Since I’m still saving my money for the yet-to-be-released new line-up of MacBooks, I haven’t thrown away my cash at anything stupid lately. Hence, I haven’t had much to write about either.
Long story short, I was bored, launched my favourite source code editor1, and tweaked this website’s design for the 1,200th time.
Gone is the white-on-black negative contrast, which I thought had become a little heavy on the eyes for this time of the year. Enjoy this fresh new two-tone colour scheme—while you can. Like I said before:
Look out for my next redesign in a few months, as I continue to publish nothing else remotely worth reading.
A ton of my equipment is due for replacement, but unfortunately I haven’t won the lottery—yet. If I did somehow manage to get my hands on a bag full of cash to burn, here’s a list of the things that I would buy with it.
My old 24-inch iMac is turning five years old in a couple of months, and boy does it show—somewhere along the line it’s somehow gotten mind-boggingly slow. I’ve thought about replacing it with one of those fancy new 27-inch iMacs, but since money will no longer be an issue once everyone’s sent me their life savings, instead I’d spend it on my dream setup:
One of those rumoured thin 13-inch MacBook Pros, hopefully equipped with one of those also rumoured ‘HiDPI’ displays. Both powerful and portable—this one is high on my list.
Having said that, I still very much prefer to do any design and development-related work on a kick-ass big screen. An external 27-inch Thunderbolt Display would let me have the best of both worlds, for a small one-time fee of $999.
My iPad 2 is one of my favourite toys. Unfortunately, having played with the new iPad, the display on mine suddenly seems washed out and… well, shitty. As the cheapest item on my list, this one’s a no-brainer.
Sure, my current Nikon D5000 is working just fine, and a great camera would not somehow turn me into a good photographer overnight, but man does the new D800 look sweet. And since I’d be throwing with money anyway, why not spend an additional, modest $3,000 on a cool new camera.
If you would like to see me purchase any of the above, please do not hesitate to PayPal me $9,000 or more. You know the name of Google’s free e-mail service, right? Well, my username’s pascaln on there as well—go figure out where to send the money to.
Now that the Supreme Chancellor has revealed himself to be a Sith Lord, it is time to look for alternatives to the products from the Google Empire1.
Google Search
DuckDuckGo reminds me of the old Google that I once fell in love with, including a simple interface and a heavy emphasis on doing one thing really well: providing the best damn search results. What really makes DuckDuckGo stand out from the rest is their stance on privacy—be sure to check out their “illustrated search privacyguides”.
Google Calendar
Previously I relied on Google Calendar to keep my calendars synchronised across different devices. This has since been replaced by iCloud, which basically does the same thing with the added benefit of not being a total pain in the ass to set up.
Google Docs
I like Apple’s iWork suite. Most people in the world seem to rely on Microsoft Office. Come to think of it, who the fuck uses Google Docs anyway?
Google Analytics
Clicky provides a free package that tops Google Analytics in many ways, including live statistics—instead of that dreadful 24-hour delay. If you’re in the market to spend a little money on web traffic analytics, I’ve heard good things about Gauges. For a self-hosted solution you could take a peek at Mint, but it seems to be somewhat abandoned.
Android
I’m an Apple guy, so you can guess what kind of phone I have. Having said that, Windows Phone 7 looks very impressive, and it (probably) won’t send your every screen tap to Microsoft’s advertising partners.
Gmail
Unfortunately, I haven’t found a proper alternative to Google’s e-mail service yet. I’d switch my primary e-mail account to iCloud in a heartbeat, if only it weren’t for this very annoying limitation. Suggestions are most welcome.
Google+
Facebook still sucks, but at least it’s not a total geek ghost town.
As you may have figured out by now, I like to spend my hard-earned cash on luxury consumer products. One of the downsides to my uncontrollable consumerism, besides making it slightly more difficult to pay the rent, is the habit of dragging around a stupidly large wallet—carrying a thousand receipts, bullshit member cards and whatnot.
My latest purchase not only looks great, but is actually aimed at addressing the excessively large wallet issue. The Slimmy wallet by Koyono forces you to cut down on the amount of crap you’re carrying in your wallet, simply by making it very slim.
Pictured above is the wwSlimmy SE I picked up: a red-lined special edition of the slightly larger world-wide version of the Slimmy—specially suited to fit oversized euro bills.
Being forced to think about what I’m stuffing into my wallet, I’ve managed to bring the back the amount of cards I’m carrying with me to a total of four—alongside only a handful of cash. Ironically enough, it actually feels quite liberating, and I haven’t looked back to my old brick of a wallet.
The only downside is that the Slimmy offers no compartment to store coins in, so when in Europe, be prepared to tip often and plentiful—but looking fashionable has always been an expensive hobby.
