A battle won, but maybe not the War …
The struggle of oldies against the relentless tide of smart technology is eternal. Mine began some nearly four decades ago when a VHS recorder engineer arrived chez nous to install the new-fangled machine and casually asked whether we had any children – simply because widely-received opinion had it that young minds were more ‘open’ to understanding new technology than our 30-ish ones.
Then again, at the time our new family addition was just eighteen months old and so this wheeze barely left the ground.
Many years later I bought a new car and could make no progress with the bewildering handbook on how to ‘grab & retain’ radio stations on its hi-fi system.
One day when son aged about 17 was home from school I asked if he could assist.
He jumped into the passenger seat beside me, threw the handbook I gave him into the back seat and said “Let’s start her up and see what we can find …” and in less than five minutes had ‘grabbed’ BBC Radios 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 … Classic FM … Capital … Smooth Radio … and something else, which was about four stations more than I would ever need.
When it comes to computers the Microsoft system is an annoying disaster area.
With typewriters, in setting up a document, you always could set your margins and sub-heading exactly where and how you wanted.
Why?
Because the typewriter only ever did what you wanted, no less no more. Perfect. Why change what works?
Instead, with a Word document, to this day the ‘system’ tries to anticipate what you’re attempting and presumably ‘improve it’. No, it doesn’t!
When, for example, I want to present a set of Minutes of a meeting and want to head different subjects as ‘A. – B. – C. etc., with numbered indented items underneath, Microsoft’s won’t allow you to do that in the manner you want them to appear. Instead, it indents the margins how it wants … and leaves you floundering, trying to ‘trick’ the system into doing what you want, a task that 75% of the time proves impossible.
With smartphones (I own a Sony Xperia powered by Android) when I’m on a call and another incomer makes itself known, a screen pops up offering me to either ‘Hold’ or ‘End Call’ – and I never know what to do.
Which bloody call are they talking about – the one I’m on, or the one that’s trying to reach me?
I then get muddled and end up killing one or the other, 95% of the time (inevitably) the one that I didn’t want to kill. To this day I’ve never mastered that situation.
Something else that drives me nuts is when I start a call, or am trying to leave a voicemail for someone … and then try to end it and return to a blank screen … instead, when I get to the blank screen, I can hear the call that I thought I’d ended carrying on in the background and, whichever button I then press or attack, there’s nothing I can do to kill it!
However – and the reason for my post this morning – yesterday I had a small degree of success on the oldie’s war with technology front line, viz. one (assisted) win and one score-draw.
A couple of months ago I stopped at a motorway services area and bought an earpiece speaker-device (essentially an alternative form of headphones) for my smartphone.
It ‘paired’ with my smartphone via the Bluetooth system immediately and proved a brilliant success. For the first time in my life I could leave my phone on my computer desk and walk up and down my front room (my preferred practice when on a call) without having to lug my phone with me wherever I went … er, within the earpiece’s 10 metres range, of course.
Subsequently, a fortnight ago I bought a ‘in-car speakerphone device’, the better to enable me to use my smartphone in my new (well not new, but de facto ‘a half-decent value for money ten year old Audi’) car.
With trepidation, I then tried to ‘pair’ the one with the other. Again – joy of joy! (I must be getting the hang of technology at last)! – it connected first time and to this day still works perfectly.
However, not so my smartphone earpiece.
Coincidentally time-wise – and therefore I presume literally – the moment my in-car speakerphone set up began working perfectly, the ‘connection’ between my earpiece device and my smartphone died. And would not return, however many times (and they were umpteen) I tried to ‘pair’ it again.
Yesterday, in frustration, I went to my local computer shop around the corner. Could they help? An eighteen year old kid was assigned to my case and sat with me on a sofa in the corner. He fired up both items – and lo and behold! – my earpiece was immediately reconnected. Don’t ask me how he did it – I don’t know … and couldn’t explain it to you even if I did.
Anyway – that was Strike One!
Strike Two concerned the sooper-dooper dictaphone I bought from Curry’s about six months ago. (I say it’s Strike Two but it’s really a case of nothing has gone wrong, so far).
For a guided tour of Normandy I’m going on in a few weeks, I am preparing a little research project by ‘recording’ some tapes deposited with the Imperial War Museum by a soldier who took part in the D-Day Landing on 6th June 1944.
The dictaphone came with a related software system I installed on my computer. By trial and error I managed to upload the tapes into the software and file them there.
Yesterday I began trying to ‘burn’ them onto blank CDs (2 tapes per CD because that’s the maximum time-limit capacity of each CD). Last night I managed to create 3 CDs (that’s 6 tapes’ worth of recordings) – half my overall task.
So far everything is perfect. I’ll be able to play these CDs out through my in-car stereo system, not least for the benefit of my fellow Normandy travellers when we make our trip.
Of course, I’m only 50% of the way to Heaven in this quest.
Today is another day and I’m mindful of Murphy’s Law … i.e. if it is theoretically (technically) possibly for something to go wrong, one day it inevitably will.
I’ll report further from the new technology front line as, when and if …
