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!