Wherever I lay my phone, that's my home

It had to happen and finally it has - I upgraded my phone! Gone is the shoddy, battered old Nokia 3310, and in its place is a shiny, fancy Nokia 6300. Hurrah!

I've also gone from Pay As You Go to a full-on contract, and changed my number so that only people I want to have it do (unlike my old mobile number, which was still known to all sorts of undesirables *cough*my ex-wife*cough*). Of course, if I don't hate you but you don't have my number yet due to my own absent-mindedness, drop me an e-mail and I'll let you have it.

Aside from that, this past weekend was taken up with two things which couldn't be more different. On the one hand, there was drinking copious amounts of wine while watching the Eurovision Song Contest, which is always good for several hours of hilarity. On the other, and taking up the rest of my weekend, was the far more serious business of sifting through 2GB of information, images and videos to put together an R600 architecture and technology preview for Elite Bastards. Delving into a new architecture is always both stressful and rewarding in equal measure, split between learning new things (which is always good) and fretting about whether you've got it right and covered all the salient points. All in all, I think I did a pretty decent job, and am actually glad I didn't have hardware testing to worry about directly alongside the 'science bit' - There's no way I could have produced 8,000 words and been as comprehensive if there had been benchmarking involved as well! Having said that, I'm now itching to get my hands on a board to match the theory with the practice.

Away from my hard work and motivation over the weekend, I'm really feeling very much burned out right now. My real job has been a very hard working slog lately, and it's left me generally drained when it comes to sitting down to test or write for EB (as you may have noticed by the content slowing up). The whole thing has reminded me that, earlier this year, I had both an additional hardware and games reviewer lined up for the site, both of whom have since disappeared without a trace or an article to their name. I could really do with some dedicated help, but that whole scenario has soured me somewhat to the idea of getting assistance outside of the awesome team of guys I have on staff already. We'll have to see I suppose.

If nothing else, I have a week off work coming up soon, with another to follow not long after, which should give me some much needed respite and chance to recharge my batteries. With any luck, the full version of Forza 2 should be out on the Xbox 360 by then - Have I mentioned my addiction to the demo yet? ;o)