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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!

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.

Whoopsie-doodle

Tsk, this is getting ridiculous.
OK internets, I have a confession to make.
I only have access to you on the weekends.
Well, unfettered access.

My workplace is unfairly suspicious of its employees' intentions and seems to think we'd spend the entire day looking at pictures of kittens or watching viral videos so they have blocked a lot of websites, and I mean A LOT.
Actually I'm kind of impressed.
Most of the websites we need for work are easily accessed but anything that might be a webcomic or social networking site is on the 'no no' list.

As I live in an area outside of the city that hasn't yet embraced the idea of internet cafes, my other option is the free internet available at the local library. Unfortunately they too have concerns about their patrons' online behaviour and have blocked many photo sharing sites and forums, almost anything to do with online gaming and yet I can still log on to Whitechapel.
Strange fish to slip through the net. Ha Ha Ha! Pun!*

And I haven't yet invited you into my home, internets.
It's not that you wouldn't be welcome, well some parts of you, it's just... well first I'd have to look at the different types of internet packages available and the conditions attached and the costs and all those lovely details and along with buying a watch and a new winter coat I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

But I'm going to soon because only getting to trawl the fun bits of the internet when I visit friends and family is a) annoying and b) kind of rude, what with the ignoring them for hours on end whilst I giggle at webcomics or lurk on forums.

In some ways it's an advantage because when I finally do come to check in on my favourite sites the magical internet fairy has come and updated them several times and there's plenty to see.
Unfortunately there are also disadvantages such as missing out on events announced or messages that people have sent to email systems that I don't have access to during the week.
There is also looking like a bit of a technotard because I've made a mistake and have then left it there for all to see for weeks on end until I notice they exist... Or don't, of course.

Even with this blog, on more than one occasion I've hit 'Save Now' instead of 'Publish Post' and haven't noticed because I've gone rushing off to do something else or attempt to be less antisocial and haven't been able to look at the webpage during the week because it's blocked at work and then have continued not to notice for weeks at a time as I leap onto the internet, fling things onto it and then run away yet again.

Until I get myself organised I'll have to keep on as I have been but I'm going to at least double-check that I've posted things correctly otherwise I'll end up looking like a damn fool.
Sort of like now.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm just going to fix March and then I'll go look up internet packages.



* Sorry I've been watching a lot of Harvey Birdman lately, it's been
Ha Ha Ha! Everything! this week.