Bank Holiday Monday
It’s a bank holiday in the UK today. You’ll be pleased to learn that I have achieved nothing at all, all day so far. At the time of writing it’s just past 2pm in the afternoon, and all we have done is sit around. My other half and the younger kids are watching Harry Potter movies back-to-back in the lounge – I’m holed up in what is left of the study tinkering with the old Macbook.
Here’s the thing – I completely forgot I had a Macbook. It was originally bought for my other half in early 2009 as a birthday present, and was then handed down to our eldest daughter who used it in her room for a couple of years – until a few months back when I gave her my old Google Chromebook, and she saw the light about a computer that cannot go wrong, and that starts in seconds. The Macbook went into a bag in the corner of the junk room, and sat there until this morning.
Don’t get me wrong – I will still use the Chromebook as my “go to” computer at home, but it’s nice to have a desk somewhere in the house with a computer sitting on it, that you can sit down at, close the door behind you, and empty your thoughts into from time to time. The Macbook even has an old copy of Scrivener installed on it (by far the best writing word processor ever) – but of course, me being me, I’m writing this with TextMate, and will be pushing it up to the internet with git. Don’t even ask – I’ve warned you I am a nerd enough times.
It’s a bit of a culture shock, going back to the Macbook. Everything works a little bit differently than in Windows, Linux, or Chrome OS. The biggest cause of frustration so far has been the key combinations – as a developer I tend to use the keyboard over the touchpad for most things, and the Mac has always been just a little odd compared to anything else. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but tangling my fingers around the Alt, Ctrl, Fn and Cmd buttons seems ridiculously clumsy at the moment. Don’t even get me started about Mac keyboards not having a hash key.
Of course now I’m wondering about resurrecting one of the various music players we have stashed in the drawers behind me – somewhere there is an iPod Nano, an iPod Shuffle, and an iPod Touch. The only reason we still have them is because we never throw anything away. I supposed the mobile phone has superseded them all over the years, but it might be interesting to fill them with music once more.