The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘apple’ Category

I have to admit it, like my most peo­ple last Jan­u­ary, when Steve Jobs showed off the very first iPhone, I wanted one. Badly! I had deep gad­get lust of the strongest variety!

I fol­lowed his keynote speech, almost live via web­sites offer­ing blogged cov­er­age and before he was fin­ished, I was clutch­ing my credit card in awe of this new device, ready to plunk down what­ever was required to have one in my hot lit­tle hands, as soon as humanly possible.

And then real­ity kicked in and the dis­tor­tion field lifted and he pissed all over my party by telling me they would go on-sale in Amer­ica only, some­time in June. As a north Lon­don based hippy, that was no good to me!

I could have imported one, while pray­ing for an unlock solu­tion so I could use it on a net­work here, but that seemed quite risky. Prayers were answered and unlocks were made avail­able, but Apple has already turned the key, relock­ing all the iPhones with one lone update. More on this in a moment.

They said the iPhone would launch in Europe towards the end of 2007 and sure enough, Uncle Steve came to Ol’ Blighty and announced you could get one on O2 in November.

My cur­rent con­tract runs out in Jan­u­ary and is on another net­work, which is no big deal. I don’t mind switch­ing net­works and I’ve done it before, just to get the hand­set I wanted. If I was that des­per­ate, I could buy myself out of my cur­rent con­tract a cou­ple months early, so I could make the big switch.

So what’s hold­ing me back? What’s changed since last Jan­u­ary when I was sali­vat­ing so much for an iPhone that I needed to wear a drool-bucket under my chin?

Over time, I’ve iden­ti­fied a few key things that I would need the iPhone to do, before I switched to one.

1) 3G — for me, this is a deal breaker. My cur­rent phone is 3G and I do use it to occa­sion­ally surf the web, using the Opera Browser. No walled-gardens for me! As great as the iPhone’s browser and user inter­face is, and it looks amaz­ing, surf­ing over Edge at slower speeds would piss me off. And while I know I could surf over Wi-Fi, when avail­able, the fact is that where it is mainly avail­able in my life, my home and my office, I’ve already got access to com­put­ers. Out­side of those two key loca­tions, Wi-Fi is not that read­ily accessible.

2) Stor­age — What really mud­died the waters for me is the iPod Touch. I’ve spent the last cou­ple of weeks weigh­ing up the options between these two devices. The main strik­ing dif­fer­ence is the amount of stor­age avail­able in both the iPhone and the Touch, with the Touch offer­ing twice the flash mem­ory, in a thin­ner form fac­tor. When the iPhone reaches 16 or 32mb, then I would be far more tempted.

3) Installing 3rd party appli­ca­tions — When Ste­vie J said that devel­op­ers could only cre­ate app’s using Web 2.0 non­sense, I had hoped this was meant to be mis­lead­ing and in time, the iPhone would be cracked and hacked, much like the AppleTV and the Sony PSP and it wasn’t too long before 3rd party app’s started appear­ing. The iPhone dev com­mu­nity has been very busy cre­at­ing some very use­ful and fun pro­grams to run on the iPhone, which cer­tainly made the plat­form much more appeal­ing. Apple slammed the door shut on these hacks this week. Even more wor­ry­ing is that the iPod Touch seems even less prone to open­ing up, and this to me, defeats the pur­pose of both devices. By crip­pling them and lock­ing them down to Apple-only app’s, they are being lim­ited to such a high degree that it is putting me off.

What’s the point of hav­ing a multi-function, multi-touch, magic device in my pocket if I can’t make it do all the things I want it to do, that I know it can do. It’s my new toy and if I want to expand its capa­bil­i­ties, I should be allowed to! I take the same risk when­ever I install an open-source or beta pro­gram on my com­puter! Why can’t I do the same on my pocket computer?

That’s what these new devices really are, they are pocket PCs, being sold to us under other i-friendly names! Don’t we deserve the right to do what we want with it and not have the mother-ship brick them with an inten­tion­ally con­structed update!

That’s what hap­pened this week, when Apple released its most recent iPhone update.

Look, I can under­stand Apple want­ing to lock the iPhones to the car­ri­ers that have exclu­sive deals with them. I have had cell­phones which were locked to a car­rier, though after the con­tract period, it is fully within my rights to have the phone unlocked. Apple should be offer­ing the same func­tion­al­ity, with iPhones. Once your con­tract period has elapsed, they should offer an unlock­ing ser­vice, so you can move the phone with you to another car­rier, if you so choose. Don’t worry, Apple, you could always charge for this unlock, do it through iTunes and it would be like get­ting free money, every­one wins!

The other thing this update did, was it closed the back­door used by the dev com­mu­nity to install app’s on the iPhone. This was totally unnec­es­sary and point­less. Why have they deval­ued the iPhone this way? They say its to pro­tect users from sub­stan­dard soft­ware that could harm the iPhone. What a load of crap!

Hello, Apple spies. I know you keep track of what’s being writ­ten about you on the inter­net, even by weird hip­pies like me, so here goes: Why not cre­ate an approved developer’s kit for the iPhone? Even bet­ter, let peo­ple sub­mit app’s to you and if they don’t harm the iPhone, make them avail­able via iTunes. Cre­ate a new sec­tion, called iPhone add-ons, which are made up of approved app’s, cre­ated by the dev com­mu­nity. You could take dona­tions for some, charge for oth­ers, share the rev­enue with the cre­ators. Who knows…I bet there are peo­ple out there in Cuper­tino, who have writ­ten some cool shit for the iPhone that would love to share them with the world! Give them the chance!

Look, I’m going to buy an iPhone, even­tu­ally, but the iPhone I want is 3G, with more stor­age and an open archi­tec­ture that allows for me to install addi­tional app’s as I see fit.

You should open up the iPod touch as well, it shouldn’t be crip­pled and it should offer all the func­tion­al­ity pos­si­ble. Why can you edit con­tacts on the touch, but not iCal events? You can do both on the iPhone and it just seems arbi­trary and stingy.

Apple, I am one of you biggest fan­boys, I have tons of your kit already and think its some of the coolest stuff I’ve ever owned. If I’m ques­tion­ing my pur­chases, then some­thing is indeed very wrong. I should be at the head of the queue to buy an iPhone and I am drag­ging my feet until the next gen­er­a­tion and maybe not even then!

Sort it out! Give every­one the iPhones and iPod Touches they deserve!

Some­times, I feel the need to post some­thing even when I’ve got noth­ing to say.

Of course, that’s not strictly true, because being a bit of an opin­ion­ated loud-mouth, I always have some­thing to say.

What I mean is, I’ve got no par­tic­u­lar topic in mind today, but I still feel I should make my pres­ence felt.

Can you feel me?

If you can, I’ll have to charge you extra. Did you think all of this hippy good­ness was for free?

Noth­ing in this world is totally free! Right now, as you read my page, my nanobots are copy­ing your hard drive to my array of servers in my hid­den, under­ground lair. Soon, all your secrets will be mine and I’ll just have to charge you a small, monthly stor­age fee to keep them safe. You wouldn’t want any­one to know about all those size 17, lady’s shoes you’ve been order­ing from the inter­net. No one’s going to ever believe they’re for your mum!

I don’t want you all to be dis­ap­pointed when you bop over to my site and find the same crap you already read. I want to be able to greet you with some crackin’ new content!

Its not like there aren’t plenty of sub­jects wor­thy of men­tion­ing here and now, like the sit­u­a­tion in Burma, the defacto ban on cig­a­rette smok­ing in your car, or even my long wait for my new iMac, but I just can’t be bothered.

Well, actu­ally, I could briefly men­tion my new iMac. I ordered a 24″ 2.8Mhz Intel Core Duo Extreme, with 2gb’s of RAM and 1 terrabyte of hard drive, with a new wire­less key­board and wire­less Mighty Mouse. It’s going to be very shiny and fast. I can’t wait! And as you can see, I have my pri­or­i­ties straight!

It shipped around 6 days ago and still no sign of it. What’s even more annoy­ing is the track­ing web­site I used appears not to be work­ing! I wish it would arrive!

Like I said, I don’t really have much to say. I bet you believe me now!

I’ve now had my brand new, shiny, lick­able, 2.16 Core2Duo, 2 gig, black Mac­Book for 2 weeks and man, oh man do I dig it!

What’s not to love? Apple have out­done them­selves in the design and exe­cu­tion of this very high-end con­sumer lap­top. I’ll say it right now, for those of you con­sid­er­ing a lap­top pur­chase in the near future…buy a Mac­Book and you won’t go wrong!

I’ll also state, for the record, that I am a big fan of Apple prod­ucts. I owned an Apple com­puter back in the mid 80s (an Apple //c for you true geeks out there) and returned to the Apple fam­ily in 2005, with the pur­chase of a 20” G5 iMac. It was the smartest and coolest pur­chase I ever made.

I saw how amaz­ing Mac’s oper­at­ing sys­tem, OS X worked, how sta­ble, easy to use and intu­itive it all was, I was sold.

Once I put my entire music col­lec­tion into iTunes, I knew I was onto some­thing. When I synched my con­tacts with Address Book and my diary with Cal­en­dar, all paired with my Blue­tooth phone, in less time than it takes to brew a cup of tea, I knew my life changed.

Apple makes the things you actu­ally want to do with a com­puter, eas­ier. Like set up the sys­tem. Edit video. Store and organ­ise your music, or pho­tos. It all just works, right out of the box.

For exam­ple, take my new Mac­Book. Guess how long it took to go from the time I signed for deliv­ery to the point where I was online, look­ing at the Google home­page on the gor­geous 13.3 inch LCD screen?

6 min­utes and that included unbox­ing it slowly and care­fully. OS X walked me through the set-up process, set by step, includ­ing join­ing my exist­ing wire­less net­work with straight­for­ward ease.

If com­put­ers intim­i­date you, or you’re tired or wrestling with bull­shit Win­dows pref­er­ence screens and Bios set­tings, come over to the light! You’ll never see that dreaded “blue screen of death” again.

My shiny new Mac­Book replaces an iBook that I sold a few months back.

The iBook I had, the 2nd to the last revi­sion sold, was a good, solid lit­tle lap­top and had the Mac­Books not come along, I would still own it. It was a very portable size, reli­able, and easy on the eye, but the Mac­Book just offers more.

A faster proces­sor, a bet­ter brighter screen, built-in iSight, mag­netic latch, MagSafe power adap­tor, thin­ner, lighter and it came in black – I had to have one!

The design is very sleek and min­i­mal, and typ­i­cal for Apple. I paid the extra for black, which many of you will think is silly. You can get a sim­i­larly spec’d white one for around 70 or 80 quid less.

What can I say? I like the black bet­ter, so I spent the extra money. Rac­ing stripes don’t make your car go any faster, yet peo­ple pay extra to have them put on. Is this any different?

Using the Mac­Book is a dream. It is very fast and respon­sive and I espe­cially like the “multi-touch” track­pad that can sense when you are using 2 fin­gers or one.

Tap the track­pad with 2 fin­gers and you pro­duce a right click, which is a rev­e­la­tion for me. I use con­text menus quite a bit and being able to repro­duce a right click with one hand on a lap­top is a very good thing. Drag 2 fin­gers on the track­pad and the dis­play scrolls, up, down or side-to-side if the appli­ca­tions allows. Very cool.

I wasn’t sure how I would like the glossy dis­play, but after using it for 2 weeks, I think it is great. I was con­cerned about glare and see­ing my face smugly reflected back at me, but this is not the case. The screen is so bright; even with the bright­ness reduced to con­serve bat­tery power, that it remains stun­ning and sharp.

I down­loaded some trail­ers from the Apple site, in glo­ri­ous 720p Quick­time HD good­ness and they played back with­out a stut­ter and looked pos­i­tively amazing!

I haven’t done much with the built-in cam­era, but I’m not much of an inter­net chat­ter or web­cam­mer, so this is not sur­pris­ing. When I was set­ting up my user account on the Mac­Book, Pho­to­Booth came up and I was offered the chance to take a photo, right then and there, to use as my login and sys­tem pic­ture. A cool fea­ture, that shows you right out the box, how user-friendly this com­puter is.

The mag­netic latch clamps shut with a sat­is­fy­ing, firm thud and the MagSafe power adap­tor lit­er­ally leaps from your fin­gers into the socket on the Mac­Book when you bring it very close.

Bat­tery life seems decent, I’ve had the Blue­tooth turned off, but the wi-fi on most of the time and I’m get­ting nearly 5 hours.

Rip a CD, or play a fea­ture length film from the hard drive and you can see the bat­tery drain faster. I’m guess­ing you could prob­a­bly watch 2 fea­ture films back to back on a full charge, but if you’re con­cerned about using it on a long flight, they do sell a MagSafe air­line power adap­tor as an optional accessory.

As far as every­thing else goes, what can I say? It’s a Mac, it’s as sta­ble and solid as my iMac and that goes for the hard­ware and software.

I’ve been on OS X for com­ing up on 3 years and I have never had a sys­tem crash. I’ve had appli­ca­tions crash, sure, but the actual oper­at­ing sys­tem doesn’t go down with it. I don’t know any­one with a Win­dows com­puter who can say the same thing.

I ran Win­dows at home for years and I still use it where I work. I was never a fan, but now that I am a Mac-head I pos­i­tively despise it! I restart my PC at work repeat­edly, because it’s always crash­ing or freez­ing. When some­thing goes wrong, the IT guys (who seem to travel in pairs these days), spend a lot of time scratch­ing their heads and going off to thing about what the prob­lem is, rather than actu­ally fix­ing it.

Look, if you like Win­dows, and you think its great, and you are happy with it, fan­tas­tic and well done you! But if you’re like me and you think it is bloated, messy and about as sta­ble as the SS Posei­don on New Year’s Eve, then I implore you to inves­ti­gate Apple computers.

Have you ever met any­one who enthuses over his or her Win­dows PC? Or Win­dows? Find some­one else who has a Mac and ask them if they like it. Pre­pare to have them go on and on, in glow­ing terms just as I have.

There’s a rea­son why peo­ple are enthu­si­as­tic about Apple. The toys they sell live up to the hype. Have you got an iPod? I bet lots of you do. Do you love it? I bet you do. Well, Apple com­put­ers are even bet­ter than their iPods!

Got an iPhone? Want one? I think we all fall into one of those two cat­e­gories, with the sec­ond one cur­rently being the larger of the two. Wouldn’t a match­ing Apple com­puter be nice?

You have no rea­son to fear Apple; Steve Jobs is your friend. He makes stuff to make your life eas­ier; to make your life better.

Bill Gates makes stuff to com­pli­cate your life and frus­trate you; at home and at work. He is very suc­cess­ful at this, that’s why he is the rich­est man in the world. You don’t have to buy what he sells; yet you do, anyway.

Apple com­put­ers are not more expen­sive, when you fac­tor in all the soft­ware you get. I have read count­less com­par­i­son stud­ies done on com­pa­ra­bly spec’d sys­tems, with sim­i­lar soft­ware pack­ages and the Win­dows ver­sion always costs more. By the time you add all the extra crap you need to bring a Win­dows PC up to the level of a Mac, you’ve ended up spend­ing a lot more money.

Let me describe my cur­rent home set-up:

- My 20” iMac, my main sys­tem, a desk­top. I use it for surf­ing and writ­ing, some down­load­ing and I dock my iPod with this sys­tem, so it has my mobile music library on it. I also use it for my seri­ous heavy lift­ing, like video edit­ing on Final Cut Express and record­ing music on Logic Express. The G5 proces­sor is show­ing it’s age though, espe­cially com­pared to the Mac­Book and even my MacMini, so if the rumours are true about a major over­haul to the iMac line…I could be replac­ing it some­time soon.
– My MacMini – con­nected to a 32” Sony LCD and my stereo, it also streams music to two Air­port Expresses. Used for all things media, it has my com­plete music library (my tunes, plus Mrs. Hippy’s), it also han­dles all film and tv down­loads, stream­ing video con­tent and video play­back. This sys­tem gets used a lot, I like my media

- My shiny new Mac­Book – surf­ing on the sofa while watch­ing TV and all of my mobile com­put­ing needs. I write on-the-go and it will be going to work with me. Now if I can access the com­pany wi-fi net­work, my work-porn needs are solved!

- Air­port Extreme – brand new, pur­chased with the Mac­Book. Only set it up a cou­ple of days ago and I have to say, the set-up was a bit Un-Apple. I’ll do a sep­a­rate post on this, but in the end, it’s now work­ing flawlessly.

- Air­port Express num­ber 1 – used to be my wi-fi hub, it is now in my bed­room, con­nected to a set of speak­ers, which receives music from iTunes via a wi-fi con­nec­tion and is rebroad­cast­ing my wi-fi net­work upstairs. I think that’s called WDS.

- Air­port Express num­ber 2 – Is in my kitchen, con­nected to a 2nd set of speak­ers. All this one does is receive music.

- My 60gb black video iPod – holds my entire music col­lec­tion and a few videos. I can’t say I have used the video very much, but as a music player, it sees loads of use. I have a dock in the car that is an FM trans­mit­ter, which lets me play it thru the stereo. It’s a Macally FM Cup and it works very well, even in cen­tral London.

I’ve edited films, turned them into DVDs, recorded songs with real musi­cal instru­ments and MIDI, I’ve writ­ten 2 nov­els and blogged my moth­er­fuck­ing socks off, all on Apple computers.

I can play the same music, at the same time, through­out my entire house. It makes blitz­ing the place with the Hoover a lot more pleasant!

I’ve been rec­om­mend­ing Apple sys­tems to all my friends for a lit­tle while now and every sin­gle one of them is grateful.

If you take my advice too and end up all grate­ful, a lit­tle gift wouldn’t go amiss. This hippy likes presents, so please send me some­thing cool and prefer­ably expen­sive! Just post it off to “the hippy” in north Lon­don and let the post­man do the rest. I’m famous, just like Santa Claus, I’m sure the pack­age will reach me just fine!

I know it’s the sum­mer and I do give a lot of space to Big Brother, but that’s not the only thing I do here on my web­site. I’m all about a whole lot more!

Pol­i­tics, soci­ety, drugs, phi­los­o­phy, and con­sumer elec­tron­ics are among the sub­jects I spew dri­vel on; there’s a lit­tle some­thing for every­one. Well, almost every­one. I’m sure there are some peo­ple who don’t find me to their par­tic­u­lar liking.

They can fuck right off. It’s the rest of you, I’m inter­ested in and more impor­tantly, that should be inter­ested in me!

This is going be one of those ram­bling, unfo­cused posts. I thought I should warn you right now, up front, so you’re not sur­prised when you work it out for yourself.

I’m start­ing a long run of nights at work this evening, so I thought I should pop around and do some­thing. Any­thing is bet­ter than noth­ing, or is that just with sex?

It’s actu­ally been a rough cou­ple of weeks around my place; we had to put one of my cats down. He had can­cer in a big, nasty way and there was noth­ing they could do for him. Well, they tried what they could, but when they opened up his lit­tle cat belly, it was filled to the brim with tumours. To spare him any fur­ther suf­fer­ing, we had the vet put the lit­tle guy to sleep. Mrs. H was there when they did it; I couldn’t face it.

My poor dead cat was one of the nicest, friend­liest, coolest cats I ever had the priv­i­lege to know and I am miss­ing him terribly.

He wasn’t that old, only around 13 or 14 years and his ill­ness was as sud­den as it was unex­pected. I rushed him to the vet’s on a Sat­ur­day after­noon and he was gone the fol­low­ing Tuesday.

Now, if he were a human, it wouldn’t have been as swift or mer­ci­ful because we don’t like to spare peo­ple from suf­fer­ing. Just ask my Dad, who from diag­no­sis to demise, had around a year of treat­ments and set­backs before expe­ri­enc­ing a rather drawn out and unpleas­ant death. Oh wait, you can’t ask him, can you?

We treat our pets with more dig­nity than we do each other. Where’s the sense in that? When my time comes, and I do hope it is later rather than sooner, per­haps we’ll have seen sense and legalised euthana­sia. If it’s good enough for the Swiss, why can’t it be OK for the rest of us? Oth­er­wise, I’m going to have to start a spe­cial con­tin­gency fund, for one final trip to Geneva or Zurich, for when my time does come…closer. It seems like the only sane response to an oth­er­wise insane world!

Have I brought you down with all this talk of death and such? Sorry, but now you know where my head’s been for the last cou­ple of weeks. Thank god for soft drugs. If there were a god, or soft drugs.

But hippy, there are soft drugs and you are puff­ing on them right now.

Oh, yeah.

So besides miss­ing my dead cat, watch­ing BB and work­ing, what else have I been up to?

Not too much. I had a drug-hell expe­ri­ence with some legal highs I’ve been get­ting online. I’m not going to tell you what they are or where you can get them, because I don’t want to see them banned. I’ve even debated men­tion­ing this at all, but as the expe­ri­ence swal­lowed sev­eral days of my life, I thought it would be a fun story to relate.

I dis­cov­ered a new range of legal highs a few months ago, though I’ve been aware of their exis­tence for ages. After read­ing many favourable reviews of this line of pills, I decided to take a chance and placed an order.

I tried them, I liked them and I ordered more. And then I ordered even more.

And then, I had my drug hell with them. I took around a dozen of the lit­tle suck­ers in a con­tin­u­ous 30-hour hedo­nis­tic binge and drug orgy, before col­laps­ing into sleep for around 6 hours.

That’s a day and a half.

When I woke up, I was down, aching and still exhausted and I was greeted with loads of text mes­sages, voice­mails, emails and other assorted forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, ask­ing if I was lying dead in a pud­dle of my own sick.

Thank­fully, on this occa­sion, I wasn’t.

I then had a few days of feel­ing quite low and run down. It was totally self-inflicted, so I’m not ask­ing for anyone’s sym­pa­thy or pity. This is who I am; this is what I do. Sometimes.

Rarely, actu­ally. I haven’t had a drug-hell in ages.

The thing with these par­tic­u­lar pills is they are very fuck­ing good. They are the clos­est I’ve had that approach an E-like high. Taken in mod­er­a­tion, there is no real come­down or other side effect. Taken in large quan­ti­ties, like a total twat, will not end well.

Yes, I was a total twat.

No one is cer­tain what the magic ingre­di­ents are in these pills, but those who have tried them, love them. Maybe a lit­tle too much as I think they are seri­ously addic­tive. Think cocaine-addictive!

I haven’t had any since my last expe­ri­ence and I can’t say I have any defin­i­tive plan to try them again any time soon, but never say never. I still have some and at some point, I might recon­sider, but I will not over do it. Mod­er­a­tion is indeed, the key.

Again, sorry I’m not telling you exactly what I took, but the less atten­tion these pills get, the longer peo­ple will be able to enjoy them. Just because I went a bit crazy with them, doesn’t mean oth­ers shouldn’t be able to have the choice to enjoy them too.

I finally broke down and ordered a new lap­top last week and guess what? It’s an Apple!

I hemmed and hawed for months on which model to get, and wait­ing for the next big update, and blah, blah, blah and quite frankly I just got tired of not hav­ing one. My writ­ing has been suf­fer­ing because of this gap in my com­puter arse­nal and I finally decided, fuck it, now is as good a time as any.

Both lines, the Mac­Book and the Mac­Book Pro were recently updated, and the myth­i­cal ultra portable doesn’t seem to be com­ing any­time soon (although now that I’ve bought one, it is prob­a­bly a week away), so I went for it and placed my order last Wednes­day and it already shipped on Friday.

I chose the black Mac­Book, with the only build to order option being extra RAM, I’ve dou­bled it to 2 gigs. I’ve gone with the stock 160gb 5400rpm hard drive, because I decided the extra speed was bet­ter than 40 extra gigs of stor­age – the 200gb model is only 4200rpm. It’s a Core2Duo, 2.16 and I topped it up with Apple Care.

I’m look­ing for­ward to its arrival, which should be in the next week, or less. They ship them from Shang­hai, which is a long way from north Lon­don, but it’s still fairly impressive.

Once I get it, I’m going to carry it with me every­where. If you invite me over, I’d bring it along, as long as you’ll let me access the inter­net on your wi-fi net­work! You see, it’s not just those lit­tle pills I’m addicted to, I’m hooked on the inter­net as well.

I did con­sider the Mac­Book Pro, but the sig­nif­i­cant addi­tional cost was not jus­ti­fied by the “pro” fea­tures, in terms of my rather mod­est needs. Also, the 15.4 inch model is fairly big, in my opin­ion, to be lug­ging around, where the MacBook’s 13.3 size adds to it’s portability.

So that’s the last fort­night or so this hippy’s life. Wow, what a whirl­wind of drama, emo­tion and big ticket pur­chases! I bet you can’t wait to see what hap­pens to me next!

I’ll be back later in the week, with more BB bull­shit, plus I’m going to start deal­ing with some of the requests you’ve all sent me. One sub­ject has been most pop­u­lar with all of you and…I’ll let you all know what is in my next entry!

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.

Hey, hey and ho, fuck­ing ho! The hippy is here to sort out all your gift-giving dilem­mas. That is, if you’re shop­ping for some­one who is supercool!

I’ve got a few rec­om­men­da­tions for you and there’s still time to order them all online and receive them in time for the big day!

I’ll start with a book that is well worth giv­ing to any­one who appre­ci­ates the vast com­plex­ity of human emotions.

- Post Secret – the book
I’ve cham­pi­oned this blog before and I’m still a big fan. The artist solicited people’s secrets, anony­mously via post­cards. They’re actu­ally quite mov­ing and I’ve been on the brink of tears more than once check­ing out his web­site. The book is a well-put together col­lec­tion of post­cards; some that have been on the site and oth­ers that are brand new. It would look great on anyone’s cof­fee table and I was very happy when it recently became avail­able to pur­chase in here Blighty.
– Post Secret – the web­site
– Post Secret – the book (via Ama­zon UK)

It’s a wor­thy project, which has gen­uinely touched peo­ple, so please buy a copy and sup­port the artist, Frank Warren.

Now for a musi­cal sug­ges­tion, two CD’s that I like very much:: Muse – Black Holes and Rev­e­la­tions and the Killers – Sam’s Town.

Muse has been a favourite of mine for quite a while now and their lat­est album does not dis­ap­point. This is big, anthemic music per­formed with pas­sion. If you like hard rock with an intel­li­gent edge, this is the CD for you!

The Killers sec­ond album is also a win­ner, but I was a big fan of their first, Hot Fuss, so no one should be sur­prised that I dig this one too. It’s got a very tra­di­tional rock and roll feel, but with elec­tronic tex­tures that keep it in the 21st cen­tury. Big in the UK, not so much in the US, which is weird because they’re from Las Vegas. Give it to some­one who just likes good music!
– Muse – Black Holes and Rev­e­la­tions (via Ama­zon UK)
– The Killers – Sam’s Town (via Ama­zon UK)

I’ve selected Ama­zon for the book and the CDs as they’re very reli­able and they can still ship out to the UK before xmas!

My friends at Everyonedoesit.com have a huge selec­tion of gifts for the hippy in all of you. Besides hav­ing one of the largest selec­tions of legal highs avail­able in the UK, they also are one of the best dis­trib­u­tors for all things RooR – this hippy’s favourite glassware.

They recently started stock­ing the clas­sic RooR glass water pipe and I’ve just ordered the three-piece model for myself. It’s com­ing tomor­row! And at only £65, it won’t break the bank either! RooR, quite sim­ply make the best glass­ware in the world, so if you need a gift for some­one who enjoys alter­na­tive smok­ing meth­ods and sub­stances, this is the pipe for them!

EDIT stock quite a big range of RooR good­ies, with some­thing to suit every bud­get, from the mini-steamroller right up to RooR’s col­lab­o­ra­tion pieces with Shiva glass, that do actu­ally cost an arm and a leg, but are gorgeous!

You can also check out EDIT’s exten­sive selec­tion of legal highs, with a flavour and effect to suit almost everyone’s tastes! At the moment, I’m still favour­ing Spice Gold, which costs a bit extra, but has quite a kick. It mixes espe­cially well with weed too!

And finally, EDIT also has a selec­tion of xmas gift boxes, again in sizes to suit everyone’s bud­get. They even do a line from RooR!

I’m a big fan of EDIT and have been for years now. I shop with them, a lot and they are fan­tas­tic. I should also men­tion I’m an affil­i­ate of their’s, which is why you see their adverts on this site. But I wouldn’t give them space on my web­site, if I wasn’t 100% behind what they do!

Ok, now onto the big gift, for that some­one spe­cial. Choose Apple!

I love my Apple toys, I’m typ­ing this on my iMac right now and my new Mac mini is sit­ting under my Sony Bravia. I just sold my iBook, to make room from my next lap­top, either a Mac­Book or a Mac­Book pro, I haven’t decided yet!

The easy choice from Apple is an iPod, though you do need to choose a model. I have to say, even though I don’t own one, I think the 2nd-gen, 8gb black nano is the best one in the line-up. A friend of mine has one and it is pure sex and plays music too! If you hold one in your hands, you’ll want one!
The new iPod shuf­fle is also a lit­tle devil of a music player; as small as a match­box, holds around 240 songs and only costs £55 quid. What’s not to love?

I’ve got a 60gb iPod with video, which has since been replaced by the 80gb ver­sion is also a fan­tas­tic piece of kit, though it’s the most expen­sive one they make. What can I say? I’ve got good taste.

By far, the best thing Apple is sell­ing at the moment is their Mac­Book. Every­one loves them and they’re expected to sell sev­eral hun­dred thou­sand of them in the run up to xmas. You can still order one online and prob­a­bly get it by xmas, or you could just walk into any Apple shop and walk out with one. You do need to pay for it first!

So there you have it, the hippy’s help­ful hol­i­day shop­ping guide! I hope it’s helped some­one out there decide what to get some­one special!

And if you’re shop­ping for this hippy, I’m really hop­ing for a green xmas…so just get me an ounce or two of skunky bud. I’ve been a very good boy all year, you know!

Here’s a treat, I’m blog­ging from my office.

What I need now, more than ever is a lit­er­ary agent and I really should be doing some­thing about it. If any of you knows of one, that would like to make 10% of my prospec­tive, future for­tune, please put them in touch. And no, I’m not jok­ing!

Hey ho hippyfans!

Sorry for the longer than usual gap in posts. I’d love to blame it on some­thing as excit­ing as a trip to a desert island, or a drug-induced coma, but sadly the truth is more mun­dane than that.

My iMac has been in the shop for the last few days, though thanks to my iBook, I’ve still been online.

So if I’ve still been online, why haven’t I posted?

Sim­ple, I’ve been suf­fer­ing from tech-stress!

In the last 3 weeks, all of my major Apple gad­gets have suf­fered from some sort of prob­lem or issue. They are all resolved now, so my tech-stress lev­els are return­ing to normal.

Before any­one thinks this is going to be some sort of anti-Apple tirade, think again. I have noth­ing but praise for how they have han­dled my tech­ni­cal troubles.

Firstly, my Black 60gb iPod with video devel­oped an odd prob­lem; when I con­nected it to my com­puter, it didn’t show up on the desk­top or in iTunes. The iPod itself worked fine for play­back, but it wouldn’t synch or charge via the dock connector.

Because my iPod is engraved, the only repair option I had was to use Apple’s col­lect and return ser­vice. All of this was under my orig­i­nal war­ranty, so it only cost me in time with­out it, but no dosh at all.

Apple sent UPS to col­lect the iPod, com­plete with all the pack­ag­ing and labels required.

The UPS guy even waited a few min­utes while I boxed it up. The next day it was back with the moth­er­ship in the Nether­lands, the prob­lem was diag­nosed and a new one was shipped out from their fac­tory in Shang­hai the day after that.

If it weren’t for the recent ter­ror alerts, I would have had the replace­ment much quicker, but as it turned out, I was with­out the iPod for 10 days. Not bad.

I’m not sure if the replace­ment is brand new or recon­di­tioned, but it cer­tainly looks and feels new. I was so impressed with the ser­vice I received that I bought the Apple Care plan to cover it for another 2 years. If some­thing else ever goes wrong with it, I know exactly what to expect.

My G5 iMac is around 18 months old and I still love it.

Around a year ago, Apple iden­ti­fied an issue with my model of iMac that involved the Logic Board and power sup­ply and extended the repair period by an addi­tional 2 years on top of their war­ranty. Last week, I realised my com­puter was suf­fer­ing from this known issue.

The fans were run­ning fast, the temp was high and hot and finally, I started get­ting dis­torted video and weird crashes. Last Wednes­day I took it into my local north Lon­don Apple Store.

I had my first ever appoint­ment with a Mac Genius and I was impressed. He checked out my iMac, booked it in for the repairs and even ordered the parts he thought might need replac­ing. It turns out, it didn’t need every­thing he sent but bet­ter safe than sorry.

On Fri­day, the online sta­tus of my repair said it was com­plete, but they didn’t phone me. I was really miss­ing it, so today (Mon­day) I went in to col­lect it. The repair was fin­ished, but they wanted to clean it before I picked it up, so I wan­dered around for half an hour and when I returned, it was boxed up and ready to go.

It’s run­ning cooler, the fans are qui­eter and the video looks great. Also, they did an amaz­ing job of scrub­bing it up, it looks as good as it did when it was new…even the keyboard!

So again, Apple came through for me.

Now, my prob­lem with my iBook is the same one affect­ing 1.8 mil­lion other Apple lap­top own­ers, the great Sony bat­tery recall of 2006. Apple was quick to announce this and even though they haven’t had that many reported cases of over­heat­ing, they’re replac­ing all those bat­ter­ies for free!

As I was using my iBook exten­sively in the last week, while the iMac was back with the moth­er­ship being repaired, I noticed the bat­tery wasn’t hold­ing it’s charge as well as it used to and con­sid­ered order­ing a replace­ment. Now I don’t need to, as I’ve reg­is­tered for the recall and should receive a new bat­tery for it in the next month or so.

Again, I’m pleased with the outcome.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s stress­ful when your essen­tial toys go funny and I’ve been miss­ing my iMac like mad.

I was able to back-up all my impor­tant data; the ele­ments of my all new dig­i­tal lifestyle, before I took it into the shop, but it’s still never easy to part with your computer.

I’m glued to my screen most of the time, when I’m home. If I’m not writ­ing, or surf­ing the net, I’m using it to waste time with music and video. I’m attached, addicted, what­ever you want to call it. I’m glad it’s home, where it belongs.

I want a black Mac­Book and am going to get one at some point in the not too dis­tant future.

I’ve offered Mrs. Hippy the iBook, which is only a year old and pris­tine con­di­tion and if she passes, I’ll sell it at a decent price. I may already know some­one who would grab it, though I would love to see Mrs. H take it. She doesn’t really get my love of all things Apple and I think it would put her on the road to under­stand­ing why they are so damn good.

I also hope to be order­ing a Mac Mini soon as there’s a refresh expected in the next fort­night, if you believe the rumour sites. I always believe the rumours; life is more fun that way.

The Mac Mini will get con­nected to my Sony Bravia and stereo and act as my media server. I’ll move all of my iTunes on to it as well as using it to down­load video from the net. I’ll also be able to receive and record some dig­i­tal ter­res­trial chan­nels on it, which will be extra cool because I can export the pro­grammes for play­back on my iPod.

And then my 2nd Air­port Express, which is cur­rently con­nected to my stereo, for stream­ing music from the iMac, will move into the kitchen, to con­nect to my brand new Log­itech mm50 (black) speak­ers, that I picked up last week. They’re rather wicked and I’m blown away by the sound!

My all-new dig­i­tal lifestyle just keeps get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter and bet­ter! And this ends what amounts to a two-handed geek-speak wank that prob­a­bly put most of you off!

Nor­mal hippy ser­vice will resume soon!

Dare you dream of my arrival?

Well, dream no more, because I am flesh and here now, with my sagely words of wis­dom and advice on all mat­ters of deep spir­i­tual significance.

Like should you get a white Apple Mac­Book or spring the extra hun­dred quid for the black one?

That’s an easy one, fuck­ers. Black is always in fash­ion, what­ever the price! Espe­cially since the white ones are get­ting dis­coloured from people’s handsweat. Yuck!

I’m not buy­ing one; I’m stick­ing with my 11-month-old, G4 iBook. It does the job.

I didn’t log on today with any sort of set agenda. I’ve got no agenda at all; I’m just sit­ting here spew­ing dri­vel in the gen­eral direc­tion of my key­board hop­ing this will go somewhere.

Chances are, it won’t and if that is the case, I apol­o­gise in advance for wast­ing your time. If it’s any con­so­la­tion, it prob­a­bly took me longer to write this non­sense than it will for you to read it.

Unless you read really s-l-o-w-l-y.

The most excit­ing thing I did all day was pur­chase a new pair of shoes. Hey, for me that’s an achieve­ment and I deserve my gold star!

Shop­ping in the real world is always a drag. I hate crowds and I hate deal­ing with sub­nor­mally intel­li­gent shop-staff.

How long should it take to check to see if you have a par­tic­u­lar model of shoe in my fairly com­mon size? If you said ten min­utes or longer, a career in retail­ing footwear awaits you!

I finally gave up and went to M&S, where its sim­ply a mat­ter of find­ing the least offen­sive shoe in my fairly com­mon size on their large dis­play, tak­ing them to the till and pay­ing for them.

That, my friends, is the way shop­ping should be…!

Actu­ally, I take that back. All shop­ping should be pos­si­ble online. That’s my favourite way to part with my hard earned dosh. It’s great because you find what you want and then they send it to you; kind of like an escort agency for goods, only with a slightly slower deliv­ery time!

I sup­pose a health update is in order, since I have been god­damn sick for the last few days. I’m 90% over it now, just the odd wave of nau­sea and still no real appetite. Mrs. H came down with it too and this super­virus or what­ever it is did not dis­ap­point, it hit her par­tic­u­larly hard as well. She’s bet­ter now too.

And that’s about it really. I’ve done a bit of work around the house today, plus the afore­men­tioned shop­ping trip and some writ­ing. That’s been my day so far, now it’s time to kick back, relax and smoke a nice spliff. I’ve earned it!

PS
My new shoes are ordi­nary black ones, with Vel­cro straps instead of laces. They’re the shoes of the future. I didn’t want to give any­one a sleep­less night by neglect­ing to include this key information.

Man oh man, I have been as sick as a dog all weekend!

A stom­ach virus, food poi­son­ing or pos­si­bly it was a gypsy curse on my intestines; I’m not really cer­tain, but I do know that I’m been expelling all man­ner of solid and liq­uid from both ends of my body since Sat­ur­day morning.

Nice!

The last time I was this unwell was while on hol­i­day in Crete a few years ago. It was just as nasty then. All I’ve man­aged to keep down my gul­let is water, and on Sat­ur­day even that was a problem.

I’m feel­ing a bit bet­ter today, but not enough to face any solid food, not even my cur­rent favourite from my local take-away, salt and chilli tofu! Just the thought of it is mak­ing me retch some­what, so I must still be sick!

I’ve missed some work, which is never a good thing; as if I go sick, some­one has to replace me. Imag­ine how much fun it is to replace me on short notice for a night­shift! It’s nearly impos­si­ble, which is why I always feel a lit­tle guilty on the rare occa­sions when I do phone in sick.

Oh enough about my health! I’m sick of being sick already! I hate being ill, it is just so bor­ing. All I do is sleep, squirt liq­uid poo and barf a lot!

Ok, I’ve offi­cially arrived in gross-land, pop­u­la­tion one sick hippy!

So how about that weather, eh? See, I’m chang­ing the sub­ject lest I offend again!

It’s still fairly warm and humid here in north Lon­don, though the nice weath­er­man told me it would less of both of those hor­rid qual­i­ties for the next cou­ple of days. That’s good.

Ok, I don’t care about the weather either, but here in Britain, that’s what we talk about at awk­ward moments; the weather! That’s what we talk about all the time! It’s too cold, it’s too hot, it’s rain­ing too much, it’s not rain­ing enough! Moan, moan, moan!

Don’t you have any good news, you mis­er­able hippy?

In truth, right now, I do not.

I guess I could geek out a bit. Why not?

I’m still dig­ging my new Sony Bravia KDL-32V2000 LCD tele­vi­sion very much! The pic­ture on it is spec­tac­u­lar and the increased size has been a bonanza for my view­ing plea­sure. The V2000 range con­tin­ues to gar­ner rave reviews from the tech­ni­cal press and is widely seen as the best LCD tele­vi­sion cur­rently on the mar­ket! It rocks!

The images from my DVD player (over a com­po­nent con­nec­tion) and SKY+ (over RGB SCART) are fan­tas­tic and I am really look­ing for­ward to hav­ing some proper High-Def sources to feed into it in the future.

The obvi­ous choice is SKY HD, but not yet. Why am I waiting?

Two rea­sons:

Firstly, the cost – I think it is too pricey. The box itself is 300 quid and they want another 50 or 60 pounds to install it. The instal­la­tion fee is the real joke, as because I already have SKY+, it would be a straight box-swap, with­out any new cabling or a new dish. Talk about a rip-off!

As an exist­ing SKY cus­tomer, they should be offer­ing me some sort of incen­tive like a cheaper price. They’re not. Demand is high, so SKY have no rea­son to lower the price just yet. When the cost comes down, I’ll be very tempted.

The sec­ond rea­son has to do with reports I’m see­ing on var­i­ous forums from peo­ple who already have SKY HD. The boxes appear to be very prob­lem­atic and laden with bugs.

I don’t want to replace my SKY+ box, which is 99% reli­able with a new SKY HD box that is far less depend­able. TV is too impor­tant to me to risk los­ing out on future record­ings. Let them work the kinks out, then come talk to this hippy.

Don’t get me wrong, High-Def is very good and is worth the extra expense, just not yet. When the box comes down in price and is seen as a more robust piece of kit, then I would love to have it installed.

Another option for play­ing back High-Def mate­r­ial is a PC, or in my case, an Apple Mac. I con­nected my G4 iBook to the Bravia via a VGA input and was stunned by the qual­ity of the image. My G4 is not beefy enough to play back High-Def, not even at 720p because the chip is too slow, but an Intel Mac Mini with a Core Duo would eas­ily rise to that challenge.

So yes, my friends, the hippy is tempted to get a Mac Mini and turn it into my media hub. It could han­dle all my audio and video server needs with ease, includ­ing High-Def con­tent down­loaded from the internet.

I’m more than tempted, I’m going to buy one as soon as they refresh the line again, which could be any­time between now and the end of the sum­mer. There will be a speed bump to the proces­sor if noth­ing else, though Steve Jobs remarked at a recent Apple event that they know peo­ple want an Apple media-hub, so who really knows what the future may hold!

Match the Mac Mini with a wire­less key­board, wire­less mouse and some addi­tional stor­age and you’ve got one lean, mean, media serv­ing machine that will let you surf the net from the sofa and access any con­tent on my net­work. It sounds cool to me.

So there you have it, even while floored by some hor­ri­ble tummy bug, I can still con­tinue to plot and plan my all-new dig­i­tal lifestyle.

Remem­ber, if it weren’t for drugs and con­sumer pur­chases, my life would be noth­ing but an empty bot­tom­less pit of deep despair. If your life is bleak and dreary too, no one would blame you for fol­low­ing my example!