I just realised I’ve been a Mac user since I could afford a lowly Performa 450 back in April 1995, although it might have been May. To celebrate this anniversary, I thought I’d reflect on some of my favourite Mac hardware. These days I have an iMac G4 and a Aluminium PowerBook 15″, but they’re not (speaks quietly) my favourite Macs.

My favourite Mac of all time was not one I owned but one I took care of for a while – a Macintosh SE, also 10 years ago. Sure, it wasn’t the speediest Mac on the planet and probably cost a packet when it was first released but it was just… so cute. You liked it, hell you loved it.

It may have had its faults but had personality and personified what was so cool about Mac at the time. Floppy disk drives were smooth and quiet compared to the crunching of PCs and you ejected them with the software. The black and white screen made System 6 somehow seem so pure, so original and was surprisingly easy on the eye. Finally, its tiny all-in-one compactness made most PCs look like huge, useless metal suitcases filled with hot air – which they were – yet felt so tough you could drop it from tall buildings and the only thing that would crack was the concrete. In fact, I think people have tested this theory with some success.

What is the favourite Mac you’ve ever owed, or if you haven’t owned many, what is the Mac you most want to own?

BTW, any Cube or Twentieth Anniversary Mac owners out there? I always lusted after the former and have always wanted to see the latter in “the flesh”. Maybe one day!

Supermarkets, don’t you just love ‘em! It’s so convenient the way you can get everything you want in one place without having to hold a civil conversation with another human being. Much better than when you had butchers, bakers and grocers all cheerily monopolising the local shopping area. These days, there is very little that cannot be obtained from the likes of Tesco, apart from drugs and sex (I know, I’ve asked) but surely it’s only a matter of time.

Just so we are clear: I love supermarkets so much I race around them excitedly, in an effort to get the hell back out again – and I don’t seem to be alone.

With that in mind, Reinvented Blog proudly presents the Supermarket Scream “Top Ten”. Not that there needs to be ten; I can only make it to three without bursting an artery:

• The 10 Items or Less Aisle
  Being sad and single I often find myself with little more than a loaf of bread, a carton of milk and a pack of the latest rip-off razors from Gillette, so naturally I queue here. Trouble is:
1. This line seems to move slower than all the others. Not sure why. I suspect it’s either because they use the least efficient person in the store to work it (usually the 17-year old whose zits outnumber his IQ) or they stretch the work to fill the time available.
2. You can’t help but find yourself counting people’s items, which makes you look suspicious and nosey. ASDA have gone so far as to rename this checkout “About 10 Items” but that doesn’t help. You just wonder whether someone who has, say, 13 items is guilty of a gross violation or just a minor offence.
• The “Ooh! Do I need my purse?!” Situation
  This one drives me mental. You’ve spent the last 5 minutes counting and recounting their purchases, and when it’s all totalled-up the person in front is not the least prepared. I don’t like to stereotype but usually these are “women of a certain age” who obviously have nothing better to do. So they fumble around in their handbags to retrieve their purse, then fumble around in their purse to retrieve their card, then fumble around again for their glasses so they can enter their pin, get that wrong, and <deep breaths!> by the time they’ve finished you’re nothing but a skeleton with shattered teeth holding a pack of overpriced razors and a loaf of bread.
• Retired Roadblockers
  These are probably the same people who fumble in their handbags. Glenda bumps into Irene and – oblivious to the rest of the world – decide to start a conversation. Fine, but do they have to stop dead in their tracks and leave shopping trolleys strewn across the aisle so people end up squeezing past on either side while they recount their last package holiday to Benidorm? I think not.

So, what is it about supermarkets or the people in them that just makes you want to scream?

To follow on from Claire’s iPod Shuffle review (which happens to be the most popular post on this blog, harumph!) what music, if any, have you rediscovered thanks to an iPod and / or the iTunes Music Store?

For me, it would be a toss-up between The Cranberries’ first two albums and Blur’s earlier stuff. I originally had all these on cassette (on what?!) to listen to in the car but they got lost somewhere. I didn’t buy them again because they had Big Life Events attached to them, but years later that’s cool by me. Actually, I was always cool with Blur (apart from their “Country House” moment) so Blur wins that one.

I’m glad I got The Cranberries just to show me that life is so much sweeter than it was back then – and the music is pretty cool too. All’s well that ends well!

What annoys you most about web sites you find yourself visiting? I’m thinking of the sort of stuff that could have you plucking out your own fingernails in despair, but maybe it’s more a drip-drip-drip torture effect.

For me it’s unnecessary sounds you can’t switch off. You’re listening to iTunes through the stereo while surfing the web when suddenly and mysteriously you are assaulted by this wall of noise at max volume, or awful sound effects, and you can’t make it stop. You don’t want to mute your Mac because that would silence the Scissor Sisters and usually it’s so badly implemented you find it stops and starts all over again if you go to another page or hit the back button. I just close the window and never return.

I’m not really talking about, say, music sites here (e.g. a band’s fan page) – you’d expect sound then and it would have some relevance. Oh no, there’s no point to this stuff at all!

UPDATE: I’ve disabled comments on this post because it just keeps on getting spammed.

While on our way to pick up pizza the other day, my friend Ade came up with a great idea for this blog, the Top Ten.

The idea is to have a good old fashioned rant about those little things that annoy us every day. It doesn’t have to be ten things, it could be two or five, but ten sounds good.

So to get it all started, here are my Top Five motoring moans.

1. Tailgating
   I saw a good sticker about this once – “Unless you’re a haemorrhoid, stay off my ass!”
2. Not Indicating
   … particularly on roundabouts. The whole point of roundabouts is to keep the traffic flowing, but it doesn’t work if you don’t know where people are going! That’s when things start to get nasty.
3. Turning Into Junctions Waaaaaaaaay Too Slowly
   You’re behind someone, and they’re doing a reasonable speed, then they decide to turn left (or right, in driving-on-the-right situations) and just as they start to go around the corner they sloooow right down, and you’re trying to keep moving without crashing into them, but you end up coming to a stop because going around this corner seems too difficult for them.
4. Bad Parking in Car Parks
   There’s usually plenty of room for one car, but every so often you see someone who needs 1.15 of a parking space for their titchy Fiat Punto. And you’re left buzzing around the car park, looking for somewhere to go. Grrrr.
5. Middle Lane Roadhogs
   This ridiculous practice (again, only possible in a country where you can’t undertake) turns our already crowded 3-lane motorways into 2 lanes making anyone who doesn’t want to do 62mph move into the slipstream of the outside lane doing 85. Pull over people, we won’t think any less of you for it!!!

What are your main motoring gripes?