It seems my MacBook Pro screen is going to have to be repaired again. This morning as I was checking my email I got up to get a cup of coffee, and when I headed back the backlight in my laptop monitor had gone. I’m not sure if it’s a software problem or the backlight is blown, but I’m probably going to be spending a significant chunk of next week trying to fix it - which isn’t time I can really afford. I really need my laptop at the moment as it’s got all my research notes on it. I have backups of my thesis draft all over the place but I’ve been entering my notes last week into VoodooPad, and it’d be a real pain to have to re-enter them. Not to mention it’s annoying not having a mobile computer.

For now, I headed into the local Apple store to check the problem and will be back on Monday when their resident tech expert is in. I’ve bought myself a Mac keyboard so I can use my laptop like a desktop over the weekend. Although the Apple keyboards are a bit overpriced by my tastes it’s handy to have a spare Mac keyboard around, particularly if I get myself an iMac sometime soon.

In another act of negative karma, I found a parcel from Amazon as I was heading out to the car to go to the Apple store. Due to my general cluelessness I managed to drive off with the parcel on the roof of my car. It managed to stay there for about a kilometre or two before falling off; thankfully I heard it drop and saw it in the rear vision mirror. No harm ultimately done except for my pride.

The books themselves were for cartooning, in particular on writing. One of them is a specific writing book: Make Your Words Work by Gary Provost. I realised I didn’t have many general writing books, which is a hole in my library when I’m writing up a thesis and occasionally other things. The other is a specific cartooning book: The Everything Cartooning Book by Brad J. Guigar, which I had recommended to me as a good general purpose book for comic strip creation (as opposed to comic books or manga).

I’m hoping that the problem with my laptop can be fixed swiftly so I can keep using my MacBook Pro. I’ve built up a nice collection of software over the last few months that I need a Mac for, and it’s going to be a real pain for nearly everything I do not to have it.