Norwegian Wood

After such a flurry of 'Blog updates recently, I seem to have gone a little quiet all of a sudden, but at last I now have a few interesting things to talk about.

Firstly, this week I finished reading Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood - An absolutely fantastic book that I found myself relating to in a number of ways as well as finding it pretty deeply moving at times. It's one of those books you finish feeling that you've learned a little more about yourself and people you've had dealings with, but without being able to quite put a finger on what you've learned. Anyway, great stuff nonetheless. Next on my 'to read' pile is Ulysses by James Joyce, weighing in at a thousand pages of not exactly easy to read prose. I like a challenge though, so wish me luck!

Speaking of challenges, the ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe board I was provided to test Radeon X1900 CrossFire has finally proved to be a challenge too far for me - To put it simply, it's been a nightmare to work with, with some horrible Serial ATA-related instabilities and quirks that I finally can't continue trying to work around, so as I write this I'm rebuilding my nForce4 system so that I can get back to working and benchmarking at a better pace. Unfortunately, this means that the X1900 CrossFire article I've been promising for so long is now on the backburner again, but I should be updating the Elite Bastards test rig to a Core 2 Duo-based system in the coming weeks, which should put me back on track on that front.

The final item of note on my agenda is that I've sealed myself another article writing gig today, this time writing for the number one UK-based anime website UK Anime. I don't actually have anything to review just yet, but everything is basically agreed with the site owner so you should be seeing reviews by me popping up there every now and then too. The great thing about this is that I spend a fair bit of my free time watching anime anyway, so it'll be a nice change of pace to get to write about it too, while at the same time not cutting into my priorities at Elite Bastards in any discernible sense. In all honesty, I can't wait to get started to try my hand at something a little different!