The northlondonhippy

Archive for March, 2007

It seems I’m part of the last bas­tion of a dying breed.

Accord­ing to my favourite news­pa­per, The Guardian, the “blog phe­nom­e­non” reached its peak last Octo­ber and has started to decline. Many have become what are now known as “ghost blogs”; aban­doned and left to lan­guish untouched on the inter­net for who knows how long. The full arti­cle can be found RIGHT HERE.

At the peak of blog­ging, way back in those heady, crazy, hazy days of Octo­ber last year, they say there were around 200 mil­lion web­sites like mine. No won­der I’m the “biggest inter­net celebrity you’ve never heard of!” – there’s a ton of competition.

The fact that other blogs are dis­ap­pear­ing can only be good news for a cer­tain north Lon­don based hippy that likes to smoke dope. Yes, me! Per­haps as all the oth­ers dis­ap­pear, eager con­sumers of blogs will seek me out for all their blog­ging needs.

Trust me, I could be your sole provider!

It was my third anniver­sary of blog­ging last week and I took a deci­sion not to mark it in my usual nos­tal­gic style. I’m only men­tion­ing it now to make a sim­ple point, which is this: I’m still blogging.

I won’t deny that my blog has changed and evolved over time and it’s far more of a place for me to wax lyri­cal on whatever’s on my mind that day, than a diary of what I had for lunch.

I think these days, what I do is closer to per­sonal essays or dare I say, a colum­nist (and one avail­able for hire!) pro­vid­ing con­sid­ered opin­ions on a wide vari­ety of subjects.

I still aim to inform and enter­tain and I try to be as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble to the widest audi­ence. And I would like it to be wider.

I actu­ally do alright in terms of vis­i­tors and for the most part, my num­bers have steadily climbed since I started and increased rather dra­mat­i­cally as of late. As blogs go and I mean those writ­ten by nobod­ies such as myself, I think I do pretty damn good.

Not as well as you guys though, because you, my beloved hip­py­fans were clever enough to make it to this page, slic­ing through the dross and detri­tus that per­vades the inter­net like a litter-strewn street.

I pre­fer to think of my blog as under­ground, rather than obscure, so well done you for hook­ing up with the hippy. That puts you right at the heart of the van­guard of the inter­net elite! It’s just like hav­ing the door­man at an exclu­sive club, invite you inside ahead of the queue and then ush­er­ing you straight to the VIP sec­tion, where Sarah Hard­ing from Girls Aloud is on her third bot­tle of Dom and she’s about to get her tits out!

Maybe not, but it’s still superneatocool.

I’m glad you all dig the hippy, because this hippy really digs all of you!

My blog is not a spot you would nor­mally visit when look­ing for major net­work tele­vi­sion spoil­ers, so if you’re wor­ried I’m about to reveal some­thing HUGE about one of my favourite pro­grammes and pos­si­bly yours, please look away NOW!

Still here? Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

The TV show in ques­tion is ABC’s “Lost”, which airs here in the UK on SKY One, or on your PC cour­tesy of BitTorrent!

The route of this bit of spoilage is rather cir­cuitous, but it comes from a myth­i­cal friend of a friend of a friend and it ties in with a cast­ing notice I read on a proper spoiler site.

Yes, I read spoil­ers. For me, it’s part of the fun!

Any­way, the char­ac­ters I’m talk­ing about are in an upcom­ing episode; a hippy cou­ple, and their char­ac­ter names have been pur­pose­fully left off the cast­ing notice.

I can con­firm, accord­ing to my source, that the hippy cou­ple, are the Deg­roots. They were part of the group that founded the Dharma Ini­tia­tive, accord­ing to Lost-lore.

But that’s not my big, juicy, bit of spoilage. Oh no, this is even big­ger than that!

No, what I found out is the iden­tity of their off­spring. It’s a reg­u­lar char­ac­ter and I’ll give you a lit­tle hint. This char­ac­ter has men­tioned on sev­eral occa­sions that HE was BORN on the island.

That’s right Lost-fans, Ben is none other than the son of the Degroots!

Expect this shocker to drop dur­ing the sea­son finale!

If this turns out to be wrong, please don’t shoot the mes­sen­ger. I think the orig­i­nal source is reli­able and it fits in with other known info.

Apolo­gies to non-Lost fans as well, but this is a big deal. Nor­mal hippy ser­vice will resume in my next post.

I’m pissed off today.

I’m pissed off most days, if I’m really hon­est, so to be more pre­cise I’m par­tic­u­larly pissed off at a cer­tain news­pa­per for their embar­rass­ing and point­less pol­icy shift against cannabis.

Yes, “The Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day” news­pa­per, I’m talk­ing about you!

For two suc­ces­sive Sun­days, the IoS ran scare-mongering, anti-cannabis sto­ries on their front page, which were filled with mind­less hys­te­ria rather than actual, fac­tual report­ing. I expected so much more from this news­pa­per and I am so dis­ap­pointed by the col­lec­tive weak will of their senior edi­to­r­ial staff that I could cry 96 tears. Cry, cry, cry, cry, 96 tears!

Ten years ago, the Indy called for the legal­i­sa­tion of weed, which is a wise and informed posi­tion to take but that all changed when they apol­o­gised for doing this, a cou­ple of weeks ago on the front page. They say that they have revised their pol­icy fol­low­ing all the recent “evi­dence” sur­round­ing the dan­gers of dope.

The Indy then goes on to recount the story of a young man who killed him­self, accord­ing to his griev­ing mother, as a result of his abuse of the demon weed.

I won’t be pro­vid­ing a link here, as I do not want to pro­mote this news­pa­per in any shape, man­ner or form, but I am sure with a lit­tle clever surf­ing you could find it yourself.

It is quite a har­row­ing read and while I am sym­pa­thetic to the woman for her loss, I can’t help think­ing that they left quite a few impor­tant details out of the story.

The mother says her son had suf­fered from men­tal prob­lems, which would imply that more than likely that he received psy­chi­atric care and treat­ment. In real­ity, treat­ment would be a big, fat pre­scrip­tion for anti-depressants.

Anti-depressants have a doc­u­mented his­tory of caus­ing teenage sui­cides. Was her son tak­ing them? Did he sud­denly stop tak­ing them, cold turkey? It would be good to know!

Per­haps he had emo­tional trou­bles before he started puff­ing on spliffs and he only sought out cannabis as a means to self-medicate and lessen his men­tal anguish. He wouldn’t be the first.

Maybe his psy­cho­log­i­cal woes were so bad, that no amount of treat­ment could have pre­vented him from tak­ing his own life. It happens.

And, gasp, you’re not sup­posed to say this, but what if his mother was just a lousy parent?

I’m not say­ing she was and by all indi­ca­tions, it doesn’t seem like it, but we’ll never, ever know. I’m sure her son would have had an inter­est­ing take on the ques­tion and it is a fair one to pose.

It’s so much eas­ier to blame the weed, rather than any­thing else! It’s the lazy, coward’s excuse.

Let’s go back in time, to my own trou­bled teenage years. My par­ents were ill equipped to deal with me, they were older than most, by a gen­er­a­tion and out of touch with mod­ern life. My fam­ily was dys­func­tion, espe­cially my extended fam­ily, on both sides. I was way too smart for my own good and prob­a­bly too sen­si­tive as well. I suf­fered from deep, teenage depres­sion of the fairly nor­mal, morose variety.

My par­ents did what any self-respecting, slightly afflu­ent, upper-middle-class fam­ily with health insur­ance was expected to do; they packed me off to a shrink.

I didn’t need a shrink, but I thought, what the fuck! Maybe some­one would lis­ten to me for a change! I went, every week, for a cou­ple of years.

Around half way through my stint with the Dr. Head­shrinker, my par­ents dis­cov­ered I was smok­ing weed in my bed­room. It was as if they found out I was secretly a mem­ber of the Man­son fam­ily and had been out butcher­ing new­borns with a rusty knife. Their son was “on drugs”! Oh, the hor­ror, the shock, the shame!

In real­ity, I was just like most peo­ple my age, in the late 70s or early 80s; I sim­ply liked “to party”.

The ben­e­fit to my par­ents for all of this was sim­ple, they had an excuse for my moods and behav­iour; they had some­thing exter­nal to blame for any­thing and every­thing they thought was wrong with me.

And even bet­ter than that, it meant they could dis­miss and lin­ger­ing doubts they had about their par­ent­ing skills, because it couldn’t be their fault if I was messed up on drugs!

I should add that dur­ing this time period, I was a full time stu­dent and worked a full time job. That’s a 40-hour work­week, plus a full course load and asso­ci­ated home­work. Go me!

My par­ents were absolved of any guilt for how I turned out. If I talked back to my mother, it was because I was “on drugs”. If I stayed in my room when rel­a­tives vis­ited, it was because I was “on drugs”. If I came home too late and ate all the choco­late cook­ies, it was because I was “on drugs”.

Alright, I will give in to that last one, but the oth­ers are total bullshit!

I’ve smoked weed every day since I was 18, includ­ing and espe­cially skunk. And speak­ing of bull­shit, skunk is not new and call­ing it a brand new type of super-weed is patently false.

I had been smok­ing for around a year when I was first intro­duced to what we all now call “skunk”. I was 19 and the year was 1982, which if my drug-addled brain can still do math is 25 years ago!

The guy I was pur­chas­ing from had what every­one had back then, nor­mal Colom­bian which was brown and tasted of dirt. Bleuch!

Then, one day I called ‘round to see him and he asked me if I ever had “Indica” before. It was a new one on me.

He brought out three large bags, each graded accord­ing to strength and explained that the strongest was the top bud, and the other two grades were lower down on the plant. The buds were just that, proper buds, and the first I had ever seen. It looked like green cau­li­flower the size of infant’s fists. And the smell, wow, it was overpowering!

It smoked like a dream, with a full rich flavour and potency beyond any­thing I had before. It was love at first puff and that love affair con­tin­ues to this day!

Was it 20 times stronger than “nor­mal weed”? Of course not! It was notice­ably stronger, though and I bought as much as I could afford. I still do, though it remains fairly scarce here in London.

The strains, which are known col­lec­tively as “skunk” were actu­ally pio­neered in the Nether­lands in the 60s, so there is around 40 years of col­lec­tive knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence to draw from on the sub­ject, right here in Europe. I would love to see some data from the Dutch men­tal health sys­tem on their rates of teenage mad­ness as a result of dope! I would ven­ture a guess that they do not see any link.

In Hol­land, where weed is openly tol­er­ated, and sold under con­trolled rules, it’s harder for under­age kid­dies to score. Also, because respon­si­ble adults openly con­sume it, teenagers are less likely to chase after it for it’s illicit nature. In the Nether­lands, reported rates of cannabis use among teens are much lower than it is in the UK. Why can’t we fol­low the Dutch example?

The rea­son why skunk is more preva­lent in the UK now is sim­ple; because more weed is grown domes­ti­cally. It’s grow domes­ti­cally because it is cheaper and eas­ier to do that than to risk import­ing it into the coun­try in quan­tity from coun­tries where it grows well out­side. If you want weaker weed on the streets, then let the smug­glers bring some in! THC lev­els would be lower, and peo­ple could choose what they wanted to smoke.

Think of nor­mal weed as beer and skunk as the equiv­a­lent of spir­its. Peo­ple don’t drink pints of whiskey, do they? Ok, some peo­ple do, but most are able to exer­cise a degree of mod­er­a­tion. If weed were legal, the strength could be printed on the pack, the same way alco­hol con­tent is with booze. I’ll stop now, I’m mak­ing way too much sense!

In the sec­ond anti-cannabis hys­te­ria front-page arti­cle of the IoS, they had a very funny and unchal­lenged quote from Sir Richard Bran­son, which should not have been printed. In his apol­ogy for endors­ing the Independent’s legalise-weed cam­paign, Bran­son said that he would never had sup­ported the cause if he knew about these “new, genet­i­cally mod­i­fied” types of dope. What the fuck?

Does he really think that there are sci­en­tists in lab­o­ra­to­ries re-sequencing cannabis DNA to yield increased potency? Look, if it is true, I really want to meet these intre­pid geneti­cists, who’ve given up on cur­ing can­cer or the com­mon cold in favour of get­ting me higher! Bring on the Nobel Prize!

Seri­ously, does he really believe that research grants are back­ing GM mar­i­juana? I thought Bran­son was a bright guy, but this is really dumb.

Cannabis, like any plant, is bred for cer­tain qual­i­ties, nat­u­rally, by using one plant to pol­li­nate another, the same way they fig­ured out how to get rid of potato blight. Say you find a plant that yields well, or tastes espe­cially nice and another that flow­ers quicker than oth­ers. By cross breed­ing the two plants, you should even­tu­ally end up with a sib­ling plant that has a com­bi­na­tion of the pos­i­tive ele­ments of both par­ents. That does NOT qual­ify as genet­i­cally mod­i­fied in my book. Mak­ing toma­toes glow in the dark by adding jel­ly­fish genes, now that’s GM!

Rather than con­tinue to debunk the fac­tu­ally and emo­tion­ally inac­cu­rate report­ing in the IoS, I would pre­fer to let my favourite news­pa­per, do it for me, with the fol­low­ing very inter­est­ing arti­cle that you can read RIGHT HERE. The Guardian is the voice of sense and rea­son! Rock on!

Don’t let the ever-increasing media hys­te­ria get to you. They are 100% wrong. Stick with this hippy for the truth about dope, first hand and with­out a neg­a­tive bias!

(NB: In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, the northlon­don­hippy was under the influ­ence of “skunk cannabis” dur­ing the writ­ing of this blog entry and he is still a sane, well-balanced, tax-paying mem­ber of soci­ety.)

There’s not actu­ally that much in this world that pisses me off, I mean REALLY pisses me off, but I am about to share some­thing with you that made me angry and tear­ful at the same time.

Please take a few moments to read THIS ARTICLE in today’s Guardian news­pa­per. Don’t worry, it’s short.

I have so much sym­pa­thy for Angel Raich and the prob­lems she’s fac­ing and I have absolute dis­gust and hatred for the peo­ple who are deny­ing her the only treat­ment that her doc­tor has prescribed.

This poor woman has a myr­iad of health prob­lems, rang­ing from sco­l­io­sis right up to a brain tumour. Mod­ern med­i­cine can offer her noth­ing in the way of hope or even pain relief, but cannabis can. Of this I have no doubts at all.

Thanks to a stu­pid law, enacted years ago to pro­tect the paper indus­try and the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try, a court is try­ing to pre­vent her from hav­ing the only thing that can do her any good.

Fuck­ing cunts! Fuck­ing cunts run the world!

On behalf of every­one on the planet, Ms. Raich I would like to apol­o­gise. I am very sorry for your pain and even more sorry that we live in a soci­ety that would pre­fer to see you suf­fer and die rather than let you con­sume a plant which is widely grown, that would offer you a tiny bit of relief.

Free the weed!

Could some­one tell me when we all col­lec­tively aban­doned com­mon sense? Emails to the usual address, please.

The media drug story of the day fea­tures our friend cannabis, which is being grown in record amounts here in the UK. The police are appar­ently shut­ting down three fac­tory farms on aver­age per a day. Wow.

Here, check out what the Guardian, my favourite broad­sheet news­pa­per has to say about it RIGHT HERE.

I’ve writ­ten about this before; how Viet­namese gangs are con­trol­ling most of the mar­ket in domes­ti­cally, com­mer­cially grown weed. It’s not a good thing for anyone.

It’s not good for the peo­ple who inno­cently rent these gangs their prop­er­ties, either homes or com­mer­cial spaces. They don’t exactly leave them in the best con­di­tion and around 50 of these fac­tory farms in Lon­don were dis­cov­ered when they burst into flames.

These farms are not good for the peo­ple tend­ing these crops, who are forced into inden­tured servi­tude for safe pas­sage into the coun­try. They’re also forced to live in very sub­stan­dard conditions.

Mainly, it’s not good for us, the cannabis con­sumer. The weed pro­duced in these farms is not very good and accord­ing to that Guardian arti­cle, they choose strains that have high yields and fin­ish quickly, rather than doing it right and grow­ing some­thing for THC con­tent. Their buds aren’t going to be win­ning the Cannabis Cup any­time soon!

And where do you think the whole grit weed thing started? My guess is in these farms! It would explain why it was so sud­den and so wide spread.

I know a really sim­ple way to put an end to these fac­tory farms and their costly and dan­ger­ous con­di­tions. I know a way to put an end to the crap dope they pro­duce as well.

Free the weed!

Legalise it!

Decrim­i­nalise it!

Offi­cially, unof­fi­cially tol­er­ate it!

It can be done, there are ways to insure that if respon­si­ble adults can smoke weed safely with min­i­mal harm. Let’s sort it out!

There is clearly a large mar­ket for qual­ity bud. Being against the legal­i­sa­tion of weed means you are against the free mar­ket and against the very basic ten­nents of cap­i­tal­ism! It means you’re bad for busi­ness! And wouldn’t it be bet­ter if cannabis was com­mer­cially pro­duced, reg­u­lated, clearly marked accord­ing to strength and pack­aged nicely? Don’t you want the VAT? You could buy a few more Tri­dents or pay for the 2012 Lon­don Olympics. The extra tax money wouldn’t go beg­ging, would it?

The cops don’t want to waste their time chas­ing gar­den­ers, but they have to because these fac­tory farms are a blight. If weed were legal, decrim­i­nalised or sim­ply tol­er­ated, Dutch style, think of how much bet­ter police resources could be deployed!

And if you’re wor­ried about under­age kids get­ting their tiny mitts on some weed, think about this inter­est­ing exam­ple that Mrs. Hippy men­tioned to me:

Give a 12-year-old ten quid and ask him to get you a bot­tle of whiskey and chances are he will have a pretty hard time buy­ing you one and will come back empty handed. Then ask the same 12-year old to take the same ten­ner and buy you some smack…I bet he’s back with a pocket full of brown faster than you can say Pete Doherty!

I’m not say­ing chil­dren can’t acquire alco­hol; what I’m say­ing is that the sup­ply is con­trolled, mak­ing it far harder for chil­dren to gain access to booze. If weed were sim­i­larly con­trolled, instead of being avail­able from your mate’s older brother’s best friend’s bed­room for one pound a spliff, maybe less under­age tok­ers would be toking.

It’s just thought; a very sen­si­ble, ratio­nal one. Don’t expect any­thing to change any­time soon.

I’m not the only one who wel­comed the RSA report on ille­gal drugs that was pub­lished last week.

Check this out!

The Sun­day Times today included a col­umn from jour­nal­ist India Knight, who has become this hippy’s new favourite writer.

You can read it for your­self RIGHT HERE.

Go on, read it! Then you’ll under­stand why this hippy is down with India Knight!

The Times is a fairly con­ser­v­a­tive news­pa­per, owned by News­Corp, the same peo­ple that own the Sun, the News of the World, Sky News and Fox News in the states, so this is a very cool thing.

Isn’t it time we all just saw sense! That includes you, Mis­ter Politi­cian Man!

Another day, another drug report; but as always with the same, sen­si­ble conclusions.

This time, the authors of the report, the “The Royal Soci­ety for the encour­age­ment of Arts, Man­u­fac­tures and Com­merce” — com­monly known as the RSA, spent two years study­ing the sit­u­a­tion. Rather than me explain­ing it to you, why don’t you read about it here, in my favourite broad­sheet news­pa­per, The Guardian.

It’s an informed and con­sid­ered opin­ion that the RSA is offer­ing, one that has been around in one form or another, endorsed by other objec­tive stud­ies and com­pletely ignored by politicians.

Politi­cians are ter­ri­fied of reports like this because they are ter­ri­fied of change. “Change” is a vote-loser, espe­cially when that change, no mat­ter how ben­e­fi­cial to soci­ety is mis­un­der­stood by a mis­in­formed public.

Politi­cians have a vested inter­est in keep­ing peo­ple mis­in­formed, espe­cially about drugs. How can they be seen to be com­bat­ing this ter­ri­ble prob­lem, if they haven’t pointed out it’s a prob­lem in the first place?

The sim­ple fact is that count­less num­bers of peo­ple in the UK take drugs every week, some every day, with no notice­able effect on their nor­mal, pro­duc­tive lives, yet they are crim­i­nalised for some­thing that harms no one.

What harms peo­ple are the sit­u­a­tions cre­ated by the pro­hi­bi­tion of drugs.

What harms peo­ple is the igno­rance and mis­un­der­stand­ing that is fos­tered by gov­ern­ments and by the tra­di­tional media.

I’ve smoked cannabis for nearly 26 years and dur­ing that time I’ve either been a gain­fully employed, tax-paying mem­ber of soci­ety or a stu­dent in full time edu­ca­tion. I’m still sharp as tack with the men­tal skills of some­one half my age. I don’t really take any­thing else these days and I hardly if ever drink alco­hol. Should I be a criminal?

Of course not!

Think of all the dosh lost in uncol­lected VAT on all of the weed I’ve smoked over the years! There goes that extra MRI scan­ner for your local hos­pi­tal! There goes an extra cop or two on the street!

It’s a plant for fuck sake! How can you ban nature?

Some of the biggest and most vocal sup­port­ers of a rethink on ille­gal drugs are the police. Yes, the police, the same peo­ple who have to enforce these point­less laws. The cops would much rather be chas­ing down gen­uine crim­i­nals than a bunch of dope­heads for possession!

I’ve spo­ken to cops who have told me they pre­fer to police a hous­ing estate that has a higher per­cent­age of weed smok­ers than drinkers. The smok­ers are much more chilled out, whereas we know what peo­ple who abuse alco­hol are like. If you don’t, just visit any city cen­tre this week­end after 11pm and you’ll receive a les­son you won’t soon forget!

Remem­ber, the police don’t make the laws and it seems like they’re not even con­sulted when they’re best suited to offer guid­ance from real life expe­ri­ence. Lis­ten to the cops, please Mr. Politi­cian man! He doesn’t want to arrest any­one for possession!

What we need is an MP with balls, prefer­ably one to become head of the Home Office. Charles Clark was lean­ing in that direc­tion; so was David Blun­kett, but not John Reid. He doesn’t want to rock the boat; he’s plan­ning a future in politics.

How about David “call me Dave” Cameron? Before he was leader of his party, he posed a ques­tion over whether drugs should be legalised. He didn’t offer or sug­gest an answer, he just sug­gested the ques­tion could or should be asked.

Since then, he hasn’t even come close to this posi­tion and if any­thing he’s backed away from it. Since the rev­e­la­tions of his boy­hood indis­cre­tion with a spliff (shock/horror!), there is even less chance of him keep­ing his mind this open. It’s a pity, I had high (no pun) hopes for him.

Leave it to the leader of the Lib­Dems, Sir Men­zies Camp­bell to be the one voice of rea­son, wel­com­ing the RSA report and endors­ing its find­ings. The Lib­Dems would legalise weed in an instant and we’d have Dutch-style cof­feeshops in every neigh­bour­hood! I wish they would get their act together and get some more support.

Do I think the law is going to change?

Yes, even­tu­ally it will, but not soon enough. I’d like it to change yes­ter­day, or even the day before. If every­one would just see sense and avoid all the knee-jerk reac­tion bull­shit that the sub­ject always brings out, we could change the laws for the ben­e­fit of not just one lone hippy in north Lon­don, but all of society!

It’s just over 2 years since I aban­doned my old beige box and upgraded my life to an iMac. I’m still very glad I did; a day doesn’t go by that I don’t con­grat­u­late myself for my bold deci­sion to switch.

I’m seri­ous. My iMac has brought me more joy and plea­sure than any other device I’ve ever owned. It is such an ele­gant machine, so sim­ple and clean in design, yet at the same time a com­plex, multi-functional com­put­ing device, capa­ble of a myr­iad of func­tions, each per­formed flawlessly.

It’s a deep and endur­ing love, as I’m sure you can tell.

Some­times, even when it’s sleep­ing, I just glance over at it, sit­ting qui­etly in the cor­ner, on my desk and I can’t believe how good it looks. I’ve got a 1.8 G5, 20” model, which is now sev­eral revi­sions out of date and I still feel this way. The newer mod­els are slim­mer, faster and more pow­er­ful, but mine still does the job rea­son­ably enough.

The only thing con­nected to my iMac is the power cable, every­thing else from net­work con­nec­tiv­ity to the key­board and mouse are all wire­lessly attached. It’s a neat and tidy lit­tle set-up.

But beyond the design is the func­tion­al­ity and at the heart and soul of that is Apple’s oper­at­ing sys­tem, Mac OS X.

I started out briefly on Pan­ther, 10.3, but not long after I switched, Apple released Tiger, 10.4, which is what I’m still on today. Leop­ard, or 10.5 will be released soon and I’ll upgrade to it fairly quickly as well.

Why do I love OS X so much? Let me count the ways!

For starters, I’ve never had a sys­tem crash. I’ll say that again, I’ve NEVER had a sys­tem crash! I’ve not had a sin­gle one in over 2 years. The only time my sys­tem gets restarted is when I’ve had to run an update to the OS that required it.

And I don’t just mean my iMac either, I also had an iBook for over a year and I’ve had my Mac Mini for around 6 months; none of them have crashed.

OS X is well designed and intu­itive and it has so many amaz­ing things built into it that you can do just about any­thing! I’ve never found a com­puter to easy to set up; you can lit­er­ally have one out of the box, con­fig­ured and online in ten min­utes or less. I had the Mini run­ning after around 5 min­utes of de-boxing. Let me see you do that with Windows!

Things just work on a Mac. For exam­ple, I’m on my third mobile phone since I switched over to Apple and each phone inter­faced with OS X effort­lessly. I can send files, includ­ing cam­er­a­phone snaps back and forth using Blue­tooth; I sync all of my con­tacts between the phone and Address Book and all of my iCal events sync as well, again over Blue­tooth, so no cables for me!

Here, let me really blow your mind:

My Mac Mini is media hub, han­dling all of my dig­i­tal video and audio. As well as play­ing back video on my 32” Sony Bravia, it plays my entire iTunes library through my stereo, I also have an Air­Port express in my kitchen, con­nected to some speak­ers, so I can groove and cook using AirTunes.

This is where it gets fancy-smancy….I use Salling Clicker installed as a java app on my Sony-Ericsson k800i mobile phone to con­trol the Mini over Blue­tooth. What this means is I can wake up the Mini, choose a song, or playlist, and basi­cally have full nav­i­ga­tional con­trol of iTunes, wire­lessly, remotely and with­out dis­turb­ing what­ever is on the tv or touch­ing the keyboard/mouse. Oh and I get full colour album art­work on the phone’s screen too.

How cool is that? Or did I lose you?

The range of Blue­tooth is good enough that I can still con­trol the Mini from the kitchen, so if a track comes on I’m not down with, skip­ping it is just a thumb-flick away!

Pretty much any­thing you plug into a Mac will work, old key­boards, mice, exter­nal hard dri­ves, print­ers, DV cam­eras with Firewire ports, you name it!

Cre­ativ­ity is where a Mac really excels. Audio and video come nat­u­rally to a Mac and right out of the box too. Garage­Band and iMovie are pow­er­ful tools to get you started but again are sim­ple to use. You also get iTunes and iPhoto for organ­is­ing your media and iDVD for burn­ing your own.

No, I don’t get a com­mis­sion; I just gen­uinely like all these toys.

I’ve talked other peo­ple into switch­ing to Apple, just as some­one con­vinced me to at least con­sider the pos­si­bil­ity. Peo­ple always thank you when you do.

My old PC, a fairly non­de­script Dell was way past it’s sell by date and it was time to con­sider replac­ing it. Right around the same time I start­ing think­ing about buy­ing a new one, Apple intro­duced it’s first flat screen iMac. I think it was around August 2004.

I remem­ber read­ing about it at the time and think­ing how cool it looked, but not believ­ing that a pow­er­ful com­puter could be housed in a form fac­tor so impres­sively thin. I didn’t really give it that much thought after that.

As I con­tin­ued my research into a new com­puter of the PC vari­ety, a col­league at work told me I should take a look at what Apple could offer. I did, I took a very good, long hard look and I liked what I saw.

I learned loads; about the oper­at­ing sys­tem, the hard­ware, Pow­erPC proces­sors, you name it. I dis­cov­ered just how good and how pow­er­ful an iMac could be. I wanted one.

It finally arrived in Feb­ru­ary of 2005 and it was every­thing I hoped it would be and more. Every­thing I tried to do with it, it did, with­out any has­sles or headaches. There were no dri­vers to install, no scary con­fig­u­ra­tion screens; it just did every­thing I wanted.

Once I tasted my first bite of Apple, I wanted more. I bought the iBook, I bought an iPod, I bought the Mini, I sold the iBook and now I’m wait­ing for the next refresh to buy another lap­top. Please let them come soon; I’ve been wait­ing for months!

Since becom­ing a Mac-head, I’ve dis­cov­ered many other peo­ple who belong to the cult of Cuper­tino and each is as evan­ge­lis­tic on the sub­ject as me. Own­ing a Mac is like belong­ing to a secret club and we’re all thrilled to be mem­bers. At least there’s no secret handshake.

Mac’s are on the cut­ting edge of design and tech­nol­ogy, they’re made from the best com­po­nents and will give you years of good ser­vice. And when things go wrong, and they might as is the case with any­thing hi-tech, Apple are sur­pris­ingly good at sort­ing it out for you and yes, I know that from experience.

Would I ever con­sider switch­ing back to Win­dows? Not in a mil­lion years! Not for all the tea in China! Not even for a go with your sister!

Once you’ve used a Mac, you would never want to go back to Win­dows. Every­thing is eas­ier and more intu­itive, why would any­one want to give that up?

I guess you can tell I’m glad I made the switch.

Does my Mac do every­thing a PC can do? Yes, of course, but that’s not the ques­tion you should be asking.

Does my Mac do every­thing bet­ter than a PC? Oh yes, and more!

If you’re think­ing of switch­ing, you owe it to your­self to make that leap. Once you do, you won’t look back!

PS

Here’s a full res­o­lu­tion photo I took on my phone the other day, the k800i. Enjoy!

Click image for full size.

I’ve had the most delight­fully unpro­duc­tive day.

I’ve spent it mostly in the com­pany of sweet Mary­jane who is a pleas­ant long-term acquain­tance of mine; though recently less so.

She’s back in my life. She was missed.

I haven’t spent a day like this in quite a while. It’s been good for the mind and even bet­ter for the soul, if only I had one.

I got so much accom­plished yes­ter­day that today could be wasted; as wasted as me.

Happy days!

I’m still quite wrecked. I’m still quite high. I’m might even get higher.

I received a rather sig­nif­i­cant rejec­tion today, on one of my non-hippy related projects. Hey ho. It’s time to aban­don ship on that par­tic­u­lar endeav­our, but it is time to set sail on some­thing com­pletely new. I’m going to start some­thing else.

Well, start is a mis­nomer; I’m going to return to some­thing I haven’t touched in a long time. I think I’m finally ready. If I’m not, then I’m stuffed because I’m run­ning out of time and chances.

Is it any won­der why I’m smok­ing myself into obliv­ion today? Wouldn’t you too, if you could? Wouldn’t any­one? Wouldn’t everyone?

Wouldn’t you?

It’s not really the rejec­tion that’s got me down; I saw it com­ing. Some­where along the line I mis­cal­cu­lated whole thing and now I can’t be both­ered to try to res­cue it. I’d rather just move for­ward with some­thing else.

I don’t even know if I could sal­vage it, even if I wanted to and since I don’t, I think that’s it. I’ve just got to mop up a few loose ends and mix a few more metaphors and I’m done.

I’m bor­ing the shit out of you now. You don’t care about any of this. I can hardly muster much inter­est in it myself.

I’m going to roll another thing; you should just go about your busi­ness and move along. There’s noth­ing to see here.

Two days in a row, how lucky are you?

Yes, I know this is a rar­ity. I was sit­ting here in front of my iMac and I thought, what the fuck? Let’s post some drivel.

I’m in quite a good mood; I’ve hit the ground run­ning this week and already got loads of stuff done. I’ve still got loads more to deal with but I am Mr. Proac­tive and it’s only Monday.

Go me!

As you have prob­a­bly worked out already, I didn’t plan out any­thing to say for this entry and yes, I know it shows.

Ask me for a refund! Sue me! Go on, I dare ya!

Trust me, you won’t get very far.

Fuck, I’m just spew­ing rub­bish today!

That’s the thing, should I post just because I have the oppor­tu­nity and desire or is it bet­ter to wait until I’ve got a point to make or some­thing to say?

I don’t have an answer to that one and I guess that’s obvi­ous from my posts. Some­times I’ve got a real head of steam on a par­tic­u­lar topic or idea while other times, like this, I just share the ran­dom thoughts in my head.

They don’t get much more ran­dom than this!

At least I’m not hav­ing brain farts. The world is full of peo­ple hav­ing brain farts all the time and for some rea­son I seem to be a mag­net for them.

Look, just because I share my ran­dom thoughts with ran­dom strangers on the inter­net does not auto­mat­i­cally trans­late into me want­ing peo­ple shar­ing their brain farts with me!

You know what I mean by a “brain fart” don’t you?

It’s like when some­one asks you a ques­tion they already know the answer to, just to hear the sound of their own voice as they ask or just mak­ing ran­dom con­ver­sa­tion; for exam­ple speak­ing their thoughts out loud.

“I had a thought; just now. Oh, oh, I’m hav­ing another one.”

If you don’t have some­thing to say, keep your mouth shut!

I hate brain farts.

This blog is not a brain fart.

In future I’ll make sure I have some­thing to say.