Jason: I don’t ah, mean anything by this, but is there any particular reason why it’s black?
Roscoe: Sure, I wanted it to be perfect.

There is a scent on the wind, a crisp sweetness that can only be new Apples. Refreshed MacBook Pros most likely but with Apple you never quite know. I used to find their secrecy frustrating but lately I find it refreshing. In these days of massive and constant information leakage its nice to have a respite and ponder the possibilities of what will be unveiled.

What would be the perfect MacBook? It’s personal and slightly different for everyone. That is one of the beauties of the age we live in. More choice, customization and options than any of our ancestors. It’s a powerfully overwhelming aphrodisiac of possibilities and one I think is easy to take for granted.

That being said, I think my perfect MacBook would have the following deviations from the current model.

• Black (because I want it to be perfect like Roscoe’s robot in Ice Pirates)
• 2 Hard Drives (1 SSD, 1 regular)
• No Internal Optical Drive
• HDMI Port

Will the refresh have any of the above… hmm, I hear there might be a hybrid drive that keeps the OS in solid-state storage, that certainly sounds juicy. Other items, doubtful. Still, it’s nice to imagine perfection even if isn’t easy to obtain.

If you imagine yourself wining the lottery you can further imagine affording a juicy dip into the wells of Colorware but alas, that is two fantasies glancing at each other across the bar of the mind.

It is far better to flirt with most dreams so you may marshal your abilities to bring life to the few that can become more than mere fantasy.

I’ve been making some big changes in my personal life so I felt my website needed to reflect that. Something new, clean and more optimized. It’s no Muramasa but it’s definitely a stepping stone towards something even more fantastical. Plans within plans my friend.

I think it came out pretty nice. Works perfect in nice browsers like Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Opera and even works well in IE 6, 7 and 8. The nicer browsers will have subtle shadows, rounded corners, bit cleaner lines between items but really that could be considered progressive enhancement. The site is perfectly readable in old busted browsers too. Good job if I do say so myself.

I learned a lot on this project, more so than I had imagined but then again… good projects always prepare you for the next challenge. I’m proud to have stuck with it over the course of many days it took.

xoxo

-Daniel

I’ve had a Remington Shortcut for quite some time now but lately its been running out of juice after only a few minutes. The blades are in great shape so I thought maybe I could just replace the batteries. In the worst case I’d have fun taking it apart and in the best case I’d have a working shaver again.

One of the original batteries looked a bit corroded around a connector and in hindsight I think this was the main problem. I ended up replacing the generic cells with my favorite Eneloops anyway. Rechargeable and hardly any discharge even over a year of storage. Lovely lovely batteries.

I haven’t soldered in years (and it shows) but I had a lot of fun fixing the shaver. It works great now too. Actually, better. The recharging indicator is once again working and my small tweak to disable the edge clipper mechanism means less resistance on the motor.

Taking apart things to learn how they work is great fun. Sometimes you can even put them back together again.