I’m a webmaster and a blogger, and googling my name only returns one result — a thanks page in a PDF internship report. Go figure.

Still recently there was at least my Wincustomize profile page, with a link to my site. Not anymore. Maybe I should fix that. Or maybe not: the idea that “Cxxxx Bxxxx” has disappeared off the face of the Internet isn’t quite unpleasant.

P.S. Oh, God. You can get to my site from Google Groups via… work personals I posted in another life. That’s not right, not right at all.

An iMac for less than $500 ? “This product is not going to be about performance. This is going to be the basics, but with just as much of a focus on software as any Mac could ever be.” If I find an old G3 iBook perfectly usable (except for the perpetually full hard disk), and if this new iMac is powerful enough to play DVDs, what’s the point of buying a traditional iMac for three or four times the price?

I hope the rumor is wrong, anyway: otherwise I’ll have to hesitate even more about which Mac to buy, and wait several months for that one to reach the market.

And why isn’t there any layout anymore and it’s all white, you ask? No, you don’t ask, nobody gives a damn, and it’s so nice to see how much everybody cares.

And why is the ad banner in the middle of the blog, you ask? Because the ad experiment is a failure, so as a punishment I’ll be putting ads all over the place, and maybe even enlarge them, until all paid-for clicks are consumed and we can all pretend that there never were any here. But then, nobody gives a damn either, and it’s so nice to see how much everybody cares.

Not that it’s related in any way, but there are days I want to put a content-less Flash animation back on garoo.net and open a barebones Blogspot just for the people I know. I’m done with the ego trip; I’m done with the writing experiment; I’m not sure I still have any need for an audience.

I don’t quite clearly know why I’m depressed, today.

It happens seldom enough to be blogged.

The not knowing part.

Meh? While I was very busy finding out that MSN allows you to videochat with several people simultaneously, and that a little cute Normandy boy took advantage of that to the extent of being insulting, a folder disappeared from my desktop. Gone, like that, my temporary links to blog discussions I was interested in. No more on the desktop, not in the trash, not accidentally dropped in a neighboring folder. Does Windows just decide to dispose of anything it finds named “temp”?

My mother got an EOS 300D (a.k.a. Digital Rebel) for Christmas, and this little (well, big) thing impresses me. I’m so accustomed to my G3 (I mean the Powershot, not the iBook) that I didn’t think a digital camera could be quite so fast. Immediate. Magical. A camera, really. (A little on the cheap side, though, are the battery that can’t be charged inside the camera, and the LCD screen that can’t be used as a visor. That one’s really petty.)

Since she also had a 60-300mm lens in the package, I had the opportunity to see first-hand what a tele lens can do for portraits. And… well, I want one.

Fortunately, I don’t do much photography these days, and even less portraits, so there’s no hurry.

But why is it exactly we keep “celebrating” Christmas even though it gets everybody bummed and depressed?

There are times you wake up from a pleasant dream (perfect love, etc.) and you’re depressed you woke up. And times you wake up from an unpleasant dream (Berlusconi digging tunnels near all the subterranean malls of my school) and you’re depressed you dreamed it. And times you weren’t dreaming, but you still wake up depressed.

“Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else in life becomes eerily easy.” Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless.

One of my two Maxtor 160 GB disks has crashed (praise the RAID); no luck in finding hard disk reliability comparisons on the web so I can decide what to replace it with.

In my day, when I was young and full of stars in my eyes, and of hope, and innocence, Christmas trees were gigantic — you could hardly see the top of them. Nowadays, the tree’s tip just scratches the ceiling. What sorry times these are…

When I lived in the Paris suburbs, I could always tell myself that tomorrow something would happen that would change my life. Jumpstart it. Or finish it, even — just, something.

Here…

Okay, even when I lived there, it didn’t happen. But at least it could. There was hope, and there was, uh… the daily pleasures of life, shall we say.

Here…

How is one supposed to do to listen to their four computers, and radio, and TV, on the same speakers or the same headset, without buying a $500 mixer?

Funny having a look at your blog’s statistics on Bloglines. Well, 14 susbscribers isn’t much. But I did announce here the French version of Bloglines, the RSS aggregator that doesn’t crash on Windows.

Mmh, an unused iMac G4 for 750 € plus taxes. It’s quite less expensive, and I always preferred the lamp design over the giant iPod thing.

But buying a cheap G4/800 wouldn’t be a real switch. That wouldn’t work. Symbolically.

Fuck. Am I dreaming or I could have, for the same price, a PowerMac with two big CRTs (or even two small LCDs)?

Life just became so much more complicated.

This unnerving, throbbing certainty the idea you lost while you scanned on your Bloglines page was the idea of the century… And the guilt of not being able to brush off the aforementioned certainty even though you’re perfectly, reasonably aware that this idea didn’t have any more value than every other before… ARGH!

When you can invest $2K in a 20” iMac, you can afford a standalone DVD player with a big TV. So what’s the point of the widescreen form factor and 1050-pixel vertical resolution only when most web pages are vertically oriented?

A Power Mac plus vertical LCD monitor and matching video card wouldn’t really fit my budget.

There it is, I’m in love — pity he’s only a fictional character.

By the way, if someone has an address where to buy an… a… a cult-follower’s disguise, like he wears in episode 4, I’m interested. A much better fad than the Matrix raincoat.

Funny how there are angels everywhere lately.

— Your blog doesn’t say you’re so pleased about OS X.

— Let the world know Garoo wants to switch. All is contained in this sentence.

Ah, December, cold (I like cold), big coats, Christmas street decorations, department store windows full of toys, hot chestnut vendors, that peculiar year’s end atmosphere… No such thing here: cold, dead, dark and desert, not even a winter smell — maybe the lack of pollution. Pff.

Or a vacation to London, in order to visit the Apple Store?

Damn, my keyboard’s numpad Enter key is dying. Is that a sign?

In fact, spending 1,500 to 2,500 euros in a big new iMac would be a leap of faith: bye bye my 3840x1024 pixels; bye bye the old Wacom tablet and all the software I, uh, own; switching to a Mac with a small LCD screen means I also say bye bye to graphics and webdesign.

Not that I would mind, but it’s a big jump into the unknown, and if I weren’t afraid of jumping into the unknown I wouldn’t be where I am now.

Ahem. This settles that, I suppose.

Hesitating. Would there really be a point in buying a brand new iMac? How about just getting a second clamshell for use on my elevated bed?

I’ve got too much stuff (hardware and software) on my PC to switch altogether, so what would I do with a G5?

Oh boy, it’s already the first of December. Damn Time.

Maybe I should get a holiday in Paris for the year’s end. But the réveillons alone in Paris weren’t the greatest success for me last year. (And, besides, this year I’m obese. Can’t go shaking my fat around in Paris, can I?)