Bootskis, bootskis, marching up and down again...

Hurrah and huzzah!

As I have a preternatural (must look that word up soon) taste for the, shall we say "slightly off-beam" in terms of rewards for my own dazzling wonderfulness (hem-hem), I have recently taken the opportunity to avail myself of a fine pair of funky dancing boots (pictured below).


They are New Rock Malicia boots, all the way from Spain and big enough to help a fairly tall Englishman become a stupidly tall (and quite likely precarious) vain Englishman. Hey, but they rock like hell! Tommy Lee, eat your heart out! ;-) Just need a pair of leather jeans, much longer hair, and liver failure and I'm there, baby!

There's nothing quite like a spot of ridiculous indulgence to lighten one's mood. Or, in fact, just to bring an already good mood up to 'Great Mood - Level 3'.

There's piles of work on for both me and Good Dog, most of which is the sort of stuff we get to earn money at the same time as learning a bunch of stuff and keeping the experience levels up. Fantastic! Much has been achieved this year for us both in terms of work, meeting new contacts and generally developing a pretty damn great working relationship.

Apart from the fact that I'm obviously the talented one... ;-)

Now I'm off to build another computer, as it's been well over a month since I've done that and I need (yes, really physically need) a PC for playing decent games on, as the Mac ports of most of the things I enjoy playing for stress relief (Civilization III & IV, Neverwinter Nights, Sim City, Total War, etc.) are dire beyond belief and run too slow for words. That's pretty bad, when you're talking about a First Person Shooter, but these are bloody strategy and tactical turn-based games for the most part. Arrgh! :-/

Plus, the new computer will have green lights glowing out of it.

Because of Apple's decision to employ actual product designers who know a bit about how things should look, I'm loath to start buggering about with the cosmetics of my G4s and G5s. I'll happily hack the innards about a bit (within what's actually achievable in a Mac), but cosmetically, they're perfect. However, PCs start life looking like a piece of roadkill anyway, so you figure "why not?" and start mutilating them. Then you get to find out that you can build one that looks silly right from the get go and you're hooked. With a Mac, it'd be the equivalent of sticking a spoiler, skirts and under-car lighting on a top-of-the-range Rolls-Royce. With a PC, it's like grabbing a Vauxhall Nova (a crummy compact car, for our colonial cousins) and sticking a nuclear reactor in the back seats - YEEHAA, Grin Factor 12, Captain!!

The great thing about it is that it still is a useful bit of kit to have around. I'm not really one for the whole PC vs. Mac thing. I grew up using Macs and can therefore do what I need to do more quickly on a Mac due to my familiarity with the way it works and where I expect everything to be. If I'd grown up using Windows machines, I'd use those in preference and probably never have touched a Mac. What I need is to get the job done as quickly as possible, not worry about who thinks my machines are cool or not... ;-)

Having a Windows-based PC on the network means that I can farm out some of the video conversion work, as well as little niggly things like subtitle format changing, to it, while getting on with other work on the G5 I'm currently typing this on. Best of both worlds. And glowing green lights. Awesome...

Apart from the fact that I have a nagging feeling that I could really use a Linux machine too.

Just in case...