new laptop - hee heee!

OK, time for a bit of gloating! I had been boring Diana with talk about getting a replacement laptop for months, and then a week or two ago my PowerBook started acting up quite badly, clearly a Sign that action needed to be taken. (if you watch Run's House, you'll see the parallel with the time he got a postcard from the Lamborghini dealer and saw it as a Sign to go buy one)

Well, I spent about the same amount as last time on the PowerBook, but this time I got So Much More!!! It's a 20" MacBook - which means a big, beautiful screen (it's quite stunning). There's a built in webcam (you won't have to wait 5 minutes for me to plug everything in any more), usb 2.0 so that my ipod syncs in seconds instead of minutes, and the keyboard lights up in the dark. Did I mention that the screen is huge? You can get two webpages side-by-side on it, or edit photos and things in high resolution. I reaaaaaally love it. Here's a picture of me using it right now:

Audiobooks

I may have already mentioned that I listen to podcasts on the way to and from work, and what a great way it is to catch up on news (thanks Si for introducing me to the Guardian news podcast - much more entertaining than the BBC newspod). Well, recently I've enjoyed a couple of great audio books:

A Tale of Two Cities
Yup, the classic by Charles Dickens. Dad got me this for my birthday and it made many a drive home from work enjoyable. I'm actually tempted to listen to it again as it was a little difficult at times to follow all the characters. The story is a good one - very intriguing characters (and their secrets of course!) plus the backdrop of the French Revolution is fascinating.

The History Boys
This is a radio play of Alan Bennett's recently successful play. Can't say I've heard of it before but this one was very entertaining and well written, with intelligent themes and some very British characters...

People's History of America
Spurred on by the last two, I went shopping on iTunes for another audiobook. Unfortunately, although on the informative side, this one's turned out to be rather depressing. It's a catalog of government misbehaviour that would give you every reason to utterly distrust the people in power. I really knew that anyway, but the unrelenting tales about Vietnam, racism, discriminating against the poor, etc. are only palatable in small doses... next I think I'll go for something more light hearted

I was lamenting how little reading I do these days, so listening to these books has been really good. If you drive to work - or scoot even :-) - I would thoroughly recommend getting them on your CD player or iPod.