Digital Things

Top tip: If you’re going to get a wife, try to get one with a birthday somewhere reasonably far from Christmas. A wife with a birthday in December will require double the effort when attempting to come up with gift ideas, and will not compensate by providing double the number of hints.

Larger ‘combination’ gifts are rarely acceptable solutions.

Today’s lunchtime shopping reconnaissance yielded a couple of ideas, but no answers.

I know what I’m getting though. I wrote a song about it. It goes…

I’m getting a digital ca-a-amera-a!
I’m getting a digital ca-a-amera-a!
I’m getting a digital ca-a-amera-a!
[repeat, no fade]

It’s weird how these things turn out. The missus took a large number of photos of our little nine-month old niece on film and the vast majority of shots didn’t turn out. This was an expensive mistake since getting film developed is a pricey endeavour.

The conversation on the train into town yesterday turned to the advantages that digital cameras have in this area. If a photo doesn’t turn out, just delete it and try again. Once you have a bunch of pictures that you’re happy with, just take them along to Boots and get them ‘developed’ just like regular photos. They’re even printed on photographic paper and will last as long as regular photos will.

This appealed to the missus greatly. She saw the advantages in terms of taking good photos of our baby niece that will turn out - that can be presented like a photograph and framed on the wall. This is different to the appeal that affects me, who is a big geek who loves technology for technology’s sake as much as I like taking good photographs.

My wife is a kind of litmus test for the alkaline of practical useage against the acid of my love of technological wonder.

There is a crossover of my geekboy digital fascinations and my wife’s interest in a camera that could eliminate unwanted photographs. This means that all of these advantages are now within the reach of the man in the street, both in terms of the understanding of the technologies and in price.

We were talking about digital cameras in this way as we wandered around Glasgow yesterday. The subject seemed to be punctuated as we walked into Marks and Spencers past an old granny (Must have been about seventy years old) punching buttons on her Nokia 3310 like a pro.

It wasn’t just cameras that got talked about. The idea of owning an iPod appeals greatly to my wife. Since she’s not the least bit interested in computers or anything technological, there must be a genuine use for a device that can hold large amounts of music and that can play it back in a simple way.

The iPod is often held up as some kind of design icon because of its beautiful simplicity. There are, however, two elements at work here that are turning these increasingly complex digital devices into successes.

The first is of course, the simplifying of the technology. Make it so simple that you can pick what you want from a menu; Walk into Boots and see a sign that says ‘Bring in your compact flash card and we’ll develop your digital film, 30p per photograph’. It’s simple and affordable.

The second comes from the other end - knowledge rising to meet the technology. The geeky techno-language that has invaded the shelves of Dixons and a million letters to Santa is being acquired, learned and understood by the computer-shy likes of my wife. People’s understanding of previously technical language is rising to meet what they want to be able to do with technology.

Yesterday’s conversation contained words that my wife has never uttered before, let alone wanted to understand. “MP3″ - three letters printed on a hundred-and-one gadgets in shop windows. A word that came from an almost arbitrary selection of three little characters designed to represent a file that contained the sound track of MPEG compressed video. “Hard-disc”. “Bit-rate”. “Gigabytes”. “Memory”. “USB”. “Bluetooth”. “CCD”.

“Why’s optical zoom better than digital zoom then?”
“Well… you know what pixels are?”
“Yeah”

Didn’t even need to explain “Pixels”.

I guess this sort of thing goes on all the time and always has, i.e. previously complex technology winding up in the sweaty palms of Joe Public. It’s just curious to see it go on so clearly in front of your eyes.

Where was I? Oh yeah…

I’m getting a digital ca-a-amera-a!
I’m getting a digital ca-a-amera-a!
…

Add comment December 1st, 2003

CNPS

On Saturday I managed to spot number 25 in my game of CNPS. The idea is to spot every number in the old-style UK car registration system from 1 to 999 consecutively. Read the linked rules page for more on how to play and the importance of that word ‘consecutively’.

It really is a pointless game. One week after reading the rules and thinking ‘that’s a pointless game’ I spotted number 1 as I crossed the road and on turning my head spotted number 2 coming the other way. The following day, I spotted number 3 and from then on I was cursed. I felt blessed with the power to spot consecutively numbered license plates with ease. I now know that I have to complete the game. There’s no way round it. I’ve been forced onto this path by fate and the numbers must be found.

For the most part it’s been easy, but I am becoming more and more convinced that there is an evil force in the universe. There is a malicious hand at work, reaching up from hell to move cars around and turn my head at crucial moments. This hand of evil taunts me with non-consecutive number sequences cruelly close to my current target numbers. It is an acursed game.

Number 13 took weeks to find. It almost made me give up. I had convinced myself that the number had been omitted from UK licenses for either superstitious reasons or for its similarity to the letter ‘B’ when written in certain ways. Eventually the mystical 13 was spotted on a Beetle with a plate that had a fancy-script style plate obviously designed by the hand of Beelzebub to be difficult to read properly and thusly cast doubt into the mind of the CNPS player, (By the rules if you have any doubt that you read the number correctly then it must be discounted).

24 and 25 have been similarly awkward. Both have taken weeks to accomplish. Shortly after starting the search for 24, I spotted 25, 26 and 27 all consecutively within the space of one cruel hour. What more evidence do you need of malicious spiritual intervention?

The workings of the underworld also seem to decree certain cornerstones of evil that affect the workings of CNPS. If, say you are looking for 7, you will see high levels of 8s. Once the 7 is spotted, the 8s will disappear.

Also, once the 7 is spotted - you will spot several 7s one after the other. After weeks of searching for a 25, I saw three of them on Saturday afternoon.

Luckily I saw a 26 last week at the train station car park. The village is small, and I will hunt it down. There are not many places where it can hide.

Add comment December 1st, 2003