So, yesterday, I took the plunge and migrated.

I’d bought and been using a mac mini for a while, but hadn’t actually committed to making it my main writing computer, mainly because it involved transferring a lot of stuff I wasn’t 100% sure I could transfer.
But my venerable, four-year-old Windows XP laptop being on its last legs, something had to be done (the aforementioned computer has a broken keyboard, a DVD player that can’t read DVDs anymore, and was taking about 30 minutes to start, from the moment I turned it on to the moment I could launch Word or Firefox).
I do have another Windows laptop (the eeepc 1000H I bought a year ago), but the screen is way too small to do some serious editing on a long-term basis.

Hence the switching over to the mac, which took me most of Sunday and Monday evening.

For the curious, here’s the stuff I installed/transferred:
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Eric, the main character of Ken Loach’s “Looking for Eric”, is in a rut: he’s on his own for raising his two stepsons, a truant and a delinquent; he lost the love of his live twenty years ago; and, just recovered from a serious car accident, is unable to muster enough dynamism to properly do his job. His life is increasingly slipping away from him–until one night, his idol Eric Cantona appears to him and tries to get him to change…

OK, when I first saw the trailer for this, the idea seemed pretty ridiculous. I mean, how can you even think Cantona would make a decent guardian angel? Plus, the only other Ken Loach movie I saw in its entirety was Land and Freedom, set during the Spanish civil war: I was forced to sit through several viewings of it in Spanish class and was not very much amused or enthralled.

However, this one works. Loach’s always been very good at depicting the lives of working-class men, and here he paints a quiet, tender picture of the fraternity of postmen (and football fans in their spare time). It could have been a very grim movie, since it deals with lots of violence and harsh facts of life–but instead, it’s a gently absurdist fable about taking charge of one’s life. Loach doesn’t shy away from the grimness of Eric’s life, but the darkness acts as counterpart to plenty of laugh-out loud moments (the scenes between Cantona and Steve Evets, who plays Eric, are brilliant tongue-in-cheek fun). The finale was made of awesome Monty Python silliness.

I actually walked out of this one smiling, and that is no mean feat.

Last few days to vote for the Hugos: deadline is July 3rd, 23:59 Eastern Daylight Time. (and, should you be still undecided as to which Campbell Award candidate you’re voting for, there’s still time to read the material in my short fiction sampler ).

I’m also told that the anthology Fantastical Visions IV, which contains my sort-of-Greek novelette “Healing Hands” and fellow Codexian David Walton’s “Dragonfly Savior”, is available for pre-order. Everything’s gorgeously illustrated by Stephanie Pui-Muin Law.

In other non-shameless self-promotional news, it’s summer in Paris and the weather is awesomely nice. I’m planning the rest of my holidays in addition to Wolrdcon (Brittany, here I come), and wondering where the blazes I put my cotton skirts, sandals and other suitable attire.

800 new words on my current WIP–leaving me stuck at the big scene with the blood

Onwards…