Computing really is a blood sport!

 

This morning I attempted to work out when it was that I first owned a ‘reasonable’ personal computer.  I had a sort of access to a machine when I started teaching in the 1970’s, but in those far off days, the computer was limited to one to a school – and in the school I was teaching in, it was in the jealous safekeeping of the Maths department, and ‘lesser breeds’ (i.e., non-mathematicians) access was somewhat limited.

     In Cardiff in the very early 80’s I was gifted a hand-held Sinclair machine, and by the mid 1980’s I had bought my own Sinclair QL.

 

     The QL remains the only computer that I have owned that has literally reduced me to tears as a long and graphically complex document that I was typing out to an external deadline was almost wholly lost when the keyboard froze.  In those distant computer times, when the digital world was yet young, a page of A4 could take over a minute to ‘save’, so you tended not to and usually you were lucky, and you could mark the completion of your computer typing by having a celebratory ‘save’.  Usually lucky, but not always.

     On that unforgettable occasion I had to retype everything that I had done and eventually went to bed in the late-early hours of the morning.  Slept for 30 minutes.  Got up to go to work.  Had a rough day.

     Given that I have had almost 40 years of computer experience (as user not programmer) and have lived through the trauma of the various versions of Windows, you would think that I have become digital savvy.  But no.

     I say this because I spent virtually the whole of the morning after I returned having completed my early swim, looking at a blank, or near blank, computer screen.

     The fault, I have to admit is mine.  I am sometimes sloppy in the way that I leave my computer at the end of the day.  Some things I close meticulously, but other documents and suchlike I tend to leave lurking on a variety of screens, as I tap the sleep button and depart.

     Usually, of course, this means little as my work from the previous day is there ready for me to edit or ignore with a tap of a finger and the writing of a password.  Except.

     Except when the computer tells me that it needs to update.  I suppose, like most people, I tap the ‘update later’ choice and usually plump for ‘Try tonight’ when I’m in bed for the machine to do what it needs to do. 

     And this is where my digital slovenliness comes back to byte me.

     For me, my computer is little more than a glorified typewriter.  Certainly, anyone listening to the way that I thump the electronic keys would be able to tell that I have not lost the techniques that I learned from my typewriter classes in Colchester Avenue in Cardiff on actual typewriters.   

 

So, most of my work on the computer is in Word, and I am usually working on more than one document at the time, and I like to have easy access, so I leave the documents on the active screens of the computer, and I don’t close them.

     Usually this doesn’t matter.  Except when I’ve clicked the ‘Try later tonight’ button for a system upgrade.  What happens then is that the Upload tries to upload, gets to a certain point, and then finds that there are open documents, and the process needs to know what I want to do with these documents, but I’m in bed, asleep.  So, the Upload stops, until I open the computer and am faced with questions and directions.

     I, of course, save the documents and then watch helplessly as Upload starts up, and what should have happened in the dark hours of inactivity, now happens when I have things to do in the daylight.

     This has happened more than once, and I am always being caught out.  It is because the clicking of the ‘Try later tonight’ is a case of ‘once clicked, soonest forgotten’ and by the time I come to close the system down, it has slipped my mind that the computer will reactivate itself hours and hours later.

     It seems to me that it should not be beyond the powers of the insanely powerful chips and programs that we play with today that, if you have, however quickly and thoughtlessly, programmed an Update, there should be a message when you try and turn the computer off or if you ask it to sleep, to remind you that all other programs should be closed if you don’t want to waste half a day in the daylight!

     I can remember on previous machines that I would sometimes get a “Are you sure you want to do that?” message on the screen which would, almost invariably make me pause and instinctively say, “No!  I don’t!  What am I doing?”  Computers do make it ridiculously easy to be intimidating.

 

     I remember on one of my early Apple computers, you would get an occasional “FATAL SYSTEM ERROR!” and a graphic of an old-fashioned spherical bomb with a fizzing fuse, which would panic me instantly!

     The only good thing about not doing digital things properly nowadays is that you waste time, whereas previously you could do severe programming damage to the future running of your machine.

     Perhaps this is the time that I learn to link my easy Update delay with tidy digital housekeeping.  Though I doubt it!  All computer users have to be masochistic to a degree, it is the price we pay for the wealth that sophisticated programs give.

     No pain, no gain.  That is the motto, and an article of belief in the digital world!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 59 – Wednesday, 13th May

Though the wind is brisk, the sun is out and I am typing on the terrace of the third floor al fresco. The screen brightness is set at maximum and the type size is 16 point, so I can actually see the screen. What I type is somewhat irrelevant at the moment, because the real joy is being outside and, stripped to the half (a description I have always found unsettlingly erotic) pretending to myself that I am actually doing some work.

      It also makes a change to get away, if only for a sun-drenched moment, from the pressing concerns of the virus ridden world!

     My view from where I am sitting takes in the tops of the pine trees for which my neighbourhood is famous, the pool of a neighbouring collection of houses and a part of the street. I can hear the sea but alas, I cannot see it unless I crouch down and look through the top branches of the trees (see above) and I get a small triangle of what could be water. If I stand, then I get another triangular view of distant water with he third side being the horizon. If the trees that surround the neighbours’ pool were cut down, l would have an uninterrupted view of the sea, or at least part of it – though I do not expect to gain much sympathy from my moans.

     I am typing outdoors because Toni is (hopefully) working his technological magic on my non-starting Apple, and past experience dictates that my helpful hovering does not lead to a productive working environment. It is, after all, a wise couple that knows their mutual working limitations.

     Though, having said that, we have survived the constructivist horrors of mantling various pieces in the IKEA “Broken Relationships” range (i.e. anything) and a couple who survive building a bed with built-in drawers with instructions that looked more like a cheaply printed Mayan calendar gets to sleep in it. Literally.  So, Toni is doing his ‘thing’ while I do mine: writing.

     Toni has just appeared and asked me about a ‘restore’ date to which I have agreed and will now type with my fingers firmly crossed, so please forgive any typing errors.

     I remember on earlier Mac machines I would, from time to time, get a pixelated drawing of a round black bomb with a fizzing fuse with the alarming information that a ‘Fatal System Error’ was about to take place. I invariably panicked and then ignored it because there was always nothing that I could do about it, so I just soldiered on and hoped that a few random key presses would placate whatever anarchistic longings were inside the machine and that it would return to jocosity and placidity ‘because I wanted it to.’ And to be fair, it usually did.

     As opposed, for example, for the numerous Windows machines into contact with which I came.  In the early days when I had acquired a ‘real’ computer that used floppy discs of the smaller variety, my predilection for Mac computers was at odds with the educational establishment’s slavish following of the false gods of Microsoft.  The incompatibility problems (and there were always incompatibility problems) were constantly frustrating, with programs distributed by the school or the local education authority only working convincingly in Microsoft Windows environments and causing pain and anger for people like myself with a Mac.  On the other hand, I constantly found my Mac environment to be much more user friendly than Windows!

Toni has been successful in repairing my computer and it is working properly.  Though Netflix said that it could not load up and advised me to check that I had the latest version of Firefox.  I checked, I did, and Netflix worked.  Why?  The ways of electronic acceptance are strange.

     As far as I can see all my files are in place and they are all backed up in theory anyway.  In theory.

I have decided that this day’s blog is not going to even mention you-know-what for a single glorious day.

     Tomorrow normal sarcasm and bitterness will be resumed!

Nothing is easy

“Computers make things easier!”

There was a time when that little mantra might have been a source of fond hope.  There was, who knows how long ago, a sort of tipping point where the manifest failures of new technology were offset by the promise that after a few tweaks everything would be button pushing easy!

I remember as a smallish child I was given a Maths Computer to try out by a friend of the family, no, bugger that designation, he was my uncle in all but name.  He was a maths lecturer and was able to get his hands onto all the newest technology and I was privileged to try it out.  And it was, indeed exciting to feel that one was in the vanguard of modern education – well, more playing around with a gadget, even if that gadget was to do with maths!

As this ‘computer’ was in the late 1950s you might wonder what it looked like.  It was basically a long metal box with a little Perspex window in the centre with a coin-shaped cut out on the bottom right edge, and with a large button to be pushed along a notched groove parallel with the right hand side.  To work the machine, it had to be pre-loaded with a series of cards on which there were maths questions.  You used the button to load up a card which then presented the viewer with a maths question that you read through the little Perspex window and there was a space underneath the window for you to write in your answer.  After the answer was written, you pushed the button up a notch; your answer was now behind the window and the official answer was revealed and you could put a tick or a cross in the little coin cut out and push the button on to get a new question and a new space for your answer!

How cute that now seems!  And there were design flaws as the mechanism rucked up the paper and the whole thing had to be disassembled to get it going again.  But the excitement of being a pioneer never left me and unfortunately dictated my technology buying infatuation for the future.

As soon as they became available for general consumption I bought calculators, digital watches, handheld computers, personal assistants, computers, radios, cameras – you name it and I bought it, as long as it had electronic thingies making it function.

And most of them failed or crashed or simply let you down.  One computer, my Sinclair QL, actually reduced me to tears after the keyboard froze and, in spite of my plaintive pleadings with it to work, it steadfastly did not.  I retired to my bedroom and sobbed into the pillow knowing that I would have to work all night to get the work done that I had to do by the morrow.  Those were the days when ‘saving’ a document could take a couple of minutes and the computer would be inoperative during this time.  I hadn’t saved and I had to redo.  I went to bed at 6.30 am and got up at 7.30 am for a full day in school!

And that was not the only time that faith in computers was misplaced.  How many program failures, software failures and messages like “FATAL SYSTEM ERROR!” with a digital bomb fizzing on the screen have seared themselves into my technological memory.  I can remember buying programs where the developers encouraged users to report failures so that the inevitable bugs could be ironed out.  Bug free was the impossible dream; bug ridden was the everyday reality.

But when things worked it was like magic!  And that remembered ecstasy was enough to get one through the difficult times when nothing appeared to be working, nothing would print, nothing would load up properly and the screen was blank.  But we were encouraged to think that all the machines (all the expensive machines when you compare them with what you get for your money now) that we used were John the Baptist Computers, all of them preparing the Way for The Computer that would truly be The One!  I’m still waiting!

Where, you might ask, does all this come from?  What has prompted this remembrance of technological pain past?  The simple answer is, buying a ticket on line.

For the first time in a long time I am not going to the opera alone.  I have a fellow enthusiast accompanying me!  As I am a season ticket holder I can get a small discount on extra tickets and I offered to purchase a ticket in the hope that the discount would be able to buy us a cup of coffee at the interval at least.  As it turns out the discount may stretch to a couple of small beers, if we are lucky.  But that is not the point; the point is that simply purchasing the thing was a bind.

Buying a ticket has to be thought of in terms of how easy using the computer is to purchase it compared with picking up the phone and doing it via a real person at the other end of the line.

It took me two attempts and to complete the operation (in spite of the fact that I am a registered season ticket holder) and necessitated re-setting my pass word for the boking site; using the details on my credit card; using details on my season ticket; taking a code from my mobile phone; taking a further code from my email account; filling in part of a form; deciding just which of the many reductions I was entitled to; other bits and pieces and, finally, printing out the ticket myself on my own machine – and for all this I was charged a €1.50 fee for -  what exactly?

Would it have been easier on the phone?  I think the answer is probably yes, it would have been easier, but my ticket might have been waiting for me in the theatre, rather than being in my hot little hands. 

And, as usual, I will know what to do the next time round.  This is the ‘Billy Bookcase Syndrome’ based on the famous bookcase of the same name in IKEA.

The Billy bookcase is one of the basic pieces of furniture that is sold in the millions.  Countless people have unpacked the bits, looked at the illustrated page of instructions and thought to themselves, “Well, this can’t be that difficult!”  Then they try and make it and find that, yes, the basic principles are fine and easy to understand, but then the ‘why didn’t they mention’ element creeps into the creation: the unstated assumptions of the obvious that neophytes need to know, nay, need to be told.  And as you make the first Billy bookcase you know that the second and succeeding ones are going to be so much easier.  In reality, of course, that attitude is one of the ‘saving lies’ by which we live our lives.  However, the general principle holds true: the second time is easier than the first.

The real tragedy of this shared experience is that the results of that experience are not shared and therefore do not appear to inform a reworking of the instructions to include the things that you thought you didn’t need to point out.

Remember, we live in a world where someone bought a mobile home and when the owner went on a drive they put the home into ‘automatic’ and then went to make a cup of tea, as they assumed that ‘automatic’ meant that the thing would drive itself.  After the inevitable crash, the owner of the van sued the manufacturer for not making it clear what ‘automatic’ would and wouldn’t do!  And won. 

If that story is any reflection on the standard of public understanding then it is difficult to imagine any set of rules for anything like building a pre-fabricated bookcase being smaller than War and Peace!

But in my specific case I say, bring on the next person who wants me to buy a ticket for the Opera, I’m prepared!  I think.


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