HK → UK → US → ?
Wow! Quad-core.
Wow! Four drive bays.
Wow! $3500+ for the configuration I want. Where is my lottery ticket? I can pretend that I am, in a sense, buying two computers but it is still difficult to justify spending that amount of money…
In other news, Leopard looks real cool. Meanwhile VMware will be coming to OS X and Microsoft is scared away by the big bad wolf.
Congratulation to Jensen Button (is his name weird or what?) for winning his first ever Grand Prix in Hungary. About bloody time too! At least he didn't throw it away like a certain Scottish driver in a race leading Williams down under. Personally I prefer Kimi Raikkonen to win but I can't have what I want all the time. And I think karma was at work today because after Alonso went off the race with a loose wheel nut and second place was a certainty for Schumacher, he retired late in the race through his own doing! I bet Flavio must be laughing his head off in the Renault motorhome when he saw Schumacher retired.
WWDC starts tomorrow and like most Apple fans, I will be following Steve Job's keynote tomorrow morning closely. Even though I did not plan to purchase a new computer at the beginning of this year because for everyday use, my Titanium PowerBook performs well enough, but I have been saving up for a new computer for the last few months.
The degree of how much underpowered it has became was painfully obvious whenever I use iPhoto or Photoshop. If that is all the computing power I need I can put up with my PowerBook until next year. However, I also have a PC laptop that I use for Windows software development. It is not the greatest and latest (only a Pentium M 1.3GHz) but it is powerful enough to allow me to code comfortably. However, having two laptops not only take up space on my desk but also means I have to make a conscious choice of which one to boot up. Actually whether to boot up the PC laptop because the Mac is always on and put to sleep when not used (I've never trusted the Windows sleep/hibernate capability, not to mention it is not quick like the Mac).
So with the Mac moving towards Intel chip and the ability to dual boot, not to mention the availability of virtualisation software (whether it is Parallels, or the rumored VMware), it means I can combine both machines into one letting me to run both OS X and Windows in parallel, switching between web surfing in the Mac and coding in Windows seamlessly. Then the question becomes, should I get a laptop or desktop?
Laptop is nice because it is compact, everything built-in, I can take it with me for traveling or even just to the bedroom. But it costs more, restricted in terms of upgrade, not as powerful as a desktop machine, and therefore not as 'future-proof'.
Desktop, on the other hand, will be as powerful as I can afford (or Apple makes available), allow me to use whatever peripherals as I like (large 20+" widescreen LCD monitor comes to mind), and I will be able to upgrade it as it ages (hard disk, memory, video card, or may be even CPU). And the price, after I've added everything I need to the list, will probably come to about the same as the laptop. The major downside is that I would not be able to take it with me, not even to the bedroom. I think that is a compromise I can live with, especially if I keep my PowerBook for traveling out of country or to the bedroom.
I did briefly flirt with the idea of getting an iMac but the inability to upgrade and restricted screen size and speed means I dismissed the idea as quickly as it popped into my head.
Now, Mr. Job, please show me what you got and I'll give you my hard earned cash in December.
Many times over the years Leah and I had been asked whether we will be going back to Britain. The answer (at least mine, can't speak for eiron, the 73% genius) is always 'No', and the confusion ensured always amused me.
BBC has an article about expats in Florida and a few of them are definitely not going back to Britain. Their reasons match mine pretty closely, and I also share some of the sentiments from the other interviewees.
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So what have we learnt from spending three days in Colorado? Well, first it is bloody hot there! At least it is dry heat and not humid like here in Manhattan, and I got a decent tan from playing a round of golf on Saturday under the blazing sun. Thank you, factor 10 sun tan lotion…
On Saturday after golf, Leah and I had dinner in the Chautauqua park with another couple. Food was great and eating outdoor underneath the mountain was quite novel. We even saw couple of deers. When desert time came, we declined the offer and instead drove to Boulder downtown. After having a strode around Pearl St. Mall, we got ice cream from the Haagen-Dazs shop and consumed them (I had the Belgium Chocolate Shake) outside while people watching. With both of our friends, TJ and Jeronimo, moving out of Manhattan to Portland, Oregon, Leah and I were giving Boulder/Denver a once-over, completely hypothetical of course! The mall area is definitely quite cool, trendy, and full of youthful enery, but the rest of Boulder seems to be just another 'generica' with the same old grid road system and pre-fabricated houses and lawns. Our suspicion was confirmed when we drove to Boulder again on Sunday after the wedding. Seeing Boulder in the daytime also show us that it is not racially diversify. In fact, I was the one of the very few non-white people on the street and that's pretty worrying. I dare think what racial stereotypes all those nice middle class white kids have stored in their heads. This extends to the less diversify culture. Everything is middle America, catering for white middle class families. May be we visited the wrong place but it is nothing like in New York City where every walk of life surrounds us.
Boulder was not the only place we visited, of course. After the wedding on Sunday afternoon we drove to downtown Denver, hoping to spend some time there to get a feel of the city. But when we got there, we realized everything was closed since it was Sunday and there won't be much for us to see. So we spent about 30 minutes driving around the city, admiring the sights from the comfort of the air-conditioned interior of our rental car. The Art Museum is particularly interesting architecturally from the outside, but alas Boulder was more interesting so we drove all the way back there and stopped for a coffee and browsed the bookstore. I bought the An Convenient Truth which I devoured on the flight back.
Unfortunately, with the exception of the Rockies near Boulder, the rest of Colorado that we saw are vast expanse of bland and featureless land. Because of the heat and dryness, all the vegetations are the same colour of light green/brown. And I think that sums up our experience in Colorado thus far (though we realized that it is not wholly representative but nonetheless a hint of typical Colorado life), which is the blandness of the area. The blandness of population, the blandness of culture, the blandness of the environment, so on and so on. This just reinforces in our mind how interesting New York City really is and why we would probably never find another place quite like it.
Don't get me wrong though, Colorado is great for visits and I will definitely visit again if only just for some great golf with reasonable price. But I won't uproot ourselves from Manhattan and move there for good, that's for sure.
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Lost in Colonisation 