My first computer experience

Write about your first computer.

My experience of computers was non existent when I was at college in the ’80’s. I went to an exhibition in a gallery and I remember being faced with a screen that said type ‘hello world!’ Or something similar and you would get a nice surprise.. So I typed:

Hello world

Nothing happened

I typed:

Hello world

Hello world

Hello world…

Over and over, the instructions soon disappeared off the top of the screen. I was frustrated, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to get back to the start. I didn’t know how to scroll back up the screen.

I gave up. Nowhere in the instructions did it say ‘press the enter key’!

It took me a few years before I bothered with a computer again.

Quiet day

I woke up from a nightmare where I’d lost my house keys and couldn’t get back in the house. I decided to have a quiet day. I haven’t been online much today. I decided to stay off the computer and basically played a game on my phone all day. It was diverting and took my mind off things. But I think I will delete the game. It’s a mindless matching hexagons game. It’s frustrating and fun at the same time. But half the time is t taken up by adverts. I tried to get past them as quickly as I could but they are intensely irritating and there’s no way I’m paying to avoid them. So I’m back to reality again….

Screen time

How do you manage screen time for yourself?

I don’t manage it well, when my hands get tired I put my phone down, or when I watch something on TV. But I think I’m addicted. I like a couple of word games and play them on my phone, then there’s art, and taking photos of things I like.

Currently I’m watching a very old Alfred Hitchcock film from the 1930’s. It’s a romance. TV screen…

Apart from that I’m on a few social media platforms (too many for my own good! ).

To be honest I wish I could turn the clock back and STEP AWAY FROM THE SCREENS!

Questions?

What questions do you ask the net?

Today I asked what type of car was in the Randall and Hopkirk TV show from the 1960’s. Where is a train station that was on the TV? Turns out the answer was near Newcastle upon Tyne.

Then I asked about the profitess Cassandra. I had done a drawing and wanted to ask about the title I was going to call it. I’d also recently asked about Atlas holding the world up. I use the free images on Jetpack sometimes, but they often don’t come up with the image I’m looking for.

I have to admit, I don’t believe half of what I see on the Internet, but I think Wikipedia is not too bad. I also consult a site called Snopes.com which is a fact checking service.

I think its important to ask questions, knowledge is important. I won’t always remember the answers, but I try.

scrolling

📜

Oh I keep scrolling down the page

Facebook posts are all the rage

Never ending thoughts and hopes

I don’t know how anyone copes!

Addicted to that vertical scrolling

Dragging my eyes, they keep rolling!

Bits and bobs, this and that

Someone’s thin someone’s fat.

A work of fiction or of fact

But intelligent thinking is what’s lacked?

Sometimes serious causes emerge

But often it’s just a tawdry surge

Of endorphins keeping me awake

Switch it off. For goodness sake!

Delivery?

Do you ever get those emails that say your package is on its way? Or cards through your door saying you need to pay tax or excess postage to get your delivery? There are a lot of scams out there. The post card gets you to ring a premium telephone line, or the email tells you to click on a link, then they empty your bank account by persuading you to upload some app that allows the scammers to see all your bank details or gets you to move money into their accounts. It pays to be cautious…

I got an email today, my delivery is due. The thing is, I rarely get anything on line, I haven’t for months. I’m not expecting anything, and I’m certainly not opening an email from the supposed company. If someone delivers something I will be really surprised! Plus I don’t do online purchases anymore. So the email has been deleted.

Clearing memories

WordPress keeps telling me my phone is full. I know! I keep trying to delete photos but it’s almost impossible. There are thousands of them. There’s lots of other things, I am not sure of half of what’s on here….

So I think I will have to buy more memory. Its funny how real memories are subsumed into a digital memory. If you don’t have a photo of it, it didn’t happen? Case in point, the recent death and funeral of the Queen. People have always recorded their lives throughout the ages, for example look at cave paintings. Then art throughout the ages, paintings for people who could pay, or sketches by people who had the means or ability to draw or paint. Then deguerreotypes (not sure of the spelling) became popular, painted portraits turned into slow motion photos that took time to take and heads had to be clamped in place to get a clear image. Box brownies, single lens reflex, eventually digital cameras, then phones which took a few photos. Now, the mobile phone is a hand held computer… But it still gets full.

The human mind can hold more information, but it’s not stored in a logical order. Links from the past suddenly reach out and grab your attention. Clearing a human brain of memory is not a good thing, and unless it happens through illness, age or injury, causing degradation of the brain structure, it is to be hoped that people can build memories (good or bad?), not lose them.

Fighting with Jpegs!

Not showing much, just a glimpse.

I’ve been working on my MA project Al day and it’s driving me mad. I have one image that will save as a .Tif file but not as a .Jpeg, no matter what I do I get a notification that the file is not supported or something. All the rest are fine. I have both sorts of files so I can put them into a website that will print a one off book for you! Argh!

slow internet

seaside image, blurred with different images

You know the feeling, an egg timer or a circle twirling. The second hand of a clock ticks..too..slowly…

Life nowadays is frenetic. Be There Now! See this Ad! Watch this Vid! Even our phrases are shortened to cram more information in. Life begins to make your head spin. And if you don’t keep up? You get left behind. There is a current advert on the TV (television) with someone attacking and smashing their router because their broadband is too slow. Do you remember Dial Up Modems? Whir whir diddle diddle, a strange tune to listen to as the modem selected the digits of the Internet service provider?At least thats what I imagined it was doing. When if you got ten emails in a day you were overwhelmed. Now? thats nothing. We are superglued to our screens.. (not really).

Before that. Dial up phones with a circular dial that you had to turn to get the numbers dialled. 0 took ages as your finger was placed in the 0 hole and then you pushed the dial round till it reached the bit that actuated the number…hard to explain to you youngsters out there.

Seriously.

LET GO OF YOUR MOUSE OR EQUIVALENT.

GO OUTSIDE

LOOK AT THE SKY, OR A TREE…

SEE?

You can survive without it!

MAILER DAEMON, failure notice?

What does mailer daemon even mean? When you send an email to a company after they have given you a SPECIFIC email address, you copied it down twice, then it comes back with a failure notice? Is it that they want you to fail, to think it had gone through and they are dealing with it? So annoying! What to do? I went online and found an ‘info@’ email address. I have forwarded the email there. I hoe it gets through. I included the email address I had been told to send it to. Let’s see what happens?