We’re officially back from Scotland now so breathe a sigh of relief. Actually, we’ve been back since wednesday but it’s been a bit of a lazy week. We got snowed in up North so we spent a couple of extra nights with my family, which was welcome, but I had to shell out another £70 to change the date of our tickets – not very welcome! I got to see my little nephew when we were up -uh, I think he’s four now? – and he’s mad as ever. Still daft on Doctor Who. He’s also spoilt rotten on all the games systems my sister’s husband has: Xbox 360, DS, PSOne, and I think a PSP at one point. When we arrived I was quite shocked to find him playing what looked like Call of Duty or something similar on the XBox 360. Get this – he knew exactly what he was doing! He was driving a long in the country in some kind of armoured car, shooting at enemy infantry. He hasn’t quite worked out that the red arrows meant where the enemy fire was coming from, so he gets a few shots in the back of the head as he turns all the way round, but he quickly jumped out of the vehicle saying, and I quote, “I need a bigger gun”, before he ran off and found some grenades to play with! Being the concerned uncle I am, I game him a load of child friendly games from my Playstation collection. We also had a go at Spiderman on the DS too which was cool. He showed me how to play and I attempted to get him past the tricky bits (and failed miserably!). I better keep an eye on him, especially seeing as he introduced himself as “the bad spiderman” when I first saw him!
Despite the lazy week, yesterday Fallingstar and I went on a mad DIY bent and made three cd towers, a chest of drawers, a small table and two designer storage boxes, that we got from Ikea. It’s cheap and cheerful but you have to admire the ingenuity in the fixings (despite the guilty nagging that it’s probably racked up a lot of airmiles? I dunno). So yes, the room is becoming more “ours” now as Falling put it. If you don’t see any pictures in this post, it’s probably because we’re still trying to put all our stuff away – we have SO much stuff between us it’s unbelievable! I have to admit though, i’m finding it much easier to part with stuff nowadays, games included. Also, because i’m typing this on my lunch break at work so I won’t get a chance to post a final version until I get home tonight. I’ll add the photos in later.
It took me two and a half hours to get to work this morning. It was ridiculous. I ended up having to go back north again just to get south because of all the train delays and station closures. I was 45 minutes late for work in the end, but my boss’ wife made me a cup of tea, which was nice! I start back at uni tomorrow so here’s hoping I get off to a better start (I left at 7:30ish this morning!!).
I’m looking forward to going back to uni, although I have to admit to feeling pretty low concerning my future these past few weeks. I want to arrange a meeting with my personal tutor to discuss some of my intentions. Oh yes, I finally found out I have one. At my first time at uni, we had to have meetings with our personal tutor every week. This time around, I found out I had one just before the Christmas break in year 2! I also have quite a few personal projects I want to get underway with. I have to admit, since finishing the last of my coursework and the trip to York/Edinburgh, I haven’t had much time to fiddle around with things. It’s slightly worrying to consider how much Director Lingo I may have forgotten, so time for a hasty brush up this week;-)
The new blog is progressing, although it’s been slow going since I got myself so confused about a few things. It’s alright now though as I have a much clearer plan of what i’m trying to achieve, and I found some REALLY useful tools that make the whole process so much easier (Namely the Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug for Firefox). That said, I won’t go into any more detail for the moment. I’ll just keep plodding away in the background. The reason being, I have the feeling that whenever I have an idea for something I want to do, then share it, I end up never doing it. Right now I have about 5/6 little projects I want to blether on about, but until I make some serious progress, I should keep my trap shut!
iGoogle today brought up the latest MacWorld news. In it today is an article about the ongoing lawsuit between Psystar and Apple. I can’t claim to have known anything about this until I read about it today as it’s been a while since I signed into iGoogle, and at least a couple of months since I picked up a magazine. However, the jist of the matter is Apple started proceedings against Psystar who were selling intel machines with the Mac OS X operating system (ie, Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware). Psystar launched a countersuit saying that Apple is breaking anti-trust laws by tying the Mac operating system to Apple hardware. That countersuit was rejected, but today’s news was about an appeal where Psystar has been able to change their countersuit to Apple “breaking copyright laws”.
I’ve read a little about it in the time I have on my break here, but I have to say that the whole thing sounds ridiculous to me. I have no problem with Apple software only being on Apple hardware. That’s one of the main reasons I like Macs so much – the hardware may be overpriced, but since Apple controls software and hardware, it gels that much better. “It just works” irritates the hell out of non-Mac users, but 99% of the time it’s true. I really don’t want to see Psystar win this battle as this could ultimately lead to the wonderful Mac OS X sitting astride a variety of machines with unpredictable hardware configurations. I try not to sway the boat too much with the Mac vs PC debate (I have and still do use both), but the reason for many of those random Windows error messages is the hardware underneath, which is out of Microsoft’s control. While I know my way around the inside of a computer, there’s something nice about buying a box, plugging it in and seeing it work first time, every time.
Coincidentally, I saw a little video yesterday showing Leopard running on a tiny notebook. It was impressive but reading further into the whole “hackintosh” deal and I realised how fiddly it is. Even if you get Mac OS X on a PC, chances are critical functionality like sound, ethernet etc won’t work, and even if it does, the above blog said that simply trying to use Apple update will wreck your installation. So why bother? I can understand the allure of getting Mac OS X but why not just get a Mac? Okay, they are expensive (Touch wood nothing happens to this one when its guarantee runs out!), and you do get more bang for your buck buying (or even building) a PC, but if you want to have the Mac experience, there’s no better way than to get the real deal. Anyway, there’s always the Mac Mini if you want a taster, except you have to supply all the peripherals to go with it.
So anyway – sorry for going off on a rant there! I’ve got about ten minutes of my break left. Just enough time to finish my coffee and eat my doughnuts;-)
