Why the new box? The crystallizing moment probably came when Gina, in frustration, finally snapped “You’ve been going on about this ever since I met you. Just stop talking about it and buy it already.” The it in question is Mathematica. When I was at Morgan Stanley I scored a copy — and that was probably the most fun I had with a computer in the last decade. I first stumbled across it when the NeXT machines came out (also at Morgan Stanley).

Well, if I was going to order a copy of Mathematica, it seemed like a crime to install it on a laptop. Or a Mini. It deserved a worthy machine.

As they say, in for a dime, in for a dollar. The other piece of software I had been interested in noodling with was Motion. And that certainly wasn’t going to run on a laptop. Or a mini.

Well, if I’m going to be animating things with Motion, I’ll need things to be animating. So, logically, I’d also need something like Adobe’s Creative Suite.

Well, the machine is here. Mathematica, however, was delayed for two weeks. In the meantime, I’m working my way through the Motion tutorial.