More than meets the eye...

Seen any good movies lately? I've only seen a couple in about 6 months: Shrek 3 a few weeks ago (really disappointing, IMHO) and Transformers last weekend after work. It's such a guilty pleasure, but I really enjoyed Transformers: it's big and stupid as far as dialogue and story goes, but for anyone interested in digital effects and compositing, or sound design, it is simply a work of art. The first half was definitely better than the second half (the latter was mostly one loooonnnngg battle, whereas the first half actually introduced characters and began a few parallel plotlines - it was even pretty funny). Don't go for the intricacies of the plot, or the sparkling dialogue (it gets especially cheesy when the machines start talking - why can't they just shutup??), but the effects are outstanding. I have no problem enjoying a dumb film that knows it's a dumb film: it's films that think they're clever but which really are dumb that I can't stand! Transformers is a Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay production - the same two people responsible for The Rock - and when I list my Top 10 favourite films, I do have to concede that The Rock is certainly near the top of that list (it's very, very low-brow to say that, but hey, it's true). Another reason for seeing Transformers was that MuteMath (my MuteMath) are featured on the soundtrack! (they have recorded a version of the old Transformers theme). I can't say I heard it anywhere in the movie though, so that's a shame. But they're still on the soundtrack CD, so that's gotta help them along: they deserve to be much bigger than they are, and I'm sure they will be soon. (speaking of bands that I like that seem to be getting some traction, Mat Kearney has been playing on Fox and MMM quite a few times recently. I even hear Brooke Fraser's "ShadowFeet" being used on the ads for 9's "Sea Patrol" or somesuch at the moment).

As a segue, I listen to the MuteMath CD every time I go to the gym - the first 5 tracks are great for the 10 minute run and 10 minute cycle that I always have to start with. I've managed to consistently go to the gym 3 times per week since I started 6 weeks ago - it's still not easy, but it is getting marginally easier. Haven't noticed much of a physical change yet, aside from the fact that I can get through the routines with less of a struggle and have steadily increased the weights on each of the machines: I guess that must mean that some invisible good is being accomplished. I've actually noticed a very fundamntal thing about myself in the last couple of years: I have no respect for small increments. Whether in financial terms or in weight loss/gain, or in most anything else, I have an unhealthy attitude toward small increments. For instance, intellectually I know that saving $5 per week would eventually lead to a worthwhile amount of money if I had the discipline to keep at it, but I don't have the patience for it. I know that losing 500g per week would eventually result in a really positive overall weight loss, but if I don't see at least 1kg being lost each week I lose all momentum and interest. Conversely, if I know that I'm not eating right, and see that I'm putting on a few hundred grams each week or so, I'm not likely to change anything until a few weeks later when I realise that I'm 5 kilos heavier than I was "yesterday". It's weird I know, and it's a personality flaw that I'd like to work on for myself and in turn, be mindful of when setting an example for Jessica. Money boxes will feature heavily!

Jessica is pretty well now, but we calculate that she hasn't been well for a full week in at least 2 months. It seems that she just gets over something, starts to perk up for a day or two, and then comes down with something else entirely. Hopefully she's just getting all of her sicknesses out of the way in one convenient block, and then she'll be a picture of health for the next 3 years straight. She's doing a lot of dancing these days - some of it we have managed to catch on film, but most of the time you can't get to the camera so you just get to sit and enjoy it while it last (LOTS of ballerina twirling). She's also stringing two or three words together ("There's my Daddy! Where's my Mummy? There she is! Cup please? Ta!"), and has become really proficient at recognising colours, people, objects in her books etc ("Where's Anthony? Can you see RED? Where's the boat? etc"). She often does things now which cause Mel & I to look at each other and say "she's too smart for us!" (we walked in to the lounge last night and she had inverted a heap of coloured, plastic cups and placed them in a row across her other toys - and the cups were all sorted into colour sequence!). She also loves watching herself on TV or on the computer (video clips we've made of her) and she'll giggle away at all the funny things that onscreen Jessica does - no matter how many times we replay it.

Mel is flat-out at the moment - getting to bed after midnight, getting up at 5am, working whenever she can find a moment during the day (eg. when J goes down to sleep). Her major client is very high maintenance, very volatile in terms of mood and expectation, and pretty unreliable when it comes to completing tasks that Mel depends upon to complete her own role. So after being told one week to cut her hours back (for the clients financial needs), they turn around overnight and demand weeks worth of new analysis to be completed and sent back to them almost immediately. It's very taxing on her when it happens (which is not every day or even every week, thankfully) and makes every aspect of her life very difficult. On top of that, they are getting her services for a fraction of what they would need to pay anyone else (and they know that she does a brilliant job), so hopefully the next time they try to push her around she'll not only say "sorry, that's an unreasonable expectation - I'll have it for you next week instead" but she'll also add, "and my fees have gone up by 150% too!".

Speaking of Mel, it is her birthday next Friday (August 3rd). Every year, I spend at least June & July contemplating the perfect gift for her, and yet I always reach the last week as confused and as anxious as ever. I've never managed the 'perfect' gift, and on a few occasions what I have carefully planned out as being a brilliant set of gifts, matched perfectly to her interests and passions (or so I thought), has fallen pretty flat. Most of the time I think I hit somewhere in the middle to upper-middle range. I have a list of about 15 things this year, though recent conversations have helped me rule out about half of those too. This may be the year that I ask Mel to pick something that she'd like: it sounds incredibly unromantic and even thoughtless (hence I haven't done it before), but if it leads to her 'perfect' present, maybe the end justifies the means? I don't know. It seems like such a phone-in. I think I'll persist with my self-directed endeavours, and hope for the best (it is still the thought that counts, right???)

Well I must go and get my things ready for work tomorrow. I was told today that I need to fly to Brisbane tomorrow, investigate a perceived problem, then fly back tomorrow night. I'm up at 3:15 to leave the house by 4:15 (my flight is at 6am), get into Brisbane at 8:30, to my destination at 9:30, investigate this so called problem (which really needs a week to properly investigate), then back to the airport at 6:30pm, onto a plane at 7:50pm which gets into Melbourne at 10:15pm, so I'll be home by about 11:30pm: that's a long day! But on top of that, I'm told that I have to submit the full report on my findings (with photos and powerpoint slides) no later than 10am on Friday, as they'll form the basis of an 11am meeting. Since I cant start that report until I leave Brisbane, I can't see that I'll be going to be tomorrow night! On the bright side, it sounds like Mel will be up most of the night working on her projects, so we'll at least give each other company. On that note, since it's 10:22pm and she's busily tapping away on her laptop in the study, I should go and get her a cup of coffee.

Goodnight,

Matt

iMatt

So I never did get around to that appraisal/review of our new computer, and I know that there is at least (at most?) one person in the world interested in our findings (thanks for your interest, Jon - you're personally responsible for the next few paragraphs). To recap, we were ready to replace our 5 year old PC recently and decided - for the very first time - to depart from the Windows World and into the Macosphere. We had looked longingly at the 24" iMac's for several months, drawn by their stylish simplicity (Mel HATES cables, and on the iMac the pretty HD screen is the entire computer - there's no separate CPU tower, and only a power cord and the lead running to the keyboard and mouse), the great interface, the promise of a host of creative applications, and the fact that it provided a non-Vista future (I'm not willing to "upgrade" to an operating system that requires 1GB of RAM just for itself). It also helped that the PC-based software I use for video editing has been discontinued as of this release (ie. there won't be a version 9), so there was very little to tie us to the Windows format. The only other stumbling block for moving to a Mac - that your existing software library becomes redundant overnight - is no longer an issue due to programs like BootCamp and Parallels, which let you run Windows software on the Mac too. On top of that, my employer had a staff discount night and we were able to get 20% off Apple's price, so it became a no-brainer.

Where do I start? In short, this is a wonderful machine to use. It is so unlike the PC's that I've been using since the early 90's. I know I'll sound just like the "I'm a Mac" guy on those Apple ads, but you really do get the feeling that there is absolutely no contest between the two formats: they're like chalk and cheese. The HD screen (which again, IS the computer) looks beautiful. The machine starts up and is ready to use in a matter of seconds (maybe 10?). I plugged in the Airport wireless network adapter on the first night and both the Mac and Mel's Windows-based laptop instantly found the network and connected to broadband automatically - no laborious setup required (the iMac has built-in wireless networking). There's a built-in camera and microphone above the screen, hidden speakers below, and the Apple logo - the only branding anywhere - doubles as the receiver for the included Apple Remote. The Remote lets you control your iTunes library, watch movies, watch/listen to podcasts, play a DVD, view online movie trailers or watch a slideshow of any of your photo libraries (complete with auto pan-and-zoom and music). The problem for us is that we don't want to leave the Mac in the study, since it's so much fun as an entertainment centre. Thankfully it's so portable (just pick up the screen, keyboard and mouse) that you can move it about as required: we've had it set up in our bedroom and even downstairs in the kitchen (that's where I'm typing this from actually - and I can keep an eye on Jessica as I type).

The included software is fantastic: Garage Band is a full featured music creation program that lets you create complex, layered music tracks in minutes; it even lets you create Podcasts or a score for your home movie. Things like Comic Life (used below), iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie HD and PhotoBooth are a lot of fun whilst also being pretty powerful. The Mac even has a feature called VoiceOver: if I hit the Esc key while I say (yes, SAY) "Open Browser", the internet browser starts up. If I say "Stew & Dumplings" or "Deb's Mutterings", it navigates to those blog pages instantly. If i say "Check Mail", it will start up the Mail application and download any new emails. You can even have it read blocks of text (web pages, emails etc) aloud to you in a choice of voices. If you say "Quit This Application", it'll do that too. In fact, if you ask "What Time Is It?", it'll tell you that aswell. Pretty neat. What else? Icons for your applications sit in a Dock area at the bottom of the screen (like the Windows Taskbar) and will jump up and down if they have something to alert you to (eg. new mail). If you click a mouse button, every open application is instantly arranged in a tiled manner across your desktop, so you can keep track of things. Press another mouse button and a second desktop is overlayed across your existing one, this time showing all sorts of customisable widgets such as weather, calculators, world time, dictionaries, flight trackers etc: press it again and it just fades away. All the ports and connectors are tucked away behind the screen (and there are lots of them - including Firewire 800 and Optical digital out) and DVD's slot into the right hand side of the screen. Tired of a boring static desktop wallpaper? The Mac lets you have all of your photos cycling through as your wallpaper. Finished with the remote? It magnetically sticks to the side of the iMac for safekeeping. The list goes on - it just feels like Apple have thought of almost everything to make this a pleasurable experience.

In some ways it's completely unfair to compare this computer to our last PC: the PC is a single-core 2.4GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB RAM and a 19" CRT monitor, whereas the iMac has a 2.33MHz Core 2 Duo with 1GB RAM and a 24" LCD screen. But even with allowances for the PC's older, slower, smaller feature-set, and you compare to what's on offer with current PC's, the Mac experience is so much more enjoyable. It's been a joy to use so far, and there has only been one occasion where it became unresonsive (I think I was possibly trying to do too many things at once - loading a DVD, playing a movie in iTunes, surfing the web etc) - so that's a good start. I know I sound like such an Apple Tragic, but the experience so far - for both Mel & I - has genuinely been fantastic. Amazing to think that - as well as being the most heavily featured computer we have purchased - this is also the cheapest computer we've ever purchased. Based on our early experiences with it, I'd recommend a Mac to anyone looking for their next computer. Mel has already decided that, when she replaces her business laptop later this year (a Toshiba), it'll be replaced by an Apple MacBookPro: and by then Apple will have replaced their current operating system ("Tiger") with a new OS ("Leopard") which is tipped to include a truckload of added functionality. http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/


The one drawback of moving to Mac is that I have to relearn a lot of things (keystrokes, folder behaviours, file types etc are quite different): thankfully there seems to be a lot of help both online and built in to the OS and it's applications. It can be frustrating being out of your depth for a while (especially when you were reasonably proficient within the Windows environment), but hopefully the learning process doesn't take too long: I can see that there is so much potential to unlock.

So there you go - these are my first impressions of life on 'the other side'. I may sound over zealous and uncritical, but it's an accurate reflection of our experience so far (which I appreciate could change). Those Mac ads - which I happen to think are terrifically funny but which I know many people find infuriating/belittling/misleading - might oversell the idea that Mac owners have discovered Utopia, but it's only a mild exaggeration. :)

Matt

(BTW, moving to Apple also means that I can someday in the future move up to the industry-leading video editing software, which is Mac-only. "Final Cut Pro" (part of the "Final Cut Studio" suite) is used to make Emmy-winning TV Shows and a number of feature films, and is one of the two editors that you would need to learn if you ever wanted to move into the industry full time (the other being "Avid"). FCStudio has just been upgraded and includes 6 pro applications, for colour manipulation, 3D design, soundtrack development etc, and is a seriously powerful suite. It's not cheap, and I'll be saving for a little while longer before I can afford it, but I found out this week that my YMCA gym membership entitles me to certain discounts at the Apple store, and I can save 18% on - you guessed it - Final Cut Studio! That saving alone would pay gym membership for 6 months, so it's a pretty terrific bonus that they've made available.

I promised to follow that last Wiggles post with some photos, so here they are (a few weeks late - but who's counting?). Not sure how this will work, but I decided to try out an application called ComicLife which comes preloaded on the iMac, and which lets you quickly arrange photos in a comicbook layout with speech balloons and thought bubbles etc. It may not work very well for posting in a blog, but here goes...(if you click on each individual page in turn - there are 8 - a larger version should appear)...