like cake

not quite 24 hours, but here i am on my couch with my beautiful new family member. interweb, meet MacBook.



luckily, my iBook managed to hold out for about 45 minutes of hard core data transfer. anyone who anticipates a mac-to-mac transfer in the near future: let me assure you it is simple as pie. after my inaugural boot, the shmancey Mac orientation movie prompted me to restore settings and data from my previous machine. plug in to power, connect with firewire, hit enter, and enjoy dinner with a glass of celebratory chianti. then, it's like i'm back on my iBook - from my mail settings to my bookmark organization, right down to the spatial layout of the countless pdfs cluttering my desktop. beautiful.

lady friends

it seems funny to link to my aunt from here, as i think most people who read this blog are from that side of the family - and therefore have already seen my aunt's posts, but i was touched by her entry today. i also have a wonderful group of internet lady friends who i've known over e-mail for 2 and a half years, and i agree wholeheartedly with my aunt that it is both wonderful and important to have a support group of peers. some of my lady friends are artists, some are educators, some are academics, but all of them are inspiring. cheers to lady friends.

enforced hiatus

ack! this past weekend, my iBook G4 that has faithfully served me through an Honours thesis, two rounds of grad school applications, a PhD transfer exam, and countless PowerPoint presentations decided to cough a bit and then die. my beautiful little iBook, he who travelled with me to India last winter, who has been to every Society for Neuroscience meeting that I have (including San Diego, Washington, and Atlanta), who keeps me company on my plane or train trips back to Ottawa; yes, beautiful little iBook has passed. luckily, this was an ideal time for my laptop to die. term paper from last semester's course? done back in december. new grad school applications so that i can continue my PhD in the fall? sent off last Thursday. manuscript that i was supposed to finish 6 months ago? complete as of last Tuesday. and so, little iBook allowed me to access my desktop for one last back-up. then we took a trip to the Apple store, and i waited 2 hours for an appointment with a bleached-blonde and facial-pierced Genius (which is what they call the staff who work behind the Tech Support desk, not a sardonic moniker on my part). Genius tried to turn iBook on a few times unsuccessfully, listened to my detailed description of The Symptoms (which included: sudden black screen, won't boot past the opening apple screen, then scary vertical flashy stripes that look like a grand mal seizure), consulted with a compatriot Genius, and diagnosed iBook as requiring expensive replacement of the motherboard or worthwhile replacement of his entire being.

after a little detective work on the very helpful Apple Technical Support web site, a phone call to my computer-savvy father, and several hours scrolling through pages of Apple internet discussion boards, i came to the conclusion that iBook's motherboard had indeed failed. not that i didn't trust peroxided-pierced Genius; he just had a rather flippant way of diagnosing which begged a second opinion. as a result, i will soon be the proud owner of my second Apple laptop. this time around, a mid-level MacBook with all the trimmings!

1 GB RAM? check! 80 GB hard drive? check! (how crazy it is to reflect that my first laptop, a generous gift from my Grampa in 1999 - hi Grampa!, had only 4 GB of hard drive storage. and this was more than enough! simply baffling.) combo CD and DVD burning drive? check! built in wireless? check. built in camera for video chat? check. remote control to turn on/off iTunes while i'm standing in the kitchen? check. i can't wait to get my hands on this new piece of beautiful computing goodness. hopefully i can put out my first post from MacBook in T-24 hours... see you soon!

coveted [update]

kottke has posted a play-by-play of steve jobs' keynote at the macworld conference, complete with corresponding stock jumps and dives of apple and RIMM (manufacturer of the blackberry).

he's also compiled a helpful guide which answers the question you must all be asking: how big is this thing, really?

oh, and it turns out steve did announce the release date -- june 2007. unfortunately, the phone will only be available in the US for now, and you have to sign a 2-year contract with cingular. *grumble grumble*

coveted

apple has just published details on their new iPhone.

i want i want i want!!!!!

also, if you look here and click to watch the QuickTour of Maps, you will see a very important application of my favourite feature.

no release date set, but i can't wait. it should take about a year for them to iron out the kinks, and it just happens i'll be looking for a new phone around then... i really hope they didn't scrimp on the actual phone part that enables good reception. that would make it almost all not worth it. we shall see.

word play

after finishing the first complete draft of my paper, i popped over to queen video on bloor and picked up wordplay for viewing pleasure in what remained of my evening. i vaguely knew that it was about crossword puzzles, but clearly recalled mention that jon stewart makes an appearance. it was worth it just for him:

"i'm so confident, i'm gonna do it in glue stick."

-stewart, when asked whether he dare attempt the NY times puzzle with pen

as if he just happened to have a glue stick lying around on his desk. in case he feels a craft itch coming on. love that guy.

anyways, the whole movie is great. a veritable celebration of crossword geekdom, complete with endorsement of puzzling by bill clinton. he explains that he used to enjoy doing the NY times crossword over his lunch breaks in the white house, to take his mind off the multitude of issues he faced during the rest of the day. seems a stark contrast to looking up satellite images of one's texas ranch on The Google.

watching put me in the mood for a bit of my own wordplay, so i was happy to locate this. daily crosswords that even i can solve! we've all gotta start somewhere. i just spent the past hour working on today's, but i better escape to bed before i get caught up in yesterday's.

my year in cities (part deux)

i remember doing this last year after seeing the idea on kottke. since i travelled fairly much over the past twelve months, and since i did attain one of my travel goals from 2006, felt like it was worth reprising.

Ottawa, ON*
Toronto, ON*
Saskatoon, SK
Vancouver, BC
Whistler, BC
Montreal, PQ*
New Haven, CT
New York, NY
Atlanta, GA
Simcoe, ON

in order to list a city, i had to have spent one or more nights in the city at some point in the year. cities with a star were visited on more than one occasion. bolded cities were particularly exciting.

final drafted

after nearly seven (count them.. SEVEN) months of procrastination, i am proud to say that this afternoon i finished the first draft of my paper. this is not just some term paper (wrote that be-FORE xmas), but rather the kind of paper that formally describes and pontificates on the results of an experiment that yours truly carried out with her own hands and brain. in order to not feel like a total slacker, i need to remind myself that in the SEVEN months since i started writing i was distracted by a week-long smarty-pants conference in montreal, my first trip to new york city (which was partially for academic purposes), submission of an operating grant proposal to CIHR by my supervisor, the realization that i need to reconvene my studies elsewhere by sept 2007, submission of four PhD funding applications, prep and travel to the annual neuroscience meeting in atlanta, two experiments for my thesis, one experiment for fun, one GRE general test, and two grad school applications. oh, and that comparative cognition course with the term paper that i wrote on the weekend before vacation.

so maybe i'm not a slacker, but i'm still minorly disgusted with myself for taking seven months to write the paper.

i don't really believe in new year's resolutions, since you shouldn't have to wait until january the first of every year to decide to change something in your life, but if i were to make a small resolution for the occasion of 2007 i would aim to fully characterize and understand my procrastination patterns. i have always been a procrastinator, and it has never posed me any problems. because i am also obsessively organized, everything gets done on time. i typically just end up losing a bit of sleep... one thing i have noticed is that the more busy i make my life, the less room i have to procrastinate. for example, in my last year of undergrad i was working at the housing office, TAing for two courses, teaching two evening dance classes, running the Dal dance society, serving on a student services committee, taking a full course load, carrying out my honours experiments, and somehow having a fulfilling long-distance relationship on the side. i was at my most busy, but also very efficient, productive, and happy. when i started grad school in toronto, i figured that i should cut back on accessory things in order to spend more time on my research and course work. this has worked out OK, as i have oodles of hours to devote to all aspects of my experiments, but i don't feel that i'm as productive as i was in that year at Dal. conclusion? in order to feel productive, i need to be able to dabble in more than one or two activities.

perhaps i'll re-incorporate fresh pasta making into my weekly routine. productivity can also be yummy.

you're not lost

with the switchover to google-blogger, i decided to adopt a fresh template. thought this one was a bit more fresh and punchy.

she's jolly good, fellows

happy new year to all!

my time at home in ottawa is coming quickly to its end. unfortunately i brought a nasty cough/cold virus home and shared it with my brother and mom, but we took it as an excuse to stay in the house and eat turkey soup and sleep. i did get better enough after christmas to go out and see a couple of friends, and think i might actually get to briefly visit with my ex-roommate from halifax who is heading home to nunavut via ottawa. then on wednesday, back to toronto. much like last year at this time, i'm going to be flat out with data collection for the next 6 to 8 weeks. hoping to have everything for my thesis done by the end of february.

over the holidays i read one book: Heat, by Bill Buford. an account of Buford's culinary experience with Mario Batali and one of his NYC restaurant kitchens, plus wonderful detail on several trips to Italy to gain insight into the mysteries of eggy pasta and cuts of pig and cow.

i also saw one movie: The Secret Life of Words, directed by Isabel Coixet and starring Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins. i had never heard of it, but found it on our Rogers On Demand movie thingy and was subsequently amazed that i had never heard of it. great film, and great performances by Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins. also great soundtrack.

best present would have to be personally addressed and signed copies of margaret atwood's two latest books: Moral Disorder, and The Penelopiad. yippee! apparently, she was in ottawa recently announcing a collaboration among herself, the NAC English Theatre, and the Royal Shakespeare Company -- they'll be preparing a musical theatre version of The Penelopiad, which will debut in England next summer and open the NAC's english theatre season next fall. unfortunately, i don't think i'll be able to justify a trip back to ottawa from vancouver for only that performance. hope they take it across the country...