Making my ibook sing for its supper

Like a lot of guys I often buy stuff with the excuse that,

"it will come in handy."

or even worse,

"I need it for work."

So you end up with a lot of expensive stuff you use only a couple of times but which you can't bring yourself to admit was bought because you wanted a cool, new toy. I was starting to think that this was also true about the ibook I got at Christmas then I thought about what I had done with it over the week;

1 I used it to download loads of stuff while at Public. Their wifi connection is a zillion times faster than my dial-up at home. The ibook logged onto their network immediately and seaminglessly. Plug and play at long last. Its small size and lightness means that its not a hassle to carry around with me on the Vespa.

2 I was doing a exercise in a Headway book which involved listening to a poem by Auden. Luckily, it is also in Four Weddings and a Funeral which I copied onto the hard disk and played for the student which made the whole thing more interesting.

3 Started making a list of the dvds I had using Open Office for Mac (NeoOffice), the lessons on using Word which I did this week proved very helpful.

4 Downloaded stuff from Teachit.co.uk in break between lessons to help me with teaching Of Mice and Men. I'm not a English Lit graduate - Ba(hons) Sociology, Ma (TEFL) - so preparing a student for lit exams is a bit scary.

5 I'm editing Ancestor and The Pocket and the Pendant with Audacity so it will be a bit less repetitive i.e. getting rid of the theme music and ads at the begining and end of each episode before I give my students a copy.

Still the old joke still holds true;

"What's the difference between boys' toys and mens' ?"
"Mens' cost more."