Postcard from the West Country

See Cornwall? No, actually you can't - not on the weather map, anyway, as it's covered by cloud. It doesn't matter what time of year I come here, it's always clouds and rain interrupted by sunny spells. Not that I'm complaining. Or maybe I am.

It has been a good and bad week or two so far - mostly good. Good because I'm on my hols. Bad(ish) because my other half wrote an article for the Independent last week that was harldy, er, Apple-friendly. That wasn't the bad part. That bad part was that I couldn't resist the urge to flick through some Mac websites I frequent a couple of days afterwards; I wish I hadn't. To see the name of the mother of your children abused in such puerile ways is hideous. It didn't help that the Independent subs butchered her article so that it started with the words, "When I switch on my MacBook, the first thing I see is the happy Mac icon..." (or some such). She didn't write that, they did. As soon as we picked it up, I said, "You are going to be crucified for that. Every Mac user out there is going to read that first line and say, 'No, it isn't.'" And unsurprisingly, such was the case. Many assumed that the writer of the article didn't use a Mac, was an Apple-bashing liar, and so on. But the article made some very valid points about recent Apple QCA issues and their tendency to treat the press with disdain. She tried hard to give Apple the opportunity to respond to everything in the article, but they weren't interested in getting anyone to speak to her personally, other than to send her previously-published press-releases. So it goes, as old Kurt Vonnegut would say. Ho-hum.

Anyway, that's the defence of my better half done; not that she particularly cares - hell, she got paid decently for the article. It's just that I happen to care when I see her name slandered on websites that I, as rather keen Apple user (and actually, she is a Mac-fan herself, she just happens not to worship at the temple), frequent.

As for Scrivener: it really is going well. I just finished writing the Spotlight importer today. It was a pain, but it only took a day to do, so I'm not complaining. Services support is done and dusted, so is the search function, find and replace, and several features that I said would never make it into 1.0. Another month or two, and there should be a beta release... I'm looking forward to it. It's been over two-thirds of a year since the last beta was released, and I seriously think that this version is a downright good program, and holds its own against some very stiff competition.

Anyway, back to scouring the Cocoa forums for a tidbit I need.