Heaps of Beeps

Howzit, folks? Since I just gave you a Stuff Caleb Sez, let's now do an entry in Stuff George Carlin Said. Because I like to keep things balanced, and also because I never get tired of G.C.

"Everything beeps now."

As usual, he's right. When I was a kid, we didn't have many things in our house that beeped. There was one phone, it was stuck to the wall, and it rang with an actual bell. You know, a round metal thing inside being struck by a tiny hammer. To make a call, you had to literally dial the number. Zip-zip-ziiiiip! 

Want to change the TV channel? You had to walk across the room and turn a big mechanical knob. (The choices were 2, 4, 5, 7, and 11, plus a few UHF stations that usually didn't play anything interesting.) We called it tuning in a station, and it was slightly less trouble than tuning a piano. Even though it only had a 17" screen, the TV itself was about the size and weight of a Smart car.

We were one of the first families I knew to get a microwave oven. It was an Amana Radarange, and it didn't beep. Like our TV and our telephone, it had... wait for it... yep, big round dials to set the cook time, plus a few clunky mechanical buttons for "Start," "Stop," and "Light." It made our food hot, and nobody ever struggled with how to program it.

But things changed, and several years ago, almost everything in the house beeped. Some things beeped when we pushed their buttons, other things beeped to get our attention so we'd know when it was time to wake up or when our toast was done. And don't forget beepers. They beeped too!

Nowadays, most devices have been replaced by the smart phone. It's a camera, video camera, video game, GPS, calculator (and scientific calculator!), TV, alarm clock, remote control, flashlight, Rolodex, and even a phone. And it beeps a lot. I still have a separate electric shaver, because as far as I can tell, they haven't made an app for that yet. I checked into the Motorola Razr, but that turned out to be a very misleading product name.

I wonder what George would have said about smart phones.

I Need to Clear My Head

I'd like to catch up on a few miscellaneous things today, but I promise to soon return to the English lessons. <sarcasm> Because I'm sure everyone enjoys those! </sarcasm> (I know a little HTML.)

First, let's update one of my favorite features here at U by C, Stuff Caleb Sez! Here is something that recently came from Boy Wonder:

[By the way, this whole conversation started after he told me his strategy for winning a level in Angry Birds Star Wars, which he was playing at the time. I said it wouldn't work and suggested another approach. He went with his idea, and it worked. He won--the game and our dispute.]

Caleb: Dad, you know why kids are sometimes smarter than adults?

Me: Ah, what?!

Caleb: I said, do you know why kids are smarter than adults?

Me: Ummm, no. I don't think they are.

Caleb: Dad, they are. Sometimes. You know why?

Me: No, I don't know why, because I don't think kids are smarter.

Caleb: Well, they are. Sometimes.

... and as soon as I left the room, he mumbled, "And by sometimes I mean all the time."

Five minutes later, he tried again.

Caleb: Dad, kids are smarter than adults. I know they are, so don't say it's not true.

Me: Okay, fine. What's your point?

Caleb: You want to know why?

Me: Yes. Please tell me why kids are smarter.

Caleb: Because adults know so much stuff, there's no room left in their brains. But kids have lots of room in their brains to think of smart things.

I hate to admit it, but he may be onto something. I've got decades of useless knowledge cluttering the recesses of my cranium, making it difficult to think clearly and come up with innovative solutions to, say, a video game involving light saber-wielding birds and pigs dressed up as stormtroopers. His mind is an empty slate, leaving him free to devise the best trajectory when launching those little digital birds... and to form an argument like the one he just gave.

...

By the way, I've been updating the other pages here, easily navigated using those tabs at the top of the page. Mainly, I've been adding pictures to the pics page, but if you haven't checked the Bozo List lately, there might be some new-to-you updates there too. I'll add some more books to the books page soon. Man, am I productive, or what?

Hey, one more thing. Leave a comment, whydontcha?

Blogger Went All Korean On Me

I took a little trip to Korea earlier this week, which gave me an opportunity to piggy-back on my last post, about the dual-language signs back home. (I'd been planning that post for a few weeks, but just got around to it at the same time my latest adventures brought new meaning to it.)


After getting settled into the hotel, I fired up my laptop to see if the wi-fi works, send Wifey-san an email, and check some of my favorite blogs. Did you know that a lot of sites, like YouTube (no big deal) and Blogger (kind of a problem) auto-detect your location and set language defaults accordingly? Here's what the top part of my Blogger dashboard looked like:

And the menus? Yeah, they were filled with nonsensical chicken scratchings too. I managed to find the place where you can select your language and got it switched back to English, so I can work my blog again. While surfing around, I come across lots of sites with no letters, just squiggly little characters all over the place.


My friend who's been here a while gave me a cell phone so I can keep in touch.
(In other words, I can call for help when I get hopelessly lost.) I decided to try it out, and guess what? It's a Korean phone. The dialing buttons have regular numbers and letters, plus the little squiggles, but the menu buttons and most of what appears on the screen are all Korean. How do they even read this stuff? I started experimenting, just pushing lots of buttons to see if I could make it do what I want. That didn't work. So my friend showed me what's what on it, and I remembered for about 5 minutes. That was Thursday. I'll probably never make a call with this thing.

We went out for dinner the other night, and it's a good thing I was with people who know how to order at the restaurant, find their way around the city, etc. When you travel to a foreign country, it's helpful to know a few phrases in the local language. Still difficult, but helpful. My Korean is limited to, let's see... exactly zero words. I can't even say, "I'm an American. Please don't hurt me. I'll give you all my money if you show me back to my hotel and leave my kidneys where they are." I sure hope I never get separated from the group.

Super High Tech Computerized Drinking Fountain

Here's another installment of stuff I see that reminds me of other stuff.


These days it seems everything is computerized. Check out this amazing drinking fountain:

From the front, it looks like any other fountain, but look at the top...

I'm not a computer expert, but I think if you click on that logo in the corner, it sends the water directly to your email.

Really Simple Sipping?

Posthumous Lessons From Steve Jobs

According to a book I bought a few months ago, one good way to attract interest in a blog and build online community is to get an early scoop on a buzzworthy news story. In spite of this advice, I’ve never been inclined to write about current events here at Unintimidated by Convention. (The book also suggested choosing a short blog title.)

I’m making an exception now because I took genuine interest in an Associated Press story about Steve Jobs. AP reporter Michael Liedtke got an advance copy of Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of Jobs, which was released today, and he wrote about Jobs’s striking animosity toward Google, which he accused of corporate theft. Jobs personally mentored Google CEOs, and their two companies previously enjoyed good rapport. But, according to Isaacson, Jobs later accused Google of stealing their Android mobile phone operating system from Apple, and he declared a willingness to “spend my last dying breath… and every penny of Apple’s $40 billion… to right this wrong.” Clearly, he felt strongly about the issue.

All this is well documented, and I doubt there’s much breadth I can add to the story beyond what Isaacson and Liedtke have already published. But I want to give my personal take on the situation, hopefully adding to its depth in a few areas.

As I read the AP story this morning, two things immediately came to mind. The first was a four-line stanza from “Elegy Written in Country Churchyard,” a beautiful 18^th century poem by Thomas Gray:

     The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

        And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

     Awaits alike the inevitable hour.

        The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Indeed. Doesn't matter if you're worth billions, at the head of the decade's most successful company, and revered by countless followers all over the world. When it's your time to go, there's nothing anyone can do about that.

The second thing I thought about as I read was the group of questions raised by Jobs’s accusations and how Apple, Google, and the legal system will respond. Just because Jobs is no longer with us to push the issue does not mean the alleged corporate theft will be ignored. Perhaps Google will be barred from selling any more copies of Android and ordered to pay Apple eleventeen gazillion dollars. Or the two companies will settle on a licensing agreement. Or perhaps someone will prove Jobs’s accusations to be baseless, the offhanded ramblings of a dying paranoid.

I think none of this matters as much as the tender feelings of any one survivor to whom Steve was a son, brother, husband, father, or friend. To them, he is more important than all of his accomplishments combined. But he is no more or less important to them than any retired bus drivers, middle-aged waitresses, or 22-year-old struggling college students are to their respective loved ones.* Another stanza from Gray’s elegy goes like this:

     Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

        Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

     Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

        The short and simple annals of the poor.

I will try to remember that what I do for my family and friends every day is worth more than all the Google Androids in the world, and I hope everyone reading this understands the same is true of their priceless lives. 

This gang is the reason I drag myself to work every day
...and run straight home every night.

* Or a 40-something government employee who sits down with his MacBook three or four times a week to write something on his little blog with a big name—add him to the list.

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Love my blog but want more cowbell? Wish I would fall into an abyss, or at least throw my laptop in? Feel I should have chosen 12 pt. Arial instead of 14 pt. Verdana? Comment below! I’m not a mind reader.

Grab Bag No. 3: I'm Part of the Atari Generation

I've been writing a weekly grab bag post consistently every three weeks, give or take two...


Which means it's time for another. The topic of this one is video games, but it's a short one because I'm not really what you'd call a "gamer."


- I had Columbus day off from work, and Mrs. Christensen and I spontaneously decided some of that free time should be used to get the band back together. By "the band" I mean Rock Band, our family's favorite use for the PlayStation. We searched the house but could not find two pieces necessary to make the drums work, and the guitar was not in great shape either. What to do? Simple! Go out and buy all new instruments. We now have a better guitar, wireless drums, and a new microphone to boot! (They come as a set.) It's great to be an adult. Kids and teens have to save for months or beg Santa Claus for something like this. We just had to reassign a hundred bucks from the grocery budget. (Maybe it was the car insurance; I'm not sure.) DON'T JUDGE ME!


- While at the game store, I took a few minutes to browse the used discs and spotted a cheap copy of Lego Star Wars. We picked it up for our boy, Caleb, and it's a huge hit! This is a video game based on a toy that's based on a movie... I want a T-shirt with this game on it!


- George Carlin once said that violence on television only affects kids whose parents act like television characters. I tend to believe this theory, and I'd like to apply it to video games as well, but have you seen what goes on in some of those games? Shocking. There's a big debate over this topic, and a lot of research is being done. I side with those who believe games are more harmful than TV to young minds because you are an active participant in the game; you don't just watch it, you interact with it.


- I was thinking about the old Pong console we had 30-something years ago, which we hooked up to our 13" black and white TV. I wonder how much that unit would bring on eBay today? No doubt several times what it cost new. (I can still picture its simulated wood grain housing and big mechanical switches and dials. They just don't make 'em like that anymore.) I recall being just as entertained by it as by the Atari 2600, the Super Mario Bros. on NES, and every increasingly sophisticated game that followed, up to this day. In another 20 years when we have holodecks in our houses, I doubt I'll find them much better than any of these. Marshall McLuhan's claim that "the medium is the message" holds true here. A video game is a video game... they're all fundamentally the same as each other, and different from all books, movies, etc.


That's all for now. If you need me, I'll be rocking out. Or maybe stacking Tetris blocks.


...




Love my blog but want more cowbell? Wish I would fall into an abyss, or at least throw my laptop in? Feel I should have chosen 12 pt. Arial instead of 14 pt. Verdana? Comment below! I’m not a mind reader.

Leave a Comment... Or Not.

My apologies to anyone who’s tried to leave comments here and found that to be more trouble than it’s worth. I’m not arrogant enough to believe lots of people read this blog and like it so much they want to be a part of it. But a few friends have told me they tried to comment and couldn’t get that feature to work.

Here’s what I think is going on:

My evil plot to rule the world through blogging has been co-opted by Google’s own (much more successful) plan to conquer the known universe with the help of bloggers like me. You could say I’m in their downline. Apparently you need a membership with Google (Blogger’s mother ship) to leave comments here. My friend Wayne didn’t have any trouble with it, but he’s a full-blown, card carrying tech geek, so he already has a membership to every online service that exists. The rest of us just want to go to the bottom of the blog post, type a few words of agreement, encouragement, hatred, confusion, or other feedback, then input that CAPTCHA thing to prove we’re not spambots, and voila!—comment added. Why is this so much to ask?

I wrote a letter to try to get help, but I’m not sure where to send it:

…

Dear Blogger/Blogspot/Whatever You Prefer To Be Called Now,

   I really appreciate your help setting up Unintimidated by Convention.  Since I don’t know anything about computers, I could never have done it without you. But my friends and followers (I use these terms very loosely) cannot post comments without becoming part of your virtual empire. Could you fix it so anyone who wants can comment without first getting a Google ID?

Your Humble Servant,

Brian

…

I’ll keep working on this. In the meantime, if you already have a membership, please comment. If not, it really doesn’t take long to set one up. I’m just sayin’…

P.S. You can always write to me by email. I'm at bchristensen1970@gmail.com
Yes, I'm aware that gmail is another Google franchise. So maybe it's a bit ironic that I suggest using it at the end of this post, but not really, because anyone can freely send a message to that address.


~ 24 October 2011 Edit: Good news! I've figured out the comments thing. I just had to poke around in the settings a little, and guess what? Under "Comments" I still had the default setting selected, which requires an OpenID membership, but you can also check "Anyone" or "Only members of this blog." I now have it set so anyone can comment. I take back everything I've said about Blogger's limitations in this area. ~ 


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Did you like what you just read? Why not join Unintimidated by Convention? There's no membership fee, you don't have to attend any meetings, and I promise not to send you annual renewal notices. Just click on the right where it says "Join this site" and then type in your stuff that it asks for. Do it now!

I Had to Call it Something, and "Google" Was Taken

“Why does Brian call this thing Unintimidated by Convention?” In case you’re obsessed with that question, I’ll explain…

Before starting my blog I thought very long and hard about what to name it, devoting at least two hours to the matter. I looked to one of my recent writer’s notebooks for inspiration and found some things I’d jotted down about Homer and Langley, the latest novel from E. L. Doctorow. In this re-imagining of the lives of Harlem recluses Homer and Langley Collyer, Doctorow crafts many passages of pure genius.

My favorite short phrase from the book is “cats on patrol,” which refers to exactly what you’d think. The only trouble is this would make no sense as a blog title.

I was captivated and amused by a page-long passage on the paradox that can result from tying one’s happiness to that of another person. But my blog isn’t about relationships, and a page-long title might be a bit much. (I mean, this isn’t a Fiona Apple album.)

Then it hit me. “Unintimidated by convention” is a phrase Doctorow uses to describe the Collyer brothers, stubborn, fiercely independent, and thrifty-to-a-fault pathological hoarders. I do not wish to live anything like they did (no reasonable person would). But there was something about their attitudes as portrayed by Doctorow that I strongly identify with. I’d found my title.

In a future post, I’ll probably list some reasons I consider myself unintimidated by convention.

... 

With the problem of naming my blog out of the way, all I lack is a subtitle for it—you know, a little tag line that gives a nutshell description of me or suggests the blog’s focus. I brainstormed some good possibilities, but someone has beaten me to each of them. Here’s a list of subtitles I could have used if they weren’t already taken:

- Naked beneath my clothes

- Huge in Europe

- Two people shy of a ménage a trois

- Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

- New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk-parody duo

- Me want cookie

- From the office of the President of the United States of America

- Now with 50% less saturated fat

- Veni, vidi, vici

That’s about all I’ve come up with so far. If anyone has an original idea, I’d love to hear it. Please comment below.

~ Edit: There's now a subtitle, which you can see if you scroll to the top of the page. I have a standing invitation for Stale Thinking to meet me by the flagpole at noon, and I'm gonna work that sucker over! (21 September 2011) ~

Me 2.0

I’m taking this college course on computer technologies for professional and technical writing. (Yeah, and they have courses on stuff like history of rock and roll. Who's the sucker?) Our first assignment is to browse some books on Web 2.0, just to gain basic familiarity. I say to myself, “Self, I wasn’t even aware they came out with a new update. We should definitely install it on our laptop, because the original web was pretty nifty, so version two should be dynamite!” Allow me to go back and explain a little of my history…

For about three seconds in the early 1980’s I was up to speed on computers. I hung out with some tech-savvy kids. I could hold my own in a conversation on the latest hardware and software, and I could actually use both to nearly their full potential. Over the next decade my computer skills stagnated as the technology rushed forward like a bullet train. I was left standing at the station, and by the time Al Gore became Vice President, I was clueless. I could no more sit in front of a computer and make it do what I wanted than fly to the moon by flapping my arms. I’ve spent the time since then trying to catch up, but I’ve always been two steps behind and about as capable as an average 5^th grader. (On some things, more like a below-average one who has to stay after class to get extra help.) I mean, I’ve figured out how to work Word and Excel, how to find what I need on the web (version 1.0) and how to use email. I’m not stupid, just stunted.

So I open a book called Fundamentals of Web 2.0 (an electronic, online edition), and the first thing I learn is that there was no big revision to the internet. The 2.0 is a term someone coined for social networking, which, until recently, I thought was only used by high school kids looking for new ways to spread gossip and consulting firms trying to make a buck with their expertise in... ah, social networking. Apparently, there’s more to it than that, and if I don’t get on board I’ll soon be left even farther behind.

Hence, this thing you’re reading right now. That is, if you didn’t fall asleep two paragraphs ago. If you’re still with me, I’m sure you’ll enjoy future posts on how I’ve learned to Tweet about getting my Facebook LinkedIn to my blog.

Copyright 2011 by W.W. Norton & Company

         

From Charlotte Temple

by Susanna Rowson. 

This is NOT what they mean by "Social Networking," but it's about as close as I ever came until recently.