The “boss” has begrudgingly approved a new laptop (after some not so general prodding on my behalf) so I ordered a new Macbook Pro today – A 17″ anti-Glare screen, Core i7 2.66 Ghz with 8 Gig of RAM and a 256 Gig Solid State Hard drive. It should arrive in a few days time; which is perfect timing for both my trip to Iceland and a couple of quick pre-Iceland weekend excursions in Victoria – one to Bright, Mount Buffalo and Falls Creek with the family and the other to Mungo and the Walls of China in the far north of Victoria. Both trips I am very much looking forward to.

My current MacBook Pro is about two years old now and has not missed a single beat from day of purchase (typical Apple product in my experience). The new laptop should be significantly faster for working with 1DS MKIII RAW files in Lightroom in 64 bit mode with the extra 4 gig of RAM. More importantly however, battery life is supposed to be significantly improved over my current machine; which is great for working in the field when camping without power. Although I have not had a laptop hard drive ever crash and die on me (I have had plenty of desktop drives die) I am looking forward to the added stability and peace of mind the solid state drive brings to the table.

For the life of me I could not find my favourite small coffee thermos the other day – in frustration I gave in today and ordered one of these Canon Travel Thermos from Canon Mugs. These are apparently exact copies of the promotional thermos that Canon gave away at the Winter Olympics earlier this year. From what I can tell from the limited reports online these are quite good quality and are stainless steel lined. I normally get a little nervous ordering online from China (you really never know if anything is going arrive), but in this case its not a lot of money and you can pay via PayPal which is generally quite secure. I will report back when it arrives.