It's been a while...

My God, I haven't updated this in an age!! :oO

To be honest, the reason why is that I really don't have much to report at the moment, things are just ticking along without anything too spectacular happening. Maybe I'll have some more exciting things to say in the next two or three weeks, but we'll have to see on that count. :oP (I feel like I always say this in every Blog entry, but nothing seems to come of it all that often!)

Elite Bastards is.... Well, Elite Bastards. As always, things in the pipeline, a pile of as yet unreviewed hardware on my desk, and hopefully bigger, better things to look forward to (Although still no 7800 GTX!). At the moment I'm working on an article on NVIDIA's SLI anti-aliasing, which to be honest is probably one of the most in-depth things I've done in a while. It's shaping up pretty nicely though, and if I'm disciplined I might just get it done and dusted by the end of this week.

Away from all that, last week saw me take a week of work, which turned out to be very relaxing - It was great to be able to spend a full week with Tara, on days out or just lounging around. It really recharged my batteries somewhat, so hopefully I'll be able to take another week or so in September to enjoy some more time away from the office and all of the boredom that entails. :oP And yes, that is me admitting that I miss full-time hardware reviewing. ;o)

Weird dreams and the 7800

I knew there was something I'd forgotten about in my last Blog entry, and now I've remembered it...

You know you're thinking about video cards way too much when you end up dreaming about them at night. Yep, that's right, I had a GPU-related dream... About SLI to be more precise. The weirdest part is, there weren't actually video cards in my dream, SLI seemed to be represented by two snakes - One was green and one was blue. I'm not sure what they were doing exactly, but people around me were clearly referring to them being together as some form of SLI. No, I don't know what it means subconsciously either. And no, I wasn't smoking anything.

Looking at more of the GeForce 7800 GTX reviews around the web the past few days has made me realise two things:

1. I really want one to review
2. I need a monitor with a higher maximum resolution than 1600x1200

I'm not sure quite why I have such an urge to check one out right now considering that there isn't a lot new feature-wise to see on it (Transparancy anti-aliasing aside), I guess I'm just a whore for new hardware. Oh well, I'll just cross my fingers and see what comes up. :o)

On a final note, why does the rain always seem to wait until the weekend? :o| At least I've finally gotten around to booking some time off work about a month from now, which means you guys either won't be seeing very much of me between the 18th-22nd July, or you'll be seeing an insane amount of me while I plough through content aplenty. I wouldn't hold your breath for the latter though. ;o)

Longest day (+ 1)

Well, it doesn't feel like almost a month since my last Blog post, but apparantly it is so... Oops.

The World of Elite Bastards has been full of some somewhat exciting happenings recently. NVIDIA didn't answer any of my e-mails trying to get hold of G70 information, but thankfully that didn't stop me getting hold of it all anyway. :o) Hopefully my efforts might stand me in better stead with them next time around, although I won't hold my breath. I've also put a little time into trying to build up relationships with AIB partners of (specifically NVIDIA) at the moment, and have hopefully made some steps in the right direction.

More importantly, the other even more exciting thing at EB which I'm nurturing has moved another step closer to fruition - I can chase it down a little more now the G70 article is out of the way, so hopefully soon I can start talking about it a little more. There's also a third 'pretty cool' thing which is a bit of a work-in-progress content wise, so hopefully that can move towards its actual 'getting an article together' stage soon. On top of all that, I still have a fair old pile of hardware to review, and quite probably at least one item to give away to a lucky reader!

Finally, Quinn is currently working on a Content Manaagement System for the site - It looks like a dream to me right now, with everything I need and then some. Again, hopefully that's something we can start showing off sooner rather than later once we've got it how we want it.


Away from EB, I saw Sin City, and it was the single most fantastic movie of the year so far. I'm not even going to bother waxing lyrical about it, just go and see it for yourself if you haven't already. War of the Worlds is the next movie on mine and Tara's 'to see' list, so we'll probably go and catch that on its opening weekend.

This past Saturday I was in London with the wife, being cultured and stuff - We went to Tate Modern to catch the Frida Kahlo exhibit going on there. Some fantastic works of art on show there, I was seriously impressed. We also spent some time shopping (Well, her shopping and me paying), and I also took her to see my spiritual home for the first time - Highbury, current home of Arsenal football club that is. She has a hugely embarrassing picture of me acting like an idiot in front of it as her current desktop backdrop, but no, I'm not going to let any of you see it. Ever. It would have been a perfect day, had it not been so damned hot! Pushing through crowds of sweaty people on the tube in the heat quickly loses its novelty value, I can tell you.

I'm sure there were a load of other things I meant to add here, but I can't think of them. Who knows, mabe it'll stand me in good stead when it comes to updating this thing more frequently?

Moving on up

Not a lot to report, but I felt like I really should put something in my Blog to close off the month.

I'm nearly finished with my GeForce 6600GT review. Honest. Well, kinda. Hopefully I'll be done with it this week, if not I should be lynched. Away from that, I knocked out a brief CrossFire preview today to keep up with the Joneses. I'm also sat on some other pretty interesting information that I can't talk about, plus another opportunity for Elite Bastards that I'm very excited about. It could be a great stride forward for us as a site, and also pull us out in some new and intriguing directions. I don't want to reveal anything until I actually have guarantees in hand, but I'll keep you guys posted. :o) While we're talking EB gossip, the coming weeks will hopefully see the beginning of a redesign of the site. Again, I'm excited, although I do need to sit down and put the suggestions people have made together into a cogent plan on things we should look at doing.

Away from the site, things have been ticking along pretty reasonably. Arsenal won the FA Cup, and very undeservedly so, work is busy (But never too busy ;o)) and I have both the new Coldplay and Royksopp albums (Both of which I'm undecided on as far as my 'like-o-meter' goes). Went and saw Star Wars: Episode 3 on the opening night - I think my wife enjoyed it more than me, but it was still the best of the latest trilogy by far. To my shame, I laughed at one point where I was supposed to be upset... My wife will never let me near children again now I fear. :o( We'll probably try to catch Sin City this weekend (Yes, the UK sucks for movie releases), although I have a nasty feeling it's going to be a case of style over substance.

As a final point, I need a holiday - Anywhere know of a good place to stay in Wales, in the Cardiff area preferably?

Don't Believe The Truth

Well, the main URL to my Blog is finally fixed after seemingly vanishing for a while - It turns out all I had to do was republish it, but I've been too lazy to do so until today. :oP

Not a great deal else to comment on really, life is just ticking along as per usual. On the Elite Bastards side of things, work is piling up - I have three video card reviews on the go now!! :oO Again, laziness is largely to blame, but hopefully I'll knuckle down to at least one of the reviews soon, I really want to get my look at a GeForce 6600GT out of the door soon. Fingers crossed I may be able to take a look at SLI in the coming months as well!

The other reason for my lack of working on EB content has been building a PC for my Dad, who has finally (scarily) decided to enter the information age. I'll be installing the whole set up at the weekend, but I'm mightily impressed with what I've been able to put together for him for just £350 - A Pentium 4 2.8GHz, 512MB of RAM, top-of-the-range NEC DVD writer (Another item which is kind of on my 'to review' list, I have a second unit available to me) and a 17" TFT. Despite being packed into a cheap case it all looks pretty sweet, so I hope he'll be impressed. And, more importantly, I hope he won't keep breaking things, I think I'll set up Remote Assistance on it just in case. ;o) It also managed to impress the wife with my PC building skills ('You managed to build a pretty PC from that box of stuff that got delivered yesterday?', she swooned :oP), which is always good. ;o)

Today's entry title comes from the name of the new Oasis album, which I finally got around to listening to last night, and I was pleasantly surprised by. It seems like a real break from all of their work before, it has a far more structured and melancholy feel to it rather than the usual 'anthemic' qualities of their stuff. I used to be a big Oasis fan, but was disappointed by everything post 'Be Here Now' - 'Don't Believe The Truth' feels like a true return to form for me. Talking music, I'm (im)patiently waiting for the new Coldplay album to make an appearance - In the meantime I've been listening to the new Gorillaz album (Not too bad) and a 2 CD live compilation of Kraftwerk stuff (Can't go wrong with them) to amuse myself. Oh, and the third OST to Naruto, which (in places) rocks. :o)

Today's Doctor Who episode...

..Brought to you courtesy of Hanners....


Attack of the Zombie Bears

Will Firefox win the browser war?

With all the hype surrounding Firefox in recent times, anyone would think that it was ready to conquer the mountain that is Internet Explorer in the next few months. Of course, that isn't the case, and to be honest I've poo-pooed the idea of Firefox taking any massive stranglehold in the browser market... Until last Thursday.

Last Thursday, as part of my job, I had to visit the home of one of the company I'm contracted out to's directors to fix a problem they had with dialling in to the work systems via Terminal Services. Now, this guy is clueless about computers, beyond the basics he's lost in a sea of technical jargon. But, I fire up this guys home PC, and what do I find as the default browser? Yep... Mozilla Firefox. On further questioning, I find that he'd read and heard from friends (Other relatively IT illiterate friends too) that it was a better, safer browser, and so he'd gone and installed it, was using it and (most importantly of all) enjoying the experience. If guys like this are getting the Firefox bug, then we really could be looking at a revolution in the browser wards. I was genuinely shocked by what I saw that day, but also very happy to see such things occuring.

In other news, me and Tara have been together for 43 months today!! I would use the term 'anniversary', but I know somebody reading this who wouldn't like it... :oP

A blast from the past

I spent part of my morning at work today installing and configuring a CD-ROM drive on a Windows 3.11-based system - Talk about retro! It's been years since I've so much as touched Windows 3.1, I was pleasantly surprised that I remembered all the necessary items (as well as managing to remember the jumper configuration for an absolutely ancient 300MB Maxtor hard drive - How sad am I?!).

What really shocks me is that the company I work at still relies on these kinds of system and software which point blank refuses to run on anything over and above Windows 3.11. This is in-house software too, which people have had.. Oooh, over ten years to update - But do they? Do they Hell!! Nope, instead they bitch to the IT department about how we no longer allow such systems on our corporate network or how they're incompatible with our Active Directory setup. Ah well, c'est la vie....

Outside of that amusing distraction, life is cool enough really, minus some Elite Bastards-related stress today - Although the ending of the saga in question wasn't the ideal one from our point of view, hopefully it still leaves everybody relatively happy. Nothing is worth messing up friendships or burning bridges over is my philosophy, and I'd like to think it's served me well here. Now, what I really need is for someone to whip me around the skull with something heavy until I get to work on the review which is sat waiting for me. Perhaps they can whip me around the skull with a PCI Express GeForce 6800GT, I could do with one for a little while soon? :oP

My thoughts on bias and 'pay-offs'

Well, The Inquirer certainly stirred up a hornets nest with their rant about the online hardware reviewing world - It's spawned threads here and there, and caused the likes of Anand from Anandtech no less to indirectly respond to some of Charlie Demerjian's thoughts in his Blog.

As someone who has reviewed hardware for three sites ranging from small to (albeit briefly) huge, I obviously have a fair few thoughts and some experience in the matter myself, so I figured I may as well put finger to keyboard and say a few words.

First up, Charlie mentions the dreaded NDA, something which, to be honest, nobody who wants to be on the forefront of the industry can go without signing. I've been under a few of these myself, and they can be a frustrating experience. Take ATI's HyperMemory launch, where a date was given for the NDA to expire upon its signature, which was then moved at the very last moment. Or 3DMark05, where the two major IHVs both released new 3DMark05 compliant drivers less than 24 hours before the NDA lifted for the benchmark. It's all about playing the PR game on the side of the companies involved (Although I'm not blaming FutureMark for the 3DMark05 issue, it was all down to ATI and NVIDIA), but at the end of the day it not only makes life difficult for us reviewers, it makes informing our readers as accurately as possible nigh-on impossible too. Carrying on with my 3DMark05 scenario, I had a massive number of benchmark results already recorded, and recreating all of these with two new drver sets would have been an impossible mission even had I been working full-time on said article. Thus, I was left with a dilemma as to whether to publish the article as is with 'old' results, or wait until I had the latest results available for the video cards I was using. In the end, I decided the article was more about 3DMark itself than the results, so I ran with it. Was I right to do so? I'm still not sure.

We witnessed a similar crisis around a number of sites this week with Intel's dual core Pentium Extreme Edition launch, which was pushed forward at the last minute. This left a lot of sites with half-baked, incomplete articles and no time to draw out the full picture either for themselves or their readers. Is that really helping anyone? Intel may feel it was a PR victory to introduce the first dual core parts to the community, but the subsequent rushed articles may well not have done the part the justice and fanfare it deserved. But who is to blame? Intel for moving the NDA expiry date, or the various web sites for rushing to comply with the change and release content early, rather than simply doing so 'when it's done'? Again, that's a question for others to answer, because I honestly can't say what I'd do in the same situation.

Which brings us to the more serious allegations, of bias and 'pay-offs' from vendors to certain sites, be they physical or psychological. I may be naive, but I find it very hard to believe that any online hardware sites are currently accepting money in return for positive reviews - In the past, maybe, but I can't imagine this kind of pratice going on in 2005.

A more 'psychological' form of being paid off however, I can believe. PR people are there to make the likes of us hardware reviewers feel like kings, while at the same time trying to ensure their products get positive press. This heady mix can often lead to journalists unwittingly becoming mouthpieces for a particular company, and end up with them being manipulated by a PR department without them even knowing it. These kinds of 'special relationship' are usually pretty easy to spot, and I'm sure even I don't need to name names for some of you to know the kind of thing I'm referring to. This is the reason why HEXUS tried to keep the vendors and reviewers as far away from one another as possible at all times, with all arrangements and information regarding hardware going through a central point - It stops these kind of relationships from forming, and thus helps to guarantee the impartiality of the individual reviewer. Of course, you can't separate the two entities completely, but the more the link is shortened the less of a problem it can be.

For me personally, the biggest issue in the reviewing community isn't bias, nor is it being 'paid off', but is in fact something which can often lead to accusations of either of these. No, the big problem is simply - Lack of knowledge. Think of the number of times you've read a review with a massive factual error around which its conclusions are based or, even worse, reviews which read in a horrifyingly similar fashion to the products press release. I often hear the 'f' word (fanboy) thrown at such reviews, but it seems to me that a lack of understanding is usually the key. And to be honest, it's perfectly understandable - While working at HEXUS I looked at a massive variety of products, and had to adapt to a lot of new things, and it really isn't easy - Indeed, I remember having to sit down for a good half hour one afternoon talking with another staff member over the basics of... Cooling fans. Not CPUs or video cards.. Cooling fans. If you really want to write great reviews, you need to know everything about everything, and however much you strive for it that status is, quite frankly, impossible.

There are no simple answers to these dilemmas for us as hardware reviewers, but things are much simpler for you readers out there - If you want to read about a particular subject, take in as many different articles from different sites about it as you can, and form your own opinions from what you've read. When you throw everyones ideas into the melting pot, chances are you'll be left with a far more complete picture of what you were reading about. It's why I link to every review I can find on Elite Bastards' front page when a product is launched - It isn't so people can click on the link for their favourite site, it's so they can take their fill of information about the product.

Weird times, but better times

So, since my low point a couple of weeks ago, things have been much easier for me - I hesitate to use the word 'better', as it's really just involved me putting my worries and concerns on the back burner in the knowledge I have to deal with them, and soon.

The long weekend over Easter was fantastic though, and I thoroughly enjoyed it - Me and Tara didn't do anything all that special, but we spent the whole time hanging out together and generally enjoying one another's company and it made for a wonderful time, a real tonic after the weekend that had gone before.

Away from that, work has been ticking along at the usual pace. The most frustrating thing currently is that my work on content for Elite Bastards has basically stopped in its tracks, I've simply not had the willpower to do anything EB-related recently, but hopefully once all my problems are sorted then I can get back to churning out some more material.

Finally, I really have to thank everyone reading this who left words of support for me either here or through other means after my last entry - It means a lot to me to know I have you guys' support and friendship at a time like this, and I really appreciate and treasure it. So, thanks again, it's good to know there are people like you around. :o)

I had a bad weekend....

Very bad... Probably life-changingly so. I really can't talk about it any more right now, but we'll see what happens over the coming days and weeks. Right now though I'm distraught, really I am. :o(

Time for a change

I finally got bored of the old Blog template style I was using, so I've switched to a new one - It's simpler, but feels a bit neater and 'cleaner'. I guess you could also call it boring, but oh well... I'm not entirely convinced that anyone much reads this regularly anyway, although you're always welcome to prove me wrong with a plethora of comments. :oP

Playing catch up

If there's one thing I haven't had much time for this past couple of months, it's been anime watching - My wife loves Japanese culture at least as much as me, but I haven't been able (OK, so I haven't tried) to drag her into any of the shows I watch. Anyway, over the past week or so I've been making time (in my lunch breaks and the like) to catch up on things - I'm now up to speed on Bleach (Well, apart from Episode 23, but I'm waiting for the Lunar Anime fansub on that count), and am on my way to catching up with Naruto too - I watched up to Episode 122 last night, and my wife is in London with friends until late tonight, which should allow me time for a mini-Naruto marathon. :oP

It feels somewhat wrong to be persevering with Naruto now it's been licensed - Theoretically speaking, I should be deleting the lot and waiting for an official release. But, unlike most anime, Naruto is unlikely to make it to the West in all its glory. Simply put, it is (Like Pokemon, Digimon, DragonBallz et al) a marketing man's dream. And who do marketing men love the most? Children, that's what. I think it's safe to assume that the Naruto that ends up airing in the US/UK will be shorn of any blood, gore and death, probably to the point of having entire episodes or plotlines removed. Recent episodes have seen the death of many a main character, something all but unthinkable to the marketing people over here (Imagine the controversy of killing Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie, and create it over and over on a weekly basis) - Is that really going to fly in the Western market? It'll be interesting to see what happens to the series as it transitions to the West, but I can't help but be pessimistic.

Outside of anime, everything is good enough. I finally got my X850 XT review done, and also managed to knock up a look at ATI's plans for 2005. I really should be looking towards my next reviews and articles instead of watching copious amounts of anime tonight, but.. Well... Tough. :oP I'll get around to it soon enough, I promise. Now CeBit is over, I'm also waiting for... Well, I'm not sure what to be honest. But something. I don't even know if it's good or bad, just something, and I know someone who might be reading this who knows the answer. :oP Oh well, patience is a virtue that I'm slowly learning to co-exist with, so I suppose I'll just have to wait and see...

2MB broadband and hardware aplenty

It happened a day earlier than I was expecting, but I now have a 2MBit ADSL connection in my house, thanks to Nildram's new offerings. In July, all of their customers get regraded to 2MB (assuming their line can handle it) regardless, but for just shy of £13 they'll do the job right away. Of course, I couldn't resist, and put in my order at the tail-end of last week. I was given an activiation date of today, but last night found myself sitting pretty with a higher connection speed. I haven't really stretched its legs yet, but it certainly felt nice while I was downloading Catalyst 5.3... :o)

On the reviewing front, I finally polished off the article from one of our forum members last night, so that went live today. I have no excuse not to start on my next big review now, and I really need to get a move on with it, seeing as I've secured another couple of video cards for review, which'll be going head-to-head with one another. I'm intrigued as to how the two boards will shape up after having seen all the marketing, so I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into them. You guys will have to wait and see what I'm talking about, although some of you should be able to guess already. :oP

In an ideal world, I really want to review the ASUS SLI motherboard I picked up, but it really doesn't feel right to even attempt to review an nForce4 SLI board without testing its SLI capabilities. I also have to question myself as to what exactly should be tested benchmark-wise on a modern motherboard - When you take a look around most reviews and find a set of largely theoretical results that show little differentiation between different boards, you have to wonder what the point is, perhaps it's better to concentrate largely on feature set. So, I think that one can take a place on the back burner for now, but it's still something to think about for the future.

Away from the whole computer hardware and Elite Bastards thing, life and love are going just swimmingly still, although with nothing spectacular to report. It's actually been a quiet week all things considered.

Six months and NDAs

Monday was mine and Tara's six month wedding anniversary - Maybe nothing special in the grand scheme of things, but to me it seems like an important milestone. Considering all the stories of rough rides I'd heard from others, the whole six-month period has gone fantastically smoothly, give or take the odd tiny bump or two. I seriously can't imagine myself being any more happy or content than this - I know I must go on about it in basically every single Blog entry, but I still can't get over how things have changed for me over the past few years, all thanks to one person. :o)

In other news, the NDA for ATI's HyperMemory technology expired yesterday (as anyone who saw my article will have realised), although to my minor irritation it was pushed forward a couple of days at virtually the last minute, leaving me with only a couple of hours to polish off what I'd done so far and pour all of the rest of my thoughts into the article. All in all, it came out pretty well all things considered, seeing as I was all but ready to forget the NDA lifting time and simply publish it "When it's done". It may not be the most interesting technology in the universe, but it was still article-worthy to my mind and it was nice to be on 'the inner circle' of these things for once. :oP The experience has piqued my interest in how these low-end boards and their memory sharing technologies perform in the real world as well, so maybe that's one for the future. :o) The next article on my 'to do' list for Elite Bastards is a biggie, but I want to get it done sooner rather than later. I also have in my possession another intriguing article written by a contributor which I'll try to get out the door this week once I've cleaned it up and sorted out some charts.

Nothing much else to report really - Work is ticking along as per usual, Tara drank way too much watching Chelsea win the Carling Cup, Bill Murray and William Dafoe were both great in 'The Life Aquatic' and... err.... that's it really.

Iran jails blogger for 14 years

Reading a story like this is certainly enough to make me glad I live where I do...

"An Iranian weblogger has been jailed for 14 years on charges of spying and aiding foreign counter-revolutionaries.

Arash Sigarchi was arrested last month after using his blog to criticise the arrest of other online journalists."

Happiness

Another big gap between Blog updates, but there hasn't been all that much to talk about lately - Just a slow, steady stream of happiness and contentedness.

Work has been busy (And probably worthy of some cheap, tacky documentary - When Transitions To Active Directory Go Wrong), but never to hair-pulling-out extremes. It seems to have been an unlucky couple of weeks, with failure after failure of systems, hardware, etc, but we seem to be over the worst of it now so maybe things will quiten down. Aside from that, I've loved being back - I honestly didn't realise how much I missed hearing a 'thank you' from someone on completing a job, it just seems to make it all worthwhile. The reintroduction of deep analysis of the football from the night/weekend gone by has been a big bonus as well.

I've also enjoyed my reintroduction to the fullness of the Elite Bastards fold over the past few weeks as well, I swear it's one of, if not the, best communities there is. It really is a joy to post news and articles there and see the responses and debates that follow, it makes the whole process worthwhile.

Finally, life at home is very good - Tara has (understandably) had a few pangs of homesickness this past week, but we're both very happy with everything right now, and I love spending every free moment with her. We spent last night watching 'Saw' on DVD - A pretty good movie, but still kind of a poor man's 'Se7en'. Mind you, 'Se7en' is probably one of my top five movies, so it would take a Hell of a lot to knock it from its lofty perch. I also shelled out on the new Doves album, which I haven't listened to properly but sounded pretty good, and also 'Dead Or Alive Ultimate' for the X-Box - The opportunity to let my wife beat seven shades out of me was too much to pass up... ;o)

Love is in the air...

It's Valentine's Day today (R.I.P. to anyone who has forgotten ;o) ), so I believe the law requires that I mention love in the subject title here. Anyway, today is my first day back in my new old job (Read the post below if that confuses you) - It's great to be back among friendly, familiar faces, and in an environment where you can interact with people away from just phones, e-mails and MSN. I'm not the most sociable person in the World normally, so I surprised myself saying this, but I really missed the human interaction element of working from home. I've spent most of the morning catching up on what's being going on at work the past couple of months, as well as trying to configure myself a new PC here in the office - And boy have I ended up with a crap one! Oh well, it's not like I need anything all-singing all-dancing I suppose.

As of Saturday my wife had been in England three weeks now, and everything is still going beautifully - Every day is a joy to partake in. We've had some great days out, great days in, and I only wish I could be at home for Valentine's Day... I guess I didn't plan that one out so well! Still, I had a bunch of roses delivered to the house not long after I left, and also left her with an 'Andy replacement' in the form of a cuddly toy. I fear I've lost my place in bed now!! :oP

Website-wise, I've taken my leaving HEXUS as a chance to re-evaluate and look to the future of Elite Bastards. I think, when it comes down to it, that I'm something of a control freak, and I need the relaxed atmosphere where I can basically do what I want to produce my best work. It hasn't taken long for the writing flame in me to resurface, and although I won't have that much free time any more I have quite a few plans for what I want to do there as the year progresses. I'm already working on getting the test rig side of things up to scratch, with today seeing the arrival of... Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it? ;o) I also got hold of some great stuff last week as well, so keep your eyes peeled. I hope it'll be an exciting time on that front, both for myself and anyone else involved in the site, be they staff or readers.

So, I'll leave you all with Valentine's Day wishes and I hope everyone reading this, single or otherwise, has a good one.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss....

Wow, what a couple of weeks it's been... Busy would be an understatement. A couple of weeks ago, I moved into my new place, so a lot of time has been spent getting things together to make the house into a home (Including a lot of self-assembly items - My hands still have the cuts and bruises!). Things are finally coming together, and I have a sofa/couch turning up tomorrow which will be another step closer to completing the jigsaw.

On the 22nd, I had to travel to London to meet my wife at Heathrow. Waiting for what seemed like forever while she went through customs and getting her baggage was nearly a soul-destroying experience, but was more than made up for by finally getting to see her again.. And for good this time. The past week has consisted almost solely of the two of us spending every waking (and sleeping) second together, I don't think we've been more than a few feet apart at any one time. Although the magnitude of the situation still hasn't really sunk in for either of us yet, I really can't describe how happy I am right now - There simply isn't a word for how being around Tara day in, day out makes me feel, it really is the best.

Finally, on the big news front, I quit HEXUS a couple of weeks ago. With my wife here, I don't want to spend long evenings when I should be with her slaving over editorial, and it was pretty clear that the HEXUS job would involve a lot of that. Secondly, I quickly realised that I wouldn't be able to support myself and Tara properly financially from working for them full-time. Thus, a couple of quick phone calls to my former boss, and I was soon invited back to work where I was before at better pay and on some more exciting new projects. I start back there a couple of weeks from now, which hopefully gives me chance to finish all my outstanding HEXUS work and spend some more time with my wife to boot! I'm kind of sad in some ways that reviewing/writing full-time didn't work out, and I had great fun getting to try out the hardware I did, but my private life and family is way more important than satiating the geek in me. It's something I'd try again though, but I think the circumstances would have to be hugely different to those I encountered this time around. Maybe if I win the lottery I'll give it another crack on my own terms... :oP

At the end of last week I finally got broadband back into my life, as my 1Mbit service was transferred to my new address. I'm very tempted to move up to the 2Mb feed available at this new property, but I'm holding out for the time being. This morning a whole load of 802.11g kit that I'd ordered turned up, so today so far has mainly involved me getting that all set up... I'm done now, and I have to say that it feels good to have a completely wires-free 54Mbps network. Everything was beautifully easy to set up, and all in all it took me no time at all to get to exactly where I wanted to be network topology-wise. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of downloading to catch up on... ;o)

I hold in my hand....

...the key to our bungalow. Yep, I got everything finalised today, and it's now mine to keep. Well, rent, but don't spoil the imagery. ;o) I also have the water, gas and electricity connected, so all that's left for me to do now is get the phone line connected and sorted, followed by an ADSL link up and running, and I'm 100% sorted. Well, apart from all the furniture and the like I need.

It's been a busy time in the HEXUS department too, with exciting things coming my way almost as quickly as I can deal with them. Today saw the release of my preview of Corsair's new RAM, which is pretty darn cool I must say, and also released (sort of, it isn't on the front page but got linked to elsewhere, God knows how that happened) was my look at Gigabyte's 3D1 video card - SLI, but on a single board... I don't need to explain to you why that's cool I'm sure. ;o) Still plenty of interesting things in the pipeline too, so I don't think I'll be getting bored any time soon.

Aside from that, I'm now counting down the days until I get to pick my wife up on Heathrow on the 22nd... Life is going to start getting very different from here on it, but in the best way possible.