Monday, March 20, 2006
Monday, March 13, 2006
Cold-blooded old times
As per usual, I have to start a Blog entry with an apology as to the lack of updates. And, as per usual, I will also proceed to blame said lack of updates on being busy and so on - I've been spending quite a lot of time benchmarking for various articles recently, to the point where I've built up something of a minor backlog of actual reviews to write! I have a couple on the go right now, so if I can motivate myself sufficiently, then you might see them both this week. All this is on top of my latest review for Beyond 3D, covering ASUS' EN7800GT TOP Silent, which as I'm sure I've mentioned before is hard work but a joy to write for as a site, and I really can't feel much more proud of my efforts than when something I've written shows up on the front page of Beyond 3D.
Last week saw me pick up a nasty bout of 'flu, which laid me low for a fair while - There's nothing I hate more than my brain being willing but my body refusing point-blank to be of any use, so I'm not the most fun person to be around when I'm sick. Luckily I'm over that now, and fighting fit again.
Things have been a little strained in my personal life of late too, with things going on that I'm really not sure I can mention publically. Anyhow, it's reached the point now where I feel I'm being taken for a ride and used and abused to suit other people's designs right now, so I'm basically going to sit back, stop thinking about it, take my hands off the wheel, and see what happens. At the end of the day, there's only so much pain and upset I can take before I have to simply walk away from a situation, no matter how loathe I am to do so. :(
Anyway, aside from that there isn't a whole lot else to say... Back to Elite Bastards, things are finally coming along with the CMS, we've had one or two other cool things crop up (Not least Scott Davey's console-related articles, which are superb, and as mentioned in my last quick Blog entry, succeeded in getting us Slashdotted), so all in all we're making progress, although still not quite where I'd like things to be. Something to keep working towards is always good though.
Last week saw me pick up a nasty bout of 'flu, which laid me low for a fair while - There's nothing I hate more than my brain being willing but my body refusing point-blank to be of any use, so I'm not the most fun person to be around when I'm sick. Luckily I'm over that now, and fighting fit again.
Things have been a little strained in my personal life of late too, with things going on that I'm really not sure I can mention publically. Anyhow, it's reached the point now where I feel I'm being taken for a ride and used and abused to suit other people's designs right now, so I'm basically going to sit back, stop thinking about it, take my hands off the wheel, and see what happens. At the end of the day, there's only so much pain and upset I can take before I have to simply walk away from a situation, no matter how loathe I am to do so. :(
Anyway, aside from that there isn't a whole lot else to say... Back to Elite Bastards, things are finally coming along with the CMS, we've had one or two other cool things crop up (Not least Scott Davey's console-related articles, which are superb, and as mentioned in my last quick Blog entry, succeeded in getting us Slashdotted), so all in all we're making progress, although still not quite where I'd like things to be. Something to keep working towards is always good though.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Reasons I don't spend much time in the Elite Bastards IRC channel #401
Topic is ' don't leave me alone here Quinn... arghh!!!!! * Hanners has left #sextorture *'
;)
;)
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Deadlines met, time to chill out a little...
As ever, I have to start this Blog entry by apologising for the lack of updates, but recent weeks have given me little to no time to sit down and do anything unrelated to work in some shape or form.
Thankfully, the results of all that hard work are now in the public domain, in the form of my 3DMark06 and Radeon X1900 XTX reviews. Despite how much I may moan about the amount of hours I had to put in on those two projects in this post, I can't really cover up the fact that I loved every minute of it... Playing with, testing and getting to grip with a new version of 3DMark is always an educational and informative experience, and it goes without saying to anyone who shares my level of geekiness that getting to find out about and then try out a new high-end video card is pretty much on top of the thrill-o-meter.
I won't wax too much lyrical about my day in London for the R580 briefing, but it was cool to catch up with Rys again (properly this time!), get to meet Dave Baumann at last (after I somehow missed him last time around, even though he was apparantly only sitting a couple of seats away at the AVIVO briefing in December!) and also meet Gary Jones, Club 3D's legendary lifesaver (to me anyway!) in the flesh, as well as a bundle of other people.
Anyway, after my exertions on those two articles I've been taking something of a breather for a few days to regain my composure - I have a few things I wouldn't mind investigating on the back of my recent work, so I'll probably plunge into something during next week. We also have a couple of other articles coming up which could prove pretty interesting too, but both of those are out of my hands. :)
Outside of Elite Bastards, there isn't much to report - Work has been somewhat busy lately, and I have a pay/performance review coming up, which will doubtless end in disappointment. I could really do with a week off soon, but I'm not sure if and well I'll get that sorted. I'm also looking at forking out a bundle of money on my car in the next few weeks, with an MOT coming up and it being in dire need of replacement brake pads. Truth be told, I really want to find myself something newer and better, but at the moment I just don't have the money in the bank.
Thankfully, the results of all that hard work are now in the public domain, in the form of my 3DMark06 and Radeon X1900 XTX reviews. Despite how much I may moan about the amount of hours I had to put in on those two projects in this post, I can't really cover up the fact that I loved every minute of it... Playing with, testing and getting to grip with a new version of 3DMark is always an educational and informative experience, and it goes without saying to anyone who shares my level of geekiness that getting to find out about and then try out a new high-end video card is pretty much on top of the thrill-o-meter.
I won't wax too much lyrical about my day in London for the R580 briefing, but it was cool to catch up with Rys again (properly this time!), get to meet Dave Baumann at last (after I somehow missed him last time around, even though he was apparantly only sitting a couple of seats away at the AVIVO briefing in December!) and also meet Gary Jones, Club 3D's legendary lifesaver (to me anyway!) in the flesh, as well as a bundle of other people.
Anyway, after my exertions on those two articles I've been taking something of a breather for a few days to regain my composure - I have a few things I wouldn't mind investigating on the back of my recent work, so I'll probably plunge into something during next week. We also have a couple of other articles coming up which could prove pretty interesting too, but both of those are out of my hands. :)
Outside of Elite Bastards, there isn't much to report - Work has been somewhat busy lately, and I have a pay/performance review coming up, which will doubtless end in disappointment. I could really do with a week off soon, but I'm not sure if and well I'll get that sorted. I'm also looking at forking out a bundle of money on my car in the next few weeks, with an MOT coming up and it being in dire need of replacement brake pads. Truth be told, I really want to find myself something newer and better, but at the moment I just don't have the money in the bank.
Friday, January 06, 2006
Belated Happy New Year
So, here we are - 2006. Still no hover cars, teleporters, Transformers arriving from 1986... All pretty boring isn't it?! I'm not much of a New Year person in all honesty, I don't buy into a lot of the ideas of making resolutions, clean slates and the like - For me, it's just a continuation of what went before, and if there are things you want to change about yourself or your life, then you should be doing it when you realise that something's wrong, not because there's a new number in the year. But, there you go, I'm just a killjoy like that.. ;o)
Having said that, the start of a New Year always seems to be a good opportunity to set new targets and review any you've made before. As far as Elite Bastards goes, I really feel we've made progress, even just in the last couple of months - I won't bore you with statistics, but we're slowly beginning to draw in more readers on a regular basis, and certainly our 'big' articles are getting more exposure, which can only be a good thing. To continue that growth, what we need is content, content, content, and good quality content at that. We certainly should have a couple of big hitting articles showing up in the coming weeks, and I'm really hoping (with some work on my part too) that said articles will help to snowball the reputation of the site as one worth reading and/or dealing with. On that matter, I saw something over the Christmas period which brought a huge grin to my face, but you guys will see it soon enough (If you haven't already for the chosen few ;o)).
The only fly in the ointment which I was hoping would be done and dusted by the time we entered 2006 is the lack of our new Content Management System, as we're at the point where doing things as we are currently is holding us back. Hopefully we'll get something together sooner rather than later though.
On a final point of Elite Bastards business, I'll be off to London one day next week. And that's all I can say on the subject right now.
Away from web site goings-on, my Christmas and New Year was pretty cool, but quiet. Killer present of the year for me was a DAB digital radio, which has seen me glued to BBC 6 Music whenever I get the opportunity - It's almost like they can read my mind and pick up my musical tastes whenever I tune in, it's uncanny.
As for what 2006 holds for me personally? Well, there are some intriguing happenings at the moment, so even I don't know where I'm going to end up by the time the year is out.
Having said that, the start of a New Year always seems to be a good opportunity to set new targets and review any you've made before. As far as Elite Bastards goes, I really feel we've made progress, even just in the last couple of months - I won't bore you with statistics, but we're slowly beginning to draw in more readers on a regular basis, and certainly our 'big' articles are getting more exposure, which can only be a good thing. To continue that growth, what we need is content, content, content, and good quality content at that. We certainly should have a couple of big hitting articles showing up in the coming weeks, and I'm really hoping (with some work on my part too) that said articles will help to snowball the reputation of the site as one worth reading and/or dealing with. On that matter, I saw something over the Christmas period which brought a huge grin to my face, but you guys will see it soon enough (If you haven't already for the chosen few ;o)).
The only fly in the ointment which I was hoping would be done and dusted by the time we entered 2006 is the lack of our new Content Management System, as we're at the point where doing things as we are currently is holding us back. Hopefully we'll get something together sooner rather than later though.
On a final point of Elite Bastards business, I'll be off to London one day next week. And that's all I can say on the subject right now.
Away from web site goings-on, my Christmas and New Year was pretty cool, but quiet. Killer present of the year for me was a DAB digital radio, which has seen me glued to BBC 6 Music whenever I get the opportunity - It's almost like they can read my mind and pick up my musical tastes whenever I tune in, it's uncanny.
As for what 2006 holds for me personally? Well, there are some intriguing happenings at the moment, so even I don't know where I'm going to end up by the time the year is out.
Friday, December 23, 2005
Did I say I was going to take a break...
..over Christmas? Scratch that - Something very cool has just fallen into my lap which is going to take up a fair bit of time... ;o)
Sunday, December 18, 2005
This is redirected mail...
Been a little while since I've made a proper Blog entry, things have been pretty busy the last few weeks, so there's a few things to catch up on.
Firstly, the Friday before last saw me attend my first ATI press event, a briefing in London about CATALYST 5.13 and AVIVO (The fruits of which you can read here). Hanging out with all the guys from the UK press was both overwhelming and daunting and very cool all at the same time - It's quite a head trip to meet those familiar names from the community like Fudo from The Inquirer and Rys from HEXUS (Who I probably owe some money for referring to Elite Bastards as 'the best domain name ever' at least half a dozen times in a ten minute period of introducing me to people ;)), as well as a handful of ATI guys like Andrzej, Godfrey and Richard Huddy. So, apart from feeling like the new boy in class amongst all those old hands, it was great to be part of the 'inner circle' as it were, and I'm hoping it won't be my last outing on the circuit. Now, if only NVIDIA would give me the time of day...
The big down side of the day was that I had to make a dash for the door pretty much as soon as the briefing was over (which meant I managed to miss getting a chance to say hi to Dave Baumann - D'oh!), to get back home and complete packing everything to move out of my old place early Saturday morning. Luckily, everything went smoothly (apart from breaking the sofa, which I didn't need anyway), and by Saturday evening all of my stuff was either back at my parents place or safely incarcerated in storage. Now, a week on, everything is just dandy, with my room here looking great and all my IT needs set up perfectly (better than it ever was at the bungalow). It's a big weight off my mind getting out of that dump and back here, and now I'm looking forward to entering 2006 with a renewed focus on the things that are important to me.
The past week has involved mainly sorting out the final parts of the move (mainly redirecting post, changing addresses for credit card bills and the like, hence the subject name from a Dubstar B-side), as well as working on the AVIVO article whenever I could. Saturday morning involved a race around the shops to sort out all of my Christmas shopping, which I sorted out with surprising ease. Then today has seen me working my arse off benchmarking a couple of boards to try and get the review out of the door before Christmas, as well as putting some sheen on a review from one of the other guys which should see the light of day in the next day or two. Once I'm done with writing up the video card review, there's one other short item I'd like to delve into before Christmas hits, after which I might even shock myself by taking a bit of a break for a few days (Although knowing me something else will pop up and grab my attention, and before I know it I'll be hammering away at another article).
Which brings me to tonight, and finally some proper time to kick back and relax by updating my Blog while listening to the new Belle and Sebastian album, The Life Pursuit - An excellent CD, possibly their best yet. Great stuff to chill out to.
Firstly, the Friday before last saw me attend my first ATI press event, a briefing in London about CATALYST 5.13 and AVIVO (The fruits of which you can read here). Hanging out with all the guys from the UK press was both overwhelming and daunting and very cool all at the same time - It's quite a head trip to meet those familiar names from the community like Fudo from The Inquirer and Rys from HEXUS (Who I probably owe some money for referring to Elite Bastards as 'the best domain name ever' at least half a dozen times in a ten minute period of introducing me to people ;)), as well as a handful of ATI guys like Andrzej, Godfrey and Richard Huddy. So, apart from feeling like the new boy in class amongst all those old hands, it was great to be part of the 'inner circle' as it were, and I'm hoping it won't be my last outing on the circuit. Now, if only NVIDIA would give me the time of day...
The big down side of the day was that I had to make a dash for the door pretty much as soon as the briefing was over (which meant I managed to miss getting a chance to say hi to Dave Baumann - D'oh!), to get back home and complete packing everything to move out of my old place early Saturday morning. Luckily, everything went smoothly (apart from breaking the sofa, which I didn't need anyway), and by Saturday evening all of my stuff was either back at my parents place or safely incarcerated in storage. Now, a week on, everything is just dandy, with my room here looking great and all my IT needs set up perfectly (better than it ever was at the bungalow). It's a big weight off my mind getting out of that dump and back here, and now I'm looking forward to entering 2006 with a renewed focus on the things that are important to me.
The past week has involved mainly sorting out the final parts of the move (mainly redirecting post, changing addresses for credit card bills and the like, hence the subject name from a Dubstar B-side), as well as working on the AVIVO article whenever I could. Saturday morning involved a race around the shops to sort out all of my Christmas shopping, which I sorted out with surprising ease. Then today has seen me working my arse off benchmarking a couple of boards to try and get the review out of the door before Christmas, as well as putting some sheen on a review from one of the other guys which should see the light of day in the next day or two. Once I'm done with writing up the video card review, there's one other short item I'd like to delve into before Christmas hits, after which I might even shock myself by taking a bit of a break for a few days (Although knowing me something else will pop up and grab my attention, and before I know it I'll be hammering away at another article).
Which brings me to tonight, and finally some proper time to kick back and relax by updating my Blog while listening to the new Belle and Sebastian album, The Life Pursuit - An excellent CD, possibly their best yet. Great stuff to chill out to.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Blog additions
Just thought I'd point it out for the less eagle-eyed amongst you - I've added a couple of things to the sidebar of this Blog in recent weeks. First up is the current state of play in my 'real' work Fantasy Football team (That's soccer to you American types). I was the office champion last season in a nail-biting finish, taking the overall lead by a meagre few points in the final week of the season. As you can see, my team (Fake Madrid, they'll always be in bold) have made a decent start to the season, and are currently sitting pretty at the top of the table. It's going to be tight though, so no room for complacency. ;)
The other item which I've added tonight is courtesy of music profiling site (and all-round 'cool thing') Last.FM, which now allows you to add HTML images showing your latest statistics wherever you please. So, I figured it would be cool to add a couple to my Blog sidebar, so you can see what tracks and artists I've been listening to for the past seven days. :o)
Anyway, I should have some cool and interesting things to write about in the coming few days, so keep your eyes peeled!
The other item which I've added tonight is courtesy of music profiling site (and all-round 'cool thing') Last.FM, which now allows you to add HTML images showing your latest statistics wherever you please. So, I figured it would be cool to add a couple to my Blog sidebar, so you can see what tracks and artists I've been listening to for the past seven days. :o)
Anyway, I should have some cool and interesting things to write about in the coming few days, so keep your eyes peeled!
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Dancing, laughing, drinking, loving...
Apologies for the lack of Blog updates, it's been a busy time for me lately. Focusing on recent events, last Friday was my new friend Katie's birthday, so I went out with her and a bunch of her friends for a night of drunken debauchery. Okay, so it wasn't quite like that... I wasn't drunk. ;o) That was then followed by waking up early(ish) the next morning to decorate what will become my room back at my parents place. Things are finally getting towards a manageable state on the move front, I'm pretty much organised apart from a handful of minor obstacles. Be warned though, I might be left without Internet access for a little while during the following few weeks, so don't worry if I disappear off the face of the planet for a while - I'll be back.
Things are equally busy on other fronts - Last week saw Beyond 3D publish my review of a couple of Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO boards, as you've probably already seen. It's always a pleasure to do some work for Dave, and the feeling of having an article up at a site which is quite simply the pinnacle of 3D hardware knowledge always gives me a real glow of achievement - It's kinda like being on Mastermind or something. ;o)
There's been no respite at Elite Bastards either - I published my review of the Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO² there today (What is it with me and those boards?!), and I should be having a couple of graphics boards show up in the next day or two for review, which should keep me juggling moving and benchmarking in an... 'Interesting' fashion. God knows how I'll pull it off, especially seeing as I have another little project that I think some of you will like that I want to sort out in the next couple of days.
The best news on the EB front lately was being shown a piece of what can only be described as 'fan mail' from someone pretty high up the hierachy at a well-known company. A quick e-mail in his direction, and things could be getting far more interesting on the sample and information front for us, all being well. So, hopefully we might be able to provide some far more comprehensive coverage of product launches very soon, fingers crossed. :o)
Having said that, the 'best news' moniker has been stolen away from that information these past couple of days, by the fact that a couple of our forum members have dug into their own pockets to donate to the site. It may sound overly emotional, but it puts a lump in my throat thinking that people are willing to part with their own hard-earned cash, entirely of their own free will, to fund our little Internet adventure. I've put a lot of time and work into various facets of the site over my time with Elite Bastards, but it's always been primarily for my own satisfaction and enjoyment (as well as helping out and empowering our readers, obviously) over any financial gain. So, it really means a lot that people think that we're worth something in cold, hard cash. That may sound weird, but that's just me.
Anyway, that's my quick catch up Blog for the day, I'm sure I've missed loads of stuff, but I'll hopefully be able to keep you all filled in during the run-up to Christmas, Internet connection permitting. :o)
Things are equally busy on other fronts - Last week saw Beyond 3D publish my review of a couple of Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO boards, as you've probably already seen. It's always a pleasure to do some work for Dave, and the feeling of having an article up at a site which is quite simply the pinnacle of 3D hardware knowledge always gives me a real glow of achievement - It's kinda like being on Mastermind or something. ;o)
There's been no respite at Elite Bastards either - I published my review of the Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO² there today (What is it with me and those boards?!), and I should be having a couple of graphics boards show up in the next day or two for review, which should keep me juggling moving and benchmarking in an... 'Interesting' fashion. God knows how I'll pull it off, especially seeing as I have another little project that I think some of you will like that I want to sort out in the next couple of days.
The best news on the EB front lately was being shown a piece of what can only be described as 'fan mail' from someone pretty high up the hierachy at a well-known company. A quick e-mail in his direction, and things could be getting far more interesting on the sample and information front for us, all being well. So, hopefully we might be able to provide some far more comprehensive coverage of product launches very soon, fingers crossed. :o)
Having said that, the 'best news' moniker has been stolen away from that information these past couple of days, by the fact that a couple of our forum members have dug into their own pockets to donate to the site. It may sound overly emotional, but it puts a lump in my throat thinking that people are willing to part with their own hard-earned cash, entirely of their own free will, to fund our little Internet adventure. I've put a lot of time and work into various facets of the site over my time with Elite Bastards, but it's always been primarily for my own satisfaction and enjoyment (as well as helping out and empowering our readers, obviously) over any financial gain. So, it really means a lot that people think that we're worth something in cold, hard cash. That may sound weird, but that's just me.
Anyway, that's my quick catch up Blog for the day, I'm sure I've missed loads of stuff, but I'll hopefully be able to keep you all filled in during the run-up to Christmas, Internet connection permitting. :o)
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
In a word... Argh!!
I think this explains it all.
Right now, my house has no power, and hasn't done since about 11am this morning. So, I'm sat here at my parents right now typing away from my laptop. Which is fine, except I have a bunch of news to post that I can't get to as it's stored away in Outlook on my main computer, and some work on an article for an NDA which expires tomorrow that is also out of bounds until the power comes back, which won't be until tomorrow morning some time.
Technology is great... Until the power goes out. :P
Right now, my house has no power, and hasn't done since about 11am this morning. So, I'm sat here at my parents right now typing away from my laptop. Which is fine, except I have a bunch of news to post that I can't get to as it's stored away in Outlook on my main computer, and some work on an article for an NDA which expires tomorrow that is also out of bounds until the power comes back, which won't be until tomorrow morning some time.
Technology is great... Until the power goes out. :P
Monday, November 14, 2005
Fitter, happier, more productive...
After my solely geek-related last entry, I figured I should really dedicate a post to how I'm doing right now. And the answer is - Pretty damn good. I'm sleeping better, exercising more (yes, that's right, exercise - I'm going for runs every evening, slowly building my fitness and stamina back to somewhere close to where they were a few years back), eating better, and generally doing well all round.
I move out of my place almost exactly a month from now, so a fair bit of my time has been taken up with trying to arrange everything - Clearing things out at my parents place, clearing things out here, arranging storage for the stuff I can't bring with me, decorating, and so on. But I'm really looking forward to leaving the dump I call my house now - It doesn't hold any real use for me now, so I can't wait to get the burden of it and bad memories that go with it off my hands. All of this has eaten up a fair bit of my reviewing and writing time, but don't worry, normal service will be resumed soon enough.
Anyway, it isn't all hard work for me - Friday night, my good friend Gemma came down from Southampton for the night, firstly to catch up on everything (I haven't seen her in the flesh in forever!) and secondly to take what would have been Tara's place going to see Jimmy Carr (a British stand-up comic, for you non-UK people) as I'd booked the tickets several months ago. If you like old-school gags and joke telling, and aren't easily offended, then it's great stuff and I thoroughly enjoyed it...
"I went to Ask Jeeves the other day. I asked Jeeves... Why is Google so much better?"
Then, of course, Saturday was the England - Argentina friendly, and one of the best games of football I've had the pleasure to witness (Helped of course by the fact that England won - Just). I've also been dedicating some 'me' time to ploughing through watching Lost - I got fed up of waiting each week for episodes in the UK to air, so I went off and found the US episodes. I finished Season One last night, so I'll probably start off the second series tonight. Good, intriguing stuff indeed.
Anyway, this seems as appropriate a place as any to finish with a word of thanks to all of you who've comiserated me, talked to me, worried about me or helped me out over the past few weeks, every one of your comments and thoughts were much appreciated. As you can hopefully see though, I'm doing just fine. ;o)
I move out of my place almost exactly a month from now, so a fair bit of my time has been taken up with trying to arrange everything - Clearing things out at my parents place, clearing things out here, arranging storage for the stuff I can't bring with me, decorating, and so on. But I'm really looking forward to leaving the dump I call my house now - It doesn't hold any real use for me now, so I can't wait to get the burden of it and bad memories that go with it off my hands. All of this has eaten up a fair bit of my reviewing and writing time, but don't worry, normal service will be resumed soon enough.
Anyway, it isn't all hard work for me - Friday night, my good friend Gemma came down from Southampton for the night, firstly to catch up on everything (I haven't seen her in the flesh in forever!) and secondly to take what would have been Tara's place going to see Jimmy Carr (a British stand-up comic, for you non-UK people) as I'd booked the tickets several months ago. If you like old-school gags and joke telling, and aren't easily offended, then it's great stuff and I thoroughly enjoyed it...
"I went to Ask Jeeves the other day. I asked Jeeves... Why is Google so much better?"
Then, of course, Saturday was the England - Argentina friendly, and one of the best games of football I've had the pleasure to witness (Helped of course by the fact that England won - Just). I've also been dedicating some 'me' time to ploughing through watching Lost - I got fed up of waiting each week for episodes in the UK to air, so I went off and found the US episodes. I finished Season One last night, so I'll probably start off the second series tonight. Good, intriguing stuff indeed.
Anyway, this seems as appropriate a place as any to finish with a word of thanks to all of you who've comiserated me, talked to me, worried about me or helped me out over the past few weeks, every one of your comments and thoughts were much appreciated. As you can hopefully see though, I'm doing just fine. ;o)
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
System upgrade time
Now I have more time and money afforded to me, and thanks to some irritating instability of my Pentium 4 system (When I say irritating, I mean random hardware-related reboots irritating, not stupid little application error irritating), I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and put some thought into upgrading my system. I wanted to build a machine that would last me into the future (Like that ever happens!), so here's what I ended up with.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+: As with many people right now, when it came to choosing a CPU my mind was caught between going for stellar single core performance, or more modest performance on a dual core platform. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that much of my time is spent on the desktop . On a quiet day, I'll have Outlook, Firefox and Azureus running, but it isn't unusual to have a lot more going on at one time - Take last night for instance, where in addition to the aforementioned applications I also had Excel, Frontpage, WinAmp, Paint Shop Pro, Notepad and a host of Windows Explorer windows open at one time. So, I opted to go dual core, and I haven't regretted it one iota - If the move to a HyperThreading capable CPU was a boost, the move to dual core is a giant leap. It's something you need to experience for yourself rather than have it explained to you, but things feel smooth!
Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboard: Picking a motherboard was an easy choice for me - I've been using the 'vanilla' A8N-SLI in my test system for some time without issue, with my only niggle being the annoyingly loud southbridge fan. The A8N-SLI Premium removes this issue thanks to a passively cooled southbridge, and throws in BIOS-level SLI switching as an added bonus. A stable, decent performing motherboard with all the features I wanted at a decent price made this a more than obvious choice.
2x BFG GeForce 7800 GT OC vieo cards (SLI): When it came to picking a video card, the decision was made easy for me for a number of reasons. Firstly, I already had one of these boards sat around waiting for review, so picking up a second identical card gave me the opportunity to run an SLI configuration for a real pixel-pushing behemoth. Secondly, much as I would have loved a Radeon X1800-based board to partake in anti-aliased floating point blending abilities and other feature packed goodness with, the price difference between an X1800 XL and the £200 BFG board was too much to stomach - The price:performance ratio of this part is simply unbeatable right now. And boy do these things perform! I don't remember having such a tingly feeling playing games since I moved from a Radeon 8500 to 9700 PRO some years ago - F.E.A.R. at 1280x960 with 4x AA, 8x AF and everything on maximum (Yesy, that includes soft shadows!) is a sight to behold, as was Call of Duty 2 last night at 1280x1024, 4x AA and 8x AF with everything maxxed out.
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatal1ty sound card: This was the biggest 'luxury' on my list, and to be honest I really haven't stretched its legs yet, but I felt that my old Audigy board was ageing and could probably do with something later and greater to take its place. The X-Fi certainly seems to have its share of nifty tools, and I haven't noticed any performance impact from sound effects in-game as I did on occasion with the Audigy, so I can't complain. The only downside right now is that I've found it impossible to get the optical output working, but that's a whole other story.
2GB Corsair XMS PC3200 RAM (CAS 2): We seem to be rapidly approaching a world where 1GB of RAM won't cut it, so this seemed as good a time as any to make the move to 2GB of memory. It's hard to appreciate how much difference the added RAM is making in the context of the whole system, but certain things certainly seem nippier when in the past there'd be a bout of hard disk thrashing, so I'd like to think it's done some good.
Enermax 535W SLI power supply: It's a power supply, and even I can't get excited about that! It has all the connectivity I need, adjustable fan speed, and it just works, which is all I ask of it. If it doesn't blow up and kill or electrocute me, then it's a good unit in my book.
So, there you have it - A little time and a lot of money later, I'm left with a system that I can be more than proud of - It performs great, feels responsive, and makes gaming more enjoyable than I remember in a long time... Mission accomplished!!
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+: As with many people right now, when it came to choosing a CPU my mind was caught between going for stellar single core performance, or more modest performance on a dual core platform. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that much of my time is spent on the desktop . On a quiet day, I'll have Outlook, Firefox and Azureus running, but it isn't unusual to have a lot more going on at one time - Take last night for instance, where in addition to the aforementioned applications I also had Excel, Frontpage, WinAmp, Paint Shop Pro, Notepad and a host of Windows Explorer windows open at one time. So, I opted to go dual core, and I haven't regretted it one iota - If the move to a HyperThreading capable CPU was a boost, the move to dual core is a giant leap. It's something you need to experience for yourself rather than have it explained to you, but things feel smooth!
Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboard: Picking a motherboard was an easy choice for me - I've been using the 'vanilla' A8N-SLI in my test system for some time without issue, with my only niggle being the annoyingly loud southbridge fan. The A8N-SLI Premium removes this issue thanks to a passively cooled southbridge, and throws in BIOS-level SLI switching as an added bonus. A stable, decent performing motherboard with all the features I wanted at a decent price made this a more than obvious choice.
2x BFG GeForce 7800 GT OC vieo cards (SLI): When it came to picking a video card, the decision was made easy for me for a number of reasons. Firstly, I already had one of these boards sat around waiting for review, so picking up a second identical card gave me the opportunity to run an SLI configuration for a real pixel-pushing behemoth. Secondly, much as I would have loved a Radeon X1800-based board to partake in anti-aliased floating point blending abilities and other feature packed goodness with, the price difference between an X1800 XL and the £200 BFG board was too much to stomach - The price:performance ratio of this part is simply unbeatable right now. And boy do these things perform! I don't remember having such a tingly feeling playing games since I moved from a Radeon 8500 to 9700 PRO some years ago - F.E.A.R. at 1280x960 with 4x AA, 8x AF and everything on maximum (Yesy, that includes soft shadows!) is a sight to behold, as was Call of Duty 2 last night at 1280x1024, 4x AA and 8x AF with everything maxxed out.
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatal1ty sound card: This was the biggest 'luxury' on my list, and to be honest I really haven't stretched its legs yet, but I felt that my old Audigy board was ageing and could probably do with something later and greater to take its place. The X-Fi certainly seems to have its share of nifty tools, and I haven't noticed any performance impact from sound effects in-game as I did on occasion with the Audigy, so I can't complain. The only downside right now is that I've found it impossible to get the optical output working, but that's a whole other story.
2GB Corsair XMS PC3200 RAM (CAS 2): We seem to be rapidly approaching a world where 1GB of RAM won't cut it, so this seemed as good a time as any to make the move to 2GB of memory. It's hard to appreciate how much difference the added RAM is making in the context of the whole system, but certain things certainly seem nippier when in the past there'd be a bout of hard disk thrashing, so I'd like to think it's done some good.
Enermax 535W SLI power supply: It's a power supply, and even I can't get excited about that! It has all the connectivity I need, adjustable fan speed, and it just works, which is all I ask of it. If it doesn't blow up and kill or electrocute me, then it's a good unit in my book.
So, there you have it - A little time and a lot of money later, I'm left with a system that I can be more than proud of - It performs great, feels responsive, and makes gaming more enjoyable than I remember in a long time... Mission accomplished!!
Thursday, October 27, 2005
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.
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.
Monday, October 24, 2005
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...
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...
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
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...
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...
Friday, October 14, 2005
Monday, October 10, 2005
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Weekend away et al
As most of you reading this will doubtless have already noticed, I got back from my short break on Monday afternoon. Those handful of days in Wales were definitely much needed to recharge my batteries, and just spend some time relaxing and chilling out - It was really nice to just have some time between me and Tara, with little in the way of the other distractions that tend to crop up in day-to-day life. I might put together a slideshow of pictures from the trip as an MSN Spaces slideshow to bore you all with some time, so be warned! ;o)
Thankfully I also have all of this week off work, so it's meant plenty of sleeping in, and has also given me time to finish off the Radeon X800GT review I started before I went away for Elite Bastards. If you're interested, I've just gone live with it here. I should be starting the mammoth task of my GeForce 7800GT review next, so don't be surprised if you find me rocking in a corner muttering 'No more benchmarks, no more benchmarks...' any time soon. ;o)
Away from all things Elite Bastards, there isn't much to report - I'm ridiculously obsessed with the new Boards of Canada album right now, which is quite frankly one of the best things I've heard. Ever... Not to mention being strangely cathartic and inspirational at the same time to my writing. This weekend I should also be going to see A History Of Violence with the wife - It looks good from the trailer I've seen, so I hope it doesn't disappoint.
So, there you have it, everything I can think of to say for now. :o)
Thankfully I also have all of this week off work, so it's meant plenty of sleeping in, and has also given me time to finish off the Radeon X800GT review I started before I went away for Elite Bastards. If you're interested, I've just gone live with it here. I should be starting the mammoth task of my GeForce 7800GT review next, so don't be surprised if you find me rocking in a corner muttering 'No more benchmarks, no more benchmarks...' any time soon. ;o)
Away from all things Elite Bastards, there isn't much to report - I'm ridiculously obsessed with the new Boards of Canada album right now, which is quite frankly one of the best things I've heard. Ever... Not to mention being strangely cathartic and inspirational at the same time to my writing. This weekend I should also be going to see A History Of Violence with the wife - It looks good from the trailer I've seen, so I hope it doesn't disappoint.
So, there you have it, everything I can think of to say for now. :o)
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Romantic and relaxing weekends
Well, this week is turning out to be a mixed one for me thus far. On the down side, I have a nasty cold right now, and if there's one thing I hate with a passion it's feeling ill. I've been fighting it all week, but today it finally got the better of me to the point of pissing me off.
However, the good news is that I have the next week and a half off work - Whoo-hoo!! What's even better is that tomorrow I'm leaving for a long weekend in South Wales with my wife, which should be a fabulously relaxing break for both of us. No laptops, no mobiles, just the two of us in a little cottage in the middle of nowhere, you can't get better than that. :o) I can't help but think of it as a kind of belated honeymoon, seeing as we didn't have anything of the sort when we got married in Las Vegas last year, and tied the knot in our last couple of days there.
Last weekend was also a pleasant one spent with the wife - On Saturday afternoon I took her to see AFC Bournemouth play for the first time, in what turned out to be an incident-packed game. Very enjoyable indeed, although an hour to get out of the car park was not so much so! Also, any facility which thinks that £3.40 for two bottles of Coke is reasonable needs their heads examining. Note to self - Smuggle in your own drinks next time! On Sunday, we went and spent some time with my parents and had a great meal there as always, and the majority of the rest of the weekend was just spent chilling out together. A simple but enjoyable time, and a great reminder of why I love spending time with Tara so much. :o)
Moving off in to the World of Elite Bastards, I've been working on testing for a Radeon X800 GT review most of this week - The benchmarks and the like are all done, so it's just a case of putting the actual content together when I get back from my break away. Perhaps a little more excitingly however, I've finally gotten my hands on a GeForce 7800-based board - Don't expect to see a review quickly for this one though, I intend on covering every angle I can with a fine-toothed comb. :o) I need to get hold of a relevant part to compare it to as well, but that's all in hand... :oP
I think that just about covers everything, I just wanted to get a few things down before I leave for Wales bright and early tomorrow. I'll be sure to tell you all about it, and bore you with pictures of fields and sheep, when I return early next week! ;o)
However, the good news is that I have the next week and a half off work - Whoo-hoo!! What's even better is that tomorrow I'm leaving for a long weekend in South Wales with my wife, which should be a fabulously relaxing break for both of us. No laptops, no mobiles, just the two of us in a little cottage in the middle of nowhere, you can't get better than that. :o) I can't help but think of it as a kind of belated honeymoon, seeing as we didn't have anything of the sort when we got married in Las Vegas last year, and tied the knot in our last couple of days there.
Last weekend was also a pleasant one spent with the wife - On Saturday afternoon I took her to see AFC Bournemouth play for the first time, in what turned out to be an incident-packed game. Very enjoyable indeed, although an hour to get out of the car park was not so much so! Also, any facility which thinks that £3.40 for two bottles of Coke is reasonable needs their heads examining. Note to self - Smuggle in your own drinks next time! On Sunday, we went and spent some time with my parents and had a great meal there as always, and the majority of the rest of the weekend was just spent chilling out together. A simple but enjoyable time, and a great reminder of why I love spending time with Tara so much. :o)
Moving off in to the World of Elite Bastards, I've been working on testing for a Radeon X800 GT review most of this week - The benchmarks and the like are all done, so it's just a case of putting the actual content together when I get back from my break away. Perhaps a little more excitingly however, I've finally gotten my hands on a GeForce 7800-based board - Don't expect to see a review quickly for this one though, I intend on covering every angle I can with a fine-toothed comb. :o) I need to get hold of a relevant part to compare it to as well, but that's all in hand... :oP
I think that just about covers everything, I just wanted to get a few things down before I leave for Wales bright and early tomorrow. I'll be sure to tell you all about it, and bore you with pictures of fields and sheep, when I return early next week! ;o)
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