After a few attempts to clean the contacts and eventually breaking the somewhat brittle metal I decided that an upgrade was the only sensible course of action – also owing to the fact my current mouse is as ergonomic as a brick!

A quick look around on eBuyer threw up several options of which I chose the Logitech G7 Cordless Laser Mouse.

I’m not sure what the difference having a laser mouse has compared to a good old fashioned optical mouse, but anything with a laser built in is obviously superior! The mouse itself boasts 2 Li-Ion battery packs which charge on a base station provided with the mouse, meaning that there’s no downtime when one battery runs out, and some pretty nifty looking battery indicators to tell you when the current one is running low. The mouse can also be programmed with variable resolutions from 400 dpi to 2000 dpi, this can be switched on-the-fly whilst using the device, apparently allowing you to jump “from pixel-precise targeting to fast-twitch maneuvers, without pausing the action”.

Below are some of the images of the device from the Logitech website, expect more to follow and a review when I actually receive the device.

Much World of Warcraft will ensue when the mouse actually arrives (although no more than before it arrives)!
- Chris

A lot has happened in this time, I’ve finished my exams. Most of which went relatively well, barring of course the Grid Computing exam which was always going to be a wildcard. I’m now officially finished University as well after handing in my research dissertation last Monday. All-in-all it went well, however running out of time towards the end, my personal calling card, did mean that the report tends to tapper off in quality towards the final sections – but at least it’s finished.

Since finishing I’ve been looking after the pub at home as my parents were on holiday and returned yesterday. Other than that I’ve been sitting here at my computer playing World of Warcraft a hell of a lot, watching the majority of the Friends seasons on DVD and over the past two days watching Supernatural season one on DVD as well.

After only a week and a half of freedom from University I’m starting to feel lost as there’s no paticular direction to my life just now. I’m hoping to start a PhD next year but that all depends upon a funding grant from the EPSRC, so I’m currently caught in limbo between either finding a real job or a filler one until I hear for sure about the funding.

Procrastinating isn’t half as fun as it is when you’re meant to be doing something else. Sitting playing WoW doesn’t appeal as much now as it did when I had work which I was supposed to be doing at the time. Doing things you do to “take a break” from something doesn’t appeal when the thing you’re doing is actually the thing you’re taking a break from [some punctuation was harmed in the making of this sentance].

Other than playing world of warcraft and starting to keep a World of Warcraft blog to track your progress in the game (killer of a good few hours that could’ve been used for work), watching DVDs and playing cards I’ve not done anything. It sounds great but not doing anything when there’s nothing to do is pretty damn boring.

Other than doing nothing I’ve also managed to break my new XDA Exec which is currently en-route to O2 who will be replacing it with a new unit. Somehow whilst trying to flash the new WM5 version onto the device it seems to have deleted the original version, as expected, but not written the new version, not as expected. This means that when I did a hard reset on the device to update the OS there was nothing there to install and the device would just hang at an O2 splash screen. After some searching on the web and trying some wierd fixes nothing worked so it was on to O2 who asked me to send the device to them.

There’s nothing much left to add really, suppose I’d best start looking for a job to fill in the time between watching DVDs, playing World of Warcraft and sleeping; but I’ll get around to that later as it’s Friday night and I can hear a game of cards a-calling me from the pub…
- Chris