After the initial uproar over Tea v0.9, v1.0, and v1.1 I am preparing to launch Tea v1.1.5, which will feature many user interface changes, something that seems like a site, and addition of some more background functions and interactivity.

That's right people, the Tea closed beta is now open! (Huh? That doesn't make sense.) If you wish to participate and possibly get free or very cheap Tea for life, contact me here. Please try to also include ball-park site traffic statistics. I ask for that because I want to get a good range of different sites with varying amounts of traffic.

More teasers? (Get it?) Of course! With ample time to work this holiday season (I love vacations!) I've already managed to put a serious dent on the work left to do. I have also decided to make Tea a self-hosted project, meaning that costs will transfer from a one-time license to still-reasonable yearly cost to help pay for server usage. As more people sign up, the costs will hopefully drop for average users, while I will be forced to come up with a solution for the more-visited users.

I finally got around to playing Röyksopp's Melody A.M., my well-anticipated Christmas present. Wholey schmeezus! (Term Copyright 2007 Dirk Gadsden) I was already an avid fan of their song "Remind Me", which is featured in the Geico airport commercial, but it's just the tip of the iceberg in the bands' amazing musical conglomeration. Even half-way into the song and I'm already amazed.

As an early Christmas present to myself, I recently purchased an EVGA nVidia 8800GTS (G92), 2 more gigabytes of Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 RAM, and an XCLIO Windtunnel ATX Full-tower case. Below is the story and opinions of my upgrades and purchases.

Graphics galore

The 8800GTS is the latest product from nVidia, featuring an cutting-edge G92 graphics processing unit, the card pushes the limits of modern graphics processing pontential. With 128 stream processors and 624 gigaflops of shader processing power, the new G92 exceeds the G80 core found in the $500 8800GTX and 8800 Ultra.

Room to breath

Will all that power in the house, I also decided to buy a new house for my parts. The XCLIO Windtunnel was the case I decided to go with, with an ATX Full-tower design and two gargantuan 25 centimeter fans on the side, it pumps through enough air to make "windtunnel" a very accurate description. Unfortunately the rear fan space is for a 120 mm fan and not an 80 mm fan. I have many high-quality 80 mm fans, but no 120 mm fans. The good thing is that the Zalman cooler for my CPU provides enough force to supplement the missing fan.