I’m taking the red eye to London tomorrow via Heathrow. I’m very happy to be traveling with British Airways this time. They offer online checking service which allows you to pick your seat 24 hours before your flight. So I managed to nab a coveted over-the-wing/extra legroom/fire exit row seat. Yippee. My unbruised knees are already thanking me.

I am planning all sorts of fun things this trip, the most nerdy fun being my planned trip to the Regent St. Apple Store in London. It’s the biggest Apple store in the whole wide world and I’m gonna get a new iPaaaad as a belated birthday present from Tom and finally get my greedy Canadian hands on an iPhone. Just fondle it for a while. It’s will be difficult parting with it, but at least I will have shared an iMoment with one.

I’ll keep you up to date with my adventures whilst in England. You never know what Mostly Lisa might get up to…. Here are some videos from my last trip to put you in the British spirit!

Bet all you posh British folks are feeling well pleased with yourselves. Pleased as punch, aren’t you? Cuing up at the Regent Street Apple Store, moments away from smudging your fish and chip and egg and marmite crispy fingers all over a shiny new iPhone… Well I’m sooooooooo happy for you.

So is this Mounty. If he had an iPhone, perhaps he would have been able to save Mantook the beaver, who was injured in a tragic igloo cave-in.

I leave you with this sad self-portrait of me and my crappy Nokia z-they-don’t-even-make-this-model-anymore Phone. Think aboot that, Nikf and Graham and Nathan, and feel just a tad guilty for the iPhoneless Canadian girl.

Does it? And be honest, well actually just tell me what I wanna hear cuz I’m feeling so insecure today cuz I gained like 9GB. I know. Horrific.

Translation of my expression “Omg.lol.php.xml.OSX!”

After NOT *sob* receiving my copy of Leopard on Friday and having NO Apple store to buy a copy hot off it’s “World Premier”, I spend the enter weekend absolutely gutted. I tried to find pleasure in other things, the new Transformers DVD… Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups… the momentary sunlight on Saturday… and discovering a new Bjork song that is simply delicious (”Unison” from the album Vespertine)… but nothing could fill the gaping whole in my heart. So you can imagine my giddy delight when a special delivery arrived this afternoon.

The install was painless, though took it’s sweet time. Bittersweet time, as I sat and reflected on all the good times I shared with Tiger. After all this is good bye. *tear* You were a friend to me through the good and the bad. I won’t forget you Tiger.

And then shazzam shazzing the intro launched as I squealed with giddy delight. First thing I did was experiment with the new iChat uber features. Screen Sharing made me the most giddy, until the coding monkey I was screen sharing with thought it was funny to mention that he could destroy my HD in 15 seconds. haha wtf? Get outta my pooter!

FYI. When Screen Sharing the mic is live, as in the other person can hear you. Even creepier. Complete control of your computer and they can hear you giggling on the other end. Oooooooooooo spooky stuff.

Lastly, doesn’t Leopard make me look smarter? Maybe even smarter than the Specs? What do you think?

17 hours. weeeeeeee. giddy excitement. hizzah. hizzah. tears of joy!

Features I am most amped about:

Desktop: Spacey new screen. Stacked icons. A whole new way of thinking about and organizing the many many things that appear to clutter my screen. I am really praying for a miracle here.

Spaces: Looks rad. The ability to organize my desktop into different “spaces” is perfect. Because I deal with Photo editing stuff, video stuff, blog stuff, and now web design stuff (finally cracking down on the Redpilot site this weekend. Any assistance from any super booyah designers/coders will be greatly appreciated.)

Time Machine: It’s obvious what’s uber about time machine.

Marty McFly: Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a time machine out of a [Mac?]
Dr. Emmett Brown: The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a [computer], why not do it with some style?

But is any one else a leedle sketched by the possible consequences of messing with the time continuum on their Mac? Goodness knows what past horrific memories (like that one bad picture of you from like 2005) will return to haunt you in the future, present… uh i’m confused.

iChat: i love iChat. It’s ace. iChat allows me to see and talk and communicate to mostly mac people all over the world. Truly awesome. And it just gets better with Leopard and iChat Theatre.

Screen Sharing: The best feature ever! The ability to collaborate on media projects through iChat will be priceless.

Multiple logins: finally AIM, dot mac, Google talk and Jabber can live together. Good bye Adium. You and your stinkin’ msn crew can either upgrade or talk amongst yourselves.

Tabbed Chat: One window > Ten separate window. Simplicity is a beautiful thing.

Finder: Cover Flow & Quick Look look lovely. Viewing images, PDFs, keynotes, and movies from the finder. Me likey.

And for those of us with more than one Mac in their household, or like four, but who’s counting though, the new Sidebar finder features allow Instant connection to your other Macs through the finder. Spotlight and cover flow also work with all shared Macs.

Preview: I use preview a lot. More than i’d like to admit. I deal with loads of pictures and files and I sometimes just can’t wait the extra 3 seconds to fire up Photoshop or Acrobat. especially when dealing with PDFs. Now you can manipulate PDFs in Preview. hizzah.

But the thing I am most amped about is the “one click” Send Images to iPhoto and Batch Image Operations features.

I take a lot of screenshots. Mostly for my blog or to share on iChat. Of what, I’m not exactly sure, but I seem to really like doing the apple+shift+4 thang loads. And according to my messy desktop, I’ve racked up 43 Picture.pngs in the last week. Yikes.

After I screenshot or download picts onto my desktop, I usually want to resize the images to quickly so i can upload them onto my blog or flickr. And before i had to drag the images into Photoshop or iPhoto to do that, but with the new Batch Image Operation feature I can resize a group of photos in preview. Thank you. Thank you. Finally

Read more about all 300+ Features.

Or go drool over the guided tour.

What new Leopard features are you totally jazzed aboot? Let’s totally nerd out and talk about Leopard allll day long!

Twitter > Facebook (that’s like comparing apples and oranges. and?)

iChat > Adium (get that growling duck outta my dock. finally. peace.)

MB > MB Pro (what? yeah you heard it. More durable, runs cooler, and works better. so. ha!)

Firefox > Safari (now, i’m a bit hesitant on this one… i go back and forth between the two and i hate indecision. so i’d love to hear your opinion the great browser debate.)

Wired mouse > Wireless mouse (just crap crappy crapperson. can’t take the delay, the horrid reception, the carpal tunnel pain…. no matter what bluetooth monstrosity i try, my old Microsoft Mouse (the shame the horror i know) works the most ace. can i say that? the most ace? huh. whatever.

Canon > Nikon (i’ve actually pissed you off now, haven’t i? sorry, but there’s no turning back for me. i’m Canond up the ying yang. if i woulda known about the lack of a PC jack on the Canon flashes i might have gone with Nikon.. but probably not. just cuz i like the Canon logo better.)

Also:

Tea > Coffee

Money > Starbucks

Electronics > Jewelery

Coding > Poetry

Why? Because i said so. If you’d like to have a jaunty argument over any of the following, i’m feeling extra sassy today so bring it!

FYI. I expect loads of thought provoking comments for that bikini picture.

Tired:

Plugging in is lame. And for those of us who work in a home office/in their bed and cannot physically separate themselves from their MB for a period longer than < 3 minutes tops, constantly moving electrical outlets or running down battery power is draining to say the least. Speaking of batteries…

Expired:

Noooooooo! my ipaaaaaaaad!

Fire Hazard:

There’s no doubt aboot it. This maxed out power bar and the five others i have stashed in every corner of my apartment are a hazard of some kind. Which brings me to my topic du jour.

Wires suck. Wireless is uber. I love bluetoothing my keyboard, streaming my music to my sound system, backing up my photos to a wireless HD. Airport Extreme is l33t.

(wireless mice however have caused me some grief… but that’s another kettle of worms. what?)

Future of Wirelessness: Wi-Tri!:

Wi-fi meet Wi-Tri: wireless electricity!! Boo-yah!

WiTricity
n. Electricity that is transferred wirelessly between two electromagnetic coils resonating at the same frequency. It could one day power laptops and charge cell phones cordlessly, but engineers will need to increase the 7-foot range and 40 percent power efficiency.

For more, here’s Wiki.

You can DO it smart tech scientists of the world! i believe… i believe… mostly.

Ok. Back to work. So stressed out right now.

this is me at at Cambridge train station with no wi-fi during Stevie J’s keynote speech. coincidentally, at the exact same moment the new wikky-booyah iPods (plural) were launched, my pink mini’s battery died. it just gave up. iDunzo.

needless to say, i wannawannawanna new one. but which one? Touch? basically iPhone without phone, but wikkid wi-fi action. awesome. shuffle? boo. never liked those. Classic? 160GB. Holla!

Ok bed. Eggsauced.

NB. Worst moment of keynote: Shameless facebook plug. Boo!!!

After totally drooling over the sweet workspaces shown on tutorialblog.org/cool-workspaces and officesnapshots.com i thought i’d share my current iMessy workspace.