I got me a MacBook. At dead on $2000, it’s the most expensive single purchase I’ve done yet. It’s the second most valuable thing I own. I cherish this baby. I’ve “donated” my desktop to the family, removing the need for the ye olde Pentium III that was their computing universe for the last seven years. Yes yes but how does it feel? At 13 inches diagonally, the widescreen is about the size of an A4 notebook, and clocks in at just over 2 kg, making it easily luggable. The glossy whiteness of it has been spoilt a little over the last fortnight by various fingers, but the look is slicker than an oily racetrack. This thing grabs attention when it’s opened - the whiteness marks it out as different to the batillion of corporate-clone silver and black Windows laptops out there. The cleverly glowing Apple logo helps for sure. ...

Someone tell me how we know the birthdate exactly, but the date of death shifts every year, according to a mysterious and complex formula they use to torture 1st year Computer Science students with. IT’S SO STUPIDLY COMPLEX! Bet you didn’t think about that before, did you? (Merry Christmas y’all!)

The Federal court has ruled that simply linking to copyright material - not hosting - is “authorising infringement of copyright”. So, uh, I suppose, technically, this post is illegal because I’m linking to copyright material…

The streets of Iraq were quiet for 90 minutes as the soccer team played in the Asian Games final, hoping for gold. People were anticipating victory, as a united nation, but the simmering ‘sectarian’ tension remained… “I urge the people not to shoot in celebration of the victory of the Iraqi team,” Sheik Abdul Hadi Mohammedawi told worshippers in Sadr City hours before the game began. “It squanders ammunition.” For the record, Iraq lost 1-0 to Qatar. ...

We had a “grads” Christmas party last week, and we’d invited along the summer interns mostly to make up the numbers. As soon as we settled in to start the night, a group pulled out cigarettes. And they kept going through the night. Now, I’d seen it often enough in Europe, and given the reputation of the continent, I could accept it. But my impression of Australia, and Australian ‘youth’, was that smoking was on the way out, a rarity at best. ...