Mark London as another city I’ve been to! Took a 9-hour direct flight on Zoom Airlines (much better than Air Canada — they served dinner and breakfast and they didn’t lose my luggage!) and arrived in Gatwick Sunday morning and meet up with Renee, my friend from New York. Then we both took a train and met Nicki in a city outside London. It was so good to see her again! She was staying with another friend in London which I had met previously when she visited Vancouver. Nicki took us to Greenwich and we walked around a little bit and then had some drinks to end the night.

My backpack on the left. That was all I brought with me for my month-long trip.

On Monday, Nicki returned home to Bristol and our other friend in London said we’d be able to stay there while we took in the city. So we took the bus into town and did a lot of walking. We started off at Trafalgar Square and saw the Horse Guards. We walked through St. James’s Park and got to Buckingham Palace. Took a bunch of pictures. The changing of the guards had happened earlier in the day so we’ll try to catch it tomorrow. Then we got over to Victoria Street, headed over to Westminster Abbey, made our way to Piccadilly Circus (London’s version of Times Square) and then into Soho. Walk around there for a while, had some indian food and some drinks, and eventually ended our evening by taking in a free live show.

Me and the trooper.

Buckingham Palace.

Westminster Abbey.

Piccadilly Circus.

On Tuesday, we woke up early and took the bus into London and joined the Big Bus Tour, which allowed for some amazing photos. We got to the Tower of London and spent a lot of time there and took even more photos. It was tiring and now I find myself sitting in an internet café, writing down everything before I forget. We may try to get on the London Eye later tonight, which promises spectacular views of the city at night when it’s all lit up.

The Canadian Embassy in Trafalgar Square.

The London Eye.

Tower of London.

Tower Bridge (don’t go mistaking it for London Bridge).

Big Ben.

Westminster Abbey.

It’s been an exciting couple of days and I’m looking forward to more!

So the rumours of a super thin MacBook were true and the images from Wired were pretty close to what the actually thing looks like:

Courtesy of Apple.

Here are the big details. It’s less than 1″ thick, it weighs 3 lbs, runs on Intel Core 2 Duo @ 1.6GHz or 1.8GHzIt has a 13.3″ widescreen LED display, a backlit keyboard, 2GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, and no optical drive. That’s right, no optical drive. Their big thing is that you will not need to watch DVDs because you can rent movies from the iTunes Store (new feature added today). And if you do need to use an optical drive, the MacBook Air has a new feature called Remote Disc that lets you wirelessly use the optical drive of a nearby Mac or PC.The thing looks nice and sleek but I think it’s giving up too much for me to want to buy it. The base model (1.6GHz, 80GB hard drive) is $1899 and the higher-end model (1.8GHz, 64GB solid state hard drive) is $3,248. The features I’ve put in brackets are the only dis,tinguishable features between the two that I saw from first glance. Sure doesn’t seen like a $1,349 difference. And as I was watching the guided tour, every time I heard MacBook Air, I thought it was MacBook Error. Freudian slip, perhaps?Nothing new on the MacBook Pro front, alas. I was hoping for an update. There’s still three days left at the Macworld Expo so perhaps something might happen.

The most popular rumour floating around as to what the big announcement will be at Macworld Expo is an ultra-portable ultra-thin MacBook. The screen is to measure in the neighbourhood of 12.1″, is said to not have an optical drive (bye bye, DVD and perhaps Blu-ray?), and will move to flash-based hard drives (faster and no moving parts). This did not excite me. For one, I would want a bigger screen. The first (and only) laptop I got had a 14.1″ screen. I would definitely not want anything smaller than this for photos, image-editing, and spreadsheets. The lack of an optical drive would also be a problem because I would want as few peripherals as possible. Without an optical drive, I wouldn’t be able to rip CDs, burn discs, play games (if I wanted to), or watch movies. The flash-based hard drive would be welcome because it would be faster, consume less energy, be quiet, and not get heated. But then Wired went ahead and released these details and this mock image:

Courtesy of Wired.

That thing looks très sexy. Can’t wait to hear what the big announcement is tomorrow!

I just created a store on CafePress to sell midnightglory.com-branded goods. I’m not really expecting any sales, but I had nothing better to do today and I thought I might as well create a store and at least reserve the name midnightglory before someone else took it. My real intention for the store is to sell calendars with spectacular photos which I intend to take throughout the year. Hopefully by this time next year, there will be some really nice goods available in the store that people might actually spend more and buy.

It’s Friday January 11 2007. You know what that means! The Macworld Expo is next week! Okay, maybe you didn’t know that and maybe I am a big dork. But in any event, with the annual Macworld Expo are surprises and announcements galore. Just look at past Macworlds: 2006 - iPhone; 2005 - Intel iMacs; 2004 - iPod Shuffle, Mac Mini. Need I say more? I don’t know what major announcement will come this year. All I’m hoping for is a major upgrade to the MacBook Pro so I can finally go and order the damned thing. As mentioned, I’ve been looking at getting a Mac for my next computer. I won’t go over again all the reasons why I’m choosing a Mac over a PC but I will say that the MacBook Pro will make me more productive. Plus, I don’t want to be cooped inside at a desk staring at a computer when the nice weather comes back to Vancouver. I’d rather be out in the public staring at my laptop, obliviously to my surroundings. At least I’ll have fresh air. Not that the air in my home is stale. Err, wait, erase that!