Last night I met up with JohnBoy to go and watch his friends band, actually someone who was in my hall at uni. They were really good, called The Redwings, you can check out their music on their MySpace page.

Picture very bad from my camera phone
They were playing at Dry Bar, not somewhere I’ve been in a very long time. Its a nice place with a good bar, serving Budvar the real Budweiser. Non of this watered down American stuff. Probably had a few too many but it was a good night.

I was on MySpace when a pop and javascript dialog popped to the front of my screen. It claimed there were errors in the registry on my Windows machine and that I should download WinFixer. This is a little strange since I was using a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X! Don’t think I’d trust that software on a Windows box, if I had one that is.

Saturday was a bit of a boozy occasion seeing in the birthdays of both Paul and Trav. The fun started at 2pm with lunch and beers in Kro, however there was no way I was going to last from then until late in the evening. I joined everyone else at 6pm in the Phoenix pub. This used to be a local haunt as it’s across the road from my Computer Science department. Well, some things don’t change, it’s still as it was back then, “it’s probably the same furniture glued back together”.

Me and Ross enjoying some drinks with random friends of his
Then moving on to the main event at Scubar, this is an odd place, sort of a big barn type place that attracts a very studenty crowd. Much drinking and then some more drinking.
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Well, I finally did it. I’ve resigned from my job of over 5 years with Transitive. It has been a great job but sometimes it’s just time to move on and experience something different.

So…what next? Well, I’ve accepted a job with Apple. They’re a great company and seem to be able to do no wrong. Innovation and style are both at the heart of everything they do so I’m hoping I’ll in fit well.

Today the BBC is reporting that carpool lanes, to be called ‘carshare’ will be introduced around Leeds. This is a great and sensible move, long overdue.

I know some people will be skeptical, but it makes the difference between 70MPH in the carpool lane and 50MPH in a regular lane. I’ve been using them for a few years in the US now and it is much quicker. Not only do you have time but it’s much less stressful, the drive is smooth and quick.

This is going to take a bit of getting used to. In America this is ingrained in the culture and part of everyday language. However, it only works because it is heavy enforced by a huge fine. The UK need to ensure they do the same otherwise it will come a joke. And if you think your blacked out Range Rover is going to get you around this, think again!

I’ve been using a MacBook Pro for just over a week now. This machine really is amazing. Setting up all my bluetooth devices just worked, so that now even Skype works with my headset. This is a remarkable step up from the lack of compatibility in a USB bluetooth dongle.
Audio is actually better than I expected. Even a high volumes the speakers give clear and crisp sound.
The only problem I’ve encountered so far is that the wireless really doesn’t work that well. After coming out of sleep it doesn’t always connect back to my router. Worse still it regularly stalls and completely fails to route packets.

I have finally got my long awaited MacBook Pro. This machine is amazing! The screen alone is just incredible, even on the lowest brightness setting it is brighter than my old 800MHz Powerbook.

Fully loaded with music, videos, documents and photos the machine ground to a halt. A very worrying moment. It turned out to be Spotlight getting overly excited about all the new content. After lunch the laptop was much happier.

I’ve finally noticed there is a PHP Gallery which is much improved over version 1.5. Check out the new version of Jaywalk Gallery.