How technology has eased the path

In this information-ready era, there are so many things that our children will never have to face, that we did.

1. Mum not having a clue how to do a French braid. There's Youtube. And now she's watched the French braid video, you can browse together the many other complicated braiding possibilities. Many!
2. Going to the public library to get a book out on a topic for a project at school, only to find that there were two relevant books, and guess what? They've both been taken out by other children. Because there were two books and thirty children. 
3. Not knowing what a rude word means. Not finding it in the dictionary. Being too embarrassed to ask your Mum or a friend. That's what Google is for. It might not even be a rude word. Just a super-cool one. Urban Dictionary will tell you.
4. Not getting a joke. Why is everyone laughing, and you didn't understand it? Again, Google.
5. Sitting in a cafe on your own. Whether it was filling in time, or waiting for a late friend, there used to be an exquisite awkwardness about being on your own in a cafe. Do you nip out and buy a newspaper to read? Or do you carry a paperback in your handbag, for just such moments as this? Do you fiddle endlessly with your coffee? Do you go to the loo - again - to fill in a few minutes? This next generation will never have to worry. They have their phones.
6. The indecision as to whether to buy a Filofax or not. Filofaxes polarised us. They were either the ultimate cool, showing that you had lots of friends - in fact, so many of them that you had to spend serious money on a leather-bound book to keep all their details in. Or they were just too cliche for words, and you stuck with your old address book, which had a picture of Salisbury Cathedral on the front. There was no half-measure. Either you were a Filofax person, or you weren't. But whichever you were, you were expected to show great sympathy when you heard the story of someone's friend or sister who had lost their Filofax, or had it stolen. All those friends' details stored carefully between the leather covers, gone! I suppose that is one thing that has been carried forward into the technological era, and intensified. The lost phone. That must be much worse than the lost Filofax.
7. Endless conversations devoted to giving directions. How did we manage before mobile phones? 
8. The need to be punctual. If you couldn't contact the person you were meeting, then being 5 or maybe 10 minutes late was ok, but you wouldn't expect them to be happy for longer than that (see 5 above). No mobile phones meant no potential for last-minute apologies, or re-arranging of venue to fit in with your inefficient travel plans. Maybe this one is a loss rather than a gain of modern life.

Can you think of any others?

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Textpat Mum

Still on my blogging break, but just had to share this story with you.

The way technology makes decisions for you annoys me. For example, I can't drive my car unless I am wearing the seat belt. This is annoying if I've parked, undone the seat belt, and then decide I'd like to edge forward another inch or two. The car just won't move, unless I buckle up again.

Another example: my phone automatically uploaded all my google contacts, even though I never asked it to. This is rubbish, because it means that I have a large number of contacts, whereas I only use the phone for calls and texts to people in my immediate life. (No, I'm not boasting about that number of contacts; it's just that the phone has uploaded anyone, everyone, who's ever sent me an email to which I've replied - or that's what it seems like).

Thus it was, dear Bloggy Friends, that one of my Bloggy Friends who lives in Chicago received a short burst of texts from me today:

"How about john n natasha? freya in poppy's class"

"McNabs? two daughters and know the andersons. u like peter who talks to u after chapel. wrights? john and roger wld get on"

"So how about smithsons collingwoods andersons and wrights?"

Poor Expat Mum was a little confused, until the final one shed just a little light:

"cld u find out when guest night is and if too late to take 6 or 8 places"

and she realised that it was me, trying to text my husband, whose name (without giving away any anonymity here) might mean that he is next to her in my contacts list.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of annoying technology, what about spell-checkers? In an email chat with another Bloggy Friend this afternoon, I was amused when she told me that having her sons at different schools worked out ok, "but it's a piano when it comes to pickup".

12 Days of Blogging

Everybody is at it. Hot Cross Mum, The Potty Diaries, Nappy Valley in New York and Expat Mum. They've all come up with versions of the 12 Days of Christmas. I wanted to join their club, so I've done one of my own, about blogging.

Incidentally I have, actually, already done a truncated version of the well-loved carol, counting down the body parts I've lost, but that was a long time ago: (all my hair, 4 wisdom teeth, 3 moles, 2 boobs, and a lymph node, I believe it went.)

Anyhoo, here is one about blogging. I'm going to cut to the chase, and start at the 12th day.

On the 12th day of Christmas, my bloggy friend sent to me:

12 Tumblrs Tumblring
11 DiggIts Digging
10 Blogger Updates
9 Wordpress Downloads
8 RSS feeds
7 Pics a-Flickr
6 Tweets re-tweeted
5 BritMums Live!
4 Angry Birds
3 Facebook Friends
2 Gurgle Loves
And a Rise in my Site Meteree!

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Quantum Jumping

Now then. The other day I was chatting to my younger brother on Skype. For some reason, his camera is at desk level and can't be moved, so I see a huge chin and big nostrils, and if he doesn't turn off the light behind him, it looks like he has a halo. Or perhaps since I saw him last summer he has turned into an angelic creature with a weird face. All things are possible.

Which brings me right to the heart of this post. Am I the only one, or is everyone else getting bombarded with adverts for Quantum Jumping? They're everywhere I go in my virtual life. They invade my gmail account. Whoever is organising the campaign must have a huge advertising budget (and no, this isn't a sponsored post, before you wonder).

This is what the Quantum Jumping website says:

The abundant you. The inventor you. The creative you. In alternate universes, everything you desire has already taken place. Tap into this infinite potential with Quantum Jumping...

Every decision you make in life causes a “split” in reality...

In these alternate universes, alternate versions of YOU are living out their lives...

And then:

This revelation may be a little hard to swallow...

Yup. That last one, I go with.

Help. I'm just getting to grips with the fact that something called 4G might exist. I'm not ready for alternative realities. Actually, and perhaps this is why I find Quantum Jumping a little threatening, I'm a really bad one for 'what if?'ing in my life. I have come to see that it's a very unproductive activity, so I've been trying to drop 'what if?' in favour of 'what next?' - a much more helpful approach. Quantum Jumping is the ultimate 'what if?'. Not only can you explore what hypothetically you might have been or done, but it seems that you can literally do so.

I asked my younger brother if he thought one day we'd be able to get beamed up and down by Skype, rather than just being able to see and hear each other through the medium of a screen. He said something about molecules.

So what do you think? Are you all getting the ads and links? Who is behind it all? Is it possible to explore our other virtual lives? Am I, perhaps, a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist, a supermodel or a kindergarten teacher, a hooker or a zookeeper, and I just don't know about it? And if we can hop about from one life to another, from real life to virtual life, will we all still need to go to Cyber Mummy to meet up?
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Google, Blogger, my dishwasher, and my ill child

Am I the only one who is getting fed up with Google? (Oh yes, you can always rely on me when it comes to being up there at the vanguard of blogging technology.)

First and foremost, I never know whether the word should have an initial capital or not. And is it different according to whether it's a noun or a verb? Do you write "I looked on Google" or "I looked on google"? Do you write "I Googled an old friend" or "I googled an old friend"?

Then there are the glitches. My Google Reader (ooh, initial caps there, it seems) now opens two copies of the blog I want to read when I click on it. I have no idea why. I didn't change any settings. It just started doing it. I'm annoyed.

A few days ago, again for no apparent reason, the format of my gmail page changed. I can't sign out from it. The words 'sign out' used to be in the top right hand corner, but where they were, there is now my name. If I click on my name, I get a drop-down list, which does have 'sign out' on it, but it won't let me click on it. If I try to, before I can get the cursor there, quick as a flash, it whisks the words away and reloads the page. I'm annoyed.

Blogger is full of glitches too, and they're getting worse. Does anyone else think so, or is this just me? I sometimes get an email notifying me of a comment on my blog, but that comment doesn't appear on my blog itself. I'm guessing that for every time I notice this, there are several when I don't pick it up. Life is short, Bloggy Peeps, and when I'm reading comments from my email account, I don't bother to go to my blog to check that they're there. It's just that I've noticed a few times. I'm annoyed.

Plus, our aged dishwasher needs new baskets. The plastic is all peeling off, leaving sharp rusty stumps, which I've cut myself on. The cutlery basket has holes in the bottom, so that if you don't stand the cutlery up in just the right way, it falls through. Because the model is such an old one, it would cost us $280 to replace the baskets. That's $150 for the bottom one and $130 for the top one. We can buy a new dishwasher for that. I'm annoyed.

AND... when children are off school because they are sick, you have to pick up work for them. There's always loads of it. Loads. It's like the teacher feels the need to punish you for letting your child get ill. (Note I say "you", not the child - because where do you think the burden of this task falls?) It's bad enough for one day, but if your child has been off for three, they pretty much have to write a couple of theses as they struggle back to health. I'm annoyed.