The Geeky Brit

There is a new movie coming out all about the life and times of the British great anti-slavery hero William Wilberforce. The movie “Amazing Grace” is out in some theatres now, and I want to see it soon, however such films do not get distributed to as many theatres as a big blockbuster.

The movie revolves around Wilberforce’s efforts to ban the slave trade, and slavery in general, which Britain had been a major participant in. He eventually succeeded in his efforts. This guy is up there with Abraham Lincoln in my opinion.

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So for those of you that do not know I recently switched from PC to Mac.

3 Years ago I would have laughed if anyone would have told me I would be doing this. Yeh, my first *real* programming experience was on Mac (albeit with Java as the language of choice), and I have used Mac’s in my past, but moving from Windows to Mac. Pah!

Oh my word, am I glad I did. In the words of John Newton “I was blind but now I see”: The whole computer experience is not meant to be this good is it? Where are the crashes, the hangs and those hilariously cryptic messages (yes many of them are non-understandable by geeks too)…

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I know some people love watching the Academy awards, but I find them tedious at best. My lovely wife, of course, loves watching them, and so once a year I bid fairwell to conversation with her for several hours. I do admit to getting interested in the “big” winners and go into the family room to see those, but honestly who cares about the “Award for best Sandwich maker in a low budget movie”?

Please don’t get me wrong I like to see who is recognized (and this year some fellow Brits could do very well), but I get to do this on monday morning by looking at a newspaper or other news source….

…apparantly. The BBC are reporting that the British firm William Hill have already paid out for wagers on Dame Helen Mirren winning the best actress oscar this weekend. A little premature perhaps? Maybe not, she was absolutely fantastic in “The Queen”. As the bookie says “Should the unimaginable occur and Dame Helen fails to win the Oscar, then she will have been robbed and so will we.”

Ahhh British optimism.