Living with computers

Just thinking how commonplace computers and such have become in my lifetime; actually it's not even that long. My first experience of computers, as far as I can recall, was when I worked at the Dunedin City Council, back in the eighties. We couldn't actually change anything on the computers (which in those days were still fed by cards with holes punched in them), but we could type something onto one of the terminals, and print it out. That was Big Time! (The actual computer filled an entire room and had enormous rolls of tape spinning around working very hard.)

I think the very first computer we actually owned was one that was about the size of a calculator: it was about twice as long horizontally as vertically, and you could only fit one program onto it at a time. With an upper limit of something like 64 bits...! It was very low level programming, but it worked...even though it was frustrating having to delete one programme in order to do another. From memory this was called the Casio PB-100, and it was very popular, in spite of its considerable
limitations.

I remember sitting up to the wee hours of the morning inputting information on its little keyboard, and getting very frustrated when one single error would make the whole programme refuse to run.

At some point after that I used a friend's computer. He was always somewhat ahead of us, and had a computer where you spent a great deal of time typing stuff in via the keyboard (that was progress). You had to add in information for bolds and italics and all that sort of thing, because of course it did none of these by the mere press of a couple of keys. There was no mouse, so if you made a mistake you had to go back by pressing the cursor (at least I think that's what we must have done - it's a long time ago) in order to change things.

And then all this information was recorded on a tape. You'd play the tape back and only then would you discover whether you'd done everything correctly or not. If you hadn't, you have to go back and find the error and fix it, and then record it again and then play it again...I don't know how we had the patience, quite honestly.

Was it really this big? Seems enormous. 

Finally, around 1989 we bought an Amiga 500; this was truly the Big Time! What a wonderful machine that was. Okay, you had to save things to disks, and it was wise to do this fairly regularly. And you couldn't use more than one programme at a time, so none of this modern idea of having several programmes open that you're working on simultaneously. You had to find your own typos and do your own proofreading. Woe betide if you didn't save on this machine...the work was gone for good.

I first learned to use a mouse with the Amiga. I can remember trying it out at a friend's house and seeing the cursor flying out of control all over the screen, and wondering how anyone ever got any finesse with it.

The Amiga played some great games, ones we thought we far superior to what Microsoft was producing at the time. And we eventually began to discover email, and the Internet. It would cost us a dollar an hour to be online, and we could spend an hour just getting online. Email was terrific; the Internet didn't seem to be that big a deal initially.

Regretfully, Amigas went out of circulation, and we finally had to concede to buying a PC. (Which was named Alphonse, as have all of his descendants since). Though we mourned the loss of the Amiga, it didn't take long to get used to the new style, and by now browsers had appeared, and we realised just how extraordinary the Internet was. And this was before Wikipedia, IMDB and dozens of other sites that we use all the time - even before Google. Remembering a time when these didn't exist, or when they were baby sites trying to find their way, seems odd now. They've become so much a part of the Internet worlds.

And then we added a laptop to the family (this must have been in the mid-noughties, because we had we carted it around parts of Europe in 2007). Later, though probably not that much later, an iPad invaded the place, and an iPhone (this was my wife: she's always been up with the play), and then Smartphones and such.

Now my wife even has a Mac after the laptop became sluggish and slow. I don't personally like it much: Apple seems to have contrarily put things that are normally on the right in the PC on the left, just to be annoying. And there are other things about it that don't grab me. Still, it has its points, and occasionally I do concede and use it for something.

The computers over the year have done very little 'computing' - for me they're biggest benefit has been being able to write at speed, and correct easily (I bought my first typewriter in the year I first started work and taught myself to touch-type; that was around 1960...), and cut and paste and so on. But the other big boon has been the music programme, Sibelius. If only I'd had this when I was younger I would have had a ball with it. The hours it would have saved writing out fair copies of music for others to be able to read. Not to worry, it came along in good time, and along with the millions of words I've written on the various computers, there have been hundreds of thousands of notes.

What a time to be alive!

Grimhilda takes a flying leap

A couple of days ago I wrote about the new book that I've nearly finished writing: Diary of a Prostate Wimp. Today, however, I uploaded my previous book, Grimhilda! - a fantasy for children and their parents, which has only been available so far on Kindle, onto Smashwords, where it is now available in other ebook formats, and will soon be available on Kobo, iPad and so on.

I've just spent an interesting half hour doing an 'interview' with Smashwords...all by computer, of course. You can find the result here, and you're welcome to pass along the link to anyone else who might be interested.

So Grimhilda! has now expanded herself further, from a musical seen by a fair number of people here in Dunedin, in 2012, to a novel that went on sale on Kindle in January this year, to this latest leap out into the wider world. She's finding it all to her satisfaction, and is keen for more customers! Pretty good for an old girl who started out life in the late 70s...

A series of sentences on helmets of various kinds

From the (mostly) wonderful Kim Fabricius:
There are some churches that, for their παρρησία, [frankness] should have crash helmets in the pews – and others, for their bullshit, Wellington boots.

And from the equally wonderful Dave Pell:
There is no tantrum like a Put-Down-the-iPad Tantrum.
First I need to prepare. I put on my hazmat suit, helmet, and thick, dark goggles to make it less likely that I too will be pulled into the light. Any parent of an iPad-era child will be familiar with the other tools in my arsenal: Ear plugs, body padding, iron manacles, shock paddles, a straight jacket, an inflatable kayak (speaking in tongues while the head spins exorcist-like 360s can release a significant amount of saliva), WiFi jammers, tear gas, tasers; and for re-entry, candles, classical music, smelling salts, and several black and white paper printouts of familiar places and loved ones.
And even with all that, I give myself about a 50% shot of bringing my son’s attention back to the terrestrial world before the iPad battery runs out.

From my book, Grimhilda! - when I picked up on this paragraph I realised it had a typo in it! Now fixed...
The Sergeant Major marched out accompanied by two of his corporals. His uniform was a resplendent red, with gold braiding - unlike the drab combat kit of his Yankee counterparts. He wore a shiny gold helmet shaped rather like an old-fashioned policeman’s hat, except this one had a spike on top, with a white plume. Under his arm, he carried a pace-stick, which he used to prod people when necessary.

From an essay by Andre Dubus:
Because he and his father could not really talk to each other, this test of manual labour passes between them as a kind of spiritual gift from father to son. The gift is the opportunity to attain manhood, and the older Dubus reflects that "it is time to thank my father for wanting me to work and telling me I had to work and getting the job for me and buying me lunch and a pith helmet instead of taking me home to my mother and sister." If he had quit, Dubus writes, "he would have spent the summer at home, nestled in the love of two women, peering at my father's face, and yearning to be someone I respected, a varsity second baseman, a halfback . . . yearning to be a man among men, and that is where my father sent me with a helmet on my head." "Going home" to the women would have been to settle for passivity, to consign oneself to a world of yearning instead of a world of action.

And lastly, and most recently, a paragraph from an article on the Skully P-1, an upgraded motorcycle helmet that incorporates a digital head-up display, projecting a live feed from a 180-degree rear-facing camera, which eliminates the blind spots that affect other enclosing helmets.  The system can also broadcast turn-by-turn directions and pair with a smartphone to read back text messages, so the rider’s eyes can stay glued to the road.  It could get to be the driver's own cosy little world inside there.

Grimhilda! goes live

Been a busy week in which I've not only learned how to do the final processes required for getting my e-book, Grimhilda!, up onto Kindle, but also how to turn the original Word document into an .epub or .mobi file. I realised yesterday I had to have a copy in either one of these formats in order to fulfil my requirements with the National Library of NZ, which holds a copy of every e-book published in the country that's had an ISBN given to it by that library. The library acts as a kind of clearing house for ISBN numbers in NZ; it requires two copies of every printed book. Of course, it's difficult for a library to 'hold' a copy of an electronic book, soGrimhilda! has done her first 90 days on Kindle's promotional level, I'll need the book to be in those formats for sending it off to other devices, such as Kobo.
they have to have it in a format that's usable to them. .Epub and .mobi are the same formats public libraries use for their electronic books.  And, once

If you're still with me, that's great. Don't get too fussed, it's all a learning curve, for you and for me.

Anyway, Kindle says that the normal turnaround time for getting a book online with them is between 12 and 24 hours. I uploaded the final version of the book at 4.27 on Monday (I noted the time exactly!) and, when my wife came home told her she wouldn't be able to see it till the next morning. Nothing daunted, she checked anyway, and there, at 6.15, the book was up and running online. So of course she had to be the first to buy a copy, which rather puts our profits out of kilter, but at least it meant someone bought it. Later on, we were unexpectedly called over to my son's house to babysit, because my daughter-in-law had cut herself rather badly and was down at A&E. So Grimhilda! got its first 'reading to a grandchild' - or at least two or three chapters did. This same grandson, who'd seen the musical version back in 2012, and declared it 'awesome' at the time (so generous!), two years later struggled to remember it. Such is the price of fame. However, I gave him a few details to remind him, and he did remember actually going to it. I'm not sure that he realised the book was telling the same story. Well, that's the advantage of being able to take the same material and re-do it...

You can find Grimhilda! here.  Currently it's available for Kindle readers of all sorts, as well as Kindle apps on PCs and Macs, and on iPads and iPhones. And the Kindle apps on android phones too.

Progress on the e-book

The e-book version of Grimhilda! is making good progress. I've actually put a preliminary version online at Kindle's site, so that I can check out to see what it looks like on various devices. As a result, my son and I spent a good deal of time last night sorting certain elements out such as spacing, and changing a little design feature, and altering the way the cast list showed up (somewhat randomly instead of in neat columns) and checking out links and photos and so on.

And we worked on the cover as well, though this hasn't been uploaded as yet. This draft version isn't available for anyone else to view online yet, though hopefully the finished product won't be far away.

The Kindle site is very informative - sometimes overwhelmingly so - but in general I found, even though I'm not a whizz kid on computer things (except in certain specialized areas) that I understood what was required, and have managed to do it. That's been very satisfying!

Initially the e-book will appear just on Kindle (which means of course that it can still be read in iPads and iPhones, plus other smartphones). This will be for the first three months; after that it will also appear on other platforms, such as Kobo.

South Island holiday

We've been on holiday for the last fortnight, travelling around the South Island, from Dunedin to Christchurch (with a couple of overnight stops between) up the Kaikoura Coast, to Blenheim, Nelson and back down through the middle of the upper part of the island, a trip we've done before but had pretty much forgotten - in terms of what kind of scenery it was, and so forth.  In fact the last time we did that trip we had my 13 or 14-year-old son with me and we spent much of the time trying to remember all the names of the various bridges, rivers, culverts and so on, linking them together in a great long sequence.

It obviously wasn't very effective, as I didn't recognise a single name as we drove by this time!

I'm finding it tricky coming back to my usual PC keyboard; I've been typing on an iPad, and the difference is considerable.  The iPad keyboard is smaller, and it's very easy to hit the wrong key (though at least it does a good deal of correcting for you as you go along, some of it rather random).  Plus, a number of items are in different places, and at present I'm still reaching for where things are on the iPad rather than the keyboard.  That's the least of any problems.

Just before we went away we tried to scan something onto the computer.  My older printer, which is the one with the scanner, refused to do it.  Another older computer, attached to the laptop, refused to do it.  Obviously both of them felt they were in retirement mode, and didn't need to keep working the way they used to. (My current printer is a Speed King, printing out reams of pages at a great pace.  But that's all it's capable of doing.)

Perhaps I need to investigate some print shop websites to see if I can dispense with printers altogether!

Anyway, our trip around the South Island was full of highlights.  I've kept a diary of the day to day activities and people we met (and animals - there were several that made some brief impact) and I'll post some of those on the other blog at some point in the next week.

Eliot App

Now here's a bit of a surprise....of all the enhanced ebook apps for iPad you might think people would download in quantity, The Waste Land by T S Eliot isn't perhaps one of them. Yet the app made its money back for the publishers (Faber Digital) in just six weeks. That must have been something of a surprise.

So, apart from Eliot's elliptical poem, what else do you get on this app?

* a film of actress Fiona Shaw reading the entire poem (this was specially filmed for the app).

* audio recordings of the poem by T. S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, Alec Guinness and Viggo Mortensen.

* interactive notes explaining many of the poem's references.

* more than 35 experts on video talking about their perspective on the poem.

The video below is from The Guardian, and has people explaining how this piece came to be available for the iPad.

Peter Bregman, iPad and addiction

I've quoted Peter Bregman's articles before - mostly on the Mission Resource blog that I also write. I like his self-deprecating humour, and his good sense. I'm not going to quote him this time, just tell you that you need to read the article entitled, 'Why I returned my iPad'.

Why do I think you need to read it? Because in it he tells us what the value of returning the iPad was as opposed to keeping it. He doesn't say there's anything wrong with the iPad itself, but there was something wrong with him.

Substitute 'iPad' for any one of a hundred other addictive things, and you get the idea.

By the way, his use of 'boredom' might be questioned, and is questioned by some of those who comment. A better word might be found....

And some of the very negative comments show that there's a need for this way of thinking. They're far more vicious than anything else I've seen on the Harvard Business site

Every three seconds? A little bit of hyperbole?

The world is awash with e-books and their ilk. It's reported that Steve Jobs (not him personally, but him as a kind of entity) is selling an iPad every three seconds. I find that just a little incredible as a stat, but I've been surprised by stats before. Let's see what that actually means in real terms.

There are 86400 seconds in a day. Divided by three, that says that Steve is selling 28,800 iPads a day. Really? In a week, he'll be selling 201,600. In a thirty-day month, he'd be selling, 864,000 of the things, if my calculations are right. That's ten times the number of seconds in a day. An interesting bit of number play.

I suppose that's possible. And I suppose it's possible that Jobs and co can churn out that many from their production line, wherever that is, and that teenagers in need of acne treatment and saga generation people in need of new dentures can both discover the joys and wonders of the iPad idol. (Sorry, did I say 'idol'? Surely not.)

Seth Godin, from whom I got the stat about the three seconds, is obviously a fan of the Kindle, and has written a post suggesting ways in which it might forge ahead of its competitor. And of course the Kobo has just arrived on the NZ market, from Whitcoulls, of all people. (Perhaps the most innovative thing they've got involved with in along time.) Check out their site or check out Whitcoulls ebooks selection. I can't say the prices impress me much; I think I thought they'd be rather cheaper than they are. SuperFreakonomics, for instance, is showing at NZ$29.95. You might as well buy the book.