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If you’re an Apple fan boy (Josh) then no doubt you’re wetting yourself today with, at last, the official announcement of a shipping date for the new version of OS X, Leopard. It sure does look sweet and I’ll admit that I’ll be in the queue at some point to get my own copy. $129 ain’t bad, but if you can find four friends, you can have it for just $40 a head.

The side business has all but died these days but recently I had someone ask me to make a ‘backup’ of some 8mm films for them before they lent them to someone. Sure no problem I say. I set everything up and when it comes time to calibrate the digital camera onto the projector lens I see that the picture is totally grey. Doesn’t matter what I do, the camera can’t see anything. A little web research – looks like the CCD chip has died. At one time I had three camcorders:

1. A Sony purchased pre-8mm film business which turned out not to have a good enough optical zoom; I gave it away when I bought:
2. A Canon Optura 20, very nice quality but one day the firewire port gave up and I was no longer able to transfer the image to the computer. Next!
3. A trip to Cost Co for something cheap resulted in a Samsung SCD103, it worked great until this CCD chip business

How hard is it to keep a camcorder running? I’m not doing much film transfer work so I don’t really want to buy yet another camera but I have some potential work that I’d like to do. The alternative is to send one of the cameras for repair at a minimum $157, but a brand new replacement at Cost Co is not that much more. Sometimes the digital world is a PITA.

I just love this song from Kate Nash, called Foundations, and you can get it on the iTunes Music Store for 99c!

This one has it all – cute clay animation bunnies, new york city scenes and it’s all a plug for Sony’s new Bravia TVs so I score some bonus points there.

I decided yesterday that I was going to buy an iPhone on the way home. This was in part due to a feeling that I needed some major retail therapy, and by watching a lady use various aspects of her iPhone while waiting at the DMV yesterday. That thing is cool!

Fortunately for my bank balance a co-worker (and iPhone owner himself) talked me out of it. Mostly he reason was that I would be a hypocrite to buy one after all the things I said to him when he bought his, and he said to wait until a 3G version comes out. So, for now, Apple owns a little less of me.

In other news, I have now upgraded all my blog sites to 2.3. All went smoothly except for this site. Importing the tags from Ultimate Tag Warrior doesn’t seem to have worked very well and so for now the tags on here are hit and miss. I’ll look at that if and when I can be bothered. Oh, might also switch themes soon.

You can find a live album of hers on the iTunes Music Store, iTunes Festival: London – Amy Winehouse (Live). She sounds good but not quite as edgy sounding as in Friday’s videos. And also look out in November as her first album is finally getting a US release. I’ve not heard it so no idea how good it is.

In other news, I’ll be upgrading all the guapacha sites to WordPress 2.3 sometime soon so if these sites stop working, don’t panic dear reader, I’ll have it all back as soon as I can.

It’s back, baby, and it’s Amy singing live. Watch out for the crazy censoring of Me and Mr Jones in the second half!

Today is the two year anniversary of my mother’s death. It feels like much longer than two years and it seems like it is wrong to feel that way, that somehow that betrays her memory. Not that I don’t think about her often – she certainly would have loved the Alaska trip, and when thinking of future visits home it is hard to remember that she won’t be there to cook my bacon sarnies, or to fall asleep in front of whatever movie we might be watching.

A day to look back and fondly remember.

Two instructional videos for Talk Like a Pirate Day:

One of the items in the meaty stack of mail delivered whilst on the cruise was an invitation from the INS to have a chat about my US citizenship application aka ‘the interview’. Scheduled for October 10th I had plenty of time to study the question bank, but this weekend I got another letter saying that ‘due to unforeseen circumstances’ my interview had been canceled. The letter says they will be in touch should they reschedule.