I’ve just been trying to do some simple image manipulation with Gimp, an open source free image editor which I’m using on my Mac. It’s nice that it’s free, but I’ve just found out the hard way why no one would pay for it. It’s rubbish. It can’t even handle simple copy and paste operations! I selected an area of the image I wanted to copy, copied it, pasted it, and found it hadn’t pasted anything at all!! Grrr!! I tried it over and over, making sure I had the right layer selected… in the end I gave up, I’m going back to my PC to edit the file on Photoshop. The only reason I’m not using Photoshop on the Mac is because I’ve got an old version which doesn’t run in OS X. Grrr again.

Then I decided to release my frustration by making a cup of tea. So on went the kettle. Then the hot water went into the cup, along with the tea bag. I stirred it to the correct strength and binned the tea bag. It was at that point that I discovered that we had no milk. GRRRR!!! Things not going my way at the moment…

Two posts in one day… gosh, I must really live an exciting life…

Well, I’ve just copied all my documents over to my Mac from my PC. I kinda figured I’ve only really been using the PC as an extra storage facility since I got the Mac, so I might as well put everything onto the Mac and just open the PC-only files fron the PC as and when I need to. It’ll save having two computers on all the time anyway. Thing is, I’ve discovered through doing this that I’ve got 5.2Gb of personal files! That’s ridiculous! Admittedly, some of that is music, and a large proportion is photos, but even so!

I’ve also just downloaded a nice program called CyberDuck, which is an FTP and SSH program. That just means I can log into various web servers and upload files and stuff. Useul for managing web sites. Which all means that with using jEdit for writing HTML files, and Gimp for editing graphics, I’ll never need to use the PC for web design again! Yey!

Yesterday was a fantastic day, a real answer to prayer. I’ve been kinda struggling for a while now with my personal time with God, praying and reading the Bible and all that, it’s been something of a cause for concern. But yesterday was exactly what I needed, and it was such a breath of fresh air! I went to a new church in the morning, driving out to Orchard Baptist Church for their morning service. The worship was wonderful, just what I needed, very uplifting. It was the first time in quite a while that I could really enter into the spirit of it, and really experience God in a real and present way. It was wonderful! Very humbling too, though, realising just how long I’d gone without God, and realising how much I do actually need him! It was like I was a bottle that had been slowly leaking without me noticing, and then God filled me to overflowing and I realised how empty I had been!

Yesterday evening I went to a play. I have to admit I didn’t really know what I was going to, having not been told what it was all about! Gavin just told me to come, and I gave Anna and Lucy a lift. It was in Barking, and there were a load of CU folks going, which was nice. As it turns out, it was a musical about the life of Jesus, but I only found out once the show had started. It was also the first time I had sat in the very front row – very exciting! The show was really powerful, and very imaginitive. There are a lot of musicals that are empty and cheesy, but this had a great storyline (obviously) and the music seemed to fit in perfectly. The performance was really top-notch, they had some very interesting casting (Jesus was bald and looked decidedly Middle-Eastern). It also struck me as the tears were flowing that I’ve not come across any other character, real or fictional, that I felt so strongly about, that I would weep when he was in pain, and hated those who hated him. Jesus really is the most amazing person ever!

Yey!! My new computer has arrived! It’s so cool! I’m writing this on my new Mac, using Apple’s very posh Safari browser, which so far seems a lot faster than anything else I’ve used. The Mac OS X Tiger interface is really sweet, so smooth and impressive, I love it! Just shows that Apple have actually put some thought into their operating system, unlike Microsoft, who seemed perfectly happy shipping XP while it still looked like Fisher Price had sponsored it! No, this is a real computer for real people, for people who like their computers to look like it’s been put together well. I’ve already got it all linked up to the network, and I have access to all my files on my PC, though I suspect this computer will get a lot more use than the PC from now on! It’s so cool! (Sorry, did I mention that it was cool earlier??)

Well, my keyboard arrived today. I now have a lovely Apple USB keyboard to go with my new Mac when it arrives. Very exciting! It wasn’t exactly the model I was hoping for, but it’ll do just fine. It’s got a pink underside to the keyboard – not sure if that’s a good thing or not! I don’t really have anything else that it would go with, so it might stand out a bit, but then again, it is pink, so I’m sure Ellie will approve! I also seem to be able to type faster on this new keyboard, the keys are slightly nicer, and much quieter.

I went round to Phill’s flat last night to watch a film. Very nice flat indeed. And a very nice computer, too. Very quiet, very posh. However, he did manage to spoil it all by saying that Macs weren’t real computers, and were only for poncey arty types! How ridiculous. Admittedly, I am buying the computer mainly for the fact that it looks nice, but that’s beside the point…

Well, there have been all sorts of fun things happening just recently. First of all, yesterday I had a mad, crazy compulsion to go wandering around that ridiculously silly web site that is known as eBay. I wasn’t really intending on buying anything to begin with, but you know how it is, you see a bargain and you just can’t resist! So anyway, there I am at 11pm, glued to my computer, waiting for the time to run out on a particular item. It was a bit of a close-run thing, with a last minute bid from someone else which I had to bid against. Bit of a stress. Still, I won the bid in the end, which was rather cool! So now I’m waiting to take delivery of a Mac computer, 1Ghz G4 processor, 832Mb RAM, OS X Tiger (the latest from Apple), and all for about two hundred pounds! How cool is that!! I’ll need to get myself a keyboard to go with it, and a mouse eventually (though my existing USB mouse will do for now).

So, what could I do today that would even come close to last night’s excitement? Well, how about cloning myself five times? Ok, so I didn’t actually close myself, but I do now have a recording of me singing in 5-part harmony! I know it sounds like a bit of an ego-trip, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for ages, and Andy C lent me some recording equipment, and no one else was in the house, so I thought I’d take the opportunity! There’s something strangely unique about the sound of the same voice singing in harmony with itself. Still got some tweaking to do to it, but still, a good afternoon’s work!

Today I went shopping. With two girls. It was actually quite fun though, so no complaints there! First off we went to Matalan because I wanted some new jeans, to replace the ones where both knees have worn through. Neither AM or Esther had been to Matalan before, so I had to introduct them! It’s a fantastic shop, reasonable clothing for very good prices. I, or rather ‘we’, spent ages trying to find me some nice jeans. There were loads of different sorts, and I don’t seem to be very good at making decisions! In the end I found some I liked, and then went looking at t-shirts as well. So after a good three quarters of an hour finding me two items of clothing, we all went round to the womenswear section to choose some clothing for AM. Funnily enough I was much better at making decision about those! I could easily pick out what looked good and what didn’t, and what suited AM and what would suit Esther. But then, as AM said, we more naturally take notice of what the opposite sex is wearing, which makes it easier to be objective when selecting clothes for someone else!

So that was a good hour and a half’s shopping, and by that time it was lunchtime, so we stopped off at Tesco. Only to find that the restaurant is closed for refurbishing. Grr. So we ended up just rushing (or rather dawdling, as it turned out) round doing our food shopping and then coming home for lunch.

Other than that, I’ve almost finished writing my sermon for Sunday, we’ve had a lovely candle-lit dinner (just because we could, not because we were in romantic moods…), and now I’m messing around on my computer again.

As some of you may know, I have been having problems in recent times installing a graphics card in my computer. I eventually came to the conclusion (through a series of deductions that is far too long to go into here) that it must be the miniscule power supply (230W) not being big enough to adequately power everything. So I bought a new power supply, and yesterday lunchtime I fitted it. Everything ran nicely, no problems there. But then I didn’t expect anything to go wrong, it’s only a power supply.

So, I then went on to put my nice new graphics card in. Windows got halfway through installing the drivers for it, and crashed. And I mean seriously crashed. Crashed so much that Windows wouldn’t start again, not even in Safe Mode. I was not a happy bunny. So I put my Windows CD in to see if I could fix it, but it was having none of that either. It would get so far in the installation and then give up. I had a poke around inside, and noticed that the CPU was very hot. It was almost as if the new power supply was giving more power than the motherboard could handle. And it was clear that the motherboard didn’t like delegating the graphics to another card. So in the end I put the old power supply back in, and reinstalled Windows on my secondary hard disk. I’ve still got all my files and stuff on my other hard disk, so I haven’t lost anything exactly. It’s just a bit of a pain.

Right, well I’m going to crawl under my desk again now and unplug everything, and connect up my CD writer (which I forgot to plug in before) and my other hard disk (which I meant to not plug in before). I’m just glad I didn’t have to be doing anything important on my computer yesterday…

Well I’ve had a fairly productive day so far. This morning I went into town and bought two small chests of drawers for three quid each, which was something of a bargain. The tops are a bit scratched, which is what brought the price down, but I’m hoping to use them as part of my desk eventually, so they’ll have another surface over the top anyway. Then I went and got my hair cut, did a little shopping, then went to lunch at the Flag. Since then I’ve washed my car and tidied my room, and it’s all very satisfying! One of the units I bought this morning is now in my room, giving me more storage space, meaning that now I can actually see my floor! First time since I moved in…

I’m gonna have another drink now (it’s very hot here) and then have a look at the car again. I’ve got some de-rusting stuff that I’m gonna try, and some touch-up paint to fill in the spots where some nasty stones have been kicked up onto the front of my car. Trouble is, it’s rather scary, I don’t want it to eat into my car and make it fall apart… and I still haven’t sorted out the little pond, which has filled up with weed again. And I need to do some more to my novel too, but that can probably wait til this evening.

Oh, and if anyone has a nice big bit of wood they’d like to donate for me to use as a desktop surface, do let me know!

I’ve always found that daydreaming and general procrastination is always most enjoyable when there is plenty of work to do. This week, for instance, there have been a whole load of things I really should have done. I should have fixed the lawnmower and trimmed the lawn. I should have tidied my room. I should have been out looking for a job. I should have been out and got a hair cut. But no, I’ve spent the last few days writing a novel. Much to Anne-Marie’s annoyance (she’s trying to write a couple of novels too) I’ve written well over 4000 words for one and a half chapters, and I’m reasonably pleased with the content too. It’s a sort of comedy sci-fi novel. I won’t go into detail about the plot, it’s rather complicated! I’ll just have to be careful with it though – AM would kill me if I got published before she did!

I also decided to have a change of mouse. As in computer mouse. I decided to get rid of the tail, exchanging the USB mouse for a cordless one. It’s quite cute, and significantly smaller than the other one. But it’s still a mouse. It still clicks. It still scrolls. Don’t I live such an interesting life…

Actually, truth be told, I have just got back from a fantastic weekend. Friday I went down to see Ellie, and went to a local pub to meet up with some of her friends. They’re a mad lot, absolutely bonkers. Apparently they tend to scare off most people who meet them. Strangely though I felt somehow quite at home with them – I guess most of my friends from school and uni have been similarly crazy! Then on Saturday Ellie and I went down to Torquay for my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. That was good fun, nice to see family again, and Ellie seemed to cope all right with my odd family, which was a relief! She came to our church on the Sunday morning too (first time she’s been to a Baptist church!) which was quite pleasant. Then we drove back to hers, I stayed overnight again and drove back to Wivenhoe on the Monday. Lots of driving, but thankfully I quite enjoy it.

So I guess, on reflection, if anyone was to complain about how I haven’t done much recently, I could more satisfactorily use the excuse that I have been driving round the country and haven’t really been here… yeah, I’ll stick to that one!