Print is Dead

For the early part of my childhood, I never had access to a computer. They were still sci-fi devices all big and filled rooms and were DATABASES. They could shoot nukes across the world and were powered by a computer in American called WHOPPER which is why for ages I thought that’s what Burger King’s tagline ‘Home of the Whopper’ meant. So for all intents and purposes, for a small boy growing up in Bournemouth it might have been a parallel universe. So instead I read books. All books. All the time. Loads of them. And I absolutely loved it. I had my head constantly in a book pretty much from the age of 7 to 13. Then I got my own computer. It was pretty cool. I could make it speak in a weird Stephen Hawking voice and I could play games on it. It was a useful diversion. I remember doing some homework, making a mistake, applying some tip-ex, then booting up my computer to play a quick game whilst it dried. Several hours later my parents demanded to see my homework and I...er... oops.

I bought a modem for it by saving up my pocket money. Wow. The internet wasn’t quite as we know it but it was on the way. I was on bulletin boards and then AOL and it was keyword: amazing. But the speeds were slow, and I couldn’t really do much. I still read loads of books. Fast forward a few years where I hardly ever read a book for fun in university. Too much going on. Then I travelled abroad for a few years. I read a lot then as it was handy to have something to read on planes, trains, and er buses. I also got into audiobooks too, as I was sometimes too far away from English language books stores to buy books so I downloaded them and listened to them instead.

Nowadays, I am a book hoarder and collector, but seldom reader of them. I just don’t have time. Yes, I sneak in a few pages here and there during the day when I read the books I have on my phone, but I don’t consciously sit down and read. Yet ironically, I probably physically read more than I have ever done in my life. A few newspaper websites, magazines, numerous blogs, techy stuff, work PDFs on my kindle. I’m all read out. When I travel for business, I do read to pass the time, but that’s about it. I save up books now to read on holidays. I haven’t been on holiday since I became a dad so I guess I will have to see how that pans out.  

On Beards

I watched some of the Baftas last night. Not in an “interested in the Baftas” sort of way as I am immune to that type of celebratory circle jerk, but more in the “wife heard George Clooney had a beard and wanted to watch it and also had the remote control” sort of way. And I, being wedged and cemented into the sofa, was forced to watch some of it. FORCED. So anyway, I asked my wife what the deal was about beards. “Oh,” she said. “Some men look good with beards and some don’t…but you look lovely with no beard…ahem.” As it happens, quite a few leading men had beards at the Baftas and suddenly I realised that having a beard is now a cool thing and once again, I am behind the curve. I want a beard. But I can’t be arsed to grow one. They are itchy, require more fussing than properly shaving to make them look neat and tidy, and make you look old. But apparently ‘bitches dig beards’. Looking at some random twitter profiles (and mentioning no handles) it seemed that this was confirmed by the number of beard fanciers there were out there.

 A famous leading man at the Baftas last night

I used to have a beard. A few years ago. But after about two months I just got bored of it. The novelty wore off. And when you have a beard you seem to run into mostly people that are disapproving of beards. I have yet to think of an appropriate name for the law for that particular phenomenon. Of course, beards are very natural and I am surprised that there aren’t more in the wild. Looking around my office there is one guy who kind of has a beard but it is not quite there. The rest of the men polled (and one unfortunate women who is capable) have never even had beards! In their entire life! When I don’t have to go to work (so either weekends or holiday) then I never shave and I get a heavy stubble thing going on which my wife loathes and badgers me to shave it off but what if I went the whole hog and just kept going AND NEVER STOPPED GROWING?

Watch this hairy space.

No, not that one. 

Black Mirror Review

I had high expectations watching Black Mirror (C4) last night. The previous programmes (mini-series? Micro-series? Vignettes?) were all excellent, original and very thought provoking. The theme of near future technology is highly believable and plays an essential part of the programmes but never becoming the focus is eminently laudable. Too many programmes have shiny toys that they over explain and wave in front of the viewer’s faces whereas in Black Mirror they are background enablers of the plot and don’t impinge upon the emotional urgency of the story. I was not disappointed – it was very good and one of Charlie Brooker’s better stories.

The story itself was excellent if a little over-wrought (a modern day Monkey’s Paw) and it is easy to see that if technology was the enabler, then the story would still work if it used bygone or parallel ‘magic’ like the summoning of golems or the friendly undead. The very real loss felt by someone who has had someone close to them pass away was dealt with very well. Having lost someone close to me recently I really could empathise with the main character’s plight. It also raised the spectre (sorry) of what happens to your online life which is increasingly encroaching upon the real. What will become of your facebook page, twitter account, or (gasp!) blog? Will they be eventually purged and deleted or live on by themselves forever as ghostly reminders of the dead? Unless passwords are shared by the person before they die then that might well be their fate.

Maybe this blog will be preserved and pored over by historians seeking to enlighten themselves trying to understand our primitive lives. Hehe. Yeah, right. Yo Future Historians? Things are just XOPOWO, you feel me?

Do you Facebook? Yes? Recently?

Do you Facebook? What am I saying, of course you do. You Facebook all the time. Well, you might, but according to recent research undertaken by the Pew Internet Research Group, 60% of people do not log on to Facebook regularly and have taken breaks of a few weeks or more. Some people said they just needed a Facebook “vacation”, others just weren't interested any more  The largest group of people say they couldn't be bothered to go on Facebook as they were too busy doing other things. This is fascinating, as although Facebook is clearly the most popular and dominant social media network ever created, take up to the site has slowed down dramatically in the last few years or so. People create accounts, then just drift off and occasionally log back in to spy on their friends and relative’s holiday pictures. Something which I have never, ever done by the way. Ever.

So what can Facebook do to stem this tide of apathy? They have introduced a sort of global search based upon people’s personal preferences. This could be very powerful and people tend to not trust stuff they find on Google but will trust things that their friends can vouch for. Facebook could also make an accessible mobile version for Android phones. What, you say there is one already? Are you referring to that sack of dicks currently pretending to be a mobile version? No. Just no.

I was very late to the scene on Facebook when I joined in 2009. I only joined because I was getting so many emails asking me to join up that I had a small yet powerful psychotic episode where I joined Twitter and Facebook, got an iPhone, and burned an unoccupied barn to the ground in Grantham during the middle of the night.