For my entire professional career I’ve supplied my own computer – a Mac PowerBook G4 – which I bought some time in 2003 as far as I can remember. It’s been a really good computer. I’ve babied it and has nary a scratch on it. Along the way, it has needed a new hard drive, and now the battery is toast, but that is easy to replace. Only now are its design and performance becoming handicaps in terms of the requirements of new software on the market. When I get to work and turn it on each morning, it takes a while to load up, likely starting to feel the strain of 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 3 years. But the crux has been that for some reason, since the release of Leopard, every subsequent OSX and security update has pretty much frozen and incapacitated it, to the point where I was finally compelled to buy an external HD just in case I lost everything.

I gently pushed and prodded my office to get me a new computer – one that would not be mine to fix should something fail, and yesterday, I got it. It’s a black MacBook, and it’s perfect. I love the size – at 13″ it’s smaller than my 15″ PowerBook, and it’s lighter too. The new screen is wonderful: bright, sharp and great contrast. I felt the same kind of revelation when I watched HD TV for the first time. I looked at my old screen and thought to myself, I can’t believe I stared at that for so long! The new computer arrived just in time, as I’m heading to Vancouver on Wednesday for a 5-day business trip to attend the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival. Playhouse, as it’s known, is one of North America’s preeminent wine festivals, with tens of thousands of people attending it. We’re sponsoring the festival, as we do every year, and it’s truly a lot of fun. Let me know if any of you are in Vancouver next weekend, as it would be fun to catch up over coffee.

Speaking of Vancouver, it was recently announced that electronica gurus Sasha and John Digweed are reviving some form of their legendary Delta Heavy tour in a new Spring Club Tour 2008 with 21 shows in 30 nights in the US and Canada in March and April (ps: I love how every promo says ‘coming to America’ and yet 10% of their stops are in Canada). I’ve often mentioned to friends that the Vancouver stop of the Delta Heavy tour in 2002 was the penultimate live music experience of my life, so I’m genuinely intrigued about the scheduled Vancouver date in April this year. It’s on a Wednesday, which is unhelpful, but we’ll see if it isn’t worth a day or two off… I was personally introduced to them by Tim Skinner in 2002, and it was, suffice it to say, an out of body experience. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Sasha 3 times, John Digweed 4 times, and as a tandem 3 times, including a 9-hour set at WMC 2003. On only one occasion did I leave disappointed. I suppose we’ll see what happens.