Saturday, October 26, 2013

The Pros and Cons of Blogging by iPad and Other Stories

I can be resistant to new technology, which is why I am writing my first blog from an iPad this morning. Overall the experience is going well. To be fair I have only written two lines, though.

The big transition is proving to be the one from clunky, touchable keys to on screen keys. I have always had a problem with this, being the kind of guy who is prone to fumbling and dropping. Don't meet me for lunch unless you fancy spending the rest of the day as a spaghetti hologram. I have no idea what a spaghetti hologram is but it sounds like fun. I fear I digressed again. The rather groovy thing about the Apple iPad is the fact it's great at correcting misspellings as you write them, which makes up for some of that fumbling. It even knows how to correct the spelling of groovy, a word which I always imagined anchored in the days when we hung out in VW campers, daubed with peace symbols, smoked pot and engaged in free lurve to the backdrop of San Francisco
Bay.  And suddenly I found a downside of the spell check - lurve became purveyors,



Come to think of it, I never had the chance to do that unwashed free love thing. I was born in the Summer of Love (yeah look it up, no clues) although I doubt if my parents realized it. They were too busy collecting Green Shield stamps to get money off tins of baked beans. I doubt if the hippies were rad enough to do that, which is probably just as we'll because you don't want a baked bean heavy diet if you are packed into a VW camper.

This brings me back to the march of technology, something the countermovement was keen to stifle. I am thinking back to the proud moment a teacher wheeled in a gigantic silver device and shoved a plastic brick in it. The school had invested more than $12000 in a video player. We watched the pre-mating ritual of hippos through the horizontal lines of Betamax. It was a great moment. It was the future. It felt awful, though.

I remember the time too when David C- he of the truly awful halitosis - set me up on the Worldwide Web for the first time, frightening me with names like Yahoo and Alta Vista. "Click through the categories," he implored.

"Can I do it later," I replied. I just wanted him to go away because his breath was about to make me pass out.

Colleagues crowded around me expressing amazement at this bold new world I had entered.

"Is there a category for pornography?" asked Willy Woodencock. "I'm doing an article about the effect of pornography on society and would like to see what's out there on the Information Super Highway."

"I doubt if it has that kind of thing," I replied. "It's the Information Super Highway, not the Smut Highway."

So, in some ways I was ahead of the curve and in some ways behind. I didn't get my hands on a BlackBerry until It was obsolete. It was like showing up in the age of gunpowder, boasting of my smart new weapon - the club. I will so be upgrading to an iPhone once I've sorted out those pesky parking fines.

Overall I'm thinking the transition to iPad is going quite well - it even adds apostrophes which is no mean thing in today's apostrophe illiterate society. This may catch on. At this rate I'll have to do something about my Sony recorder that comes equipped with real cassettes and 2x record time and tends to alarm people every time I pull it out.




15 comments:

  1. Remember the early days of the internet when you'd look up something on Lycos, for example Dave Matthews Band, click on it and it was porn? And then the windows would start stacking so you'd have to shut the computer off to make it stop?

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  2. Remember the days of AOL and pay by the minute? LOL

    Your post even has me considering 'new' technology. I'm so far behind the times - I may never catch up!

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    1. OMG pay by the minute. I do but wasn't on that much Yolanda. I know what you mean

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  3. The Smut Highway - perfect name!

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  4. Willy Woodencock? You knew him too? ;)
    When I 'do it' on my ipad it will NOT add photos to my post! I think you are well ahead of the curve here David!
    A spaghetti hologram. I like this :)

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    1. ah how can I forget Willy Woodencock, great name for the office purv Juliette

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  5. Talk about hitting home! It didn't help when I read this a.m. 33% of 2nd graders use iPads. Yipes, aren't they supposed to be into hula hoops?

    Hmm, did Willy have dual citizenship?

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    1. ha Kittie - he may well have gone. Yes my 8-year-old is far better on it than me.

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  6. I had an ipad for a short time issued to me by my place of employment. I never did quite get used to it, although it was entertaining in some ways. I didn't care for the touch screen keys at all! My cell phone is one from the dark ages, but I can use it to make calls and can make and receive texts from my sons so I'm happy. I'm a simple gal. Ha! :-)

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    1. Daisy - you can get little keyboards that attach to the iPad. I love them because I'm fast on a regular keyboard, but clumsy on the touch.

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  7. I remember logging into my work system from home (late 90s early 2000s) and walking over to fold a load of towels while waiting for everything to load.

    Good times were had by all.

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On Blog PTSD

Now then. What the heck. It seems I had forgotten about my blog completely rather than just neglecting it this time. To return after so long...