So the Magellan project may be postponed for a little while. Instead of a bright-and-shiny G5, I've elected to upgrade to a new PowerBook. Granted, I know that the PowerBook G5s will probably be out in another year or so, but portability right now for me is huge. Also, my budget is limited, and in order to do Magellan properly I also need to buy upwards of $1500 worth of monitors. D'oh. Meanwhile, for approximately the same amount of cash as just the G5, I can buy a new PowerBook G4 which is twice as fast as the one I'm writing on now, with a brighter screen, higher resolution, and the graphics chipset I want to play WarCraft III properly whenever I'm feeling slackerly. That, and I won't have to duck my head in shame anymore when meeting with clients, trying to explain the big ugly black rubbed-off spots on my laptop's chassis. True, this is what happens when you use one machine for upwards of 8-12 hours a day, but still... It'll be nice to have that gone.

(And backlit keys! And enough video-out cajones to drive a Cinema display, if they drop the prices at Macworld in January, as I'm hoping they do.)

Oh, and I think I'm going to buy a new digital still camera, too. My portfolio needs a serious kick in the ass, one powered by original artwork. One thing I want to do is take better pictures. Yes, my Elph is the bee's knees for off-the-cuff photo shoots, but the pics it takes aren't quite high-quality enough for serious commercial work. So, I'm planning on picking up a Canon Digital Rebel. (Full disclosure time: actually, I want one of these so I can do that nifty depth-of-field trick that looks so damn cool in all those artsy photos that Kate takes. My Elph ain't that cool – more of a digital, glorified point-and-shoot camera, which is fine most of the time, but every now and then...) Time to go drop some green at the Apple Store!