It's on its way...

I had an email on Saturday from Apple saying that my Mac Mini had been dispatched. They're quoting a "2-3 working day" delivery time, so all being well it should be delivered to work on Wednesday.

In the meantime, I have ordered a new 17" TFT monitor for Mrs Lacey so that she can finally be rid of the monster CRT screen that currently resides on her desk. In addition, she's going to get my Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse, which I currently use with my PC (because the Mac is coming with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse) so she'll be all set up with some nice new gadgets of her own.

I can feel a big "strip down and rebuild" of our desks coming on. The arrival of new gadgets is a perfect time for a spring-clean. I'll remove everything from both our desks, unwire all the components, dust and polish, and then refit everything. As I'm sure you're aware, cables get tangled up even if you never touch them, so it's always good to get everything back in some semblance of order. It's the only time I ever actively set out to do housework!

Firefox Rox

It's what I've been saying for months: Firefox is the business when it comes to web browsing, and it would seem that millions of others agree with me.

Even Wired News says so. So it must be true. Do yourself a favour. Switch. If you can't quite stretch to a new Apple Mac, at least change your browser. Trust me. It'll make your life better. And you can't say fairer than that.

k700i

Got myself a Sony Ericsson k700i mobile phone today, and it's really rather nice. I only have one gripe with it though (and it would appear that I'm not the only one) - Orange have installed their own "version" of the operating system on it, which replaces the standard Sony Ericsson one. For example, the right hand soft key on my old T610 brought up a menu that let you activate silent mode, switch bluetooth on and off, lock the phone etc etc. But on this new k700i, this button's functionality has been removed, and instead it activates the camera when you press it. This might seem like a good idea, but there's already a button on the side of the phone to switch the camera on! They've also installed their own "orange-themed" icons on the phone's main menu.

I've scoured the web, but try as I might I can't find a way to change it back again. Ah well, I guess I'll just have to put up with it. The phone itself is splendid, and there are a lot of good features on it. I'm looking forward to pairing it up with my new Mac Mini and exploring all the bluetooth features. I'll keep you posted.

It is done.

I ordered a Mac Mini today. Fully loaded - 512MB RAM, 80GB hard drive, DVD writer, bluetooth and wireless keyboard and mouse. Pushed the price up a bit, but still a bargain for such a lovely machine. Should be shipped at the end of the month, but I want it NOW!

I can't help it... it's soooo pretty...

My god, that's just beautiful.

The world is about to change... again

At 1600hrs GMT (40 minutes from now), Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, will give his annual keynote address at the San Francisco Mac Expo. There has been soooo much hype surrounding this year's event that it's really difficult to ascertain which of the rumours are true, but some of them keep cropping up again and again. I've been holding off buying an Apple Mac until today's keynote speech, just in case they unveil something really revolutionary, so this is quite a big deal!

As far as I can ascertain, the main new products that are rumoured to be announced are as follows:

1) A "headless" iMac - A fairly low-spec but very aggressively priced barebones Mac computer without a screen.
2) A flash-memory iPod - 1GB of solid state storage, no screen, but tiny in size and relatively cheap.
3) iLife 05 - a revision of all the iLife apps, including iMovie, iPhoto and Garageband.
4) "Asteroid" - supposedly a hardware breakout box for use with Garageband, allowing users to plug in multiple guitars and microphones simultaneously.

It'll be interesting to see if any of these rumours turn out to be true! It would seem that the flash iPod and iLife 05 are pretty much definite, but the other two could be complete fiction. If they do release the headless iMac, it'll have to be pretty special and/or cheap to convince me to buy one. I suspect that nothing announced today will steer me away from either a G5 iMac or PowerMac. But I could be wrong!

Geocaching!

Tried something completely new today - we went Geocaching! If you've never heard of it, the best place to find out is to check out the official website, but if I was to try and describe it succinctly, it would be "treasure hunting using GPS". The idea is that people all over the world have hidden "Geocaches" - which are essentially plastic boxes full of little goodies and a notebook - and then published their coordinates (latitude and longitude) on the Geocaching website. Anyone that wants to find the "treasure" simply inputs the coordinates into their GPS unit (you have to have one otherwise you won't get very far) and then trudges off into the wilderness to try and locate it. If you're successful, you sign and date the log book, take one of the items from the cache and leave something else in its place. There you go, simple really.

So Mrs Lacey and I went over to Skipton with our friends Oli and Donna (Oli owns a GPS - a rather fetching Garmin 60CS) and went in search of a couple of Geocaches that were allegedly hidden in the area. And, surprisingly, we found both of them! Even though you know the coordinates, it's still quite a challenge to find the caches themselves, because they're well hidden. And in the first one, we found a soft toy with a Travel Bug attached to it, so we've removed it and are going to take him to a new home in the next couple of weeks.

It was cold and very windy, and we all got wet feet, and by the end of it we were knackered - but it was superb fun. I can see us going and doing it again soon.

Have a look at the photos from our geocaching exploits here.

Happy New Year!

Well here we are then: 2005. Funnily enough, it seems just like 2004. At least so far it does.

So then, I suppose I had better start the year by declaring my resolutions, and then when it comes round to 31st December again, you can laugh at how many I failed to complete. I've carried some of the uncompleted ones from 2004 over to this year (just because they still seem valid and/or sensible) and I've got some brand new ones. I admit that none of them are particularly awe-inspiring or world-changing, but they are important to me. So there.

1) Buy an Apple Mac computer. I don't know what sort, but I will buy one in 2005.
2) Successfully pass all my assessments and become a Special Police Constable.
3) Buy that expensive pair of shoes that I keep harping on about. Loakes probably.
4) Weigh eleven stone. I shall do this with the help of resolutions five and six (see below).
5) Eat breakfast.
6) Go to the gym at least twice a week.
7) Go skiing. Not sure where or when, but I do rather fancy it.
8) Organise my CD collection.
9) Avoid buying gadgets that I later regret and sell on eBay.
10) Update this website regularly.

I'm hoping that they're all reasonably achievable. Some of them will be a challenge certainly, but none of them are impossible.

Anyway, happy new year to you all. Here's hoping that 2005 is a good one.