7 Quick Takes: 7th January 2011

1. Last month I upgraded my rather battered MacBook with extra RAM and updated software. Just before Christmas I finally replaced the power cable that was held together with insulating tape. Just after Christmas I spilled coffee over it. Only a little coffee, and most of it missed the computer, but even after extended drying time in the airing cupboard I still couldn't get it to switch on. But ... ta da! ... we checked with the insurance company and our accidental damage cover included liquid spills. They sent a courier to collect the laptop, examined it, issued a death certificate, and a brand new replacement will be arriving on Monday.

2. Meanwhile I have been putting the iPad through its paces as a laptop replacement. When I bought the power cable for the (ex) MacBook I bit the bullet and bought a bluetooth keyboard, fortuitously as it turned out. With the keyboard, I am managing to do almost everything I did on the laptop. Some things are little more clunky and slower, but overall it is working pretty well, at least in the short term.

3. I have now got into reading books on the iPad. I much prefer the Kindle app to Apple's iBooks, both for ease of use and for availability of books. The big plus to iPad reading for me is that it makes it easy to read and knit, without having to try to persuade a book balanced on my knee to stay open at the right page.

4. One thing that I can't do on the iPad is update my blog layout. It really is time to move on from last summer's header, and I want to tweak my sidebar. A nice job lined up for the new laptop.

5. ... But not its main job, which is going to be helping me to study. My archive course starts next week with a three day study school (which means four days away for me due to the travel time to Scotland), then it is time to get stuck into the first module. As it is an online distance learning course, having a reliable computer that I can take with me to whatever quiet space I can find (which may sometimes have to be the library) is a must.

6. This week's discovery while working at the record office was a deed in which one of the parties was a doctor described as a "surgeon and man midwife". I can't remember the exact date, but it was either late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. I imagined that midwives were always women and that male obstetricians didn't come along until much later.

7. Joke of the week, from a friend on Facebook (with apologies to any Aussie readers): What do you call a first class Australian cricketer? Retired.

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