Who remembers the couple of years I spent working in central London ? Who remembers the blog posts written on the train, performing character assassination of fellow commuters? They were invariably authored on the white Macbook pictured above. It’s not looking bad for 3 years old, is it.
In reality, little of this Macbook is three years old – during it’s period within warranty, it found itself being repaired more than once, and usually returned with some piece of it’s external casing replaced. Last night, after it had spent several weeks languishing in the bottom of a bag in our study I powered it up, and checked it over. I wouldn’t so much say it was slow, as perhaps volunteer that it was doing a good impersonation of a snail. Given that it had been through two operating system upgrades in it’s life, I made a rather brave decision – to wipe it.
The reasoning went something like this – if I’ve not used it for ages, there can’t be anything on it I need. Re-installing “Snow Leopard” (the Mac operating system) took about an hour last night, and then installing various apps took another hour. I’ve deliberately not installed iLife, and iWork because I’ve realised I don’t use applications much any more; I do everything online if I can.
So what is the Macbook going to get used for? Web development. While hacking away at freelance work at home, I spent far too many hours in the study, locked away from the rest of the house. Particularly in the evening, I end up not seeing my better half for days on end beyond making each other cups of tea. Not fun.
The “little Macbook that could” got another shot in the arm today in the form of a memory upgrade. Since birth it has survived rather admirably on 1 gig of RAM. That just got doubled. I’m not sure it will make a tremendous difference, but it can’t do it any harm. While writing this, it’s sat on the desk next to me, quietly installing software, and reporting 7 hours of battery life remaining. Go suck on that, Windows.
For those with an anally retentive statistics streak, here are some numbers fresh out of Google Analytics, charting the return of “Cheese and Beans” on 25th January 2010. I have no idea what the significance of any of these numbers means – I’m just the messenger (and the author, the baker, the candlestick maker…)
Visitors
- 8,236 visits
- 6,493 unique visitors
- 13,288 pageviews
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Top 5 Browsers
- 74.5% Firefox
- 11% IE
- 9.53% Chrome
- 3.24% Safari
- 0.4% Blackberry
|
Top 5 Operating Systems
- 74.59% Windows
- 19.49% Macintosh
- 4.52% Linux
- 0.72% iPhone
- 0.42% Blackberry
|
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XSTwfdFwIY&hl=en_GB&fs=1&]
This is going to be really interesting…
I received an email from the hosts of Cheese and Beans earlier today, notifying me that on the 12th of the month, I have already over-run the bandwidth limits of my hosting account. In laymans terms, that means “you’ve got too many damn people reading your blog!”
Of course there is no such thing as “too many people” – what nonsense are they talking about?! I headed off to look at the statistics, and gawped in amazement. Since I began the rather ridiculous feud with my cousin to see who could draw the most traffic to our internet writings, I have actually been trying for the first time in years – trying to write half-interesting posts, and telling a small corner of the world of their existence.
It’s amazing what a little effort has done – as can be seen by the graph below;
So – I have a problem – I have to pay more for the hosting (I was previously on the cheap-ass hosting plan). This almost inevitably means talking to potential advertising suitors about them sticking badges down the side of the page, or going with Google Adsense. One this is for certain – I’m NOT going to sell out to the idiots who want links within the content.
If you happen to be visiting this blog, and own a hugemongous advertising company, how about it ? I will never write about any stuff you want me to, but you can have a tiny little badge, and I promise not to make the CSS hide it, or put it right at the bottom of the sidebar.
In the spirit of sharing, here is a list of ten personal blogs I like. If you’re not on the list, and you know I read your blog, worry not – I’ll do another one of these lists soon. The selection list wasn’t terrifically scientific either – pretty much a case of waving my finger in the air and saying that one, and that one, and that one… now how many is that?
I have been reading most of these blogs for a very long time – so long in fact, that I am suddenly aware of how long it has been since I went on the search for new people to read. If you’re anything like me, the blogs you read (or rather, the authors) are somehow just as legitimate friends as those in the real world – those you visit regularly.
