Entertainment For Lively Minds
Moving forward by lurching backwards
Posted by Archie Valparaiso on 5 February 2010 - 8:40am.
When I get up in the morning and flick on the light switch in the kitchen, it takes ten minutes before there's enough light to read by.
The incandescent light bulb may not have been efficient, but at least it was effective. This changeover is the first time I've had to wait impatiently for anything to warm up since Me Nan's radiogram.
This can't be the only example of a technological development that's swept the world despite being more cumbersome, annoying or generally more rubbish than what it has replaced, so what others are there?
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Digital reception with a time lag
'The time now is precisely 7 o'clock' No it isn't.
I couldn't agree more...
I replaced an incandescent bulb with an energy saving one a few days ago and I am convinced that they are rubbish! It's the first time I've used one and they give off about as much light as a dying glow worm. They'll probably improve in the future but right now they are definitely inferior.
One development that irks me greatly is the replacement of teaspoons in coffee emporiums with wooden sticks. Said sticks leave the sugar sat in a pile on the bottom of your coffee cup.
The light that they output.
Incandescent bulbs emit light of all frequencies. These energy saving ones only give out light of a few distinct frequencies, which results in some coloured things looking darker than usual. You can prove this by looking at the reflection of the bulb on the back of a CD.
Software upgrade
Any software upgrade means that the one feature you used all the time has been made very, very complicated, or removed altogether. (eg total album time in minutes and seconds in Windows Media Player, and the 'original artisr' field in the metadata which used to be there, but has gone, taking all the artists on my Word CDs with it (I used it so that the mp3 players wouldn't clutter up my artist filing system with one-song artists).
It's not just technology
Since deregulation of bus and train services, you first have to spend half an hour gathering the disparate information from the half-dozen or so operators in your area before finally deciding which one you need to use. By which time you've probably missed the first one, anyway.
On the plus side
This thread made me think of my ipod touch. The way it's designed so that you can 'flick' through your album/single covers is an excellent design. You can't browse CD's like lp's or single covers. Any other good moves forward?
iPod Touch
is great. But why, when I've finished listening do I have to press the home button, pause whatever is playing and the press the off switch at the top. My nano only needed me to hold done the play button.
Motorway
overhead "interactive" signs. Supposed to help and control traffic flows. Seem to switch to "Queue 50mph" warnings for no apparent reason, which then end a few miles later after creating a big jam as everybody slows.
I have a theory that there is some sort of conspiracy theory by the authorities to create a self fulfilling prophecy about traffic congestion in the UK.
Oh, and while I'm at it, those self service checkouts in the supermarket aren't always as quick as they can be if you've got more than a couple of items.
And what about on line check in for airlines. Went through the motions of doing just that in early Jan, got to the airport, went to hand in my case to be checked in again and given a new boarding pass "because the machines often don't recognise tha barcodes on the printed ones"
Progress Schmogress
"Unrecognised item in bagging area"
"Unrecognised? UNRECOGNISED? It's a fucking BAG you moron piece of kit. First you ask me if i'm using my own bag, then you claim not to notice that the big baggy thing in the bagging area is a small Berghaus rucksack with straps and zips and stuff. What the fuck do you think it is? A gazelle? A cunningly disguised magnum of champagne that I'm trying to smuggle past the checkout without paying? Aaaarggghh..."
/head asplodes
Yes
that kind of thing....
Modern recording software..
(Protools, Cubase etc) may have more editing capabilities and endless effects plug-ins, but it's still fiddly and headache inducing compared to good old tape.
Creme Fraiche v Cream
I am offered Creme Fraiche these days with a pudding when I much prefer cream. I know that, unlike the old lightbulb, cream still exists but at a fair few dinner parties I have been to, it doesn't.
As in the old joke...
"I'd like some chocolate pudding please, but without cream."
- "Sorry sir, we don't have cream, would you like it without Creme Fraiche instead?"
Grumpy Old Men
It's a TV program. Have you seen it? Lot's of experienced chaps imparting accumilated wisdom on life's challenges to the great and the good. Turns out it's just a bunch of miserable jobbing actors and ex-radio dj's moaning about their lot. I ask you Bjørge Lillelien, how is that progress?
See also: Internet Forums.
According
To The "Heads " on here. CDs and cassettes replacing Vinyl.
teletext
As a retired teletext obsessive, I'm not too enamoured with the digital equivalent. There's no Bamber Boozler/Planet Sound for a start, it takes ages to load the football scores on a Saturday afternoon (much longer than ropey ol' teletext did), the weather forecast per region isn't as comprehensive and I keep being asked if I want to 'press red to go interactive.' I don't. I just want to know how Everton/Raith Rovers are doing.
are you sure?
The news from Everton and Raith is rarely good. Don't you want to keep the hope going a bit longer?
all hope thrown overboard years ago
I could cope with supporting a rubbish football team...if I still had Bamber Boozler in my life.
Teletext dosen't exhist anymore. Closed down in December.
And Sky Sports Soccer Saturday wipes the floor with waiting for teletext to update.
Half the screen...
...on BBCs digital text service is taken up with a shrunken version of whatever program's currently showing on that channel. Which means the text can only occupy the right-hand side of the screen. What sort of split-brained freak do they think wants to read the text and watch the programme simultaneously?
CDs.
CDs. An old discussion, I know, but I can't get over the fact that we've solved the "problem" of having to get out of our chair to change sides every so often by replacing our vinyl records with these flimsy pieces of crap.
Oh and e-Readers. I can't see the point, but do think they're going to become more and more popular over the next year or so.
On a positive note, I much prefer my Blackberry to my old Fileofax!
Virgin Train Toilets
On entering the toilet, there are 4 buttons which you can press for door operation.
To lock the door, you need to press the "Close Door" button, wait until it has fully closed, then press the "Lock Door" button.
Under what circumstances would anyone ever want to close but not lock the toilet door ?
Flippin tilting trains
Make me want to puke. No really. Worse than aeroplonk turbulence.
Possibly...
...to have illicit sex with a stranger, and heighten the excitement by closing the door but not locking it...as a friend once told me..probably....sorry.
A lot of people don't realise you need to lock them
and consequently, they can sometimes open whilst you're, um, not finished.
As Frankie Boyle has pointed out, it becomes like a nightmarish gameshow where the screen slides back to reveal the star prize - a woman on the toilet!
AND
on a train with doors and windows you can't open, they lock the toilets on the late night train to stop the drunks puking all over them.
So they puke all over the seats instead. But the toilets are pristine.
The Virgin Toilet Emergency button
Right next to "Open" and "Close". Brilliant design...meanwhile the entire train thinks "what's that?"
It's rant o' clock
The Post Office.
I went to post a CD in a jiffy bag early last year, went to the counter, talked to the assistant, and sorted it all out no problems.
A few months later, I went to post a CD again. I was told by the person behind the counter I had to go and get a numbered ticket before I could be served (despite there being no queue). While getting a ticket I was ushered to the self-service machine. Upon managing to decipher what I was meant to do, I printed the stamp, but then had to drop my parcel about five feet down a metal container. I was then told if I wanted a receipt, I'd have to go to the ticket machine to get a ticket and join the back of the queue which had now formed.
There, moan over.
Post Office Self-Service
Have used it twice and both times I've had to have someone tell me what to do, and will do again next time I use it because I'll never remember - which rather seems to defeat the "self-service" nature of the thing.
Likewise the self-service in Tescos of Sainsburys - there has to be a staff member loitering for all the times the machine needs re-setting because I didn't do everything in the exact order that it wanted me to, or didn't recognise my bag, or objected to me taking something out for re-packing purposes...
Post Office - Envelope Sizes
Once upon a time, if I wanted to post a birthday card first class, I put a first class stamp on it and put it in a post box.
Job done.
Now I have to fret about the (non-standard) size of the envelope in case I'm putting the wrong value stamp on it. So I have to go to a post office to get it measured.
Or else I put a first class stamp on it and hope for the best.
spare a thought for the programmer
who has had to write the firmware for those self-service checkout machines. It would be no small undertaking, trying to take account of the many ways in which a punter might progress through the checkout process successfully. "UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA!!!!" indeed.
... says a programmer!
Passport photos
When did passport photos become so impossible to get right? When did those booths suddenly become so crap at taking the pictures the photos get rejected by the Passport Office based upon a list of criteria for which Haynes should possibly publish a manual?
Black and white photos worked a treat first time, every time. Now they've gone digital and colour the variation in output is as if they're passed through a crap Photoshop clone stuck on a random image filter setting.
Arse.
there's something in your eye...
It took 3 attempts to get my passport photos right last year. It wasn't as if I was wearing sunglasses or dressed as a nun, but each time there was some minor quibble.
On the first one, I was informed that the background of the photo wasn't the right colour- I had it done it a bloody photo-booth!
On the second one, there was a very slight sort of twinkle in my eye, as the light had reflected. I tried to convince the woman in the Post Office that I had a natural twinkle in my eye, which, when allied to my considerable charm, made me semi-legendary in ladies' man circles. She shot me a glance that suggested I was the sort of chap who spends too much time on teletext (RIP).
Sat Nav £299
Map £2.99
See where we went wrong?
My friend,
if you'd been in a car whilst I tried to navigate using a map, you'd be in Curry's purchasing Garmin's finest before you could say, "You have now reached your destination".
Sat Nav £299?
Where are you shopping? Just over £100 will get you maps for the whole of Europe down to street level. Now that is, officially, a bargain.
I'm NOT shoping
I already have a woman to point out everything I'm doing wrong.
...
EDIT: Bunch of HTML-tag arse...
Database queries and the printed/handwritten page
I spent three hours trying to find something in one of our fancy dan databases at work. The same data came from a set of handwritten note books from the 40s and 50s, which I managed to track down and install on a shelf near my desk. Searching those in a similar enquiry took me ten minutes. I'll probably be required by some health and safety iniative to put them back into an electronic format and use an ebook reader in the future.
Give me pages I can feel, and the ability to flick back and forth between more than two pages at a time please.
Interactive anything
I have never seen anything that is advertised as interactive that is any good. Press the red button for interactive choices? Press the red button for a 2 minute inactive wait followed by the pressing of every button on the remote to get back to normal telly. Same for interactive touch screen things in shops and shopping centres. Interactive is like call centres with the human touch removed.
I feel better now.
a human on the phone
instead of a recording of one giving you options
predictive text FTW!?
I think this is the flip side
of what Wired described as the "good enough revolution"
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/wired-good-enough-revolution
Things I miss
Concorde (not as a viable travel option, mind, just its presence)
Moon landings
My IBM Thinkpad(had to pension it off as a laptop as it doesn't support WPA and had stopped seeing its USB. The work-supplied Tosh that replaces it ain't as good, but I couldn't source an XP thinkpad replacement in UK at that moment)
My Linn Sondek (a rational decision as it was hardly used and I got c 400 quid trade-in, but still a beautiful device)-I have one of these
http://nealp2.tripod.com/IIX.jpg
-was my Dad's-in partner's loft though so eventually we'll get that serviced and going again.
The Citroen SM and CX ...
I think I'll stop now before I turn into Clarkson ...
Ah, Portland!
Don't install CFLs upside down. The glue goes soft and you have to look at their horribly retro ZX81 innards. And don't snap the tubes. Inhaling mercury is overrated. It just makes you stare for a few seconds.
Anyway, I was googling for images of Greenpeace trustafarians just now, found the following 2005 page of nastiness directed at a long list of bands and thought you might enjoy it:
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Content?oid=33246&category=34029
I haven't heard of most of them, and their One Good Bowie Album shortlist starts in 1983, which is nuts. And was Prince still alive in 2005? And they're too kind to Elvis Costello. But they get some things right.