During the summer I had been reviewing technology:
However, being based up North the final contribution missed out for being unseasonal. So here it is proving it is always summer somewhere.
A Virtual Summer Continues….
G’Day Cobbers.
Well as summer is over - did it ever start you might say – I was in a dilemma how to continue contributing to the Summer Blog. Then, as a Geographer, it occurred to me to stop being parochial and embrace the global summer, which as I write is starting in the Southern Hemisphere. This is Back of Bourke so to capture the mood ZZ demanded an Australian makeover, so he now has an exciting antipodean screensaver/desktop. We even tweaked the word processor language to capture the flavour by using Aussie italics, as if you hadn’t guessed.
ZZ summers in “virtual” Australia
It is a while since I last updated you from Luddite Hill but this has been down to masses of work, leaving me like a lizard drinking, rather than Luddite stubbornness in refusing to use IT. I’m definitely not a bludger! ZZ has helped enormously. The last few weeks have been a round of marking on-line assignments for exam boards. Something I had been dreading for ages. However, thanks to ZZ it was not as arduous as expected. The touch-screen allowed me to scroll through assignments as if reading “real” copy and zip between reading and input screens with ease. This was aided and abetted by the small, light wireless keyboard which sat silently at the side, allowing me to write LL (Luddite Longhand) notes on the paper mark sheets, but available for action as needed to input marks onto a spreadsheet. Marvellous teamwork with ZZ becoming a bit of a Figjam. So much so I turned off the voice activation.
In one of my earlier blogs I had been a bit disparaging about touchscreen phones but this week I found a positive side to them. My friend had just returned from a golfing holiday in Portugal and was inhabiting his usual corner in the pub. A real Luddite haven: real hand pulled amber fluid and no ankle biters. Though technology has recently invaded this sanctuary when a pokie was installed next to the bar. Anyway my cobber was holding court and noticing me in the background invited me to view his holiday photographs. Since the advent of the camera phone this has usually meant interminable button pressing to scroll through bodgy, low-definition dross; of interest only to the immediate rellies and foreign waiters who if they insisted on royalty rights would instantly treble their basic wage. But wait I was handed a new touchscreen mobile phone costing big bikkies. Having learnt how to caress ZZ’s screen I soon wafted through the hundreds of snaps whilst looking both surprised and interested. Surprised at the bonzer quality of the photos’ rendition and interested that even with the latest technology people wearing budgie smugglers or bathers just to show how hot it is are still unedifying viewing. Instant digital images tend to capture the most mundane things.
This reminds me. I must go on Facebook and tell everybody what I had for breakfast. LOLx Yeah xx
King Ned must be spinning in his grave.
Hooroo for now…
