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Showing posts with label Ford Prefect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ford Prefect. Show all posts

Friday, December 29, 2017

I want what I want!




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Was it in a film or in an American TV series that a frustrated father was berating his teenage daughter not only for the length of her telephone calls to her boyfriend but also because of the fact that they appeared not to speak to each other for long periods of time on the phone as well.  On being asked what she was doing she replied, “We were listening to each other’s breathing!”



Ah!  Times of innocence and being connected to the network via a visible cable, which was never long enough to go very far from the connexion point!



When we first had a telephone it was a black Bakelite affair with a proper handset and a dial.  It also had a little pull out tray at the bottom for Important Numbers.  The lead always got impossibly convoluted and twisted, but it was great fun (well, I was very young) to let it dangle and untwist itself in a sort of mad twirl.  We also had a party line: this meant that sometimes you picked up the phone and somebody else was already speaking because the line was shared, then you had to put the phone down (you never listened, because you simply didn’t) and waited a while to try again.  In those dark days you were lucky to get a line (even shared) from the GPO and you had no choice of the design or colour of the phone.  So there.



Resultado de imagen de ford prefect 1950s
Just as we were privileged to have a phone, so also we were one of the few families in Dogfield Street in Cathays in Cardiff in the 1950s to have a car: KDU 966 - a second hand Ford Prefect complete with running boards and ill fitting windows.  I might also add before you get carried away by this tale of luxury, that we also had an outside loo and the bath was in the kitchen.  But as an only child I had a room of my own - though I’ve never really written like Virgina Woolf, in spite of this early advantage.  I might add, in case you are wondering, that the bath was normally covered by a hinged surface attached to the kitchen wall, with two little curved stumps to fit to the edge of the curled bath side and a tasteful curtain to hide the fact that there was a bath there at all.  This is where I would eat my breakfast and all meals that were not family meals.



The telephone was sited in the hallway and served not only my parents, but also my paternal grandparents who lived upstairs.  It was special and was not used on a daily basis.  It was there.  A thing.  Not something to be owned or regarded as an essential part of domestic life.



How times have changed!



I was encouraged to think about such things because, during my post swim cup of tea in my local leisure centre, I was sitting next to a table at which a young girl was obviously doing some school homework on a dreary looking A4 photocopied sheet.  Nothing remarkable about that, but she was doing the work with her mobile phone propped up against her sports bag and with one of her friends chatting away on a video call.  What made it remarkable was that the girl behaved as through her friend was literally opposite her, with whole minutes of work being done with no talk between the two of them apart from the odd casual remark.  It was extraordinary in being so ordinary.  I am not sure that I would be able to carry on the odd conversation with a mini-Lilliputian on a screen with the artless, everyday confidence (yes, I am, I am positive that I would not be able to) that the girl did.



My mind then spiralled away on tangents about concepts of ‘being alone’ and how difficult that is today; what the word ‘present’ actually means; what is ‘real’ contact?  And so on.



But where my mind ended up was with a failure of technology.



Resultado de imagen de pebble steel
Years ago I failed to resist yet another blandishment of Kickstarter and put my name down for a new type of watch called Pebble.  It was a smart watch and linked to your mobile phone was able to give you all sorts of notifications from your emails and other bits and pieces of social media.  Importantly for me it was waterproof AND had an ‘always on’ screen.  OK, it was in black and white, but it worked AND the battery life was exceptional.



When an improved ‘Steel’ version was available, I bought (confusingly) a gold steel watch which also was able to display things in a washed out colour.  It worked.



When the third iteration of this successful watch was posted on Kickstarter, with a larger screen, I enthusiastically supported its production.



And it didn’t happen.



Pebble or at least the people who made Pebble a reality were bought up by another smartwatch company and gradually the backup for the whole Pebble brand began to fray.



Pebble was a successful watch.  I have struggled to find its equal (at the price) especially with the ‘always-on’ and swimming proof aspects and feel frustrated - because it has not stopped my buying watches in the vain hope that I will find something to match it!



Resultado de imagen de zetime
My latest watch has actual hands, not virtual, which are operated through a tiny hole cut into the smart watch screen, so that there is an ‘always on’ element, but the smartwatch bits do not work as well as the Pebble did.



I have other watches in the pipeline, including one smart watch that doesn’t need batteries because it is recharged by heat from the body of the wearer!  That is in the future.  In the present, I have returned to my original Pebble.  Well, the second one.



And what a delight it is.  I can read its display without my glasses; it’s always on; it counts my swim lengths; it is back lit when I need it to be; it fits; some of the aps are still working; it’s light and easy on the wrist - and it’s not made any more?



This is where Capitalism let’s you down: something that does too much for too little money.  Pebble is almost the opposite of Apple and therefore it has been taken out.  Pebble still thrives in Geekdom, people are still writing programs and aps for the device and there is a ‘community’ of users - but I wanted more and would have supported future developments of the brand.  But to get the same I will now have to pay far, far more.  Yes, you can get smart watches for twenty quid and they have full colour screens and what not, but some aspect is always missing - usually the waterproof element or the always on. 



Technology giveth and Commercialism taketh away!



But my Pebble is on my wrist.  I count that as hi-tec recycling!