..idle writings from an idle mind..

so, in the last post i said the last few days have been geek toy days. make that the last week.

there was one more geekly item that i purchased to work around the bug i’ve run up against in my phone (yes, more phone accessories. sorta.) … an all in one card reader type device from msy, everyones’ favourite cheapie computer store. i get the feeling that the nasty website and waiting in queue is all a part of the experience they offer to their customers to balance out the ridiculously cheap prices.

so yeah, get it home and hook it up to the computer, and now i can transfer songs to the memory stick in the phone without the songs getting eaten in the process. nice ‘n quick, too — certainly better than waiting for the phone (when it did work).

however, that’s not where it stops. shortly after that, the tax office opened their coffers and sent me my tax return cheque. and yea, their bounteous offering was pleasing to mine eye and wallet. natch, i wanted needed to buy more toys, didn’t i?

..so i got myself one of these, and a keyboard to match. i’d originally intended to purchase it through work, as there are discounts available to staff on apple product — but a friend (who works at one of the applecentre stores) kindly offered to assist with the purchase and was able to offer me a similarly good discount. i’d decided to get the top spec’ed model (at this time, the advertised features include a 1.42ghz processor, 512mb memory, 80gb 4200rpm hard drive and a “superdrive” (dvd burner)). however! as i was purchasing from a friend-in-the-know, i was able to acquire a “late 2005″ model. doesn’t sound like much until you realise that it has several un-advertised upgrades that make it a much nicer machine … 1.5ghz processor, 512mb memory, 80gb 5400rpm hard drive, and the superdrive has been stepped up to a dual-layer burner (god it’s gonna be funny reading this post in two years time, what with all these computer specs).

so, i’ve been spending the last few days switching. not nearly as painful as i thought it might be, though the ‘home’ and ‘end’ keys on the keyboard not doing as i expect them to is doing my brain in a little bit. the two applications i use the most, firefox and thunderbird have counterparts available on os x, though the bugsies are a little annoying (and are apparently fixed in forthcoming releases, which will be nice). there’s also a replacement for trillian — adium. lacking a little polish and has its share of irritations, but the main functionality is there and it’s under reasonably active development. it’s also open source, which is quite unlike trillian.

i’ll put some more thoughts together over the next week or so and write down how i go. it’s certainly been an interesting couple of days.

and now for something completely unrelated — it would appear that this blog has been around (in various forms) for just on 4 years now. it’s been an interesting path to walk down, if nothing else … in many respects i’m surprised it’s lasted, but i’m certainly glad that it has.

~ z.