I arrived in Antwerp, Belgium on Tuesday afternoon, after wasting time in Frankfurt Airport for a few hours. For the past few days, I’ve been wandering around Antwerp with P on our bikes, visiting nearby towns (and countries!), going to the movies, eating out, meeting P’s family and friends, and of course, shopping.
My first lot of photos are here. Will write about Belgium soon!
The day has finally come. Well, almost. Tomorrow I leave the United States forever.
It still hasn’t really hit me that I’m leaving tomorrow, even though tonight I’ll be sleeping on an air mattress in my completely furnitureless apartment. I’ve managed to sell or give away almost everything I own. And just like when I arrived in the States, I’m leaving with two suitcases, and that’s it. Crazy.
The plan is:
I am going to be seriously tired once I arrive in Manchester. Possibly even a little crazy from staying in hostels and travelling on trains for the previous two months. Possibly. I’ve never done anything like this before, so I’ll be crazy from being completely unaccustomed to being a travelling hobo-sightseer.
I will be updating along the way. And I’ll definitely be taking loads of pictures!.
A few weeks ago, when I was getting ready to sell my PC for when I move overseas, I decided that it would be a good idea to get an iBook to take with me. The day the new G4 iBook’s came out, I ordered one.
I’ve owned PCs my entire computing life, but have used Macs a bit (I had a first generation iMac for a few months, kindly lent to me by my parents when I moved out of home, and I had a toilet seat iBook that I used for about two years), so I wasn’t completely unprepared. I had always been impressed with the hardware design, the software, and the accessories (I’ve owned an iPod for a little under two years), so I was pretty excited to finally own my own laptop, let alone a nicely designed iBook.
I ordered the 12″ G4 iBook, with the combo CD/DVD drive, and Airport Extreme wireless. The first thing I noticed was how small and light it was, as well as how nice it looked. The G4 iBooks are slightly whiter than their predecessors, and the keyboards look more like the Powerbook keyboards, but plastic instead of metal. Basically, they just look really nice.
They come with 1GHz or 1.2GHz processors, and can maxed out with 1.25GB of RAM. I didn’t add any RAM to my order because I was being cheap, but I definitely recommend doing so. It’s not that bad when I’m checking email, surfing the web, or using most programs, but when I’m using something slightly processor intensive like Photoshop it takes a while to chew through the tasks. That aside, I am totally 110% pleased with my new iBook.
For me, the best things about using a Mac are the programs. I have completely fallen in love with Safari, as a simple, clean-looking browser. The only thing that I wish I could do is set it to open all pages in new tabs, instead of new windows, by default.
I had used iTunes on my Windows computer to sync my iPod, but I never really liked it, probably because I was used to WinAmp classic. But now that I’ve used it on the Mac, I really, really love it. Once you have your music collection sorted and tagged nicely it is a really great program to use. The search feature is great, as are all the playlist options.
I just opened iCal for the first time today, and spent about 20 minutes adding birthdays, reminders, and appointments. You can set it up to not give you reminders when iCal is closed, but I think that’s one of the great things about it. Address Book works with iCal in some regards, and is also a great little application. And I can sync them both with my iPod!
Other applications I recommend:
Quicksilver: indexes your files to be easily accessed by pressing alt+space and the first few letters of the name of the file or application
iChat Status: sends the name of what’s playing in iTunes through iChat
Adium: a multi-protocol chat client, similar to Trillian for Windows, but in my opinion, better than Proteus and Fire
Konfabulator: adds “widgets” to your desktop, like weather, time, Airport status, etc.
NetNewsWire Lite: RSS news feed reader – very simple and lovely to use
Nicecast: streams your iTunes playlists from your computer, or to a Shoutchast or Icecast server
Meteorologist: a widget to add the weather to your status menu
MenuCalendarClock: another widget to use instead of the standard OSX clock. It comes with a nice dropdown calendar and works with iCal.
I really didn’t think I’d fall in love with my new laptop quite as much as I have. It is the best laptop I’ve ever used, and switching from Windows to OSX is nothing but wonderful. I seriously do not want to use a Windows PC again!
I am currently streaming on Humhum Radio for the next two hours. It is a mix of jazz, jazzy house, and downtempo. Tune in!
Yesterday was my last day of work. I don’t think it’s quite sunk in that I no longer have a job. Possibly also because I’m excited to be skiving off around Europe and not having to work for at least two months.
My last day was kind of odd. Two of my three bosses were out of town, and the other one was only there for half a day. I was really busy trying to sort everything out for the new girl who starts Monday, who unfortunately couldn’t start before I left so I could train her properly. At 5pm, when I’d finished what I needed to do, I just kind of walked out the door. Although, I did go out to lunch with my bosses the other week, and we had drinks on Tuesday when they were in town, it just seemed kind of weird and low key. It seemed weird to just walk out the door of the job I’d worked at the whole time I’ve been living in Houston. I’ll miss it though. My bosses were great, and the work kept me busy. Idle fingers and all that.
Every time I get a new job, I seem to switch fields. Same kind of work, just different types of businesses. I’ve worked for a distribution company, a technology/banking company, a political non-profit, and a real estate development company. I wonder what will be next.
In other news, I leave in one week!
I have been thinking about implementing a new system for well over a year, but hadn’t found a system that I liked. Not that long ago, I heard about Textpattern, developed by the web-famous Dean Allen. I must say, it’s quite nice. It has a few little annoyances (a few hardcoded styles, and a bit of a learning curve but nothing major – I mean, I figured it out), but it’s a really great system. Finally, my entire website is all done through one system. That is bloody great.
So, what are the major changes? Well, first of all, you no longer need an account to post comments – just an email address. However, I’ve decided to manually moderate comments due to some spac shit that’s happened on my site previously. I can also ban people, woot! Secondly, everything has nice little categories which can be searched. Currently, there is only this post in General, so any browse results will come back as blank. Time will fix that. There is also a better search function, you can join my mailing list easier, and I’m a gay little bunny all excited over this fancypants new CMS.
To go with this new system (and hopefully, new content), I have a completely different and new design, completely coded in CSS. A bloody great big bunch of love to the most 1337 web geek for all his help with CSS issues and design comments. Thanks, P! You’re the best.
Live in Houston (or near to) and want furniture or random house stuff? Let me know!
A guy I know from various message boards, Michael Raichelson, lost his apartment and possessions to a fire last week. You can read about it here. Luckily, him, his girlfriend, and their rabbit escaped without injury.
After going through tough times a couple of years ago and feeling the love of friends, family, and total strangers, I feel the need to help out where I can (even if it isn’t much) and continue the good karma circle. If you are feeling the helping vibe today, his PayPal address is i.am@michaelraichelson.com.
The above paragraph was brought to you by Hippie Ani.
While we’re on topic, get renter’s insurance! You never know when you’ll need it.