I have FINALLY succumbed to Delicious Library.

Never one to make lists that need to be maintained regularly and not particularly proud of my meagre selection of dvds I steered clear of this software for a long time, telling myself that when I had iSight (and some new dvds) I would think about it again. The iSight arrived with the iMac a while back now and today I started on the list.

As it turned out - despite sitting for minutes at a time, filling my arm muscles with lactic acid, holding the dvd in front of the web cam, the iSight failed to pick up ANY of the barcodes and I started to add them via the Text mode. It took no time at all to add the initial 72 dvds and I wish I had bitten the bullet earlier!

I can add more at a later stage when they make their way down from the children's rooms.

The facility to add these now to my iPod is really what I what I am going to make use of. I was in HMV today and about to buy a dvd that, upon returning to the house, I found I already owned! I want the security of knowing I DON'T own a particular title so I can pick up bargains when I want to!

See any here you recognise?

I may do the books next. . . maybe. . . for some reason I find it easier to keep track of the books I have read, in my head, so may not need this option so much.

Big thumbs up for ease of setting up.

Tags: Delicious Library, Software, iSight, iMac

It has been a wee while since I updated this blog and the fact it has been a wee while has made it even longer - you know how hard it is to do something when it has been a wee while?

One of the reasons it has been a wee while is that I got a new bit of kit - or two. I got a 24inch 2.8 iMac to replace my Powerbook which went a little pyscho on me. It went so psycho I had to claim on the insurance for it. I reserve the right to get another laptop in the future - but to be honest it isn't likely now - I am having far too much fun with the big screen now.

I have to say - in the past while I have taken a couple of big chances and this one has definitely worked well for me. The iMac has transformed my working life. So much so that I can't remember how I worked without it before and can't believe I worked with a laptop screen, predominately, until recently.

Let me put it in to perspective. I do a thing for my clients which doesn't directly make me money - it used to take me around 5 hours after a shoot to do this thing and really I didn't NEED to do it but I LIKED to do it but was getting to the stage where the 5 hour malarkey was holding me back from being more productive and prevented me taking an important step towards taking on more work.

With the new machine this whole job now takes less than an hour and a half.

Impressed?

No?

Ok - try this one - it is simpler.

One thing that used to take me 23 minutes (and froze the rest of the machine out) now takes 3 minutes (and allows me to continue to use the rest of the machine). That's worth it for me.

I paid the extra few pounds and got the wireless mouse and keyboard in the deal. For some reason the wireless keyboard boosts productivity too. I know that sounds silly but it is so damned tiny that I can twist it at Photoshop-keyboard-shortcut angles much easier than a clumpy wired one (or one attached to the screen!).

It was a kind of Buy One Get One Free deal - buy the iMac and get an iPod free. . . . I bumped my purchase up a little and got the 8gb Nano rather than the free Shuffle. Oh my - how gorgeous is the Nano? I didn't NEED it but as it had almost £100 off the normal price it was hard not to get something a little more than the free offering. (That £100 is a bit like the theory that "28 is nearly 30 and 30 is almost 40 and 40 is almost half a century" in that it was actually a lot less than £100 discount but I told my husband it was almost £100 and that is what he believes OK???)

I have to say I love the Nano. More so than the 60gb Photo iPod I had previously. It is now quite common for me to be sitting processing in work with the Nano playing away in my pocket. I even bought new ear phones for it as a kind of Welcome present. Even the ear phones are sexy - so much easier to wear than the ones I had before which always hurt.

How can I love the 8gb Nano more than the 60gb Photo? Well, it has to be admitted (despite me loving my 24 inches of iMac!) that size isn't everything. CoverFlow is to die for and the sound quality is definitely better methinks. I have shown the Nano (sorry - forgot to introduce it - it is called RED - for obvious reasons. .. ) to loads of people now - some who wouldn't necessarily be Apple people and everyone has "Oohed" over it.

As this machine had already been born before Leopard came out it was shipped with both Tiger AND Leopard install discs but it wasn't until I thought I had over-written Leopard with my FireWire Transfer from the laptop that I realised Leopard had never been installed! IT DID take a while to do the transfer from the laptop and then the Leopard update but it was worth it. It was fantastic to have every single thing I had on the laptop already sitting waiting for me on the iMac.

Yes, there have been a couple of teething problems. Skitch and Adium refused to work on the iMac when it was at home but both worked fine at the studio. . . After a while I went looking for an answer and found DNS settings that sorted the problem for me. Aren't forums great?

What else? Umm. . ..

I should be on commission - every one of my brain-washed PC lovin' photographer friends have fallen in love with the quality of the screen! Jealousy is all around :P

Good stuff? All of my procedures are so much faster. I love the whole CoverFlow thing - love Front Row and PhotoBooth for the craic. I know these were on previous Macs - but I haven't had them before. I have just found out that RapidWeaver saves faster on here too with the latest update. I love being able to open 32 big jpgs in less that 30 seconds which would have taken about 8 minutes on the Powerbook (had I been silly enough to try it) and love adding the studio 22 inch screen to it to spread the photos all over the place for faster wedding album manipulation. . . .

My only disappointment so far? Why does the Apple not glow / light up / change colour / do something? I keep rubbing it in case something happens.

I also require Numbers to do one thing that Excel can do. If I can get it to do that one thing I will happily remove Excel from the machine. Does anyone know how to paste file titles of photos in to a Numbers spreadsheet? Every time I do it, it tries to paste in the actual photos themselves.

It took me a while to blog about this as I wasn't quite sure which machine should keep the files for the blog safe and sound. Have decided on the iMac - I know I can update the Powerbook when I want to . .. this may change but in the meantime it is the iMac. I would very much like to be able to synch files easily between the two, especially the likes of iCal and NetNewsWire. If there are tutorials out there to do this I would be happy to receive them.

One great thing about having the iMac is that my work hours are far more productive than they ever were previously so when I leave work - I leave work behind and go home for some decent Down Time. Usually. Sometimes I take the iMac home for some Fun Time.

All I need now is a 20in iMac for the house. . . . hmmmmm . . .. . grin. . . . can you see the whole family gathered round one making it an integral part of our life? NO! Me neither - let them get their own - the iMacs are mine - all mine I say muahahahahahahahahahahaha

Tags: Apple, iMac, 24inch, Productivity

I was mildly disappointed with this score. Had I sat for 36 hours for an iPhone I am sure the score would have been in the 80s!

69%How Addicted to Apple Are You?

Denver Dating

Tags: Apple

A LONG LONG TIME AGO, before I had my Powerbook, I *ordered* three second hand G3 iMacs. They have finally gone round the world for a short cut and made it to me! And how delighted am I?

VERY!

They are so cute. With their wee 6 gb, 6 gb and 9 gb hard drives, 128mbs of RAM each and iTunes 3.

Can you read all that without grinning from ear to ear?

iTunes 3. Awwwwwwwww.

So cuuute!

My Aunt Margaret and Uncle David arrived as foot passengers on Friday afternoon's Belfast Stranraer ferry. I had visions of them having to strap these things to their backs but no - who'd have though that ferries now have trollies like the airports? It is many years since I last was a foot passenger on a ferry. In fact - I found a photo over the weekend of the last time and must upload it for you as a laugh sometime. I think I was 13.

We got home and had a truly scrumptious tea and I very kindly refused to bring two of the machines in from the car. You know there would have been no trailing me away from them had I brought them in. Dude - there was wine to drink!

Saturday was a different matter though. I started to work on them. Ew - I so would not have liked to work with OS 9.1 or 9.2 - not nice at all. I got that upgraded as far as 10.2.8 and got all of them on to the internet via ethernet.

While I was doing the updating David and Margaret cleaned them as best as they could with only fingernails and warm water.

There are two green ones and a blue one. The blue one is a higher spec - it is the one with the larger hard drive and it is 400 mhz compared to 333 and has firewire ports where the other two don't. Wee David thinks he is getting that one but he hasn't a hope! I think I will keep it in the kitchen to check my emails on!

That kinda shouldn't have been the highlight of the weekend - should it? I should mention the fact I took my Uncle see Lough Neagh for the first time in his life and that we walked the dog, were treated to a gorgeous meal and inherited the remains of a bottle of 8 year old Bells which Iain and I are trying to acquire a taste for. (The liquid is called *Bells 8 year old* - they didn't bring a half drunk bottle which they opened 8 years ago . . . you know? )

Bloody Tourists have a way of asking questions that we don't bother to ask ourselves. Oxford Island ISN'T an island - but used to be! And although I still don't know much about the Lord and Lady themselves - I know the history of the park they donated to the people of Belfast now. Thanks to the Bloody Tourists.

Great weekend. Great to see the folks. It's lovely when people come bearing gifts huh? Am now watching eBay for more RAM and perhaps a bigger hard drive!

Tags: Apple, iMacs, G3

Remember the saga of the Powerbook?

It developed a vertical line just over one inch wide down the left hand of the screen. A trip to Apple told me that it was going to be mega bucks to repair it as it would require a new logic board at about £500 plus labour (word of warning - ALWAYS take out Apple Care for a Powerbook!). Research told me that it was a fault found on 17 inch Powerbooks which came out of a certain factory within a certain time span and with a certain three digit prefix serial number. Mine fitted the bill on all three accounts. As the line was on the extreme left of the screen it was still possible to use the machine so I soldiered on.

Recently it has developed a second (more faint) one inch wide line down the middle and to be honest, since that appeared, I haven't actually used it at all - it is too annoying now for me. I use a second hand Powerbook instead.

I have asked for further quotes (the highest being £947!) and watched eBay for logic boards. Apple don't sell these items, rather they exchange them. So you have to send your old one in to them first. That is the reason you don't see any on eBay.

In the last week this little lot has happened:

Iain and I decided to claim on the household insurance for the laptop and the forms came through the post for me to fill out. I have to find two written quotes to send in to them before they consider replacing or repairing.

Engadget chose this week to highlight the fault, giving me the initial hope that eventually they may create enough publicity for Apple to do something about it and organise a recall.

And finally, eBay FINALLY had a logic board for sale that fits my machine! I have bid on it but there is a reserve price set and that could be well in to the hundreds.

It is very unlikely that Apple will do anything about a recall. I read with interest some of the anti-Apple comments in the Engadget thread - but Apple are no better and no worse than other hardware manufacturers when it comes to ignoring particular faults.

When you work in an electrical hardware industry you see it all the time. A really simple illustration would be the Ericsson mobile phone aerials (long before Sony Ericsson) which broke off and left the whole phone un-usable. Time after time we had customers bringing their phone in to us thinking it would be a simple swap out from Ericsson but they steadfastly refused to acknowledge the problem. We lost a lot of customers through that.

It would be nice to find that Apple are above that kind of shirking - but they are a manufacturer and . . .shrug . . Apple Care will not be ignored next time.

Tags: Powerbook, Apple, Vertical Lines

On Wednesday morning I shut my laptop down, went to work and opened it again to listen to some very unhealthy clunky noises. After about 10 tries to get the thing booted it became apparent that the hard drive had died a death. There was no warning at all.

Luckily I have had it instilled into me to make sure I have back ups and haven't lost one single customer photo as they are all stored on an external hard drive. I do regular back ups to another hard drive of the whole computer but unfortunately the last one of those that I did was about 2 weeks ago.

During the next couple of days I kept getting flashbacks to things that I had lost. My RapidWeaver was all out of date - the last copy I had was away at the beginning of March. All my iCal appointments were gone and my really-well-kept-up-to-date-Address Book with ALL my customers' details was gone too. . . All the recent bookmarks in Firefox including a pile of sites I had browsed through for HND research.

However, after a little looking around the Back Up Hard Drive I was able to get the NetNewsWire RSS feeds up and going again on the second Powerbook I bought second hand a while back. I have managed, to my great relief, to get both the iCal and Address Book sorted too. There is no way to get the lost Firefox stuff but that is hardly all that important.

I had to copy and paste a pile of blog entries back in to RapidWeaver and all the time I was doing that I was having a little whisper in my ear along the lines of "WordPress wouldn't do this to you . . " I would very much have liked not to have had to do that - or - at least be able to convert the entries that were there in my web space back in to RW format but as there was no immediately easy way to do that I just did good old copy and paste and had the job done in 30 minutes.

For the life of me I can not find how to magically re-install all my favourites in Transmit - I just have to add them as I need them - I only had about 9 or 10 of them and the forums say that you have to export before you can import (NetNewsWire used the latest .plist) but as I don't have access to the old version to export in the first place it is back to the good old "adding as I need them" version. I still have the back up version if anyone can come up with a way to do this.

I am just so thankful I have all my customer photos. I lost a few sessions of Dog and Children photos - but one lot has turned up on a memory card already and there is a possibility a second lot might still be on another card. But I still have both the dog and the children so more photos can be taken later. And it was only the photos taken within a two week period as well!

I am annoyed that I have had yet another problem with the Powerbook. A few months ago it developed a white line down the left hand side of the screen, effectively making it a 15.5 inch screen instead of a 17 inch one. It was because of this that I obtained the second machine. I am annoyed that the hard drive failed with absolutely no warning - it was working literally 25 minutes before it died.

Obviously a new hard drive would be required. Iain isn't squeamish when it comes to taking things apart and yesterday we spent the whole day taking both Powerbooks apart to swap the hard drives over. We put the faulty one (100 gb) in the 60gb machine and it still didn't work and we put the 60gb hd in the 100gb machine and it DID work so there is no problem with the actual machine - just the hard drive. We also took the opportunity to swap out the PRAM battery in the 60gb machine that I had bought second hand from the American guy a while back - you may remember the rant about him abusing the Unpaid Fee Dispute malarkey.

The *new* PRAM thing is still under investigation. I am not sure the new one is any better then the older one but time will tell - it may very well get better - it may very well be older than the one I already had!

I have ordered a new hard drive off eBay - going up to a 160gb this time - I wont use it all of course as I found it easy to stay less than half full on the 100gb but - I may as well have it.

Thankfully this has all come at a time when I had just finished four big orders for customers and wasn't going to need to be online or up and running for a couple of days - so often these things hit the fan when you are under pressure and just have to have a computer. If that had been the case I am afraid I would have just driven straight to PC World and not passed Go nor collected £200 and arrived home with a new MacBookPro. Can you imagine Iain's face THEN?

At the crucial moment of trying to get the thing up and running again I had Jacqui on the phone talking me through holding the C button down while rebooting etc (and whatever else Google threw at her) and that was a great help, of course, but apart from that I have managed getting all the other stuff up and running on my own and think this is a great testament to just how geeky I have become recently. I am mighty proud of myself.

I am also, finally, pleased that I had the second Powerbook in place to move on to. I worked hard a few weeks ago to get this one up to speed with all the programs I would be needing and although it is a 1ghz rather than the 1.67ghz of the other one, so far I haven't noticed any great difference between the two. I had 57 photos open on it last night in Photoshop and it didn't seem to feel the strain at all even though it is a lessor spec AND an older machine.

At the hospital the other night, when filling Papa in with the latest news I was cowed to have to tell him the mighty Powerbook had died. His response was "Apple? Apple? Really?" I suppose the only thing to remember is that that machine was both my work and my hobby and regularly was on for hours at a time - I suppose I was asking too much of it.

But a little warning would have been nice.

I have been very good not saying anything about Vista (No! I am NOT going to advertise it for them by providing a link - if you don't know what I am talking about google it!) so far. This sums it all up for me. Even just saying the name out loud to Iain bored the hell out of me. At least he got the joke. The first time I read this I laughed VERY loud.

Please go and check out the original site. They are too funny for words.

Ok Ok Ok - only true Mac lovers need bother with this one.

Watch this and tell me you haven't been there. Watch this and tell me that you recognise the trips in to PCW / Apple to stroke and drool over your own particular model-of-preference.

See her absolute disgust when she realises "she will never be with you." See her total love when she KISSES the machine. . .

My Mac is brilliant. . .

12 inch Powerbook . . .

I went to the Apple Store . . .

Just to take a look . . .

She even manages to get her own You Tube page on the screen in the store.

Inspired. I have watched this four times now and each time I had tears in my eyes. Hope you enjoy too.

It is my great pleasure to announce that my mate Nik has a new girl. I am particularly delighted to announce this because I know how much he has been drooling over her and for how long, too. I think he may be in love this time (although it is pretty probable that he was last time too. . . . . . )

I am just so happy for him - am sitting here squeeing over some photos he has uploaded of her. Would you please, if you care about me at all, go and look at the photos? I think you will agree she was worth the wait. I don't think that potato sack did her any favours at all and I am glad to see he managed to get a few strokes in before bedtime. . .

I have just watched a very interesting video of how a girl sold advertising space on the front of her new MacBook Pro - to fund the purchase of her new MacBook Pro!

I WANT!

I think this is a really cool idea and am very enthusiastic about getting one done for myself now. The machine I want is a mere £1899.00 so can someone work out how many adverts I would need to sell and for how much cos I am not very good at the "two and two" stuff.

*grinning all the way through my address book of interesting and influential people and companies*

You would have to be the first to approach the companies though - imagine 54,000 people walking around with Flickr etched on their laptops. . . they aren't going to fall for that trick too often are they? The way she then put the cover on the internet is great too - you would have to copy that and provide links through - look - the whole thing is might damn impressive and I am drooling at the whole idea! Could I be the first person in Northern Ireland to have a fully-funded-through-advertising-and-beautifully-etched-MacBook-Pro?

The girl doing this worked at the place that etched it for her - I wonder are they taking commissions? If I sent them my machine I'd want the video of it being etched too - how much for the full package - there is a whole wee industry there for someone to cash in on.

Shopping List:

One Etcher.

Lots of Insurance Cover.

One camcorder.

Go and watch the video and tell me you didn't grin as her baby was born. Were you as excited when it got cranked up to "12x" as I was?

We bought a cheap refurbished 2gb black Apple Nano from Apple (as opposed to PC World etc). It arrived the other day and it will be given to David in the guise of a birthday present - but you know it is really all because other people got new Shuffles and I really just wanted to be able to take UnPacking shots for Flickr!

I opened it late one night. Plugged it into my laptop. (There is no point in formatting it for his pc because he wont have it long enough I mean he has no music on his pc and I have almost 60gb worth.) I didn't have to load iTunes because it was already there on the Powerbook.

It took approximately 3 seconds for iTunes to recognise it. I named it David's Nano - gotta let him think he owns it for a while huh? and then iTunes told me there was a newer version of the software for me to download which I did. It took a minute or so for that.

I then created a playlist on the laptop for him, only because it is nice to have a playlist there should anything go wrong and then dragged the playlist to the Nano.

I then unplugged the Nano, inserted the head phones and listened to the first couple of songs on it. All sweet as a nut.

NOW!

Go and read what these poor sods are having to put up with in comparison. Poor people. Poor poor people . . .



Muhahahahaha

I received this email through Flickr this morning and for the first couple of paragraphs thought it was very clever spam. It wasn't until they mentioned my Smarties photo that it clicked with me who the person was. They had asked me for permission to use a photo of mine as a background. I always say yes but ask that they add a screen shot to a Delicious Desktops group on Flickr with a link back to me. No one has yet!

This person came up with a "I am not going to post it til I get my new Mac sometime . . . ." and I reckoned I would never hear from them again!

Hello again,

I finally got my Mac, this past Sunday I went to the apple store and purchased one. And all I have to say about Mac is.......SMOOTH!
Everything's so smooth and nice, it just seems to be made with so much Quality. I must say that it lives up to everything longtime Mac users have said about it. What surprised me the most was the Boot up time. On my old PC it took forever to Boot, at least 15 minutes! I'm just so happy about my purchase, I should've brought a Mac a longtime ago!

But on the down side, I still have to use Windows because I have to use Microsoft Access for school. So I setup Boot Camp. And for the past couple of days I've just been messing around with it(Mac), getting familar with different programs.

As of now I have your Smarties pic as my background. I wanted to show it to you first. I'm still trying to decide to post it or not. Because I'm new to the screenshot thing and from reading some of the comments on here and other sites, people can be pretty critical about screenshots.

So here it is!

As you see from the screen shot I was messing around with Quicksilver and Stattoo, I love those programs and I even brought Stattoo.

Thanks again for the great picture and you were right Mac is GREAT!

Isn't it great to spread the word? Why would anyone DOUBT the greatness of Mac? Poor chap, shame about the Windows thing huh? Aw well. . . .

I should've brought a Mac a longtime ago!

I had a fair few moments yesterday sitting blinking at my iPod. After updating to the new iTunes a few days ago this was the first time I had synched it for a while. An error message came up to say there wasn't enough space left on the iTunes Library and did I want to save a list for blah de blah de blah. . .. Who reads those error messages anyway?

Seconds later I had a Playlist looking at me on iTunes and the iPod had less than a gig left on it. Huh? Last time *I* looked there was like 15 gb left on it. Something was up. Must have something to do with that Playlist then huh? So What's a girl gonna do? I deleted the play list and in under .0003 of a second managed to delete EVERYTHING off the iPod. Just like that. All gone. Can you imagine me sitting there blinking? Just before the cursing started?

It took me quite some time before I realised how it had all happened. Basically I have 10gb in a playlist on the Powerbook and there was already 49gb on the iPod - well under the 60gb. After adding a couple of new purchases the other day to the Powerbook which must have just tipped the scales there just wasn't enough room on the ipod for both.

Thankfully, I only just re-formated the iPod a while back and ALL the songs from my external hard drive were neatly in one playlist waiting to be added again (thanks Mate!) and it only took a few hours working away in the background before I had the whole lot back on again. I took the opportunity to FINALLY take off a whole load that I know I will never ever listen to and with un-ticking the Powerbook's own playlist I now am well back under the 49gb mark again.

Panic over and back to normal.

All day yesterday in work Iain and I checked and double checked prices for Shuffles and Nanos for David's birthday. I like the idea that the Shuffle is so cheap but Iain thought the Nano would be a less-likely-to-be-lost size. Finally I realised the Nano has a screen that the Shuffle doesn't so Iain won that argument. We were all settled on the older 1gb Nano for £80 from Argos until the Google Queen checked online and found PC World had older TWO gb ones for £80. After tea last night I flew down there (taking the BMW for one last spin as it is now sold and being picked up on Saturday SNIFFFFF) but no 2gbs left in stock there, in Currys or in Argos!

In Argos I spoke to a very nice man who explained that there was a new Shuffle out (huh uh?). We got on to the capacity of iPods and how he had NEVER come across anyone yet who had actually managed to fill their players.

I whipped out mine from my pocket, held it up and said "You have now!"

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Wanna see something really sexy? Something that makes me very happy?

It is the prototype for the Apple Mighty Mouse CORDLESS MOUSE. Yeeeee haaaaaaaa.

Ok - so - plenty of time for you all to start saving up for my birthday. You may remember I want one of these. I want. I want. I am kinda dribbling right now it has to be said.

This is a thing I have longed for, for a long time. It is a little thing to click on to illuminate your Powerbook (or MacBook Pro) keyboard. There have been times that the lack of being able to turn the backlight on during the day has frustrated me - but I have to admit now that I have it switched on - it is annoying the happiness out of me! Thankfully I can access the slider and turn it down in a few moments. I feel honour bound to complete this entry with it on even though I am developing a head ache!

I can think of plenty of times that it will come in handy though.

Isn't is gorgeous looking too?

Jacqui blogged this evening about her new MacBook. In theory I am jealous. I love getting new gadgets and there is nothing better than being there when a new Apple product is being unwrapped, unless, of course, if that Apple product is actually for MEEEE.

I say "in theory" because I actually have no hankering after upgrading the Powerbook. I love it. I love it. I love it. Have I told you lately how much I do? I am quite content with it and with the MacBook Pro 17 inch (which I would NEEEEED to go up to) weighing in at £1900 I am more than happy to wait for it. I wish I was making enough money to just order one for the business but I am not - so it will wait. . . .

Jac very kindly mentioned that I have been helping her set up the new machine. It isn't as easy as it sounds when you aren't actually there with it. Especially as there are things outside of my experience going on there - like Dude - the things she needs to be downloading ought to be Universal - tut - as if I knew that!

It is nice to be more knowledgeable than her for a wee while. It wont be long before she is as Mac addicted as I am though. Will she still need me then d'ya think?

Last week my friend Becky visited me at the studio, looked at the Powerbook which has a Geek Girl sticker on it (I succumbed eventually) and asked me "What's with all this Geek Girl stuff?" It almost felt dirty! Imagine coming out of the closet as a Geek! Well, I am. And I am fairly comfortable with it all now. It's time everyone knew about it and it was in the open.

I'm so geeky that . . .
In the run up to the holiday, Iain has installed a few Non Genuine Renault parts to the car. One of them is the lead which allows the iPod to be connected direct to the radio and therefore the speakers. It is a magnificent piece of kit and has meant I have been able to start using the iPod in the car properly.

It isn't unknown for me to be driving along now, realise I don't know that particular song and quickly move my left hand across the steering wheel towards the top left corner of the Dashboard to see the lyrics of the song. . . Has happened more than once!

Mind you - when I am in the other car and can't play the iPod, it is also common for me to look at the radio for the name of the song playing on the radio. . . it isn't that clever. I think we should be issued with Apple iScreens for every car so we can do these things wirelessly . . . One for Jobs huh?

Also . . .
Have you any idea how little I write these days? I mean, proper writing. With that pen and paper malarky. I seriously find it difficult to sign my own name now because I do it so seldom. You don't even need to sign your credit and debit cards anymore. I had to sign my driving licence application a couple of weeks ago and I swear if they check it with the last application I made they will reject it because it looks nothing like this one.

Last week I was writing something out. Proper paper. Proper pen. A full page of writing. My wrist was getting sore. Three quarters of the way through it I realised I didn't know the date so I made a mark on the page, bottom right to top left to check it out.

I had to help Iain with his PC the other day. It exasperated me so much. It is surprising how quickly you forget all the Windows stuff. START button? I need to get him that Mac Windows theme - that will start him off gently so when the big switch comes for him it isn't as hard. Like, seriously, how difficult would it be for Windows to put the buttons on the correct side of the the browser window? What's that all about?

So I admit it. I AM ADDICTED. I'll never go back to a PC now. I even got 9/10 in the Apple test (am NOT telling which one I got wrong!) - I am an Apple Geek Girl . . . I will continue to quietly persuade others to see the light . . .

The thing about Apple is that they normally do things the way you would expect things to be done, but after being with Windows so long you have to re-learn to trust your instincts and look for the Apple way and believe it is there.

When I first switched it was common for me to say "Of course it works this way - it is Apple!" Imagine my surprise last week when I finally decided to upgrade from my Mighty Mouse to Mighty Mouse Wireless. I looked on eBay. No one was selling them. I waited a day. Looked again. No one.

I went into PC World and picked up a Wireless Mouse, walked around the store for 10 minutes THEN realised there was no scroll on the picture. . .

I then went to apple.co.uk and looked there too.

Huh?

What?

How could they NOT?

Isn't that the most obvious thing ever? How could I get to this stage in my Apple Geekiness and not realised there was NO Mighty Mouse Wireless?

Weirdness!