S*T*U*F*F* Reloaded

After an initial burst of frantic anger at losing my MacBook Pro on Friday night, I managed to get all the data off it on Saturday thanks to my wonderful neighbour letting me use his computers pretty much all day. I toast the existence of SuperDuper! - an amazing backup app that just works so well. I say to ye again, back up thy work for the digital gods have lousy timing, and will strike thee down at the precise moment you finish your masterpiece.

Then began the settling into life without the computer, and a few days later, I’ve become quite accustomed to the bliss that goes with it. I’ve rediscovered the tactile loveliness of pen and paper (although Luka, armed with stickers of cats and dogs, can make quite a mess of an information architecture diagram), and played a lot of acoustic guitar. I have managed to avoid that syndrome of flipping the machine open in quiet moments that would otherwise just be quiet moments. How many times have you just checked your email for the sake of doing so and ended up doing something as a result? You know - a client needs something done, you think “It’ll just take a sec” but for some reason that brings up something else… before you know where you are you’re deep in a spiral of adminstrative misery. We must take steps to avoid this situation wherever possible… the data Sabbath must be revived - a device-free day once a week. I used to do it… can’t remember why I stopped.

To be fair to Apple, there was very little messing about. One phone call, one appointment at the Apple Store. A five minute consultation at the Genius Bar… immediate diagnosis of a logic board failure. The machine will be fixed and back with me in a couple of days. I’ve ordered a MacBook anyway, just to have some backup in future.

But half of me wants things to stay this way - I must try and remember that it feels cool to work with pen and paper, that analogue design is a nice way to work. I’ll see how I feel when the UPS van pulls up tomorrow with the MacBook and I start the manic day of installing all my software into it.