Tag: Technology

Disconnected

Lifestyle, Technology

I read this guy’s story with something akin to dread:

And that’s when I realized that little by little, my phone had gotten the best of me.

I’ve often prided myself on one of the few people not shackled to my phone, but after reading this guy’s story, I chided myself for my arrogance.

As much as I hate to admit it, my phone is now an integral part of my existence, as much as my glasses or my car.

We’ve been one-carring it since the beginning of the week — first, my car had to (finally) get completely fixed after my collision with the highway crocodile a few weeks ago, which meant that while New Wife was driving to and from work, I sat at home, isolated.  Then I had to get some errands done (Rx refills etc.) so I had to drive her to and from work for a day.  Then, just as we were going to pick up the Tiguan, I got this call:  “My check engine light just came on.”

So we picked up my car and dropped hers off, to get the oil changed as well as getting whatever the warning light entailed seen to.  All manageable (except the total repair cost for the two cars — I’m going to have to sell a gun or two, and I’m not kidding), but having one car was an inconvenience, really.

However:  had my phone disappeared on me during this time, that would have been simply catastrophic.  Calls to the auto repair shop, calls to New Wife to organize pickup times… the list of critical calls was far longer than I was comfortable with.  And don’t even ask me how I’d have got through to anyone without my phone’s contact list.

Like many people nowadays, we don’t have a landline phone in the apartment.  But I’m starting to rethink that — or else I’m going to get a no-contract burner phone for emergencies.

This modern life is bullshit, and it sucks green donkey dicks.

There They Go Again

Technology

Apple was never shy to overprice their under-performing computers, but this has to take the cake:

‘Apple Computer A’, the prototype for the tech giant’s first ever computer, is up for sale – and could sell for more than half a million dollars at auction.  Considered ‘lost’ until recently, the prototype was hand-soldered by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in 1976, the year the company was established.  The ‘rare’ and ‘historic’ item is essentially a circuit board covered in chips and wires, embossed with the words ‘Apple Computer A ©76’.

Steve Jobs would be proud.

Update / No Update

Gratuitous Chick Pics, Technology

As I have no good or indeed any news about the Comments / No Comments debacle, here are a couple pics of women showing off their respective superstructures.

Amanda Holden:

Kelly Brook:

Someone named Toni Garrn (no, I don’t know, either):

And Lana del Ray:

I hope this makes up for the lack of Commentary…

Problems, We Have Them

Technology

Tech Support tells me that the login issues are not the only ones he’s finding, but as he has an actual (well-) paying job, for some reason he’s putting that first instead of my problems.  Go figure.

Please be patient.

 

Over-Complexity

Drive Time, Old Fartism, Technology, Two-Minute Hate

The nice thing about getting into a car, back in the day when I first got into a car is that it was like a fork:  everything about it was self-evident, and it was easy to use (hold the end without the pointy bits, stab your food with it and convey said food to your mouth).  It even allowed for different styles of use, e.g. the American (hold the food still while cutting it into baby-sized pieces, then transfer fork to right hand, slide the fork under the food and shovel said food into your mouth).

I pass no judgment about the American way other than it’s fucking stupid and it’s the way a child eats.

Anyway, the same methodology applied to a car of an earlier era:  you open the door with the handle thoughtfully attached to the outside, get in and sit down;  then insert key into ignition and turn the engine on, put the car into gear, release the handbrake and off you go.  (A couple of steps have been omitted for sake of brevity.)  Then when you get to your destination, you pull up the handbrake, turn off the car, open the door with the handle thoughtfully supplied, and get out to go to the pub.

None of the above required a user’s manual or anything other than a thirty-second explanation from an adult.

Compare that simple procedure to this concatenation of silliness:

Jeremy Clarkson was test driving a brand-new Maserati MC20 when he and Lisa decided to drive the motor to their local pub, where they were planning to indulge in a fish pie, but the couple soon realised they couldn’t get out.

Jeremy said: ‘We were in the car and five minutes after that we were in the pub’s car park. And five minutes after that we were still in the pub car park because neither of us could find anything that even remotely resembled a door handle’.

‘Eventually I turned on my phone’s torch and found the little button that you must press to unlatch the door, and then we were out.

‘And then I was back inside very smartly because the car was starting to roll down a hill.’

After finally discovering a button that activated the handbrake, Jeremy thought he had fixed the issue only to hear ‘bonging noises’ when he got out of the vehicle.

‘After an hour of swearing and wondering out loud whether it would have been easier to stay at home and make a soufflé out of ant hearts, I called a colleague, who said that to engage ‘park’ and turn out the lights I had to stop the engine twice.

‘So I pushed the button to turn the motor off, then pushed it again. Which caused it to start. I then called the colleague again, who said that when I pushed the button the second time my foot had to be off the brake pedal. And he was right, which meant that we just caught last orders.’

Let’s hear it for Technology!

As Longtime Readers all know, I have a long and abiding passion for Maserati cars, despite the dreaded which causes fits of laughter among American engineers and drivers.

Now imagine that same applied to a system which (nominally) controls the “hand”-brake and door-“handle” functions, in addition to lights, mirrors, windshield wipers, turn indicators, window- and trunk controls, ignition, transmission and (gawd help us) onboard computer.

Compared to this mobile disaster area, even my old Fiat 124 looks like a dream come true.

Manual everything — gearbox, ignition, doors, windows, seats, rearview mirrors, turn indicators, trunk opener and even, on occasion (!), windshield wipers.

All this modern shit?  You can stick it.

Even for an MC20.

 

Wait A Minute

Science!

So we have this breathless headline:

MIT scientists filed two patents on a new, 2D material that’s stronger than steel

Ummm… I always thought that two dimensions (length and width) mean that in mathematical and scientific terms the figure has no thickness — no matter how thin, the third dimension must exist for the figure to have substance — otherwise, it’s just a drawing.

And the explanation in the article doesn’t help:

“Instead of making a spaghetti-like molecule, we can make a sheet-like molecular plane, where we get molecules to hook themselves together in two dimensions,” said Strano, in the MIT blog post. “This mechanism happens spontaneously in solution, and after we synthesize the material, we can easily spin-coat thin films that are extraordinarily strong.”

It doesn’t matter if the third dimension (of the “thin film”) is only a trillionth of a micron thick, or the thickness of a molecule, it’s still >0.

Is this some kind of new math, or did somebody send out a memo redefining the dimensions?

I’m relying on a Reader Of Greater Brain than I to explain this to me.