Couple of random things

Some day, I'll get back on that meme I was doing before. Some day.

The other day my mum got the Autumn/Winter edition of a mail-order catalogue. "Any good?" I asked.
"No, it's all stuff for old people now." NB my mother does not consider herself to be old. If pressed, she may admit to middle-aged, but she had to get to about 55 before she'd even entertain the idea. "They used to have stuff for people more your age."
"No," I replied, "they had stuff that people your age think people my age would wear."

And it occurred to me that this sentiment felt familiar. I realised where: when reading a book about a group of twenty-somethings I've frequently felt as if the author had heard of twenty-somethings but never actually met one. They'd learned about this breed from TV and other books written by people who'd also no idea what it was like to be under thirty in the early twenty-first century. Being 25 in 2010 is vastly different from being 25 in 1970 or 1980 or even 1990.

Some authors do it really well, and it's quite a surprise to meet them and find out they're twenty or thirty years older than their characters. Maybe they have kids in their twenties. Maybe they have friends in that age range. Maybe they never really grew out of it themselves.  I'm not sure what the answer is, but I can't be the only one who's experienced that "This is what middle aged people think younger people act/talk/dress like" feeling. Can I?

The other random thing I wanted to mention is that I've discovered a brilliant way of running Windows programs on my shiny, yet somewhat aloof, Mac. I've heard of Boot Camp, which allows you to install Windows on a Mac, which sounds a bit desperate (and also expensive), and Wine, which allowed me to install Spotify on the Linux-operated Minnie (that would be my netbook). But neither were working for me on the Mac, where I just wanted to run my old versions of Dreamweaver, MS Digital Image, and Poser without difficulty (or the expense of buying new Mac copies, which in the case of Digital Image was impossible as a) it's a Microsoft product and b) it's obsolete anyway).

However! I've just come across CrossOver, which installs and runs Windows programs on a Mac. And it does it really, really simply. There's no going into Terminal and pretending you understand code. Just a few clicks to install. Free for thirty days, but for something that installed Dreamweaver so effortlessly I'd happily pay for the full version (and did). I'm having a few problems with the apparently unpopular Digital Image, but I'm sure I can resolve them.

So! Mac users who miss Windows programs: rejoice!

Now, to find that damn Poser disc...