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Showing posts with label connectors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label connectors. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

By his gadgets shall ye know him!





Do not judge a man by the number of leads he has.  

If you counted up the power supplies, connectors and assorted leads that I have acquired then there should be literally no area in the house in which to live as all available space should be taken up with electrical devices that presumably came with the leads.  And, while there are vast numbers of ‘things’ that need power (I hesitate to count the number of them that I can see from where I am typing) there is still, just, space to live which is not occupied by a shining metallic carapace or something with a keyboard or grille or screen or . . . but I am already beginning to count the machines that I can see and that way lies madness.
Or is it rather a sort of madness that allows you to get rid of (or put away somewhere) defunct machines that are too expensive to throw away, and yet still keep to hand the power cord or connector as a sort of precious souvenir?

I willingly admit that gadgets, especially electronic gadgets, manage to occupy my attention with an ease that astonishes even myself.  All Aldi and Lidl have to do on their Central Aisles of Interesting Stuff is offer a brush or mop or any other sort of domestic appliance with the addition of a battery and a sensor and I’m sold.

I once bought a kitchen washing up brush that looked like a gigantic electric toothbrush and thought to myself, “Now, this is ideal for all that washing up that I do when I don’t place the cups and dishes in the dishwasher.”  And there you have the central paradox of my obsession.  Because I do place the cups and dishes in the dishwasher, and I don’t and will not wash up when I have a dishwasher specifically for that job.  Nevertheless, I bought the thing, and I have used it once.  Ineffectively.  The dishwasher does a better job.  And, frankly, for those burnt in gungy bits, it will take more than a giant’s Oral-b toothbrush to dislodge them.

Does this example of self-knowledge discourage me?  No, it doesn’t even deflect me.  Gadget freaks like myself, live in fear of what we know as “The Passing By” – in other words, not buying something that looks sort-of plausible, and finding out that it was absolutely essential to genteel living when you hadn’t got it.  It all amounts to a variant on the Catch-22 situation where you have to buy things that you don’t want in case they might have turned out to be really very good and an obvious buy.  And yes, I do realize that the verb tenses in that last sentence do not make strict chronological sense, but that, I fear, is part of the point.  The backward blame that gadget freaks are known to indulge in when they have ignored something that Freakdom acclaims as indispensable.

The leads though are a hangover from a different and more distant period in our national psyche before planned obsolescence became the True Path of unfeeling capitalism.


Resultado de imagen de keep calm and carry on

During the Second World War the Ministry of Information (or something equally Orwellian) issued slogans, catchphrases, concentrated wisdom, call them what you will, like “Keep Calm and Carry On!”  A phrase, by the way, that was intended originally for use inside a ministry and not for general consumption, but now the phrase has become more widely known that it ever was at the time of its conception.


Resultado de imagen de keep mum shes not so dumb

“Dig for Victory!” was another one; “Careless talk costs lives”; “Loose lips cost ships”; “We can do it!” and so on.  My personal favourite is one of a voluptuous blond lounging in a chair, sheathed in sex, apparently merely eye-candy, but actually listening to the military men by whom she is surrounded with the tag line, “Keep mum, she’s not so dumb!”  Deconstructing the levels of meaning and social comment in that one must keep students of such things awake at nights, probably with delight!  I’m not sure if “Make do and mend” was a war slogan, but it was a definite piece of ready philosophy during my childhood.

Outside the back door of my grandparent’s house in Maesteg was a sort of shed built into the neighbour’s wall that was referred to as The Morgue.  My grandfather was a retired accountant and was painstaking in everything he did: from gardening to impeccable copperplate handwriting; from fire lighting to dressing; from politics to cigarette rolling.  He did nothing hasty and everything had its place.  And The Morgue was where everything that didn’t fit (in size or use) inside the house was housed.

Used tobacco tins were part of the filing system of The Morgue.  Pins, screws, nails, washers, bits, pieces, things – all found their place inside a neatly labelled box and placed on a shelf.  String was not thrown away, it was kept wound around equally cut sticks for the different types of binding that were recovered.  Nothing that had the possibility of a future use was thrown away, the philosophy was, “That might come in useful some time.”

Although I knew the word ‘morgue’ from an early age, I had no conception that it meant anything other than the shed next to the outside toilet against the neighbour’s wall that contained the things that were (temporarily) not wanted.  It was only much later that I learned of the more gruesome meaning of the word, and by that time I was able to appreciate the use of metaphor.

So, if anyone (other than my good self) is to blame for the writhing masses of cables that snake through the rooms of our house, it is my maternal grandfather.  Cables are, self-evidently, of use.  And, to be frank, their number reflects the galloping use of planned obsolescence that leaves poor consumers floundering in their increasingly desperate attempts to stay abreast of the latest fad of standardization.  It is as if the titanic battle between VHS and Betamax never took place, and certainly little was learnt from that fight to the death for a format!

I have recently (while looking for something else) revived my Kindle, iPad, Bose speaker and computer: all of which need different leads and connectors, or in the case of my mobile phone, a converter connector!  It is hardly a surprise to see my chair covered in various wires and cables like some sort of unimaginative foliage!  And don’t get me started on Bluetooth, where the cable-less needs of that system necessitate a whole range of unique powering solutions for the various pieces of audio equipment that I use!

It is with something approaching relief that I turn from the electronic zoo of slinky excess to the more stark delights of Catalan where, in the next month or so we might progress from the first, second and third person singular of the limited number of verbs to which we have been introduced to the delights of the plural!

Meanwhile there is vocabulary to be learned.