Tim Smalley’s weblog

Over the last few months, I’ve spent a lot of time moving around in one way or another. This has meant that I’ve had no time to post much in terms of content on here.

One reason is the massive increase in work load on bit-tech. At the end of January, we moved from working from home to working in an office environment with our sister publication, TrustedReviews. So far, this has been awesome, despite some initial worries. In the past, I’ve always worked better in my own company, but the office environment has helped to improve my productivity as well as adding another dimension to work too.

The work/home divide is working out reasonably well - when I get home, I’m almost free to do what I want. However, due to the increased work loads, I’ve been going home later and later. In recent months, going home before 8pm at night has been a rare occurance, and there have been months were I haven’t managed to get more than a couple of days (including weekends) off. I worked out that I’d got over three months of work to do even if I didn’t take any more products on board.

Obviously, the move to an office meant that I had to move house. I moved from Loughborough down to Camberley the week before we started working from the office. I moved in with Geoff, who also works on bit-tech and we’re sharing a pretty big 2-bedroom flat. Everything else that we looked at had a double and a single bedroom - this was the only one with two double bedrooms. It’s on the 3rd floor and there is no lift - that has its benefits, but it’s a long way to walk up and down if you leave something in the car. On the plus side, it’s helping to keep me fit and we’re not far from work, the motorway and the train station.

Finally, you may have noticed that I’ve moved my corner of the web from Suxeh.net to TSmalley.com - since the site is mainly about me, I felt that getting a proper domain name would help to define it a little better.

Over the next few months, I’m going to try and find the time to update this a little more often - the time between this and the last update was an absolute eternity and I don’t intend to let it slip like that again.

Since I got back from my trip to the Far East, I’ve been struggling with my sleeping pattern. In short, I’ve been going to bed earlier and earlier and waking up earlier and earlier too. Saturday night was 11:30pm, Sunday night I was tired by 9:30pm but I managed to keep myself up until midnight and then last night I was out like a light at about 10:30pm. Not only that, but I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier. Sunday was 7:00am, Monday was 5:45am and this morning was 5:00am.

Now, 10:30pm is a rediculously early time for me to go to bed and being wide awake at 5:00am is even more rediculous. I guess the timezone differences are really showing at the moment as I’m struggling to concentrate on anything for too long right now too.

I hope things return to normal soon. My cold is getting a bit worse and I’m having to put the heating on overnight in order to sleep well. I guess it’ll take me a few weeks to get used to the weather over here again though.

I’m off to meet with Wil, my boss, for lunch today in order to catch up and clue up on what’s happening in the coming weeks. I need to hit the ground running with work as there are a few important launch dates coming up soon.

The normal working day should resume tomorrow if all is well.

If anyone has any ideas of how to get out of my vicious circle of going to bed earlier and earlier and waking up earlier and earlier I’d appreciate some help!

I got back home yesterday morning at about 11:30am after a bit of traffic on the motorway on my way back up from Heathrow Airport. The flight was really good - I managed to sleep all the way from Bangkok to Amsterdam meaning that I wasn’t tired at all. I had just had an earlier-than-normal morning, waking up at about 4:30am UK time.

I dropped straight in to a normal sleep pattern last night - went to bed around 12:30am and woke this morning around 8am.

Yesterday, I uploaded some of the many pictures that I took while I was out in Taiwan and Thailand.

If you read my last post, you will have already seen the pictures from the top of the Taipei 101. I’ve also uploaded pictures from the Yang Ming mountains.

On the friday morning, me and my girlfriend set off for a weekend break in Phuket - the largest island just off the Thailand mainland. It was an area badly affected by the Tsunami last Christmas, so I was really looking forward to seeing the place. On the way, we stopped in Hong Kong, which gave me a good chance to snap some pictures of the city when we left on our way to Phuket International Airport.

I was literally speechless when we got to Phuket - I’ve never seen anywhere quite so beautiful. We sat and watched the sun set on the balcony while eating sandwiches and salad - the latter is something I’ve never really eaten much of before this holiday. I’ve grown to like salad quite a lot now though, strangely.

The following day we slept in in the morning and then went to one of the swimming pools located on our resort in the aftenoon. We had the joy of listening to water splashing down the cliffs in a tropical waterfall that fed the swimming pool - quite relaxing. If it couldn’t get anymore relaxing - our resort also had a Spa, located right next to this particular swimming pool. We popped along and booked a Thai massage for the following morning.

After the massage in the morning, which was a pretty amazing experience having never had a massage before in my life, we went on a safari trip. The trip included elephant riding, rice farming, watching a monkey collect coconuts, a baby elephant show, kayaking down a river, and many other things. There is a full picture log here - it’s easier for you to just marvel at the pictures than to tell the whole story. I’d be going on for hours if I did the latter.

That evening we headed down to one of the most famous restaurants in Thailand - Savoey’s Seafood Restaurant. It’s an open air establishment with a band playing. The beauty of the place is that you pick your fish, while it is swimming around, before they cook it. The meal was absolutely goregeous, we had a large lobster and some tiger prawns in a Thai curry sauce for our main courses.

On the whole, the weather wasn’t great while we were out in Phuket due to a tropical storm that was brewing in the Phillipines and Indonesia. Having said that, the weather could not hide the beauty of the place - this place is thoroughly recommended for a holiday. It’s just like visiting paradise, only better than I could have ever imagined. There are more pictures here, and there are many more on top of that too - I just haven’t got around to uploading the rest of them yet.

We got back home early Wednesday morning, about 12:30am. It was my girlfriend’s birthday on the Wednesday, so I sat and sung Happy Birthday to her while we were lying in bed. Being a bloke, I had no idea what I should get her for her birthday, and I typically left it til the last possible minute. I went out shopping on the Wednesday, and spent several hours looking around before finally settling on a suitable birthday present.

We went to meet my girlfriend’s parents for dinner later that evening. Her mother had cooked for us - the food was really nice. It was an interesting experience because I speak very little mandarin (using very little in the loosest possible way) and her parents speak no English whatsoever.

After that, we went to a restaurant called ‘The Bed’. We didn’t go there for more food, just for some drinks, and to listen to the music they play there - some quite good music, if a little different from my normal tastes. Finally, we ended up in a night club for an hour, just to burn away any remaining energy that we had - by the time we got home it was about 3am and Kai was at work the following morning.

Thursday evening, we headed out to see the largest night market in Taipei - it was reasonably quiet though, because of the typhoon that was coming and scheduled to hit on the Friday/Saturday. I was leaving friday, so I was kinda worried that I’d get held up by the typhoon. We had heavy rain on the thursday night, and I didn’t sleep well at all. I’ve never been in a rain storm with rain quite like that before - it was howling it down.

On friday, I spent most of the day packing things up and sorting things out ready for my flight in the evening. We didn’t do much all day and had time to catch up on some much-needed sleep after lunch. The weather was surprisingly good though - the sun was still shining but it was just a bit windy with some strong gusts every so often.

The flight home was good as I mentioned, apart from the final hop from Amsterdam to London - there was a baby sitting about 2 rows behind me balling its eyes out for the entire trip. Just what you need at 5am in the morning.

On the whole, the trip was absolutely fantastic. I’ve had a very memorable time, and I’m looking forward to going and doing it all over again in the future. For now, I’ve got to get myself back accustomed to the boring english food and cold weather that we have here. I’ve already got a cold coming on from the cold weather and the climate is very dry, too. That means my throat and lips are drying up like no tomorrow - I just can’t drink enough water at the moment.

Anyway, that’s a reasonably good summary of my trip - I can’t wait for the next one.

take care.

I’m currently on a holiday in Taiwan with my girlfriend. So far, the weather has been brilliant - it has been really hot and rather humid too (around 80-100% for most of the day). Having said that, I’ve still not got a sun tan and I’ve been walking around in 30 degrees heat in my shorts. The temperature doesn’t drop at night either - it’s 30 degrees all day and all night, pretty much.

There are a few pictures from the top of the 101 in my gallery. If you get the chance to visit Taipei and there’s a clear day while you are there, I thoroughly recommend paying the NT$350 (about £7) to get to the observation floor in the 101. The view is simply fantastic - the pictures speak for themselves.

Today I’m going to visit the Yang Ming mountains - I’m sure I’ll have some pictures from that trip later. If I don’t get the chance to post them tonight, it might be a few days before I manage to get them online as I’m heading off to Phuket (in Thailand) early tomorrow morning for a long weekend. I can’t wait for that, I’ve heard that the place is absolutely breathtaking and our hotel looks to be pretty good too.

Take Care.

Last night I finished a review on a pair of Intel CPU’s - they fit in nicely with this week’s theme on bit-tech with it being IDF week. You should see that review on the site later today all being well. Things are incredibly busy at the moment, as I’m building up for going on holiday in the middle of September. I’m really looking forward to that - it’ll be my first real holiday for nearly 2 1/2 years.

I do a lot of travelling with work obviously, but there is rarely the time to actually play the tourist in some of the places that I visit. I’m heading back to Taiwan for a couple of weeks, as I really enjoyed visiting in June when I went to Computex with work.

I’ve got several reviews in progress at the moment, and there’s a lot of new stuff coming out in the next couple of weeks - hopefully I can get some of that done before I go away in just over 2 1/2 weeks time. I’m currently looking at a dual GPU card from Leadtek which I hope to have ready to write up by the end of tomorrow at the latest.

I’m going to i25 on Sunday to report on happenings there and there’s also a batch of Radeon X800 GT’s that I’ve got to review next week - I’m really looking forward to playing with this card as it seems to have hit a really competitive price point with the possibility of doing a bit more than what it says on the box, too…

There are many other products to review before I go away, you’ll hear about them in due course - I’d better get on with some work now as there’s a lot to do…

Take care.

Last week, I finally took the plunge and bought an 04 Registration Vauxhall Astra SXi 1.6l 16v Sport Hatch. I picked it up yesterday after waiting patiently for a few days while they got it ready for me. It’s something that I’ve been meaning to change for a while now, as my old Peugeot 106 was starting to get a bit long in the tooth.

My initial impressions are that it is about 1000 times better to drive than my 106 - it corners well, responds well and feels pretty sharp. The only thing that I’ve found so far that could be a little better is the acceleration in the lower gears - it is almost like they’re a little bit lagged. Accelerating at the top end doesn’t seem to be a problem for it though.

There’s a couple of minor things I want to do to it, but on the whole its a really nice car to drive - I’ve really enjoyed driving around in it in the ~24 hours I’ve had the car so far.

What a night and what a come back. I’m still in shock and really can’t believe what went on.

I’m a Liverpool fan through and through, and its really great to see them back in the reckoining again. I just hope that they’re allowed to defend the trophy next year - it just seems a little weird that the winners may not be able to go down fighting. If only I didn’t have so much work on at the moment, otherwise I’d be looking to celebrate in a big way.

On Sunday, I leave for Taiwan - I don’t know whether I’m looking forward to the flight or not just yet. It should be alright though. Hopefully Computex will bring some good things for bit-tech, you’ll be the first to know anything of interest that we come across.

I’ve got a date for picking up my keys - it’s the day I get back from Taiwan. However, it looks like I might have to wait for my internet connection and phone line - Bulldog said 4-6 weeks… I really hope it isn’t that long, as I’ve got work to be getting on with during that time. No internet means that I’ve got limited chances to upload content to the site. I’ve not even got bluetooth on my phone at the moment, so I couldn’t access the net via bluetooth/GPRS.

After I’ve picked my keys up, I’m off to San Francisco for a couple of days… by the time I get back I should be pretty jet-lagged. Hopefully it won’t last for too long, as I’ve got to move house when I get back.

I’m really looking forward to telling you guys about some of the upcoming products, and all I can say is that there’s going to be some very cool stuff happening in the industry in the next month or so. I can’t wait til I can tell you guys more - it’s frustrating that I can’t say anything. But, my lips are sealed for now.

I might get the chance to update this before I leave for Taiwan, if not, I’ll see you on the other side.

I’ve heard a few people asking me why I’ve not been updating my blog recently…. well, I’ve had a lot to be getting on with over the past couple of weeks. My birthday was an interesting one - that took out a good portion of the following week too, as the hangover was really that bad.

I think I’m getting too old to drink these days. Maybe I’ll start drinking alcohol free beer before long (Urgh!). Maybe not.

The week after that, we finally launched the new-look bit-tech. People are afraid of change, and many of our regulars were afraid of the new design. I think that many of them have come round now, but there are always a few who have nothing but criticism for a design that is already showing its benefits. It’s interesing that most of our forum users are using the default skin, despite many people complaining about the colours, too. We’ve been through just about all of the issues that were raised behind closed doors, so we’d almost prepared answers for the obvious fear of change that was bound to follow the launch.

This month I’ve been busy with SLI, as I have been for a while now. I’ve come up with a lot of things that were left unanswered in the articles that I’ve already seen on the net, so hopefully some of that will give some more interesting insights in to the way that SLI works. I’ve also got some other things going on behind the scenes with bit-tech too, I can’t really talk about them all that much, but it’s some seriously cool stuff.

I’ve also submitted my first magazine commission this week, which I’m really chuffed about - it looks like I’ve finally got my name in to print!

I found it pretty hard to get everything required in to such a short space, but I think I did a pretty good job of it. I was certainly happy with what has to be the shortest review I’ve ever written - I think I covered everything I wanted to say in the 400-words limit that I had. I’ve got a shorter one coming up soon though, so that should prove to be even more interesting. Hehe.

Today, I went and spoke to my manager at work, telling them that I’d be dropping my hours from their current 23 hours, down to 8 hours, to allow me to focus more time on the things that I really enjoy doing.

Afterall, Tesco was never going to be a career for me, despite it looking likely when I started studying for a Retail Management degree. What a bad idea that was. I don’t regret it though, the girls were gorgeous.

Oh, and before I forget… I’ve finally found myself a new house. Well, actually it’s a flat to tell the truth. I’ll be moving in to after I get back from Computex on the 6th June. It’s near the canal, and I’m really happy with it. It’s right next to all of the important things, with several pubs within staggering distance. Good good, I’m really looking forward to moving there.

I’ll hopefully update this again before too long. I really need to find more time to update it, much like I really need to find more time to play Gran Tourismo 4. Hopefully the last few weeks will not be the typical length of time it takes me to write an update.

Take care.

On Sunday night, I popped along to a local quiz night with a bunch of mates from Tesco. We went along with the intention of getting drunk and having a laugh at how bad we were at answering the questions in the quiz. Unsurprisingly, we did get rather drunk, and had a laugh. However, the surprise was that we managed to finish second in the quiz. Shocker.

We were expecting to finish in the bottom few teams, but we walked away with a £50 prize. Having said that, while being surprised, there was an element of disappointment in that we didn’t win it when we were so close. There were a couple of questions that we argued over and finally settled on the wrong answer. If we’d have answered those questions correctly, we would have ended up as clear winners. Shame, I guess there’s always next time.

I’ve been messing around with that XGI card that I talked about earlier, and I’ve had some ‘fun’ with it, as they say. To cut a long story short, it’s been a bloody awful experience. Drivers sucking fairly hard for the most part. I mean, what kind of card causes instability in the form of a BSOD in the best game of 2004? An XGI Volari, obviously…

There’s other shizzle relating to that too, but you’ll just have to wait for the review before I say any more about it.

Finally, it’s my birthday tomorrow, so I’ll be taking Friday off after some heavy drinking to commence around 6pm. It’ll go on until I drop down at some point in the early hours of the morning. Timmy, my old housemate, is coming up to stay for the weekend. I’ve not seen him for a while, so I feel that there’s a pretty big session to be had.

I doubt I’ll update again until I’ve recovered some time in the middle of next week, but we can hope that it’s a little sooner than then, as I’ve got work to be getting on with again on Monday.

I’ve had a rather busy week this week, so sorry for the lack of updates first of all…

I wrote a rather long column on bit-tech this week for those who didn’t see it. I basically go in to where I feel the state of UK trade shows are at right now, and where I think they should go. After all, it is about time someone, somewhere, came up with a project that would work. That means the necessary advertising with your target audiences in plenty of time for the event to be a success.

I’m not expecting anything quite on the scale of CeBit, because one of those shows is enough each year - it’s a long haul for those of you who have never been. I’m expecting something that will drive more interest in to the market on a large enough scale for consumers to want to go along and attend.

The two public days of CeBit were hugely busy, and it’s great news for the German hardware community. The UK needs something like that here, something to get more gamers interested in computer hardware, and to get more computer hardware enthusiasts in to gaming - you get the idea. There are some fantastic games out there at the moment, and they’re more often than not overlooked.

Maybe CTS could be turned in to something like this? Have a few days of ‘trade only’ access, and then follow it up with a couple of days that are open to the public. Maybe the public days would have to be before the CTS awards night, though… as that always ends up as a very late night. This year was no exception - there were plenty of sore heads on Wednesday. I felt absolutely great when I woke up on Wednesday, but that was because I was still drunk…

Lets just say that the night was an eventful, and entertaining one…