Been meaning to write a bit.

Starting the momentum of preparing for an exam I have at the end of this month. It’s work related (finance stuff), so the terminology isn’t as vague as it seemed when I was studying in uni.

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Went bowling with colleagues the other day. Used to bowl better than that when I was younger in high school. Heh, a strike on occasion was entirely possible. Now I fill up the gutter on either side during one of my turns. A sad turn of events for me, heh. Ended up last on the two rounds I played. At least my arms didn’t feel sore (as they used) after the game.

Had dinner at Cookie, a place on Swanston Street that has a wide stock of beers and wines and spirits. Have a Scottish bloke working on a part time basis with us now and I was introduced to Talisker Scotch Whisky. Now whisky is originally spelled without the ‘e’, so it’s not really ‘whiskey’. Whisky without the ‘e’ is to identify the drink from Scotland, Canada and Japan. In the US (they have a knack for always being different from everyone else, the date system being the one I’m most annoyed with at times – Month, Day, Year??) and Ireland it’s spelled as whiskey. Now Talisker is quite a nice whisky to drink and I’m not really a fan of whisky itself. Since learning about alcohol, it’s my preference to drink stuff straight to get the full flavour of the drink. Talisker is similar to Johnnie Walker (or is it the other way round?) and tastes like whisky, going down smooth (with a hint of caramel flavours) but still burning a bit. The thing that I dig about this drink is the smokey aftertaste that leaves a lingering flavour that I quite like. As you can read on the Wikipedia site, it’s something you either like or hate. Heh.

Something new for the senses these days.

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Been also feverishly reading up on new hardware and technology. Ever since playing around with the express versions of Visual Studio a few days ago, I’ve suddenly felt this huge urge to absorb like a sponge all the new technologies out there. It just sparks my curiousity (another American thing is spelling things without the ‘u’) to read about all the technical innovations out there.

I’m anticipating an Intel based Apple iBook to add to my collection of hardware. I’ve always been fascinated with Apple hardware, and the first computer in the household back when I could remember was an Apple ][ Mac and all it could do was play games (which is how I started with computers anyway, but branched out to all the other interesting things you can do with it). Intel has been lagging in the desktop department due to their very hot and power hungry processors (another long story that one can discuss about) but their laptops have been selling like hotcakes due to the efficient design and 25W energy dissipation at full speed for Pentium M’s is quite a feat, since they perform on par in most applications with their big brother desktop Pentium 4 siblings (they share traits, but are totally different branches of technology).

Anyway, the mobile scene is set to improve with Intel planning a release for dual core processors for the laptop. I’ve always been fascinated with symmetric multiprocessing (multi core/multi processor systems) due to their ‘creamy smoothness’ in operation. When one core is peaked out on processing, the other one can kick in to clear out the mess or just handle extra processes. I’ve also been very fascinated by Apple’s Mac OS X, especially 10.4 (Tiger) with all the shortcuts and I keep giving free advertising by saying how much more productively useful it’d be compared to a Windows machine due to its endless customisations and various desktop shortcuts to sort through the pile of applications you have running. For multitasker like your’s truly, it’s a dream come true. Heh, but most of my friends are just too happy using Windows and learning new things that they find a Mac too troublesome to use. I’d disagree, but that’s just me.

So what’s so fantastic about an Intel based Mac? Getting it to run Windows as well, due to the x86 instruction set that the hardware was designed on to begin with. Haha, if you’ve read this far, I wonder if you haven’t been lost on all the technical jargon already.

Anyway, January’s when these things are slated to come out (based on rumour anyway) and yeah, this would be some computing experience for me.

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Would like to go on about Logitech’s G7 (a wireless mouse) that costs AUD$136. Exorbitant price to pay for a mouse, but it will have its followers. Will leave this story for another time, if I have the time.

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My 15 minutes to write this is up. Time for brunch.

This is the second time I dreamt that my D70 corroded into nothingness (this was part of a subplot to a larger dream in which I can’t remember the details to). This time, the camera felt like it was of the cardboard variety, something like those foam based furniture. Heh, it was odd that I was mentally picturing a D200 in my mind and how I’d allocate funds to buy it.

This is so not happening.

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Work is time consuming. Heh, well,that’s why it’s called work.

No idea why, but there’s been a renewed tendency for me to pick up and learn new stuff of late. Microsoft is offering Express versions of its software development programs like Visual Studio and Visual C# so you actually try to be a programmer. The programs are free until November 7 next year (I think). They feel very much like Delphi when I was using that at uni to development programs. The programs feel quite solid for something that’s only 30MB to download (I sometimes wonder what all the bloat is with programs that are like in excess of a few hundred MBs.)

Have a big list of things I’d like to learn (that’s what I remember the Start of posts for each month were for, they somehow got sidetracked), but it’s all in semi coherent order in my mind. Would like to sort the more basic things in life before I get on with any of those other things. Heh.