This article was shortlisted for the Plus New Writers Award 2006, an international competition pitting mathematical writers against each other in a fight to the death. The challenge was to write about a mathematical topic in an informative and entertaining way. Okay, so I didn't get the grand prize. But I did get the certificate.

I have decided to shut down Electron Drift simply because I think there are other things I can do with my time that are more productive. However, here is one final article which includes summaries of articles I had been intending to write...

I had promised myself, privately and in confidence, that I would never build a PC. I did not have time to go picking up all that hardware knowledge and lingo. I am an artificer of software, I calmly reassured myself, and have no time for the ways of the overclockers, who speak in tongues of mysterious jargon. I believed I would find comfort with an off-the-shelf model. Trouble was, I had learnt enough of the hardware game to realise I would not find the comfort I sought.

The second part of a three-part series on building a PC, written for those of us who aren't l33t overclockers.

Did you ever want to build your own PC? Have you hesitated before making any hardware upgrade? Hardwarephobics of the world unite. This is your story.