While it’s been something that people have been doing (and I have been selling) for many months now, today I decided to try it out for myself: running Windows XP on my MacBook.
Because of the money-stuff I do with Habo, I’ve been using Quicken for Mac, but it’s American localised, and crappy. So I thought my best option was MYOB — which isn’t made for Mac. Sure, I could have used Dad’s PC to run it, but that would have taken the fun out of it.
So far installation has been easy — just a matter of installing Parallels as you would any other piece of software, and then, when prompted, sticking in the Windows XP disc. No options, no confusing words, nada. My system is running pretty slow, but I’ll put up with it. My MacBook is probably just putting up a fight: “Why on Earth would you want to install Windows on me,” it must be saying.
In today’s Insight section of The Age there was a huge article about blogging, its origins and whether its phenomenal growth until this point is slowing. In the article, Dan Silkstone points to a Gartner report which claims that there a more than 200 million dead blogs. But not so fast, says the article:
The report estimates there are now 200 million dead blogs, basing this on a creative reading of data from Technorati. David Sifry [CEO of Technorati] disagrees. “I don’t know where they get those figures from,” he says.
My first reaction to this was “wow!” How is it possible that there are more than 70 million blogs out there — which is astonishing enough — and an extra 200 million that are dead? Further, is it possible that my blog was considered, even creatively, dead by Gartner/Technorati’s standards? I just couldn’t sit by and let that happen.
And with that, The Age, which I so often criticise for the terrible stance it takes on some issues, did something really good. For once the lads at Fairfax won’t receive an angry letter from this citizen.
First, if you haven’t already, grab yourself a copy of The 12th Man’s new album Boned. Classic comedy… my favourite tracks would have to be The Shithole 1 (listen out for Rabbits Ray Warren’s short bit — hillarious!) and Team Meeting 2 (I didn’t know Richie could speak French!).
Second, where in God’s name was Monty for the first two Ashes tests? If he’d have been there the series would have been a million times better. Maybe even a billion times better. I guess we’ll never know.
From looked like a dull draw before play has now turned into a wicket-fest this morning, and hopefully a run-fest this arvo for the Aussies.
Australia need just 168 runs off 36 overs. That’s a very achievable run rate of 4.67 an over. Hopefully they’ll open with Hayden and Gilchrist; it will give us the best chance of winning the game. Save Langer for down the order just in case something terrible happens.
Australia’s big retail chain Myer has its yearly Christmas shop-front windows to display something Christmasy. . It’s not really my thing, but it’s a nice attraction nonetheless.
This year some of the characters malfunctioned and needless to say, ’something’ occurred. Take a look:
