Technology

I gave up using a PC (personal computer) at home some time ago when I got fed up with having to sit at a desk and then wait for the thing to boot up each time I wanted to do the simplest thing. A large box with its whirring fans inside had been a part of both my working and home life for many years, such that I was familiar with the many foibles. I knew what I could and what I couldn't plug into the variety of sockets in both front and back of the machine to give it extra functions and to allow it to talk to other things. I had also become familiar with much of the language associated with it; I can distinguish between a gigabyte and snakebite and could bore anyone to death talking about the alphabet of different USB plugs. The PC had been quite useful to me for video editing, using two large TV monitors, but I had not done much of this for a while so the decision was made that this machine had outlived its usefulness.

Of course these days we have smartphones, which are now far more powerful than the PC I had been using and they can certainly do most things I'd ever want to do (even the video editing!). The limiting factor on the phone is its screen size. It is fine if all you want is to read a WhatsApp message or to look at someone's comments on Facebook but should you ever want to type a lengthy blog entry (like this) or compose a letter (remember these?) to a distant relative listing all the things you have done since you last saw them then suddenly the phone becomes rather inadequate and difficult to use. (Of course it does retain one function that beats all others - using it as an actual phone.)

So I decided to bid farewell to the mouse and upgrade my life... I bought a 'tablet'.

This is not the thing you get on prescription from your doctor then wash down your throat with a glass of water. Instead it is the name we now give to something which in effect is just a large phone. It will likely have the same operating system and computing power, an identical set of 'apps', the same controls (taps, finger swipes, etc.), in fact everything the phone has except for the ability to make phone calls (although even this can be an option). After much due diligence online I went for a tablet with a screen a little over three times the size of that on my phone, something portable enough to carry anywhere in the house without too much risk of dropping it but big enough to read things comfortably when placed on my lap. I went for one that might be considered small by some and it is certainly not superfast by modern standards. It is, however, perfectly adequate for my needs.

Once extracted from its box, the very first things to do were to attach a screen protector (a rather stressful process with almost no help from the instructions) then try to follow the forty two pages of user guidance once I had discovered how to download these from the Internet. There seems to be a view amongst those that design our modern electronic gadgets that the user will be expected to know how to use it and also be someone who will accept every provided feature without question. User guidance, once you find it, might be aimed at those (like me) who fiddle, those who like to change the standard settings, but such people should not be unduly encouraged.  One of the first things I noticed was that the tablet came loaded with software (apps) that children might use - colourful games - so my guess is that I am a non-typical user, which might explain why there is so little help available.

In one respect, however, the process of acquiring and setting up any size of phone or tablet is made very simple as it is based on the assumption that you have bought new to replace old. This being the case you will obviously want everything that is on the old device to be moved onto the new one so there will be no learning process at all. Getting this to work is effortless. As soon as the new gadget is switched on you are prompted to turn on the old phone and place it close by. After a few presses of an on-screen button both devices begin talking to each another, data flying invisibly through the air between them in a way that is hard for the human brain to understand. On the one hand I am impressed by such cleverness but the other side of the coin is the assumption that you are replacing a perfectly functioning device with something more modern that will be doing exactly the same job. This sounds very much like a symptom of a throwaway world and the thought that someone might be replacing a PC with a tablet does not seem to have been considered at all.

If someone like me is neither overwhelmed nor particularly impressed by the cleverness of today's technologies then I can imagine that someone younger than me must take them completely for granted. Growing up with a device that fits in the hand and which is always capable of communicating with other humans, no matter where they are on the planet, is something that was unthinkable in my youth. Beyond this, to think that this same tiny gadget could give one access to all the world's accumulated knowledge, almost instantly, would have been totally beyond belief. For me, growing up, the world beyond my home and my country, was hidden from me other than by listening to news broadcasts from the BBC, something I cannot recall ever choosing to do anyway. Youths of today might be equally disinterested in world affairs but they will be aware that it is not hidden from them should they want to know. More likely they will choose for themselves what they want to know, again something not possible for me in my youth. The resources of the whole world are now at our fingertips, all accessible through one tiny chunk of technology we have in our pocket. And all this we now take for granted. Worse still we suffer anxiety when we are separated from such devices. They have almost become more essential to us than the food we eat. Such is the modern world.

Random stuff

Lessons learnt in three days....

    - We are not as young as we thought.

    - Some things are too heavy to lift.

    - Muscles will hurt if subjected to misuse.

    - Too many steps make for unhappy legs.

What could possibly have given rise to these startling observations? What have we been doing that we perhaps shouldn't? The answer to these questions lies in us wanting to help some friends in their house move, something they had decided to do themselves by hiring a van and filling this with their furniture and other belongings then emptying this at the new home, filling it up again, then emptying again, and so on in endless succession for three days on end. Then as if this this wasn't enough, there was the small matter of bringing all this stuff up the stairs into the new property, a first and second floor maisonette in a magnificently old building just off the main street in Lochgilphead. By the end of day three we had a ranking order for the most difficult items, those I will never again be tempted to try to move. Top of the list is the sofabed. This is a solid wooden upholstered frame inside which is a folded steel structure which is designed to be unfolded to create a double bed. The whole thing is massively heavy and so awkward in shape that it can only be fitted through a doorway on its side. There is also nothing on it to grab hold of to make this job easier and should it drop to the ground then feet and toes are dangerously vulnerable. My advice...leave it behind...but nobody listens to me.

The friends, moving to the first home they have ever owned themselves, consisted of a family of six, two of whom were too young to contribute their own efforts (they were at school) but all six beds needed to be moved in one day so they could all sleep in the same house. My electric screwdriver came into its own and somehow I managed to lose not a single screw or bolt in the process of dismantling then reassembling them in their appropriate bedrooms, something which I can look back on with some pride. Again on the positive side the weather was quite kind to us too, mostly dry, and the cold air means nothing when you are physically active.

The second flight of stairs in the new house had a little surprise which caught us all out at first, the first step being three inches higher than the rest. This is something the family will adjust to in time, perhaps after a few nose dives, but generally they were delighted to be making this move onto the housing ladder. The solid stone construction of the property is reassuring and although there is much they will no doubt want to change, they know that any improvements they make will not be wasted money. It is more than simply a roof over their heads. It is home.

Ramps and other things

I first started to write this particular instalment in mid October when it appeared that something had gone wrong with our weather. Rain we are used to - it comes and goes all the time - and in between the rainy bits we get the sun, maybe peering around the clouds at us but at least we can usually tell where it is. The wind comes and goes too, more often than not it is bending the branches of the trees and throwing the rain at our windows. But back in October we were experiencing a few weeks of exceptional weather; no serious wind for days on end, low lying clouds covering the top of the hills around our village and dimming the daylight, drizzly rain falling continuously, the intensity varying from slightly damp to a real soaker. We seemed to be stuck in a weather system which was diverting our normally constantly variable weather away from our shores, far away to the north, so that our days were filled with a damp dreariness, something to which we are not adapted. It seems that there was a high pressure system, giving someone somewhere some scorching sunshine [that's a lot of s's], an end of year 'Indian Summer', but missing us entirely. The only thing we could hope for was that the earth might spin a bit faster so the dreary dampness could come to an end. To cheer ourselves up, of course, there was no better time to start another project.

To be fair though, this particular one did actually begin last year. To explain, when we moved into our house some two years ago we found a number of unexpected objects lying about in the garden. I believe I have already mentioned the large blue Jewsons bags, some of which had been around so long that the grass had grown over them and they were only discovered when we began to explore the garden at the back of the house. But I may not have mentioned the stack of large paving stones lying in our front garden. These were still lashed together as if they had just been unloaded off a lorry so clearly they were purchased by the previous owner with some project in mind, something that never came to fruition. They were just left there waiting for us when we moved in. We have used them in various ways, putting some down to create a pavement (sidewalk) beside the road at the front, then more recently we used some more of them to extend the paved ramp which runs up towards the house from road level.

This might not look much but take it from me, moving these things into position took a lot of effort. These serious lumps of concrete are massively heavy and dangerously awkward things to move about, especially uphill on sloping uneven ground. We loaded them one at a time onto our two-wheeled trolley which, had we lost our grip on its handles, would have shot off downhill at speed and likely ended up crashing into the garage across the road. But this didn't happen, thankfully, and by laying each one carefully we created a new path leading up the side of the house. The objective here was to create a ramp, something that is easier to walk up than the twisting odd sized steps, and also a solution to help us bring up a loaded shopping trolley with much greater ease.  This has proved to be the case but at the top of the ramp we still still had three more awkward steps over which the shopping trolley had to pass.

By this time our stack of leftover pavers had been reduced until we had just three left. It took a while before it occurred to us that this was the perfect number to lay over those last three steps, so as to extend the ramp right up to the top making a continuous route up this side of the house. It needed a name so this is how 'Project Top Ramp' came into being. What was clear from the start, however, was that it would not be a simple matter of laying the slabs over soft ground. The top steps that we were seeking to cover are made of solid concrete with courses of bricks at each side. They are sloping and are of unequal height and length. Each of the pavers would have to cover just one step in such a way that it was supported at each end and could not move. It would also mean that any gaps would need to be filled with cement to provide a continuous sloping surface.

We soon realised, however, that our pavers, although massively heavy, had no internal reinforcement and as a result are actually quite fragile, brittle enough so that if only supported at each end then a heavy footfall might easily crack them. With only three left we certainly did not want this to happen. In the end we strategically placed some old bricks (something else we have discovered in quantity in our garden) beneath each one so that they were supported. Only time will tell whether this works.

The final shape of the ramp is odd as it has to twist around some existing groundworks so it does rather look as if it was not part of the original plan for the house...which of course it wasn't...but we don't care. It will serve a function and meet our needs.

At this point I have to announce that the final evolution of Project Top Ramp is on hold. Cement goes through a chemical reaction when it is mixed with sand or other materials and this process starts to go wrong below ten degrees centigrade. Beginning the project in the persistent damp weather we were getting in October was risky enough - too much rain might have washed away the cement - but shortly after November arrived the forecasters started predicting a dramatic temperature drop within the space of a few days. At least this was more 'normal' than the constant drizzle we had been living with for so long. The rain was now heavier, showers hammering noisily on our conservatory roof, and the sun was doing its peeping out thing again. Winter has dropped in to visit and the ramp will likely now stay unfinished until Spring arrives. Such is life.