Ten years ago, my friend Alan gave me a journal. I have never liked the idea of journals, but the strange thing is that when I make myself write in them, I enjoy it. I think my problem is that I just don't like the idea of having to write in them.
In the years since, I've received many journals from people who want to encourage my writing
and I've written bits and pieces in all of them. Today, cleaning my condo and moving stuff back and forth from my storage room, I found these journals and poked through them.

This entry from February 24th, 1997, made me stop and stare at the page:

I miss writing very much but I worry that as each day passes I tend to worry more about money and less about destiny.

My father once said that if you wanted to take a risk with your life, there was no better place to do it than Canada, and I think he's right. But this is a hard thing to consider when you've just signed up for decades of mortgage payments and become accustomed to a life of steak and chocolate.
Do I pick up and move to a small town where I can rent for a year for less than my mortgage payments in Calgary? Sell everything but my Mac and my guitar? After all, one look at my condo almost a year after I moved in will tell you that I'm not much of a homemaker.

This would be easier if I felt like I knew what I was supposed to write.

I've had my MacBook for a couple of weeks now, and it is by far the best machine-- laptop or otherwise-- that I have ever used. And that's in over 10 years of geekily intimate involvement with computers.

The MacBook is an incredibly powerful combination of hardware and software, joined together with a skilled eye for design and aesthetic that you appreciate more for what's missing than what's there.

I will be making some videos to demonstrate the features of the MacBook in the coming days, but I'll outline some of the cooler things here, briefly.

Hardware:

• The remote control that comes with the MacBook has six buttons. Six. With which you can completely control your audio, video and photo collections. You can also use it to run presentations using Keynote (Apple's freakin' amazing presentation software). More and more developers are embracing the remote, and one program in particular, called Remote Buddy lets you control almost anything on your computer-- you can even use the remote as a mouse!
• The "MagSafe" power cable attaches to the computer magnetically, to detach easily under stress and prevent a passerby from yanking your laptop off a desk if they accidentally trip over the cord.
• The built-in iSight camera allows instant, painless video conferencing with other Mac users, and can be used to take wacky self-portraits or ad-hoc photos using the included PhotoBooth software.
• The trackpad allows for four-way scrolling by using two fingers instead of one-- this makes reading long web pages a breeze, and becomes so natural that now I'm doing it on other laptops-- and you can right-click by tapping with two fingers (the lack of a right-click button was a huge complaint of PC users).
• The form factor of this computer is perfect. The screen is big and bright enough to enjoy a DVD, but small enough that the computer feels much more portable than the 15" MacBook Pro.

Software:

• iLife is Apple's bundled entertainment software, including music and movie players, photo organization, as well as two non-trivial media creation programs, iMovie (for making... uh... movies) and GarageBand (for making songs). I haven't used the latter much yet, but I have already used iMovie to make a short documentary about the arrival of this machine; while it took me many hours to get this movie just right, I could now easily whip off future short films in minutes instead of hours. Getting a software suite like this for a PC would likely cost several hundred dollars, if you could even find one. If you want to listen to music, download and view photos, watch videos and maybe make one, you must by a Mac. I can't make this endorsement strong enough.
• The operating system, OS X Tiger, does take some time to get used to. The keyboard is different-- there's no delete key (the Delete key is actually a Backspace), and instead of each window having a menu bar, one menu bar at the top shows options for the selected window. If you close the window, you haven't actually quit the program; you have to click Command-Q to do that. It is a very small learning curve, but after time it becomes very intuitive, efficient, and with a bit of investigation, you can even set up the keyboard to use a spare key to delete for you. Installing software is slightly different than with Windows, but once you figure it out, you'll find that it's quicker and cleaner than anything you've loaded onto a Microsoft OS. The system is packed with great looking features, my favourite of which is the ability to zoom in on part of the screen, which will be very handy when I'm giving demontrations in class.
• One concern I've heard about Macs is that it's hard to... um... "acquire" software.
  
  Ed's Note: Yarrr! Polly wants a (software) cracker!
  The truth is, if you want to pirate Mac software, you can find it just as easily as PC software if you know where to look online. The big issue is that most of us "borrow" installation disks from friends, and few of our friends have Macs. I admit that I have "tested" software in the past, but there are very few programs that I thought were good enough to pay money for. Mac software is so good, you want to pay for it. I know this sounds crazy, but you have to experience it firsthand.
• PhotoBooth uses your iSight camera to take self-portraits, with a twist (literally). You can choose from 16 effects that alter your image in real time-- pinching your head, bulging you eyes, twisting your face, adding glow or simulating heat detection-- it's a lot of fun. I set my grade 10 class loose with it and they spent an entire period mugging for the camera and laughing their asses off. (It was the last day of classes, and they were done the course, so please don't call the school board to complain about wasting tax dollars).
  
  Ed's Note: Do it! Do it!
• Another favourite is the voice command feature, where you can tell your computer to do things, and it just does them. Say "open firefox" and it will launch the Firefox browser. Say "what time is it?" and it will tell you the time. Say "tell me a joke" and it will rhyme off a punny knock-knock-- and you have to interact with the whole "who's there" bit.

Design:

• The only way I can give this machine the proper credit is to say that it disappears as you use it. With other laptops, I found myself very aware of all the bits of the machine-- the trackpad, the key placement, cable attachments, etc-- but this machine seems like a natural thing, an evolution of machine until it became boiled down to its essence.
  
  Ed's Note: I think I'm gonna barf.

I will be back soon with more critical feedback-- the "cons" of this machine (and there are some), along with video for you to enjoy.

I think Palm (or PalmOne?) has made a bit of a boo-boo. This company was once great at producing awesome handheld PDA computers. I haven't seen anything interesting out of them in years.

Oh sure, there's the awesome Treo phones, but they were created by Handspring (a company created by a former Palm employee who went on to create better a line of PDAs that competed directly with Palm), and only come under the PalmOne moniker because Palm bought Handspring out.

Palm's newest offering? The LifeDrive, a kind of multipurpose device that plays music, movies, photos, and stores contact and calendar information.

Let's step back a second here. Out of all the portable technology devices people carry, what is numero uno? The mobile phone. The mobile phone, the mobile phone, the mobile phone. So why would someone want to carry around another device in order to store contact info, photos, blah blah blah? Palm's Treo phones are already capable of playing (and recording!) photos and videos, and can play MP3 music with third party software. They manage contact and calendar info, and accept memory cards, so storage isn't a big issue. AND THEY HAVE A PHONE BUILT IN. It seems like a step backwards to create a device without a phone.

I'm wondering who the market is for this paperweight?

"$112.58, ma'am."

The woman nodded and handed over six twenties. The people in line sighed in quiet relief: cash was quick.

As the cashier made change, the woman sensed a commotion: someone pushing through the line to get out. She squeezed closer to the counter to make room, but the person didn't pass.

"Excuse me, miss?"

The woman faced the man and smirked, "Yes?"

"I'm sorry to bother you, but..." his face screwed up sheepishly, and he scratched the back of his neck. "Well, I noticed you a few times while I was shopping, and..."

The cashier was ready with the woman's change, feeling awkward and too close. People in line strained to hear. The store quieted. Aisles held their breath.

"Well, I know this is crazy. But you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and was hoping I could take you out for dinner, or just a drink, or..."

The woman blushed, then made an exaggerated motion to brush the hair from her face; her fourth finger wore a thin gold band. The man continued, undaunted.

"Or, well anything really. Just to talk to you."

The people in line tried to look detached; they smiled to each other, embarrassed, intrigued.

"Do you have my receipt?" the woman asked the cashier, "and may I borrow your pen?"

The cashier handed them to her, and she wrote a name and phone number on the back of the receipt, folded it slowly, and passed it to the man, letting her hand rest in his for a moment.

"Thank you," he said, and walked to the doors, looking back often.

The aisles exhaled. The sounds of the Sunday errand became clear and loud again. The woman gathered her bags of groceries together.

The lady behind her moved forward and whispered, "Was that your real number?"

"Yes," the woman said.

"But aren't you married?"

"Yes," said the woman, looking toward the door. "Isn't he lovely?"

He is tall with bad hair. His knapsack blocks your view of the muffins. He orders slowly, quietly, flirting with the redhead behind the counter. She smiles perkily and slides him an espresso and a nanaimo bar. Nice breakfast. He walks away to find a seat.

"Um, I'll have... an Americano," you say, stepping forward, "and one of those." You point to the banana nut muffins. Red grunts and plops the muffin onto a plate before turning to get your drink. You smile, and the lines of a Tori Amos song come into your head:

"Boys all think she's living kindness/
Ask a fellow waitress."

When your coffee arrives, you turn to find that the only empty spot is an overstuffed chair across from Knapsack Flirt. Nuts. You take the seat quietly and pull off a crusty bit of your muffin. Not bad.

Then you hear it, just above the gurgle of the other customers: humming. Faint. Familiar. It's Radiohead: True Love Waits.

You look up. It's KF. He's reading Tom Robbins' Skinny Legs and All. Sensing your attention, his eyes come off the page and find you: your face, your hair, your lips. He's not looking at you, he's tasting you. And when he settles into your eyes, it's as though a Christmas cracker has gone off, and you are each holding an end.

The humming stops. His mouth opens, then shuts, and he gives you a crooked, closed-lipped smile. He closes the book and puts it down on the table between you. "It's haunted all my days," he says, red-faced, and you recognize the line from the song. You smile and he looks startled.

Several hours later, Red comes out from behind the counter and asks if you guys are gonna order anything for lunch or what.