S*T*U*F*F* Reloaded

We had a manic week of friends last week - fantastic! Some pals came over from Belgium (photo of beers attached), then the mighty Martyn James Brooks came to stay with us during a week-long shoot for Time Out.

Friday night was the big one… Nico (Nicolas Godin) from Air told me one night during the tour last year that he really wanted to eat haggis again. I don’t know why, so don’t ask. I invited him to come to our annual Burns Night Supper, but as it was September and people in general have a tendency to just agree to these things with no intention of ever coming, I took his affirmation that he would be there with a modicum of disbelief.

Suffice it to say that he made the trek from Paris, bearing Dominique Laurent Gevery-Chambertin 2001 and a big smile. Some other great friends came down from Edinburgh and St. John’s Wood; and the stage was set for our big evening. Just fabulous food (haggis from William Rose, neeps and tatties, Balvenie scotch and a tribute to our French contingent in the form of fine Burgundies).

Trick of the night had to go to Ian Hartley, who crowned the evening by announcing that he had purchased me a square foot of land in Glencairn, thus legally entitling me to be known as Laird Stephen Jones, a title which I fully intend to avail of and have put in my chequebook.

Once everyone left, I decided to upgrade my computers to Leopard, the latest Mac operating system. In such an operation, one must always fear the worst (though my last upgrade to Tiger was perfect) so I took a full backup, hoping that a royal beard would not be grown in the aftermath of clicking that one word “Install”.

The upgrade was seamless beyond belief. Nothing had changed, nothing was lost, it was just, well, all shiny and stuff. In fact I really dislike the look of Leopard, and can’t wait until they give us the option to lose some of the Vista-like appearance. All this semi-transparent eye candy is just ugly, pointless, and makes the screen look cluttered and busy. I went so far as to replace the dock icons with a set I designed myself that more closely resemble the old Tiger set.

Having said that, it performs rather amazingly well. All my applications were faster, the new Finder is lovely, and I quite like the little “web clips” feature where you can save little bits of web pages (almost like screenshots) in your dashboard so you don’t always have to go to a website, and they are live… for example, I have the next 8 trains leaving from Sydenham to London Bridge… so don’t have to even bother opening Safari. Sweet. Anyway, I’m getting a bit geeky so I’d better get back to my tea.