Some Great News - MacMania 8

I have an announcement to make but I fully acknowledge that it's probably only of real excitement to me but I thought you'd like to know anyway. I'm delighted to tell you that I've been asked to participate in one of the Geek Cruises this November - MacMania 8 If you're not familiar with the MacMania cruises, these are cruises set up especially for Mac users that combine a vacation with a mixture of Mac based seminars on various themes. I'm stepping in at the last minute to help them out with out a schedule change so I'll not be focussing on screencasting technologies but producing a few sessions on personal and Mac productivity. Perhaps I'll get to do a screencasting session on the next one! The MacMania 8 cruise is based around the Eastern Mediterranean calling at some great locations and I'm honoured to be in the esteemed company of David Pogue, Dan Frakes, Sal Soghoian, Leas King, Randal Schwartz, Bebo White and Josimar King. You can checkout the full details of the cruise here (looks like there is an unterminated link in my bio - just told them about that) and see what it's all all about. Heck, there are even some places left on the cruise if you'd like to hang out! I promise not to bang on about it either during the show or on the blog but I'm pretty jazzed about it (and I'll probably be taking Mrs Don as well so it should be a great break for us both). OK, So I may mention it once on the show as well, just the once!

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Manchester - Cocoa Developers Meetup

Always one to support the local Mac community, just found out that there is a Cocoa Developers Meetup scheduled for the 15th May in Manchester. Thanks Dave! The upcoming page can be found here. Although I'm not a Mac developer, might still pop along and say hello. How about you?

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Moved the Blog

I've moved the blog to another account on my dedicated serve. Hopefully the RSS feed and everything else still works! Here's hoping!!

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carpeaqua - Your Twitter is not your blog is not your Tumblr is not your FriendFeed

carpeaqua - Your Twitter is not your blog is not your Tumblr is not your FriendFeed

Hallelujah!! Can I just say that this posting by Justin Williams is completely on the mark. I've decided to become ruthless (OK semi-ruthless!) to people I follow on twitter and will un-follow them if they break these guidelines. Seriously, it's a real pain when people persistently tweet that they've just posted a blog post or they are "streaming now, come and chat" Grrrrrrr!!!! Sorry, rant over.

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Resistance is Futile....

Ever since Macworld, I've started to harbour a strange desire for a MacBook Air.

It's taken a while and it wasn't the immediate knee jerk reaction that sometimes occurs when Apple release a new product. No, I thought it was a great machine, but a little bit too expensive for me. I was in the mind set to upgrade my 1st Gen MacBook Pro but knew that the new MacBook Pros would be along soon. So I waited..... Then I started to re-evaluate what I needed my existing MacBookPro for. It's a 17" and the original thought process was that the beast would be my portable Video editing machine. I needed that huge screen for FCP and some raw horsepower to encode that video when on the road. In the two years I've had the machine, I must have done this, ooh. let me see... a total of three times! So I need a 17" MacBook Pro for working when not tied to my desk. You know, such processor intensive tasks such as answering emails in front of the TV, answering emails when in hotel rooms, browsing the web, reading RSS feeds, writing blog posts...... Hmm, not really very processor intensive stuff really. And then there's the weight and the heat! It's impossible to use the MacBook Pro as a proper laptop as I need some thermal protection between it and my lap. Plus it's very unwieldy, it's a great desktop replacement but not very portable really. Then I started to read some blog posts and see repetitive twitter posts.. After consistent MacBook Air usage since it shipped, I now feel comfortable calling it the best notebook I have ever owned. - Dan Pourhadi - Twitter I agree, and I've owned everything back to the old Mac Portable (which wasn't). The MBA is one sweet machine Steve Sande Twitter The MacBook Air: What a Laptop Should Be - Kirk McElhearn Blog Everyone I meet who has a MacBook Air loves them Scoble Blog MacBook Air Haters: S**k My D**k (Ahem!) Wil Shipley Blog MacBook Air: Rambling First Impressions (PG!) Wil Shipley Blog MacBook Air early review: GAME CHANGING! Jason Calacanis Blog Need I go on...There's plenty more rave reviews if you need them! And so the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros were released this week and although good in every way, nothing really that caused me to whip out the credit card and replace my existing beast. I toyed with the idea of selling the 17" MacBook Pro and getting a new 15" MacBook Pro for portability but you know....... I really want a MacBook Air and it would fit the bill of portability, lightness, coolness (in heat terms!) and plenty enough horsepower to do what I need to do with a laptop - just basic computing. So with that m'lud, I rest my case and complete the self-justification for the fool-hardy action of ordering a new MacBook Air this afternoon. I'll keep you posted on my findings! PS In case you think I've recently won the lottery or something as I've only just got my Mac Pro, well no! They're both business expenses and investments for the future of ScreenCastsOnline (or something like that!) I fully expect these machines to pay for themselves over the next few years - mind you, the Mac Pro feels like it's paid for itself already with the time I've saved in encoding - magic!

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