The Mac doesn’t really have any cheap and cheerful image editing software. You’ve got the very limited features of iPhoto, and then you’ve got the expensive software of Fireworks and others. I don’t do that much image editing, as I let the other half invest in the software. However, as I intend to blog more, I at least want the ability to resize and crop as needed. I discovered Picnik.com recently, and it is amazing.

Since the dawn of time, but also quite recently, I have been looking for a decent to-do list manager. This is how it used to work: While I’m out all day, I keep a list of things that I need to do, remember, or think about on a scrap of paper. When I get home, I action all the ones I can and cross them off the list, then transfer the rest to a master list in a giant notebook.

When I decided I wanted to buy a laptop, I was in the middle of a shop, I saw one I liked, I bought it. When I buy things, it is usually spur of the moment, with some but very little market research, and much excitement. Mr C is the complete opposite. He does not like to buy anything just like that, will research all the possible options ever, find the best one, but have to think about it for a while before he actually buys it.

My to do list has reached epic proportions, and doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. For a long time I just ignored it, hoping that it would go away. But it didn’t seem to, it stuck around, and so I went back to it. Thankfully, I’ve now started to cross things off, which makes the day seem just a little bit brighter. I love crossing things off my list. If I’m about to start doing something that I know isn’t on the list, I will write it down, just so I can cross it off when I’ve done it.

I’ve been looking into some interesting software for helping people get the most out of their writing. Whilst mine has very much taken a back seat for the last year or so, it’s still something I think about from time to time. I note down ideas, plan chapters, scribble out some dialogue, that sort of thing. I downloaded a nifty little piece of software called Writer’s Cafe, and I really like it.