As we head out the door of 2007 it is as good a time as any to do two things; to take a look at the top 5 purchases that I have made in 2007, and to thank you for all your support, encouragement and enjoyment throughout the year.

Not a big fan of Tom Cruise, although sort of liked Jerry McGuire for a bit, but have to say that as escapist action movies the MI series have been pretty good, and Mission Impossible III is a solid enough movie to fill a few hours. Totally implausible of course – but I did kind of like the raised keyboards, very cool!!!!

A perfect film for the end of Boxing day as it requires no brain power at all and a large amount of wine! The Devil Wears Prada is actually not bad at all – well acted, believable as it is based on the fashion industry (in case you didn’t pick that up from the title) and a good enough way to kill an hour and a half at the end of the Christmas excess.

Baseline at $20 is an application that I think I should have more of a need for than I actually do!

Where has all your disk space gone?

That is what they ask, and how they promote Baseline. The fact is mine hasn’t really gone anywhere – I know where pretty much all of the 3.55TB of disc space is attached to the Mac Pro. I certainly don’t have an issue with running out of space. Now I can accept that I have more than most and some (well many) would argue more than I actually need, but I can’t see that in this day and age of ultra cheap discs and the advent of Time Machine that most people need to optimise every last MB of space?

Following on from the Camera Bag post I have gone with the 7 Million Dollar Home from Crumpler.

Two key factors were the design, it doesn’t look overtly like a Camera Bag and I like the messenger style. I also like the olive colour, and the fact that it is designed to take a lot more equipment than I ‘currently’ have.

Will let you know how it goes when it arrives.

Arlington Park is a clever idea for a book – tell the story of a number of peoples lives on one particular day as they go about their lives in the same suburb, and then bring it all together at a dinner party. Unfortunatley it doesn’t really work. It was about page 220 that I actually found a character of any interest!!!

Have only watched a couple of movies so far this Christmas, Syriana and The Holiday.

I enjoyed Syriana a lot, but found it too hard to follow to say it was a great film. Well acted, good story from what I could understand but I struggle with the ‘deep meaningful’ plots. The Holiday was a good Christmas Day film and that is about all I can say about it – enjoyed it because of the time of year and state I was in but wouldn’t bother with it normally. Main reason? I really don’t like Jude Law at all!!!!

I have a few things to finish off and then I am going off line until after Christmas. I have spent the morning listening repeatedy to The Killers Don’t Shoot Me Santa song, so that has got me thinking about my Top 5 Christmas songs.

Santa Clause is Coming to Town – The Boss. Check out a vintage video of Bruce perfoming this song better than anyone else ever has here

Don’t Shoot Me Santa – The Killers, totally addictive and another great video

Iris 1.0 from MildMannerd Industies costs $30 and as they say on their site:

Iris lets you do more cool stuff with your iSight.

It has a number of features, most of them fun to be honest, but the motion detector is pretty cool and has certain uses:

• Take Snapshots
• Make Movies
• Record TimeLapse Movies
• Detect unwelcome visitors, with Motion Detection, and Email Alerting
• Broadcast your video over the web, with Iris’s built in WebCam

Was wondering what everyone had their eye on for Christmas? What you bought yourself, what you hoping Santa brings you? Is slightly weird but I don’t actuially have anything technical lined up this year. Tripod would have been if it was going to get here on time. Guess that is the ‘problem’ of buyingso much stuff throughout the year!!!

The Diva 21. (£59) don’t live up to their name! What do I mean by that? Well when I hear the word “Diva” in asscociation to the music world I think of over rated, over opinionated, over paid, and not worth worrying with. Not one of those phrases applies to the excellent, understated, modest and very reasonably priced Diva 2.1.

Stylish, contemporary looking and ultra-compact speakers, they’re simply perfect for any lifestyle.

Now if ever a quote was ever full of subjective statements that is it. So, as with the HarmonyAudio review let’s take a look at their statements:

The HarmonyAudio (£59) from Miglia is a great product that looks good alongside your Mac, works a treat, and is really simple to set up. Oh yes, it does a great job as well!

HarmonyAudio combines high quality audio conversion with incredible ease of use

Now an obvious drawback of reviewing an audio product is that it isn’t really feasible to demonstrate the quality of the sound, so we are going to have to take their word on that. For my part I can say that it sounded great to me, but again everyones ear is different. Miglia claim that is provides high quality audio encoding: