Went back home on the 22nd December for Xmas and generally chilled out after a few hectic weeks in Salford - my only tech saviour being my Acer Aspire one netbook running trusty linux - thankfully it didnt let me down like it did on my recent trip to London!

Got the usual stuff for xmas which was cool, along with some driving lessons (yes im finally going to drive), and a nice bottle of Silver Select Jack Daniels which will go down a treat!

Fran came up on the 27th December and we went up to the Lake District along with my family for 4 days to our new lodge that my parents had just bought - very swanky indeed. I managed to sneak my Xbox 360 along with me, along with the newly purchased guitar hero world tour Which i managed to play during our none walking days - e.g. 3-4 hours walking around lake Windemere with Zena running around like a mentalist on the ice

NYE was spent at a family party which was fun although everyone completely mistimed 00:00 lol So all of  sudden it was “Oh sh… HAPPY NEW YEAR!”. Good times indeed! I returned back to Salford on the 1st January after a NY Day buffet at my Grandmas which is a tradition! Been generally chilling out ever since really. Back to the joy factory tomorrow - especially fun as im up at 8am - oh goody how i love early starts. Exams and dissertation and all in the upcoming month so im going to have to work little hours - less money, but better grades i guess!

Tech wise (the most important) - i decided to upgrade my RAM - i bought 2 sets of 2×4GB OCZ PC2-8000 1000Mhz RAM from Aria for the princely sum of just £90.00 and i am now running on Vista x64 (had to upgrade - bah!) showing 8GB of Gigahertz RAM - yum yum yum. Also allowed me to clock over 3.7Ghz - which is always fun! Im trying to take it easy money wise, but next month i might invest in a new graphics card (4870X2) or perhaps a new PSU as my poor little M520 is struggling i feel! Oh, before i forget, i also purchased a Zalman MFC2 fan controller which also has 4 temperature monitors and other info displayed on a 5.25″ LCD display - for only 40 quid - not bad eh. This also shows you the total power draw of your PC so keep your eyes peeled for figures!

Sam

To be honest, the last 10 days have been absolutely breakneck speed for me! I have had work, dissertation and coursework coming out of my ears so blogging has been the least of my concern!

Firstly, i completed a dissertation-sized 7000 word report into WiMAX, competitors, underlying technologies (QAM, etc) - needless to say it was awesome so hopefully i get a decent mark. Secondly, i had a PERL Exam which was ridiculously difficult - reckon i’ll get my lowest mark on that one, like 45-50% - totally bad day at the office in a subject im not the best at.

On the tech side, i have been continuing to overclock and tweak my system and clock it, got my 3DMark06 score to 14200+ and my PCMark score to 10000+. Next month im looking to invest in 2 SSD’s (OCZ V2’s in RAID) and hopefully that will give me even greater speeds. Overclocked my 8800GT as far as she will go, similar to my Q6600. Also, im looking to upgrade my PSU to a Coolermaster M850 as you can get refurb’d ones from the Coolermaster shop for around £80 or so.

Well its been one heck of a week - i spent Wednesday and Thursday in London which was, frantic to say the least!

After arriving into town on the Wednesday i spent about 30 minutes walking around trying to find the hotel which was hidden down some random back alley but was quite plush to say the least - £250.00 a night doesnt buy you a cheap tatty room i guess. I got into my room about 8pm and just generally kicked back for the rest of the night, except for venturing out to get some random indian food from a corner shop!

On the Thursday i got up at around 7am after a pretty dreadful night’s sleep due to the traffic and crap air conditioning system. I was on the tube at about 8.45am - which in hindsight was a terrible idea, as it was HEAVING to say the least, but i ended up making it to my interview etc on time. The interview went well and i got home into Manchester around 4pm and finally had chance to relax after one hell of a 10 days!

Tech wise, i went ahead with a crazy decision and purchased a Coolermaster Cosmos 1010 case - RRP £150.00 i managed to get one for a snippet at £95.00 - dont ask how I sold my Antec 900 for £40 to help pay for it too. Needless to say, it looks - amazing, is absolutely HUGE - do not underestimate how big this case is - you can fit 10.5″ graphics cards with at least another 8″ to spare at the end of it. Its glorious!! i coupled that with an addition of a Zalman fan controller, a Zalman VF-1000 graphics card cooler and an OCZ XTC memory cooler. I also installed my Intel Pro1000 dual port network adapter so im running on intels - quickness! Finally, i installed a HR-05 onto my Northbridge to allow better cooling - allowing me to overclock my processor (q6600) up to 3.6Ghz per core - bloody quick!

Next stage is to either upgrade to my S5000XVN as my desktop system, or leave it as it is (being fast as heck), my next stage is to upgrade my case fans to 2000RPM Sharkoon 120mm fans, install the Coolermaster clear-side panel i ordered, the UV blue cable ties and the blue cold cathodes and it should be sorted. The only thing i want to buy after that is a Intel X25 SSD, and then my system is complete for at least a year!

Sorry for the lack of blogging recently - ive been very busy in all 3 of my worlds!

On the work front, i was in Cheltenham for a job interview last week - and im in London for one this week coming up also so im being hammered with work at the moment - also got a few phone interviews too!

Tech wise, we went a bit overboard this weekend - i sold my old Antec 900 to Martin for £40 and, managed to get a Coolermaster Cosmos for £135 (20 quid off!) so it only cost me £95! Which isnt bad for a £160+ case! I spent Saturday getting my system installed neatly into it etc and it is very very nice to look at - even if it does surrender some of the air flow the Antec 900 had, it makes it up in looks, build quality and sound - its a VERY quiet case. I also installed a Zalman MFC1 Plus fan controller for the 4 case fans, so its running quiet as a baby. I also overclocked my Q6600 further, eeking out 3.5Ghz per core the moment - suffice to say im very happy with it. Im set to buy a VF1000 Zalman for my GeForce 8800GT this week - to make my Graphics Card quieter, after which i’ll get some pics of my system uploaded for you all to  ogle

On the “extra” front, ive not really been up to much! Aside from going out on Friday with Matt and Joe, i havent really had time to breath - university is starting to calm down after a ton of assignments, and im still averaging 70%+ so far this year Fran is down this weekend coming up for our 1 year anniversary and we’re going watching Jimmy Carr - so im looking forward to it!

Well well well…

Havent been doing much recently (ha what a lie). Ive been absolutely swamped; i bought myself a new £200 suit which has made my bank balance plummit - ive also had to buy train tickets for myself and Fran for our new year trips etc so that was a fair old whack also.

Aside from money, ive been working my socks off on my assignments - ive had to do a critical write up of OpenID, and one for WiMAX - both of which are being done in conjunction with my dissertation - meaning i have NO time whatsoever free! Couple this with working 3 days a week until Xmas to pay for presents and yep, im fairly busy!

Ive also got an interview coming up in Cheltenham next week, so thats another 100 quid for hotel and train etc - so im a very busy boy!

In all my spare time, ive been updating VKernel.co.uk with some new articles - you should go and read em!

www.vkernel.co.uk !

Well, having decided to get rid of FastHost after no response to my ticket after 6 days of raising it, i recieved an email this morning telling me my domain had been renewed - how strange. At the moment its forwarding to smnet.vkernel.co.uk, with the hosting at FastHost doing absolutely nothing as far as im concerned- not exactly reliable to say the least. My aim now to get sam-marsh.net under my own control and do what i want with it.

Well, after 3 years as www.sam-marsh.net its time for a change. Ive migrated my personal blog onto the same hosting as my technical blog, as Fasthost, my personal blog hosting provider, are terrible.

Im pretty sure they have turned the lights off, left the servers and automatic billing systems on and just f’ked off. No reply on any support lines, nothing. Its terrible - they are the worst hosting company in history. UKHost4u on the other hand, are people i have nothing but good words for - great support and response time on tickets.

So for now, sam-marsh.net is smnet.vkernel.co.uk - until i can buy the domain again on the 16th December 2008 when it becomes free for all to buy (FastHost have like a 6 week default period after it needs re-registering, after which they lose it). Once i get that domain, i’ll point it back to this blog and hey presto we’re back to how we were before! Hurrah.