Laptop Update!

It works!

It's a miracle!

They took it apart, left it to dry over the weekend, cleaned it with magic elf elixir, left it to dry some more, put it back together, tried to boot it up and were - they told me themselves - quite frankly shocked when it did!

After cloning my hard-drive they ran it through some memory tests and stress tests which it passed!

There is evidence of corrosion and yes I've probably shortened its life* but it's working just fine at the moment.

I don't know what I did to deserve this reprieve but I do know I am going to be a hell of a lot more careful about where I put things :-/

So in summary: Yay!



*I'm sorry, baby, I'm soooo sorry! :-(

Time For The Slow Clap

Because I'm a very special kind of genius, at approximately 10 am on Thursday morning I knocked a full cup of coffee with my hand and sloshed a good quarter of it onto my laptop keyboard.

I'll pause to allow you time to make the appropriate series of faces (i.e. oh no! --> you idiot... --> you poor, dumb idiot...).

All done?

Well I hope that didn't wear out your face muscles because I'm not done.

As I was flailing around trying to right the coffee mug and swearing inventively at myself... I knocked over a glass of water.

Right onto my laptop keyboard.

Yep.

Feel free to proceed directly to 'you idiot' and stay there this time.

On the upside, it washed the coffee out of my laptop.

On the downside... laptop full of water.

At this point my brain finally joined the party.

I switched my laptop (which was still miraculously on at this point) off, pulled the battery and stood it on its end to let the water run out.

Knowing there was nothing else I could do, I just had to sit there cursing my own name until the end of the day at which point I took it to the computer shop and - shamefaced and penitent - handed it over to see what can be done.

Seeing as Step 1 is 'take it apart, clean it and then leave it to dry for a few days before even thinking about putting it back together and seeing if it will reboot' I have some suspense and plenty of time to feel like an idiot ahead.

If I've wrecked it I'll only be truly mad at myself if I also lose all my data.

If it's still working by some miracle I will have shortened its lifespan and learned a fairly valuable life lesson the hard way.

But the most important thing to remember here is that I'm an idiot :-P

Alien Concepts

It feels like we're in a unique point in history and it's both intriguing and a little bit melancholy.

We've watched huge leaps in technological advancement being built on the achievements of the previous generations, each leap a little closer in time to the last and yet taking us further in concept each time.

This means that we're a generation more used to large changes to our lifestyle and our ways of thinking.

We've seen more of the elements of our science fiction favourites being brought into everyday life and have a better ability to predict what may be possible and to strive for what is on the edge of that possibility.

And all this means that we are able to look at our lives and experiences and predict what things are going to fall by the wayside and how quickly.

I might be incorrect but I get the feeling that even though our parents and grandparents knew that change was inevitable they still were taken a bit by surprise when things that they'd grown up with or used their entire adult lives were rendered completely obsolete within a matter of months or a year by a new development.

I know even for people my age it was a bit startling at first watching VHS getting superseded by DVD (with a brief bit of competition from HD DVD format), but as DVD is nudged in the back by Blu-Ray there's more of a 'ho hum, another one bites the dust' feeling.

Even as something new comes out now we know that it has a finite lifespan and that the new thing will be not far behind.
Whether the new thing will last or not is unknown but we know it's coming.

Of course this reflective train of thought all started with the realisation that 'OH MY GOD, SCHOOL KIDS WILL NEVER AGAIN GIVE CLASS PRESENTATIONS USING OVERHEAD PROJECTORS! THEY PROBABLY HAVEN'T DONE THAT SINCE THE EARLY 2000s!'

So in honour of that, here is a brief list of little memories that the next generation won't get to experience.

THINGS THE NEXT GENERATION IS GOING TO MISS OUT ON

• Doing Presentations Using Overhead Projectors. I don't know about you but I used to love doing these. When you were younger you were set loose with some special textas that wrong on the plastic projector sheets and had to very carefully try to write or draw as much of your presentation as possible onto your sheet so that you didn't look like that one weenie whose last sentence had to turn sideways down the side of the page.
  In university I got to have one last play with an overhead projector and printed a colour photocopy of an Italian Renaissance painting onto a sheet of clear plastic for an Italian Art and History class presentation. I spent an embarrassing amount of time holding it up to the light and just gazing through it from either side. It was like having my own very detailed stained glass window.

Overhead Projectors: They Are Cool

• Get To Play With Cassette Tapes And All The Fiddling That Entailed. I mean really, think about all the experiences associated with cassettes.
  -Rewinding them and listening to that clunky 'click!' as they got to the end of the tape.
  -Winding them up with a pencil when they unspooled or if you were fiddling around.
  -Learning to listen to that moment of emptiness that signalled that it had got past the blank bit of tape at the start and you should start recording from this point onwards so that you didn't cut the start off your favourite songs.
  -Physically turning a cassette over unless you had a 'fancy' deck/walkman that did it for you.
  
  (I know these all sound like the things that old people go on about much to their grandchildren's chagrin but this is the point! We're getting to the nostalgia part of life about 30 or 40 years ahead of schedule!)
• Going To The Video Store To Rent Movies. If video stores last another 5 to 10 years I will actually be a bit surprised. What with downloadable movie/TV series rental services already up and running, purchasing your own movies and so forth cheaper than it used to be and the high incidence of movie piracy that goes on amongst the social bracket that used to do all the renting because they couldn't afford to buy*, the profit margins must be getting pretty slim these days.
  But not having that experience of being given a time limit for picking movies, a SET number of movies that was NOT up for negotiation due to the deals the store was offering, and all the bargaining and arguing that went on with your siblings... Well where is the drama and the excitement with doing that from home?
  If you're sitting in front of the family computer with your Mum saying 'I'm only clicking one more item, which one is it going to be?', where's the fun in that?
• Being Excited About Songs On The Radio. You can still get excited about your favourite songs coming on the radio but now that you can just go straight to Youtube or another online service and listen to any song you like on demand at any time, it just isn't the same thing.
  Waiting by your radio with your finger hovering over the record button to catch a song on cassette helped you develop lightning fast reflexes.

There are tonnes of other examples but these are the ones that have popped into my head which I felt met the criteria without straying too far into 'They won't remember telephones with cords' which is a different kind of deal.

It makes you wonder whether as we become more used to change going into the future whether our growing adaptability will be our biggest asset or whether it will lead us to be so flighty in our attentions and loyalties that we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot as a species.

I guess we'll see.



*This is definitely a big generalisation but the more bogan-y a person is the more likely it is that they're pirating movies.

Fiiiiiiiiiiiinally!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I have my laptop back again!

It had been with my friendly neighbourhood IT guys for an entire week after it went completely mental.

Around the 17th of May my antivirus software calmly announced that it hadn't received its scheduled update.

'Bloody thing,' I thought and clicked on the manual 'Update' button.

The update failed.

I tried again.

Fail.

I tried a bunch more times.

Fail fail fail.

I ran the antivirus software scan.

It found a couple of things.

I deleted them.

I tried to update again.

Fail.

OK, let's click the button that gives you more information on why the update is failing.

Oh good, now it's failing to open the Microsoft Help Website, that's not weird at all.

Let's see what happens when I try to validate my genuine copy of Windows.

Ah. It won't do that either.

That's not suspicious at all.

I asked a friend what else I could do.

She suggested a couple of websites that offer open source antivirus tools.

I tried to visit them.

I couldn't.

Yep.

Perfect.

Oh and look at that, my computer has failed a scheduled validation of my genuine windows software and if I don't rectify this - which I can't - my antivirus software will lapse altogether.

That's. Just. Excellent.

It was at that point that I disconnected from the internet and handed it over to the tender ministrations of the IT clan.

The virus took some eradicating, then they tidied up the files and deleted any extra unnecessary faff, ran a few checks, found some corrupted segments of drive, saved all my files elsewhere, reformatted my computer, updated everything, put my files back onto it and delivered it back into my loving arms.

I've survived alright without it seeing as I had my swish new phone to check in on emails and social media and even websites if I didn't mind them being tiny but my laptop has all my music, all my photos, all my files...

I already had copies of everything on a terabyte drive for safety but it's not the same as having them on a laptop that you can just open and access anywhere rather than having to wait until you're at work and plug your drive into your work computer.

Welcome back, little laptop, I missed you.

Upgrade

Well this is just getting ridiculous.

In the last few weeks I've:

• found out that I'm going to be a birth partner for one of my best friends, which I'd hoped I'd get to do but had thought I wouldn't be able to
• found myself set to go on a trek in Nepal, which is also pretty amazing, after moping about how I haven't travelled in a while and would love to again soon
• and now...

The other  month I was trying to get towards maybe encouraging myself to maybe possibly thing about getting around to one day maybe finally buy a new phone after buttons started falling off my old one, but thought it'd be a while before I got around to it, knowing myself and my tendencies towards procrastination and avoidance of new technology.

Well, yesterday I bought a new phone.

Not just a new phone but a new new phone!

After exactly one evening of getting to play around with my friend's phone and her giving me a genuine but very casual

I feel like Jay in Dogma, flinging my arms out and yelling 'Beautiful, naked, big-titted women don't just fall out of the sky you know!' except in my case, buxom lasses actually do start descending from on high.

This is my new phone.

 A HTC Velocity*.

If you've heard terrible things about it, keep them to yourself because as with everything in life, once I've made up my mind, I care not for the opinions of others. Or at least it's too late for the opinions of others and as it hasn't given me any trouble so far I'd prefer to live on in blissful ignorance.

It's got a fairly intuitive set up and there's nothing I need it to do that I haven't been able to get it to do so far.

Most of what it's taught me so far is the importance of decent sized pockets and exactly how gross and smudge-y the human finger is.

So, yes, I managed to buy a new new phone instead of clinging desperately to the old ways, well done me!

Now to think of some other things to remark upon because obviously this has become a magical wishing blog and I should take advantage of that whilst the enchantment lasts!



*'A HTC', I said. It'll be a cold day in hell before I'll use 'an' before words beginning with H. H is not a vowel, people.

Me Vs Me: The Adventures Of A Luddite

The refrain of 'If this is the future, where's my jetpack?' has been knocking around for a fair old while now but based on my customary approach to things, if we had jetpacks available to us, I probably wouldn't use one.

At least not until all the early adopters worked out the bugs - their recognition for these contributions possibly accorded posthumously - and it became absolutely necessary.

I'm basing this assumption on the fact that a button has recently fallen off my mobile phone, forcefully reminding me that I need to buy a new one, and the amount of trouble I'm having deciding on what sort of phone to get does not bode well for my adopting any other forms of technology without putting up a fight.

I've mentioned before that I'm a bit technologically disadvantaged, a bit reluctant to take up certain things, and this definitely applies to the way I think about phones.

It's the cynical, old-before-my-time part of my personality that drives this, viciously gumming a butterscotch as it mutters under its breath that phones are for phone calls and if I wanted to take a photo or access the internet I'd use a dang camera or a gosh-dang laptop computer.

The part of me that wants to try new things is valiantly struggling against this argument, a little more strongly than it used to in the past.

If we get a touch-screen phone, it whispers, we'll be a step closer to having a computer book like Penny. I know I said your laptop was like that but isn't a phone better?

We'd be like Ford Prefect, scrolling through The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and checking out the entry on Eccentrica Gallumbits, The Triple-Breasted Whore of Eroticon 6!

I'd been having some luck talking myself around to this way of thinking until some friends responded to my remarks about my broken button meaning I needed to get a new phone by commenting that the fact that my phone had buttons at all was the reason I needed to get a new phone.

This is a terrible approach to getting me to try new things.

I react to it in much the same way I did as a teenager to comments like 'Well, look who's finally up!'

I turn around and get back into bed.

In this scenario, bed is a metaphor for old phones.

That sulky part of me would rather like to track down one of my favourite handsets - the Nokia 6085 - and just stick with that for another few years.


It made me feel like I was a Star Fleet officer.

I think I'm going to be able to overcome my hesitant, grumpy self and take a step into the future* to join everybody else, but I'm approaching it slowly so as not to startle myself.

The only thing I can say for sure is that it won't be an iPhone, for no better reason than I can't stand the way that people go on about them.

This may be as irrational as saying I'm not going to try penicillin because of the way everybody keeps knobbing on about it but it's an aversion that's pretty well cemented in.

Now I just have to find a viable alternative, get used to the idea and then hold my nerve all the way up to the register!



*Or even the present would be a good start!

Out Of The Loop

I know some people talk a lot of smack about the internet and social media and how disconnected we're becoming due to overuse of both but in my experience that's bunkum.

I have never felt more connected to the rest of the world, more politically and socially aware and more empathetic than I do now.

I've been lucky in the online friends I've made in the various corners of the internet I've found myself, most of them creative and passionate about a range of things and willing to share that passion without condescending or ranting, all of them interesting, all of them friendly.

I've followed along with various protests, political uprisings, natural disasters, international disasters and historical events and I've felt as if they really have something to do with me.
Not in an egocentric way but in a give-a-damn-about-the-rest-of-the-world-and-the-rest-of-humanity way, either because I know someone personally who is being affected by what is going on or because reading blogs, tweets or retweets written by individuals really pushes home the fact that these things are happening to real people who you'd probably quite like if you ever met them.

This has all been very enlightening and great for my outlook and personal development but it has also highlighted how really horrendously bad my personal grasp of the Australian political system is.

I expect I know more about the American political system (thanks to Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72) than I can remember about Australian politics from my social science classes in high school.

Let me try to sum up what I can remember for you:

• We have an upper and a lower house, the senate and the house of representatives, one is red one is green, I cannot remember which is which on the colour or name or upper/lower count.
• Laws need to pass through both houses in order to be passed.
• When we vote in Federal elections we vote for the party we want in, rather than the person even though we know which person will get in based on our vote.
• In Australia people don't campaign for selection and then get endorsed by their party, whoever is leader of the party gets to be the head of government if their party is voted in. It's all decided in-party way before election time is called and isn't swapped before election unless the current leader is bombing out/useless, and is all done based on how good a job the person is doing in politics, how savvy they are and how they're doing with public opinion.
• I can't remember how state elections and government work in relation to federal elections and government, though I do remember the state voting process is different (a lot fewer boxes to number).

That's about it.

I mean, there are other things I know or am aware of but off the top of my head, that's it.

That isn't great.

When I rock up to vote I usually know enough about the various candidates and parties that I know who supports things I agree with or who is highly objectionable but I'm not the most informed of voters, I don't feel like I'm fully engaged with or aware of what's going on.

If a foreign friend asked me what the Governor-General was for or how governors of the different states and territories were selected, I would only be able to give very general and possibly misleading explanations*.

And because of that I just went to the library and checked out Australian Politics For Dummies.

I'm not beating about the bush, I'm starting from the most basic level I can without finding a book with pictures and anthropomorphised legislative scrolls.

Because at this stage of my life, this level of ignorance is just embarrassing.



*The Governor-General, as the Queen's representative in Australia, gives the official OK to any incoming Prime Ministers and signs legislation into law, I think that's it. Only once has a Governor-General actually bunted a Prime Minister out of power.
As for governors of states and territories... I have no idea.

A Rose By Any Other Name...

"Why is it that you still keep your journal in books?" my Dad asked me the other day as I was scribbling earnestly. "I mean, is there any particular reason you can't do it electronically?"

Well, no... but yes.

It'd just be... wrong.

Apart from demonstrating that I'm such a Luddite that even my father has overtaken me, happily keeping all his affairs in order on a tablet, his question made me wonder why the idea of keeping an electronic journal bothered me so much.

I guess there are a few reasons.

• A Beginning And An End - I like the idea of a journal being a finite length. It captures a chunk of your life, as much as you can fit into those pages. It can span years or months, depending on how much you have to say, how much has been going on. It has a beginning and an end. Once you've run out of pages, as long as you're around to do so, you start another one.
  An electronic file can theoretically go on indefinitely, stretching out in a long and cumbersome fashion that takes an amount of navigation to find anything you may want to read again.
• Fidelity - Sure a book journal could get wet, get mildew, be burnt or lost or ripped or stained, but that would be down to location and bad luck. And even when damaged, it may still be decipherable. Data files corrupt. They can do it for no particular reason, or your computer may get a virus or overheat or shut down or just plain die. Then your memories would be gone. We have books in museums that have survived since the advent of books, scrolls and parchments from earlier still which are still legible.
  If it comes to a choice, I trust paper.
• Handwriting - Not long ago when asked why he still handwrites his first drafts, Neil Gaiman pointed to studies* that have been done that prove your brain interacts differently with language when you write compared to when you type. It has to pay more attention as you form the words and sentences in your mind, then has to direct the nerves and muscles involved in moving your pen across the page. It's more involved.
  You get to chose different coloured pens for different moods or events, different kinds of inks, different types of pen that affect how your writing looks and how you feel about the act of writing. For some people writing a journal can almost be an artistic act.
  The fact is that a lot of the history and memories tied up in journals aren't just in the words but are in the physical item, the visual cues. The feel of the book, the scent, the handwriting, crossings out, misspellings and sketches of your younger self, the stains or tears or marks it may have gathered along the way all evoke deeper memories or associated feelings.
  
  

These are some of the many things that make re-reading old journals so rewarding, enjoyable and immersive. Not just the words themselves but how they're presented, how you recorded them and how you get to re-experience them.

So yeah, Dad, I guess there is a reason why I still keep my journal in books.
Because it's beautiful and it's the act of creating something as I write that keeps me interested in keeping a journal at all.
The memories are precious but so are the package they're housed in.



*I didn't bookmark the specific article at the time and have no hope of wading through his twitter feed to find it so here are two lifehacker articles on the subject: A Defence of Writing Longhand and Why You Learn More Effectively By Writing Than Typing.

I Will Punch You Right In The Motherboard!

Alright electronic devices, it is on!

You and me! Right now!

I've always known you held me in contempt and now I have the proof and we are going to throw down here and now, last one alive wins!

No, I haven't had a computer disaster.
My refrigerator and microwave continue to function adequately.
Even if any of these devices had experienced a malfunction this would be a mere inconvenience.

It is not an inconvenience which has incurred my wrath.

It was an insult.

A direct and unmistakable insult!

The other day my sister took a break from studying and decided to spend a bit of time on the WiiFit.

She pressed the power button, stepped up onto the device and waited for it to start offering her exciting, brightly covered activities.

It greeted her.

She pressed 'next'.

It mentioned it hadn't seen her for a while, a specific number of days in fact.

She pressed 'next'.

It asked, by the way, had she seen me - Ricochet - lately.

She pressed 'yes'.

It asked how I was looking.

She pressed... 'next'.

It asked if I was looking a) the same, b) toned, c) slimmer or d) fatter. Select one to continue.

... She pressed... 'the same'.

It suggested change was more interesting, didn't she think so? Maybe she just wasn't paying enough attention to me to notice the change.

On an unrelated note, it went on, did she know that studies had shown that dogs whose owners paid more attention to them tended to be more highly motivated?

Excuse me?

EXCUSE ME!?

Have you just compared me to a dog, WiiFit? A lazy, unmotivated dog at that?

Is this, in fact, what you have just done?

I was under the impression that the WiiFit was something people bought so they didn't have to feel judged or pressured in gyms or when exercising in public spaces.
So they could feel comfortable going at their own pace in their own homes.

I didn't know that it gave you guilt trips and asked you to comment on the appearance of your friends and family!

No I don't use WiiFit that often.
For starters I only visit the family home on the weekends and when I'm there I often have more interesting things to do with my time, such as walking our real dogs in the real world in the real fresh air.

In addition I tend to prefer actually piffing a cricket ball at people or going for a swim or attending a yoga class to pretending to be a penguin flipping on an iceberg for fish.

You might be too big to fit in the microwave WiiFit but don't think that will save you.

You and me.

Some time soon.

Possibly with a mallet.

After all, it'll be good for my upper body strength which I'm sure you'll appreciate.

I obviously need the exercise!

Beep!

One of the supermarkets near my flat has just installed a bank of those self-service checkouts.
After some in-the-field research and speculation I have decided that I don't like them.

Sure they have some good points, shy people are more likely to buy condoms, pregnancy tests or items of a personal nature; you can pack your own groceries and don't have to stop the checkout kid from putting tins of food on top of your bread or carton of eggs; and they take up less space and help speed up the tempo of the store so you can get in and out quicker but the bad points seem to outweigh the good.

Firstly, without the perceived judgement of the checkout clerk or other shoppers in the queue certain folk may be far more likely to make food purchases that are bad for them which they know they shouldn't be making but can't quite reign in their impulse control enough to reject. I speak from experience :-b

Secondly, the more of these self-service checkouts they install, the less actual staff they have to employ and train and now is not the time to be phasing people out.

And the biggie, thirdly, for some people the supermarket checkout represents the sum total of their regular social interaction.
Public transport ticketing systems are automated, you can buy almost anything online and certain lines of work don't require any verbal communication at all* so this may have been their only moment of mandatory small-talk and the more they're able to avoid it the more difficult it will become and the less likely they'll engage in it voluntarily.

This probably sounds a little 'back in my day' or 'you're taking this too seriously technophobe' but I do think it's a factor.
Some people will always be social and tactile and interactive no matter how many virtual options are available and some people will always struggle in those situations but the less practise they get the more likely they are to withdraw.

I'm not saying people should be forced into situations they're uncomfortable with but without a little push and a bit of chance I might not have found out about or become involved with a lot of the parts of my life and the close friends I really value now and I would hate to have missed out on that.

And that's why I think self-service checkouts are The Matrix.
Thank you.
Wait, what?


*And of course some people don't work