Day: 18 April 2021

Weeknotes #3

Week commencing Monday, 12 April 2021

  • Blood test this week; hopefully nothing important; a text from the Doctor and a follow-up consultation in a couple of weeks suggests nothing urgent was found.
  • First night out with friends in Streatham. £28.56 for a bottle of wine is much more expensive than the ones in the fridge, but it was nice – if cold – to be outside.
  • The heated Gillet that I bought kind of worked: it kept my back very warm but made me realise how cold my arms and legs were.
  • Initial planning for an evening out with former colleagues. It would be the first time I have been into Central London this year, which isn’t surprising but still feels odd to write.
  • We’re trying The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+ but I am struggling with the new Captain America. To be fair, we are only on Episode 2.
  • The weather was lovely at the weekend so, on Saturday, we sat outside at the front of the house which gets the late afternoon soon. Met some street-neighbours who we’ve never said hello to before. Quite lovely.
  • Sunday we walked to Merton Abbey for some lunch and a walk around the shops. All the craft stalls were back, and it was also great to be outside in the sunshine.

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

Somewhere, Someday, Somebody, Somehow

Writing with a pen and paper at 37,000 feet instead of on the array of digital gadgetry that surrounds me is quite liberating.

By the wonders of modern man, I am writing these words on board a plane – BA794 to Helsinki for all you plane spotters – using a pen and a page in my work diary (the pen is PaperMate and the page is for the 4th April and, yes, I know it’s not 4th). I will, I imagine, be transcribing it later this evening in a hotel in Helsinki.

Amusingly, here at 37,00 feet on an Airbus A320, I have an array of digital equipment sat under the seat in front of me. A laptop: too big to open, and anyway, the battery is nearly dead as I used it with a Wi-Fi hotspot in the terminal. My phone/PDA: it really doesn’t look good opening a phone on a plane, as there’s a tendency for other passengers to think you’re switching it on. Besides, the built-in keyboard is useless for this kind of lengthy writing. I also have my MP3 player and a camera, but neither of them is much use for writing on. So I sit, with a trusty old pen, scribbling something I will later type. I assume, if you’re reading this, that I have actually typed it up.

I also have a small jungle of cables with me. Chargers and connectors to allow all the various devices to communicate. In fact, I think they are taking a disproportionate amount of luggage space. Everything has to be charged: the phone, the MP3, and the camera. Nothing seems to work on a trusty pair of AAs anymore. I am not sure why this is, but it’s as frustrating as hell.

So, I have to ask myself why I bother with all this gadgetry? Is any of it going to make my life any easier? Sadly, I don’t think it will and – to be honest – it’s not much fun anymore. I just want items that make travelling easier, and I don’t have the money for a private jet. Has anybody solved this conundrum?

I do have a love of this kind of technology: I know that I am one of the people who believe it has the power to liberate, but, frankly, right now, all the competing vendors are not getting it correct, and I am not sure why. Somewhere, someday, somebody will get it right. I only hope that I have a hand in it – somehow.