Macritte

I've attached this decal to my MacBook, as I'm a fan of Magritte's work and thought it was witty. The designer has it laser-etched onto his machine - wish I had access to such technology.

All hail Phantom Gorilla

While I think about it, I want to plug Phantom Gorilla's BBC Radio Widget. If you own a Mac, it's a dashboard mini-application which gives you a ridiculously simple way to access every BBC radio station. And it's free (though you can, and should, send him the price of a couple of pints).

Get it here.

Nerd heaven

Afternoon all. I've spent two hours at the Apple Store in Birmingham, taking advantage of the assistants' kindliness. My lovely new MacBook Pro is all sorted out bar transferring my iTunes from an external hard drive back onto the new machine. That's proving quite difficult - any help gratefully received…

The sun shone as I left Wolves - by the time I returned there was an inch of snow and the sky was the colour of beaten copper. Within a few minutes it turned bruise blue and snow once again swirled - though only for a few delightful moments.

Time to do some work.

What a wonderful Wednesday

Been for a swim with Neal.
Copying 180Gb of my music from a knackered hard drive over to my new Mac - manually. It's very slow and I'm waiting for it to fail.
Then instead of gardening - the original plan - I'm off to Brum to the Apple shop to get the clever people to copy my settings and data over. I should then be able to start writing all the things I promised I'd write…

Anyone else see the hedge fund trader on Newsnight last night? He basically suggested that the Greeks should be left to starve because the bond markets don't like the Greek economy. Nevermind that the bond markets gave AAA ratings to the banks which went bust, leading to governments getting into massive debts to save them - government bonds have now been downgraded by these same bastards, which means governments have to pay even more money when they borrow.

When the revolution comes, I'm going to fire the first shots through their Blackberries and into their cold black hearts.

Hurrah. And Boo.

Hurrah! New MacBook Pro has arrived. It's lovely.
Boo! The old one is too old to handily copy everything over. Must go to Apple shop tomorrow.
Boo! Rumour has it the MacBook Pros are being upgraded tomorrow. This is typical of me…

Tuesday twittering

Morning all. Not much from me today - I'm writing a lecture on What Is Cultural Studies for this afternoon. It's a big subject with lots of tempting tangents. I'm trying not to talk about the Frankfurt School for the whole time…

On the up side: my new Mac has shipped. Mmmmmm

I'm listening to the wonderful sounds of Angie Hart. Older readers may recognise her from Frente! the 90s band who had a big (indie) hit with an ethereal cover of New Order's 'Bizarre Love Triangle'. I love New Order and collect cover versions of their songs, and I also have a massive soft spot for Australian dreampop: especially Paradise Motel, Huon, The Cat's Miaow and Hydroplane.

OMFG

Just pressed 'buy' on the Apple Store. 2.53Ghz, 4Gb memory, 320Gb hard drive 13.3" MacBook Pro. Certainly the most expensive object I've ever bought, despite the Education discount. I already feel guilty…

Drool…dribble…slurp…mmmmyPad

Oh how I want the Apple iPad. I've resisted the iPhone on financial grounds. I've kept my iBook G4 for 7 years: I'm a sensible Mac user. Or I was until today. Rationality has been swept away. I don't really need an iPad - I've no internet at home and prefer reading books, but there's something wonderful about a good idea executed well.

I know this makes a sad, consumerist hypocrite, which is probably why I'll never own one. I am going to buy a MacBook Pro next week though…

Money matters

Cynical Ben encourages us to buy art, and to list the five best things on which you've lavished money, as he's done. Being Ben, his list is erudite, varied and heartfelt.

Being me, mine isn't. I'm not very good with money. I either spend it like water, or hoard it. I've saved recently, but am now about to blow it on rent for a rather expensive flat, and enough bookcases to hold my extensive library and record (yes, records) collection - a product of my unthrifty ways. I'm so bad with money (and avoided gainful employment for so long) that I once had to sell 400 of my rarest 7" records merely to eat one summer. How I regret doing so.

However: good buys, excluding my books and records.

My Berghaus walking boots. I'm not very practical and had never owned any hiking gear before, so assumed that I'd automatically make the wrong choice, then spend a year acquiring painful blisters while dragging along half a mile behind the other Map Twats. Amazingly enough, they're warm, watertight, close-fitting and comfortable, much more so than my beloved DMs.

My Mac. It just works.

The Mont Blanc pen I bought to celebrate getting my PhD. I never use it though.

I have a couple of beautiful suits, which hide my hideous flabby carcass on special occasions.

The wrecked Moulton bicycle I have in the shed. It's almost 50 years old, revolutionary in design, and new ones are £6000-10000: I'll get mine restored one day.

Bamboo rice/veg steamers. £2.50, work perfectly and efficiently, and are environmentally friendly.

Error 403 - Forbidden

Anyone else ever had this, or know and explanation? I've had a horrible, sweaty hour trying to work out why access to my own blog was forbidden - Google claimed it was because I was running spyware or had a virus. Not bloody likely - I use a Mac.

And to add to the misery, my hard drive's playing up which is horrifying: all my music is on it, with the exception of what's on vinyl. I hate computers.

Anyway, I'm back again as inexplicably as I was excluded. Not sure why I'm so relieved, it's not as if I have that many readers, so it must be the opportunity to type what I think that I've become attached to. Weird.

Five finger shuffle

I've downloaded the iPod OS 3.0, for very little purpose other than being a Mac obsessive, though shake-to-shuffle is quite cool. So I'm taking a few minutes to change what's on the iPod, and it's a bit strange. I'm happily chopping albums up, dumping old favourites, and generally doing things I would normally consider philistine - like losing the 3rd movement of Elgar's Cello Concerto because it's weaker than the other 3 even though structurally the piece needs them all. Of course, the iPod's normally on shuffle, so I wouldn't notice, but it is interesting to note how listening habits have been changed by technology. I do still listen to complete pieces at home and work though - Monteverdi's Vespers today (the Gardiner recording).

Take a bite

I know I'll lose most of you now, but yesterday was a glorious one for Apple Mac users: new iPhones (time to get one), a stunning new OS coming in September, and radically upgraded laptops - I'll be replacing this 7 year-old iBook with one of these beasts in September, thanks to the education discount we can all get.

All quiet on the western front

I'm not ignoring you. I'm on a PGCE day with no power sockets within reach, and my poor old Mac can only last 15 minutes on battery power.

I'm actually having a brilliant day: the lecturer is interesting, interested and very independent-minded. We're discussing intellectual coherence and curriculum design. I won't name him her, or s/he'll be neutralised by the Borg that is the Executive. What's going on in the real world?

Sat-Nav

Hello all. As it's a holiday weekend, I won't be troubling you with too many ramblings, opinions or links. What are you all doing with the break? I should be marking projects and writing PGCE essays, but as I accidentally left my Mac at work, I'll have to find some other ways to fill in the time. 

Friday saw the ascension into the firmament of Keiti Gachevska, who handed in her PhD thesis. If there's anything you need to know about organised crime in Eastern Europe, she's your go-to gal. Needless to say, a modicum of alcoholised liquid was taken in celebration. 

Saturday was also a long-awaited day - the arrival of the Cheese Boat at Norbury junction. Our motley crew (Emma, Neal, Dan and - eventually - James) converged on Gnosall (love those anglo-saxon names), walked for a couple of miles to stimulate our appetite, then set of (with a minor detour to a pub) for the junction, another couple of miles down the canal. We saw herons, a yellowhammer, lots of flowers, ducklings, and great views of the Wrekin. I'll post some photos when I get back into the office. 

The Junction hosted a rally of canalists, who are clearly divided between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as us landlubbers. Some went for beautifully painted narrowboats, satellite dishes, those horrible painted cans and twee names. Others opted for functionality - black paint, scuffed and marked, logs and battered bikes slung over the top. 

The Cheese Boat saw us coming. Apart from stiffing me for the pickle I paid for, we were pretty impressed by the interesting variations on cheddar, and very impressed by Perl Las and Perl Wen, two organic Welsh soft cheeses. Needless to say, we bought a massive amount, and washed it down with beautiful buttery bitter (Junction Best) from the pub. 

Already suffering from tendonitis, I added sunburn to the injury list - not the last wound I'd suffer that fateful day either. Thanks to my interestingly-pale (or pasty, as my 'friends' put it), I'm a bit paranoid about sunburn, as I blister in the presence of candlelight. However, yesterday looked overcast and I forgot my hat and factor 50. Thus by the time I returned to Wolves ready for Irina's party and Blast Off, I looked like a tomato with eczema - as a disconcertingly large number of former friends pointed out. 

We made a cameo at the Bulgarian-and-assorted-computational-linguistics do, then determinedly headed out to the Civic for Blast Off, Wolverhampton's best - and only - indie night. I'd prefer more Gorky's, Tindersticks, Stereolab, Field Mice and Neu! personally, but it's pretty good. One of my media students kindly mixed me a decent cocktail and James, Neal, Emma and I added to our walk-related injuries by dancing like loons until 2.30. Somewhere along the way, I added to my injuries. Finding something determinedly attached to the sole of my Doc Marten (of course), I tried to yank it off, only to discover that it was a large and jagged chunk of glass - cue much blood. Thanks to the Civic's security and First Aid people - kind, friendly and efficient, despite the absence of a pair of scissors. I was soon 'bopping', as I believe the young folk call it, to Hot Chip as though major haemorrhaging was nothing worse than a stubbed toe. 

The only downside to the day was Stoke's battling defeat at home to West Ham, only slightly balanced by Emma's beloved Munster getting hammered by unfancied Leinster. 

Feels like I've lost a limb

IT services have managed to fiddle with the servers so that Mac users can't send mail out - so don't feel snubbed if I don't reply to you today. The utter gits.

You can still send me mail, or post to my blog.

Back now - all the mockery from IT services about Macs was worth it because it was their fault!

Snow joke

Today I should have been in scenic Telford on another PGCE training day - learning to make podcasts, but it was cancelled at 7 this morning as I was setting out to catch the train. Guess I'll just have to rely on the simple instructions provided with my 6 year-old Mac and struggle on - not that podcasts are at all useful in my particular teaching context…

Mmmmacintosh

I haven't posted anything geeky for a while (hey, by my standards anyway), so here goes. I run Mac OS X 10.4 on an old iBook G4 which is frankly struggling now. However, it means I can run Phantom Gorilla's Unofficial BBC Widget - a brilliant, free little app on the Dashboard which simplifies listening to the BBC's radio streams like you wouldn't believe. As it's a good idea invented by a person who only wants to help us and support the BBC, the inevitable result was harassment by letter, e-mail and phone by the BBC legal department - despite technical support from BBC geeks- for using BBC logos in the display. The absolute morons.