Phone Blinkers

For lunch I nipped to the Mean Eyed Can for a couple of Empanadas and a diet coke (see here), and found it almost amusing the number of people sat in the sun, or walking but engrossed in the mobile devices almost oblivious to anything else.

While I listen to music (and now radio) on my phone I very seldom do anything that distracts me for walking or whatever. If I want to take a picture or video I stop and make sure that I am not blocking anyone or at risk of running into anything.

While listening to John Niven he told me about a book "Makin' Tracks" by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein that resulted in him getting into Television.

So although phones are very useful they do seem to act as blinkers for so many people, blinding them to all that is going on around them. Having said that I have been guilty the odd time of concentrating too much on my phone and nearly walked into to a person or stationary object.

Going Mobile

It's a hell of a long time since my daughter Juliet palmed off her old mobile to me introducing me to having a mobile phone. Since then they have metamophosed from handsets with the hus plus of being able to text people, and if you were lucky actually send a picture to the hand held computers that we have now.

You still see the odd person with the old Nokias (thatill work)  or the Doro's (but even they have a smart version now) but I am still waiting for my phaser / teleporter Star Trek one to turn up.

It used to be that if you were meeting up with someone you would specify a time and place and you would all meet up  and all will be fine. No it's texting ,Google Calendars , messaging and the like. We often don't even use our phones and phones prefering to use some form of messaging, and there is an absolute deluge of them.

It's another glorious morning so I will get off, feeling very good although my left shoulder is still painful, but that should be rectified when I go through the physiotherapy.

This is an excuse to play The Who's "Going Mobile" from one of my favourite of their albums, "Who's Next".

Have a brilliant Saturday everyone.

Running Out - Power and Signals

 Was just thinking habout how reliant we are becoming on mobile devices and how companies are pushing us to become more reliant on mobile devices. We can use them to pay for things, watch things , communicate in a number of ways but they are reliant on two things, power and a decent signal. So you may have your phone phone and think you can use it as your bus ticket, pay for your overpriced coffee or whatever but if the battery runs out then that's you stuck. Similarly of the signal drops then you may be stuck again although some apps provide on device data.

I use my Sony Xperia XA for recording my walking and yesterday went out without it. Incidentally the Pacer software since I installed it has only possibly failed to record properly one, and that may have been my fault, so I am well impressed by it's reliability.  This was one of the few times I have returned to get hold of my phone , mainly because I wasn't sure if I'd left it in the house or actually lost it. I piced it up and the power was on 12% . By the time I got to my destination it was still going on 2% power but must have switched off soon after. I didn't have a back up power pack and although I have one power cable which I could have used to recharge it on the bus, it was in another jacket.

Sometimes a pen and paper is actually better, and although I have the Kindle app on my phone and an actual Kindle Fire they are still dependent on power and signals.

I'm not sure what the answers are to these first world problems, unless someone makes distributed power a reality. Imageine how cool it would be if power was as distributable as a radio , tv or mobile signal. We would truly be a wireless society then although even more vulnerable to losing the source of keeping us up and running.

This could possibly be even extended to replacement body parts, imagine a heart running on distributed power. but I am really flying off  into the outer reaches of science fiction here and I am no Brian Aldiss, and I was introduced to the concept of distributed power by another of my favourite authors F Paul Wilson. I think it was Legacies. one of the excellent Repairman Jack series.

Anyway it's Sunday and I need to relax , so it has to be "The Power" by Snap. Have a good day everybody.

K.I.S.S.

I think it's an acronym. Keep It Short and Simple. It's the way I've tried to live my life. Trying to keep things as simple as possible , so that I stand a chance of understanding them. A primary school teacher once told me that a genius was a person who could see and explain things in the simplest terms.

I always use this analogy when try trying to argue that even the most complicated thinks can be reduced to a simple construction. The most complex Lego creations are still just a series of little bricks which can be rearranged into any shape you desire, and that's most complex things you can imagine are just a huge combination of simple things.

The computer or smartphone you are using to view this is just a huge collection of zeroes and ones, binary switches, on / off gates that are added together to show you the most amazing things.

Anyway  keep things simple and you can keep them in check and make sure the do what you want them to do. It's time for bed for me so I am going to sleep

Keep It Wicca

Also an excuse to have Iron Maiden's The Wicker Man in Lego , five years in the making and it;s just lego. But a good song referencing a truly great film , featuring Christopher Lee in one of his favourite rols

My Own Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Many years ago Douglas Adams wrote about a book. The book had on it's cover the words "Don't Panic"  and was updated by various researchers. Earth's entry read "Harmless" , shortly to be upgraded to "Mostly Harmless" by researcher Ford Prefect!

The book is what ts says containing useful information about where you are , a bit like the Lonely Planet Guides today . Crammed with useful information about everything and I realised that anyone who has a reasonably smart phone has their own Hitch Hikers Guide in their hand!!

H2G2 was the online incarnation of the book but obviously it was still about Earth as barring the odd trip to the moon , man is quite content to stay here . There is still plenty to do. Anyway you can see what by phone looks like now either side of this bit , one locked , one unlocked.



I can do all these things with it:

• Make and take phone calles 
• Send and receive texts
• Be involved in Conferences
• Take Pictures
• Look up information that others have stored
• Watch Videos
• Listen to radio shows and music
• Find out where I am
• Find out where I'm going
• Schedule my time
• Listen to music
• Record videos and music
• I can't teleport .... yet

So we all have our own guide , here in our hands.


How lucky are we?

Superstition

This is my fourteenth post of the year , and as soon as I'd written my thirteenth I thought I best write another one quickly , then couldnt think of anything to write about . I still can't but obviously started thinking about how society conditions us to be superstitious even though usually there's no basis to do whatever you need to do to cure it.

Take the number thirteen , various reasons for this one being that there were thirteen people at the the last supper and the thirteenth person was either Jesus (who got crucified) or Judas (who betrayed Jesus) , but surely all the others could have been the thirteenth person , then what about the people serving etcetera.

Also you get thirteen loaves or cakes in a bakers dozen , in case one is not up to standard. Most of the time all thirteen will be up to standard so in this case thirteen is a very lucky number.

Then there's don't walk under ladders , well that's surely rooted in common sense as ladders aren't exactly stable and if someone's up there they could drop something on you , got that from an argument between Batman and Robin in the sixties TV series where Robin comes up with various superstitions and Batman explains how they may actually have some foundation.

Then there the magpie rhyme , lets face if you see a single magpie , anything that happens like missing a bus , or the lights changing to red could be interpreted as sorrow , similar to horoscopes. Incidentally , apparently astrolgy apps are very big on smart phones , although that's not surprising given the sort of people I've seen with smartphones. Anyway I've now done fourteen posts this year so it won't bother me til this time next year.

Six Point Eight Millon Phone Activations On Christmas Day

Thats more than one phone for every ten people in Britain , given the saturation of mobile phones in this country , that's quite amazing , obviously sales campaigns are being amazingly successful . Apple are the greatest marketers with the abiltity to create want and need in people , and their target market don't even know why they want the damned thing (iPhones and iPads especially) , hell I nearly bought an iPad so that's how good they are!

Anyway this must create a lot of disused handsets which companies like Boots will take off your hands and give you a couple of quid in return. Anyway I didn't get a mobile phone , my trusty San Francisco 1 still going strong and enabling me to make calls , text , surf the next and take bad pictures!!

Ghost of Christmas Present

It's amazing how much we have available to us today , how much we take for granted. Today I had lunch with my girls with a choice of excellent Sounth American food in pleasant surroundings at Las Iguanas in Newcastle . Within a stones throw of that are Pani's (Italian) , Dabbawal (Indian) , Hei Hei (Chinese) , The Bacchus (English) , Simply Greek (Greek) , Little Saigon (Vietnamese) , El Torrero (Spanish) and that's just for lunch , and by no means the only restaurants or cafes to eat at. As a kid yohurt and pizza were the height of exotica and if you were really adventurous you could try a Vesta Beef Curry or Paella!

As well as the food technology gives us things like catch up TV , mobile smart phones amd timy music players that will hold most normal people's music collections. Never has life been more convenient with such choice. Despite all the golom merchants predicting global coolapse , the reality is that we probably never had it so good. And it feels good at Christmas

Me and My Content Delivery Device (A Short History of Me & Mobile Phones)

About ten years ago my daughter forced on me an old Pay as you go Motorola phone, and through the years I eventually got a contract , a bike , and then became employed by my present company who provide me with a phone and pay my bill.

When I started I saw article that one of the big cheeses in Orange had hoped for a 25% take up of mobile phones by the population - at that time it was around  130% (a number of people have multiple phones , personal and business). Apart from being able to make calls , you can communicate by text, take photographs , send pictures , browse the internet and interact with social networks as well as playing music and watching video. The latter option could bring some truth to the phrase "It'll Make You Go Blind!!" as watching films of a certain kind on such a small screen cannot be good for your eyes!!

Thr rise of smart phones (big hitters being Apple / iPhone and Google's Android) mean that phones can do anything bar teleportation.. Apples main failing is that you need a PC with iTunes on but they do the job , though the iPad is a big iPhone you cant make calls on!!.

Anyway here's my progression:

• Samsung Tocco - My first touch screen phone - generally very good apart from the fact if you had the number pad on and put it to your ear it started pressing keys and cut you off.
• Nokia X6 - Nokia have great cameras but a terrible operating system and it wmanaged to wipe my contacts twice so it went in exchange for ..
• LG Chocolate - A Gorgeous Looking phone , absolutely brilliant until you switch it on!! This went in exchange for
• LG 505 - Worse than the Chocolate and without the looks
• Orange San Francisco - Android Phone , processor to slow , camera rubbish , but dirt cheap and brilliat in every other department - I do love this phone despite it's few drawbacks . Still have it and can't see anything I want to upgrade it for. Bought myself a tiny Panasonic camera to make up for the picture shortfall

I still can't believe how far mobiile phones have moved on since thefirst ones came out....