I have been meaning to sort out Parallels on the Mac mini and the iMac for some time now. The main reason that I haven’t is that I couldn’t actually see any reason why I would want to be able to use Windows XP on a Mac.

Sure, I have a few applications (Quicken, eWallet, ListPro and TaxCalc) that my wife still uses, and may well continue to do so for a while yet BUT with two Windows PC’s in the house it isn’t that much of a hassle to sit down at one from time to time.

So the new adverts are out and you know what? I don’t like any of them!

Maybe the rumors of a change of actor should have been true, or maybe they have just run of steam, or it could even be that the humor has run out?

What do you reckon?

This is something that has been bouncing around in my mind for some time now. It reawakens every time a new iPod is released and I have to find a justification for getting the new one.

I have five: a 3G 10GG iPod, a 3G 20GB iPod, a 1G iPod Shuffle, a 2G iPod Shuffle and a 5G 60GB iPod with Video.

My wife has four: a 1G 4GB iPod Mini, a 1G iPod Shuffle, a 2G iPod Shuffle and a 1G 2GB iPod Nano.

A Story/Review/How-To – Scott

This story really starts with my journey this past year on an 11-week tour of the United States with an opera company from London. Since I knew I would be “stuck” on a bus most of the day, every day, for 11 weeks, I really wanted a way to be connected to the internet. My choice, at that time, was to go with a PCMCIA “Aircard” solution from Verizon Wireless. This worked fine, and in fact exceeded all my expectations, with the 17″ Powerbook I had at the time. After the tour, however, the $80 (US) per month that I was paying for this service just didn’t make economical sense; after all, I have very fast access at home. When I traded in my Powerbook for a Macbook Pro, the old Aircard was defunct, anyway (the Macbook Pro has an incompatible Expresscard-34 slot, instead of the PCMCIA).

Thanks to Wayne for pointing this out to me. He is a fellow Mac mini owner and has been following my attempts to get the Mac mini set up as the hub of my digital network.

This Macworld UK article is a particularly interesting read, and addresses a number of the issues that so far I have encountered. The main difference is that the article starts from scratch with the Mac mini, whilst I am trying to “back in” the Mac mini to my existing set up and equipment.

Hopefully you will all have noticed the new logo? If not this is a good time to take a look over to the right of the blog (as you look at it). See it? Like it? I love it!!

I want to thank Vincent Tavera (impactgraphics@satx.rr.com) one of the designers over at The Mac Nurse for an excellent job.

This is less of a review and more of a mini article, although it was inspired by the excellent NetNewsWire . Of course to really get the most out of NetNewsWire you need a NewsGator account. They offer a free “lite” version or a subscription version which can be either Gold £19.95 or Platinum £29.95. It is well worth checking these out.

I am still playing around with the video and camera. Am trying to do a lot more and build up to something creative! Can’t see it happening in a rush, but I did take what I thought were some pretty cool black and white pictures of the study today, and shot a movie of the study. This is really just an experiment and a very personal reminder of how things look as I do have a tendency to move things around, although that is going to be pretty hard with the way everything is wired in now!

Let’s face it- Even if you are using a trouble-free Mac, you will eventually have something go wrong. Data-destroying disk errors will occur, a hardware component might fail, or maybe the latest hurricane blows a tree into your house, destroying your lovely new iMac. Regardless of how it happens, something has gone wrong, and you’re now stuck without access to all those important things that were stored on your computer.

Fear not!!! You have a recent, and comprehensive backup. What, you don’t have one of these?? You’ve never heard of such?

A very quick apology. A number of comments seem to have got held up waiting on moderation and then inadvertently deleted. I REALLY appreciate people taking the time to comment so if your comment hasn’t shown up then it is probably a victim of my fledgling site administration skills. Sorry. If you want to make the comment again I will be more cautious next time.

Ok so this is all over DIGG at the moment, but it is really funny and clever!

When I bought the Mac Mini I knew that it didn’t support Dual Screen but that it was possible to connect two screens via a DVI splitter device, which would allow you to run two screens in mirror mode.

This would be ideal for me as I would like to have the Mac Mini connected to my 23″ Cinema HD Screen and to my TV via the DVI to Video Adapter.