150 reviews and counting...

Today saw me publish our 150th review on Elite Bastards since introducing our current CMS system in February 2006. That's a lot of hardware in two and a half years! Now, let's see how quickly we can make it to 300...

It's Good to be Free

What's this, three months without a 'Blog update? One of the grand ironies of 'Blogging about your own life is that the more that you actually have to talk about, the less time you have to write about it because you're too busy living said life.

So, what's been going on with me? Well, firstly my 'real' job has been hitting some fantastic new heights, involving some very big contract wins for the system I manage and plenty of other growth along those lines, to the point where I'm now heading up a team of five rotating engineers who work alongside me to keep things running smoothly and leaving me to focus on 'the hard stuff'. The year so far has been a fantastic challenge on this front, and although it's had its rough moments (working until 1am to recover from some major software issues counting amongst them) I'm loving every minute of it. I do need to book myself some holiday though...

After another small period of reviewer's block, I'm now writing material for Elite Bastards pedal to the metal, with plenty of great things both recently reviewed and still on the table for the coming weeks to keep me on my toes. Again, things have been falling into place nicely there, and we're continuing to grow our readership month on month, making for yet more positive news.

Away from all that, my Facebook page has been taken over by the ramblings of a madwoman... And I like it. ;o) Most importantly of all though, as of a couple of days ago I'm now officially a free man once again, with the paperwork finally confirming that the bane of almost my entire adult life is now nothing but bad history (or should that be bad comedy?). Yokatta!

So, that's the past three months in a nutshell, ignoring the fact that it's been snowing in April and other bizarre goings-on. Will the second quarter of the year prove to be as exciting and eventful? Probably not, but one can only hope for more of the same...

Some Kinda Rush

Well, here we are, just a few short weeks into 2008, and already the year seems to be passing by at a million miles an hour. Ever since Big Ben struck midnight on New Year's Eve, everything seems to have been a blur of meetings, lunches, phone calls, passion, music and multimedia.

My 'real' job is bringing me more challenges by the day, from a presentation to the entire sales team of the company (which went down extremely well), to taking on additional staff to work under me on the project to which I'm assigned, leaving me free to build our offering, and thus its profitability, to new levels.

Elite Bastards is as busy as ever needless to say, with some new advertising opportunities coming my way, a huge amount of review hardware to enjoy and pile through, and plenty of other stuff to concern me with.

Then there's... Well, loads of other stuff going on with my life too. But that would be telling. ;o)

Thankfully, with what little downtime I get, there's a new season of anime fresh from Japan to see in the New Year, with Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Gunslinger Girl getting second seasons, and a couple of other interesting series either starting or on-going. Music-wise things have also been interesting too, with some very mainstream music actually (shock horror!) hitting the spot for me. Strange times indeed. Perhaps the A&R people have finally noticed that the vast majority of bands on MySpace are, in fact, shockingly bad with a fan base that is little more than a circle jerk, and (again, shock horror!) gone out to start finding talented artists again. Or maybe I just got lucky, who knows.

Anyway, that's where I'm at right now - After what the first half of January has had to offer, I'm very much looking forward to seeing what goodies the rest of it brings!