Christmas Wrapping

Okay, so I said that my last 'Blog post would be the final one of 2007. Famous last words and all that...

Well, here we are again, another Christmas Day. So, how has it been? Well, it's Christmas Day, which is pretty much a guarantee of being 'any good' as days go. Despite starting out the day feeling a little like Shinobu Maehara in the Love Hina Christmas movie (now there's a reference to confuse the majority of you, thankfully!), since that point it's been a pleasant and enjoyable day. I realised just now that this has been my first day of real, unfettered downtime (i.e. not thinking about or concerning myself with work-related matters at all) in a long, long time. Hell, I've barely even touched a keyboard until tonight! I guess it really is something I should think about doing more often for my own good.

I think over the last couple of years I've also discovered that I really am getting old, in that I now enjoying the giving of gifts to others far more than I do receiving them. Sure, getting presents is great, but you can't beat the feeling of giving something to somebody that they really love. I guess I'm just a big softie after all...

Anyway, I'm rambling now. Tomorrow is Boxing Day, and I have at least one must buy item on my shopping list, meaning I'll have to brave the masses... Fun! Isn't it amazing how no matter how well prepared you are for Christmas and any gifts you know you'll be receiving and giving, there's always something you don't account for?

So, there you have it, Christmas in a nutshell - Lots of eating and lots of drinking (which I'm sat here trying to recover from), and a fair old whack of Christmas TV. Probably time for me to sign off and get back to it all in fact....

Ramping up for Christmas

Wow, what a day - Not only have I done a massive amount of work towards two reviews for Elite Bastards scheduled to go live this week, I've also found time to watch Arsenal beat Chelsea (oh how, how sweet that was to watch!) and... Well, write this 'Blog entry.

While most other people seem to be looking towards shutting down for Christmas, things seem to be getting busier than ever for Elite Bastards. The major operation for this weekend was to final finish off what will be the largest single review the site has undertaken thus far - It's taken a lot longer than I hoped to get around to and finished, so it's good to see it come to a close with a release slated for tomorrow. Then, by midweek we should have our GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB review out the door, which is another big plus. There'll be no rest for the wicked though, as we'll (hopefully) be previewing something new and unreleased motherboard-wise around Christmas Eve. All that, and there's still a huge backlog of work to churn through!

Anyway, the one thing I've been meaning to highlight in this 'Blog since the turn of the month is the latest visitor numbers for the site. Thanks to Quinn's moving the forums to their own dedicated server, and the change of our e-mail services to a third-party provider, we're now finally starting to find some headroom to eke a little performance out of, allowing us to serve more readers than previously. That, combined with some big-hitting articles for the month of November (two major GPU launches and the NVIDIA Crysis driver furore) drove our numbers through the roof, and saw our visitor numbers climb by over 35% compared to October, with our page views creeping towards the half million mark.

Overall, that sets us some pretty hefty targets to live up to for 2008, and I for one can't wait to see where the Elite Bastards adventure is going to take me next.

Anyhow, that's probably all my 'Blogging done for 2007 (unless I suddenly find myself inspired to jot something down), so now is the time to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year! Have a good one everybody...

Facebook and invading users privacy

Scary stuff...

Seeing as my 'Blog here is replicated on my Facebook profile, I figured I'd link this here - It's well worth a read if you want to know what Facebook are doing with your online surfing habits.