narshada

OK, firstly I have an apology to make.
Steve Jobs I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything bad I ever said about Macs. I acknowledge that it was mostly down to fear of the unknown. I'd never really had time to play with a Mac and although I'd thought about moving away from windows, the lack of software (mainly 3D Studio Max,) had put me off.
Working as an admin for a windows based company didn't help. The graphics guys had Macs but they rarely needed anything from me. At one point I had trouble connecting one of them to a shared folder, and that reinforced my dislike of the format.

I didn't know how to open a terminal and find an IP address and nothing was where I expected it to be. THe graphics guys weren't much help either - they came from the "I just turn it on and it works" schools of thought, an ideology guaranteed to annoy any Windows Admin.

Then a while back I switched to Linux on my laptop at home. It brought back memories from when I worked as tech support for a company that sold Unix based servers, grepping and piping, topping and checking logs.
I really liked Ubuntu. Not being Windows was a good start but for everyday use it was great - easy to use, came with pretty much everything you'd need preinstalled and everything else just a few clicks away.
The only thing was that, despite the GIMP being an amazing piece of software, especially considering it's free, it just wasn't Photoshop. 3DS Max I can live without now as I haven't done much 3D work in the last few years but Photoshop is a deal breaker.

So I started to think about a Mac. I'd since learned that the terminal window on a Mac was just a bash shell - same as in Ubuntu Linux so getting an IP was as simple as typing: ifconfig -au.

Then my boss decided to buy a Macbook to replace the laptop that was stolen from his car, as he used Macs at home. I advised him that I had little experience supporting Macs and it might make things difficult for accessing files, connecting to our remote email server etc. He told me to arrange a meeting with a guy at the local Apple store who was their 'integration specialist'. I went, the guy failed to show, I wasn't given a reason why and I got to talk to an 'expert' who was nothing of the sort and not only tried to work the phrase, "the great thing about Macs is..." into every sentence, but outright lied to me about a couple of techie bits I tested him on. I know, I shouldn't have held it against the technology, but I did.
Then my bosses Macbook arrived and as predicted, I struggled to connect it to our email server, but that was because my boss had bought the wrong version of Mac Office. And something else happened. I had to sit down and use it. I had to install something and uninstall something else. I was amazed at how easy it was. The interface was slightly alarming to someone used to a 5 button mouse - just one trackpad with no buttons, the pad itself was a button, but it worked beautifully. On my Dell laptop, I'd switched the ability to click by tapping on the trackpad off as it got annoying - you ended up clicking by accident quite often. On the Mac - and I hate to say it, but it just worked. I played with the gestural interface on the trackpad and was instantly impressed. Scrolling on my Dell machine meant dragging my finger along the right of a little trackpad - usable but not great. On the Mac, you scroll by dragging two fingers anywhere on the pad. The equivalent of alt-tab can be done by swiping four fingers sideways.
I'm hoping the next update includes more support for gestures and think they might play a larger part in computer interfaces in the future.

So I looked into getting one. I decided that a standard Macbook would be the one I'd go for, as it was at the top of my budget range but was more future proof than the white Macbook but would have loved a Macbook Pro.Then in a spectacular piece of serendipity, a girl I'm following on twitter asked if anyone would be interested in buying 'Daisy', her 4 month old Macbook Pro. Better spec, larger screen, illuminated keyboard - all for less than a brand new Macbook with a few optional extras.
I couldn't resist. I picked up 'Daisy' as her previous owner had named her, on Friday and I'm in love. She's lush. We've had fun with photobooth, I've marvelled at the interface and slickness of the OS in general and made the appropriate ooh and aah noises.
I can also get Parallels, which will enable me to run both Windows and Linux as virtual machines - 3 OS's on one laptop, Yowser.
OK, that's the Mac love done.

We're over at Pinklet's parents at the moment. We came over on Friday for a friend of Pink's 30th. It was fancy dress:

We had a good time. Drink flowed and music played. We ate and drank and danced and played silly drinking games until the wee hours. I smoked a little weed for the first time in months and my head made me regret it. Oh well.

I have this week off work, which I am really happy about. I'm going to relax, play some 360, do some writing, do some reading, do some web design, get used to Daisy and look for another job.