63 numbers…

Our new phone turned up, not as good as the original one, its lighter and looks “generic”, the screen isn’t coloured and has no logo. Clearly a cheaper value, but it works. We had to move a cupboard to get at the electric socket to plug it in. That meant moving several years worth of books, old letters, ornaments, trinkets and tranklements. I found a few things I thought I had lost….. I also unearthed the paper shredder… Might be useful!

Then… Deep breath, inputting numbers. Each one by hand. The old phone would not release the numbers I had on it. So I had to look them up on my mobile and transpose them onto the land-line. The trouble was that I wasn’t sure what had been on the land-line so I may have added a few more from my mobile than I needed to. But the problem is the new phone has automatic call barring, so I might have blocked some friends if I hadn’t copied them. First World problem? Yes. But hubby ended up like a caver underneath the cupboard trying to work out where the plug socket was. The cats enjoyed exploring the space too…

Phone broken

Can’t ring in, can’t ring out – call guardian is blocking all our calls…we had an engineer out who checked the phone lines. As soon as he plugged his own phone in it worked, but when he plugged ours back in. No luck. He rang our phone supplier and asked them what we could do (engineers only work on phone lines, not phones), the woman he spoke to needed to verify us. Could I say when we had the last bill? I didn’t know as hubby pays it. So she went through a low quality verification and asked the engineer his details. Then she said that we should check the settings.? How? There’s a manual on line… I explained I wasn’t happy to go through lots of pages. We finally convinced her the phone needed replacing…. Then she checked the Argos website. We could get a big button phone. I don’t want that, I want the same as we have. I could get three of the right phones from Argos for £125! No we just want one.. We only live in a small house. OK they have the phone for £39.99. We ordered it. The engineer was great but I thought the advisor on the phone was a bit more interested in her own assumptions and didn’t really want to listen to me….

Gallery problems

An old painting from a few years ago

My phone is doing strange things, especially when I’ve tried to upload images to my Facebook page today. I decided to optimise some of my photos because my phone memory is too full. Usually the images that I have shrunk stay on the phone and the others are deleted. But thus time everything doubled up. I tried deleting the old ones, but I had to restart the phone and my images seemed to get mixed up. I tried finding them and although I did the gallery kept reverting to the older ones. I guess I need to buy a new memory card? I don’t know if I can sort it out otherwise.

Cleaning photos

I just optimised about 100 photos on my phone, but as usual it’s mixed everything up now. Photos I took yesterday are right down my camera roll and this picture I created digitally is now number 1.

There must be a logical explanation for what happens but I don’t know why. I’m not a computer expert so I don’t understand the ins and outs of what is going on. Still it’s interesting to see old photos popping up again. Mostly ones I have made into patterns.

Sunset clouds

Loved tonight’s sky, even though we are on the wrong side of the hill…our house is in shadow about two hours before the sun sets. We get good silhouettes! I grabbed my phone and took a picture. If I’d wanted to get to the sunset I would have had to jump in the car, turn round, drive up and over the hill and find somewhere to park. As it was these colours were fleeting, lasting only a few minutes. I only saw it because the light reflected into our kitchen and made it glow.

Put the phone down.

Interactive, haptic

Hectic, internetted

Encapsulated, held

Bells and whistles

Too connected!

Now my projects done

I’m having fun

But it’s to seductive

All those screens

You and him and me

Chatting and liking

Dose of dopamine

Eyes go funny

Arm aches

Fingers droop

But still I type.

Put the phone down

Disconnect…..

Freedom!

Wrapped up

Wrapped up in my magic phone I can ignore the world. The problems I have, the worries my friends have.

Wrapped up in my magic phone I can focus on the trivial things, the bits that make me smile.

Wrapped up in my magic phone I can watch daft dogs, silly things. Lost kittens in mittens.

Wrapped up in my magic phone I can forget people. Lose the worries, the wars, the poverty.

Wrapped up in my magic phone I am in cotton wool. Insulated nicely against the world.

I must turn it off and put it down. Lose it or let the battery go flat to be free. Maybe? But just another glance can’t hurt…..

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!