (one of whom I've been trying to curry favour with for a long time) sending hardware my way, and another one sounding very promising on that front. I can see it being a very busy autumn and winter for the site...

Things are still fun-packed on the anime reviewing gig too, with one new review published today and another completed and ready to go. It really is a great job to do, even reviewing the poorer quality shows.

Anyway, I really wanted to use this entry to share my excitement, so with that done, back to work!

Forging ahead

Boy, have I been on a roll this past week - Not only did I finish our rather popular Radeon X1650 PRO review for Elite Bastards, I've also now found myself an entire week ahead with regard to content, with two reviews sat ready to go any time I feel like it. If only I could stay in this situation all the time, it's a really great feeling to be sat atop a stack of good content. On top of that, I also had time to polish off my first review for UK Anime as well - Appaling to watch though it was, writing an anime review was a joy, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Hopefully, I can keep this state of affairs going, as I actually have a much required two week break from my 'real' job starting from now, meaning plenty of rest, relaxation and... Well, 'other things' (Use your imagination!)... for a while. It should also give me at least some time to keep up on the review front, with a fair amount of stuff in the pipeline, not least moving my test system to Core 2 Duo hopefully.

Recent weeks have also made me decide that it's finally time to bite the bullet and take serious action with regard to speed and time-out issues with Elite Bastards' server - This past week, we've had things tuned up a fair amount, with a little more tweaking on the way, but things still seem a little sluggish to me, so I'm looking very seriously at moving us to a new server and host entirely. I've seen the deal I want, so if all this tweaking doesn't get us where I want us to be performance-wise, it'll be time to move again to a very impressive sounding rig. Fun! Needless to say, I'll keep you all posted on where things go on that front as time goes on.