Santa Monica

Back from a day of being a tourist in Santa Monica. Very conveniently, several buses run from UCLA to Santa Monica and its environs. The Big Blue Bus issues a Little Blue Card which you can top up with cash every now and again, and saves you fumbling about for quarters. Naturally, I purchased one yesterday so I would be able to use it this weekend. Without my Supreme Gatherer Of Dross (he coined it himself, nowt to do with me) to supply me with 20p coins, I'd be lost for bus fares. It's not like the fancy new Oyster card, nor LRT's (Lothian Regional Transport) new magnetic card, but it saved me from looking like an idiot who can't tell the difference between a quarter and 5 cents.

My trip was timed perfectly to hit the end of the Saturday market on Arizona (between 2nd and 3rd Street), where again I had to be very careful not to buy too many plums! I love the names of the varieties on offer. Today's purchases include Black Amber plums, Santa Rosa plums, and Spring Brite nectarines. The stall also had White Lady peaches, but I've set the absolute limit on soft fruit purchases at 3 varieties max, with 2 of each, exception for smaller plums to be 3 or 4. Given the opportunity, I'd gorge myself on so much soft fruit that I'd be sick!

The main fun of the day over, the cool interiors of the shops on Third Street Promenade beckoned me in... "Get out of the sun before you develop melanoma", they whispered. Fortunately for my finances, I had the good sense to come out with only a small amount of cash, and no recourse to the credit cards. But being a geek first, and a girl second, my first stop was the Apple shop. Not the fruit. I used to spend many a lunch hour at Edinburgh's Scotsys shop (near George Sq) drooling over the sleek, stylish Powerbooks. When my laptop last gave out, I kicked Windows XP off the system (SP2 caused the damn crash in the first place) and replaced it with good old Linux. Unfortunately, running Linux prevents me from updating my iPod and doing fun things like watching movie trailers with Quicktime. The obvious solution to this is for Apple to release some source code to help the Linux community adapt drivers and software. But since that's as likely to happen as me climbing Mount Everest, I've been keeping my eye out for a decent Apple offer. And what perfect timing I have.

Apple is running a special offer for students and staff of schools through their Education store, giving rebates on the price of a mini iPod when you buy a computer and a mini. It's not quite as good as last year's UK schools offer (that was for a 20GB 4th gen), but that's fine because Apple products are cheaper here than in the UK anyway. Now, I've been thinking about this for a long time, and decided months ago that I'd get one here. But now Apple has gone and announced that they're switching to Intel chips. Which means the 4Gs will probably be shelved, and software and hardware support will probably wither away within a year or so. And I don't want to add to my already massive pile of obsolete equipment. Looks like my bare bones Linux machine and I are going to remain partners for a bit longer.

Right. [Geek Off] Shop curiosity satisfied, I went to get sunstroke on the beach. I've uploaded some photos. Have a gander...

:D

Listening to Savage Garden's Santa Monica while typing this post.