Ok, Apple have just announced their new laptop, the Intel powered MacBook Pro. Overall it looks good, those speed claims are certainly impressive, however there are a few unanswered questions that, well, need answers.

1. How long does the battery last? There is a total absence of any estimates on Apple’s site.
2. Where has the Firewire 800 port gone? Is that it for Firewire 800?
3. Where is the s-video out? I use that! Any adapter gonna be available to take it from the DVI? The graphics chip is capable of doing it supposedly.
4. What the heck is a ExpressCard/34 slot? And what did it do with the body of PCMCIA?
5. It’s a little bigger no?
6. Why isn’t it cheaper!? (OK, that’s just my stupid fantasies)

Any thoughts?

The end of the year approacheth and I thought I’d take that as an opportunity to try and foist some of my own personal taste on to you. This isn’t a definitive list you understand, just a few things that I liked in the world of popular entertainment, well CDs and TV anyway. Some of these things were new in 2005, some just new to me.

Favourite TV of 2005

Favourite Albums of 2005

I’m back! Hooray! No? Okay, I’ll be posting soon about my Christmas experience very soon, as well as letting the world know about my favourite things of the year, but in the mean time I thought I’d share a few of these interesting facts from 2005 that have been posted over at the BBC’s news site.

You can find the full list here, but here are a few of my favourites…

Just a brief post to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I’m about to head off home to deepest darkest rural Oxfordshire for a couple of days and will be without broadband! Maybe I’ll write some posts and get them online via modem, who knows.

Five TV channels and no internet, what on earth will I do?

I just had to draw your attention to this great little photo of what are being called ‘Tomkat’, otherwise known as Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes. Dlisted is running their caption competition which cannot fail to produce results, read some, or make up your own. I wouldn’t normally post such dirt but because I’ve been reading these sort of blogs recently, Tomkat actually popped up in a dream. We were in a limo together, along with miscellaneous other celebrities that I can’t remember, and I don’t know what was being said, but after a while Tomkat started bitching about my house and insulting it. I had to tell them they were being quite rude and impolite. They were very cold.

dlisted.blogspot.com caption contest

Today my flatmates and I did a little pre-emptive Christmas shopping. We still haven’t decorated our house yet and tomorrow we’re going to go and buy a tree and all the trimmings, so today was all about the research. Not quite sure where we’re going to get one from yet, the only ones we could find today were all a bit on the small side. We also popped into our local CrackDonalds for lunch. I haven’t been to the golden arches for years, and today was a reminder why. We knew we wouldn’t really enjoy it, but it was just one of those things that you have to do once in a while. We all felt suitably shamed and dirty.

I finally plucked up the courage to go to the hairdressers the other day. I’m terribly slack when it comes to getting a new-do. I find the whole experience really unpleasant if I’m honest. I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if I did it more regularly, but as I leave it so long between chops (we’re talking 2 or 3 months here) I usually look like crap. I can feel all those fashionable Toni & Guy types sneering at me while I wait, and I know what they’re thinking, it’s something along the lines of… “It’s gonna take more than a haircut sweetie”. Of course it gets even worse once the cut begins.

You have to sit wrapped in this awful black plastic shawl, with your hair sodden and stuck to your face staring into a huge mirror while lights more powerful than the sun highlight every last defect of my sorry potato-headed self. It’s utterly gruelling. And let’s not forget the pathetic small-talk you have to endure. I’m not one of the worlds most natural or gifted conversationalists and I think I probably experienced at least ten stoney silences during the pitiful exchange with my stylist ‘Penny’. I did experience something new this time though, ceramic hair straighteners. Now my hair is pretty straight as it is, but my stylist saw fit to take it to the next level and I can’t say it’s an experience I’m eager to ever repeat. By the time she was finished I looked like a deformed Top Shop mannequin, it was as if someone had painted my hair on. Fortunately though a good shower and blow-dry later and I looked relatively normal once more. I’m still not entirely sure about the wispy mullet I now possess , but I suppose it’ll grow on me, literally.

Look at this idiot, he’s heard the news about the explosion at Hemel Hempstead and despite the police and oil companies saying explicitly that you shouldn’t react by panic buying petrol, he’s decided to pop down to his local petrol station and join the huge queues of other brainless wonders. If anyone knows his name then please do write in!

I just read the sad news that comedy legend Richard Pryor passed away at Encino hospital near Los Angeles due to a heart attack. I grew up really enjoying Pryor’s films, even “Brewsters Millions” which Pryor himself didn’t really like. I loved the very un-PC “See No Evil, Hear No Evil”, but I think my favourite performance was in “Superman III”. I remember feeling really sad for his character as well as laughing out loud.

Pryor famously battled with alcohol and other drugs for many years, but I think on balance, history will remember him as simply a great comic and comic actor. So long Richard.

BBC Obituary

So today is the last ever day. The 159 left Marble Arch this lunchtime on it’s final journey. The Routemaster bus was actually discontinued in 1968 but has been refitted and repaired ever since. The 159 and several other Routemaster buses are being decommissioned just down the road from me in Brixton, in fact they are expected to start arriving at the depot in the next few minutes.

I’m very glad that I moved to London just before this happened, and I’m told that many of them are being sold on for other uses, so I guess we’ll see them again.

UPDATE: I’m reliably informed by me friend George that the routemaster buses will still run on a couple of services, one of which is specially created as a kind of moving museum. Hooray!

Now I don’t mean to be mean, but what is it with all this mourning for George Best? If you hadn’t heard (which I find an utterly implausible possibility for any U.K. resident) George Best died last week. Well boo hoo.

Look, please don’t misunderstand me, it’s sad for his family and friends and everything, but why on earth am I supposed to care? There’s been wall-to-wall coverage of this pathetic old wife-beating boozer’s demise on the news, even a live broadcast of his funeral on the BBC, and I just find it completely ludicrous if not offensive. He was a football player for gods sake. He wasn’t a diplomat, a charity worker, a teacher, or even a good role model. He was a once-good kicker of balls who pissed his life up against the wall and got through more livers than I’ve had hot-dinners.

Excuse the rhyming, I always get that way when I’m angry. Maybe next they’ll install a webcam in is coffin so we can all watch the final stages of his decomposition that began way back when in the 80’s. But I guess with all that alcohol in his system he may conceivably never rot. Pickled for all eternity, like Lenin, only hairier.

I’m feeling pretty lacklustre today, but with no good reason. Or at least no reason that wasn’t there yesterday. It’s strange how one day, which is much like the last, can have such a different feeling. If I was more spiritual in my world-view then I’d probably look to the moon or my biorhythms to explain it. I have a plan though. A series of activities and actions to lift myself up and it starts with a word. That word is “mandible”, it’s my favourite word in the English language and I’m saying it to myself right now. Mandible. Mandible. Mandible. Already I can feel a tightening of the muscles around my mouth, and as if my magic a smile appears. It’s a grey day today, but mandible is helping me to see it differently. Outside my window a huge tree is throwing away it’s leaves and for a moment they look like butterflies, in the distance birds fly and it’s hard to tell where the leaves end and the birds begin. I’ve found myself dreaming of painting in recent weeks, it’s odd as I haven’t painted anything at all for years, save the odd interior wall of course, but that doesn’t really count, although it can have a Zen-like charm. My friend George says to “just do it then”, and I know he’s right. So why can’t I?

Today is the introduction for tomorrow. I’m going to be meeting up with my good friend Patrick Wray who I haven’t seen for several months. Patrick is an uplifting presence, and we’ve done a lot of work together in the past and intend to pick up again this weekend during his stay with me. Another friend will be joining us on Saturday, Gerry King, and between the two of them you can’t help but be uplifted and inspired. I’m looking forward to a weekend of adventure and creativity, some of the results of which may find themselves posted here.

I’m now free of any work and I need to put together my portfolio and CV in order to start looking for some more, but I’m never really that interested in looking back at old projects and find it difficult to summon the will to complete it. However I think it’s half-finished state is one of the things that is casting a shadow over my day and I know I have to get it done in order to move on with more exciting projects. I think I’ll distract myself with another cup of tea first. I’ve been drinking too much coffee recently and I think tea might be my saviour. I’ll watch the kettle boil, and see how I feel.