One does something 'more quickly'.

Having said that, I know exactly what you mean, though I do find those moments often threatened by the gulf between the theoretical and the practical reality.

"Oh wow, YES!, you MUST listen to this!...."

silence

tumbleweed

Waiting for the pasta to cook commenting on this post using my blackberry. No wires, just a phone, connected to the internet. Wow! We do take.this stuff for granted don't we?

Sky Sports Score Centre on the iphone. Whilst at a child's birthday party this afternoon.

I bought a book the other day called Pressed In Time American Prints 1905-1950 which is an absolutely beautiful collection of images. I was particularly taken with a print made in 1929 by Martin Lewis titled 'Glow in the City' and wanted to see if there was a book available just of his work. I went straight to the Alibris book search site, entered his name and came up with a rare but affordable out of print hardback. I haven't bought it yet, but the point is that I know that it's out there and I know where to find it. It struck me that 10 or so years ago I'd have been traipsing around bookshop after bookshop looking for it, probably to no avail. Now I press some keys on my computer and it appears as if by magic.

I'm not certain that this is entirely a good thing... I remember well the thrill of finding a book or a record I'd been after for years in some dusty corner of a second hand shop, but the fact that I have such an easy alternative at my disposal is nevertheless extraordinary.

Glow in the City by Martin Lewis

the first time I use it I was literally in bed under the covers at a friends house. I was being nagged to get up and find out when our train left but it was cold morning and it was not our house. But a few clicks on my phone I found the nearest trin station and the times and could roll over saying "i'd done it". Even so even when it worked and the train pulled in at the right time my technology wasn't praised. Being able to zoom into your position on you phone is truly amazing and yet common place.

- but where's my jet-pack?

I read a marvellous book some 20 years ago by a chap called Alexander Dolgun, titled simply 'Dolgun', which told of his abduction by the Russian secret service in Moscow in 1948 and his subsequent years in the Gulag.

It was and remains a marvellous narration of his astonishing survival. I read it several times until I made the phenomenal error of lending it to someone. Naturally I never saw it again.

Over the years since then whenever I found myself in a second-hand bookshop I would try and spot a copy. Never did. Not once.

Gradually I forgot all about it. Then the internet happened.

Absolutely anything you want or think you want is less than a day away. Browsing through some online second hand book sites looking for some decent 'Jennings' hardbacks the name Dolgun suddenly popped unbidden into my mind for the first time in a decade or so. One short search later I'd found and bought a copy.

The gap, from the thought entering my mind to the arrival of my long lost favourite book, was only 22 hours.

That means something. But I don't know what.

I was on a nostalgia buzz last week and stumbled on a site called A quater pound of sweets. 3 days later I was eating cola cubes,cocconut tobbacco and brown mice with my kids[who hated them so I ate them all].
If this isn't a pointless miracles of technology then what is ?

to your iPod in the first place and carried the 25 iPod monoliths necessary to contain your entire collection with you to the supermarket in a wheelbarrow, you could have heard the tune a whole 30 minutes earlier. Sir, you have the patience of a saint.

More important than the pointless miracle of technology, I marvel at the limitless brilliance of the human mind, that it can connect one of the countless jam varieties directly to just one line from one of the billion songs you've heard in your lifetime in a microsecond. Now THAT'S impressive. The listening mechanism stuff? Meh. Technology schmechnology...

if I wanted to know what groups were playing in my local vicinity I would scour the gig guide in that weeks MM/NME/sounds. To see a particular group I would hope that their tour was announced in the news pages.

As mentioned elsewhere, I doubt the dates that Deaf School have just played would have been mentioned anywhere other than in the Liverpool Echo. I picked up on it on Myspace, booked the tickets online and saw where I would be sitting on a seating plan. The shows were even better than when I last saw them in the 1970s. After their final gigs tonight I will be able to view photgraphs and, hopefully, some video clips online. Again, I doubt any publication other than the Echo will have bothered with a series of concerts where everyone who is anyone from the Liverpool music scene would have been clambouring to be at these sellout reunion gigs.

God bless the internet.

Yesterday we had Mexican food for lunch. My daughter (5) who just expects this sort of thing, said 'Can we have Mexico music with our lunch?' Two minutes later, thanks to Spotify, we are all grooving to The Mexican Hat Dance. Fantastic!

besotted mode with my Ipod, even after a year. It's become a permanent extension, as essential as trousers. The concept of having my entire music collection in my pocket,and fully accessible at will, is astonishing. The sheer knowledge that in seconds I can dip into Fragile, Trout Mask Replica, Otis Blue, Surf's Up or Solomon's Seal etc. never fails to amaze me. Sad, possibly, but it is also a psychic first aid kit. For example, I was boarding a flight from Cork to Bristol last week, only to be assaulted by Bonio's hysterics about 'one love'. Urgh.
Dear Mr Fantasy to the rescue !

Our hols are imminent and as of yesterday morning no documentation had arrived. Mrs Phil was getting a little jumpy. I phoned the travel company and spoke to a real person, who, after some frenzied keyboard tapping send me an email with everything required. I duly wandered upstairs to the computer still talking to customer service person and confirmed that said email had arrived.

Now I've been using email for so long these things shouldn't surprise me, but this was brilliant - despair to elation in seconds (and on a Saturday too).

Needless to say, a full to bursting iPod and its solar charger is top of the "to take" list. I just need to convince the FPO that the new 64GB iPod Touch is a bargain if bought at the airport ... hmmm there are some things technology can't assist with.

When I was 14 me and my mates used to watch skateboarding videos. They were only avilable on American import, very expensive and hard to track down, but one of us would get hold of one somehow and we'd all convene at his place to watch it. We'd dream of owning the soundtrack on cassette, but had no way of knowing who these obscure American college bands were and if we did, there's no way we'd find their stuff at the local Our Price.

Now? Streets on Fire is available on Youtube - albeit in 10 minute chunks - and with a bit of Googling I was able to ascertain that one of my favourite sequences was soundtracked by fIREHOSE (an offshoot of the Minutemen), whose entire recorded output seems to be on Spotify.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33642

I can browse by artist, album, song, or music genre. Boom! I'm doing it right now! The "repeat" feature? Heck, songs from my iPod don't ever have to end. I swear, I had "Music Box Dancer" going through my head for three days straight last week.

You say those iPods have customizable playlists that allow you to line up songs of your choosing? Primitive! I can put together a playlist, say "Best-Ever Heavy Metal Anthems," while I'm sitting in traffic. My mind is light-years beyond that, though. Does your iPod have the "That Reminds Me Of Another Great Song" feature? Well, my mind does!

Does your iPod have a powerful feature that can play back the great songs of summer 1993, as they sounded coming out of Mike Tollefson's boombox in the back of the school bus? Of course not. That particular playlist is in my brain, which your pitiful iPod will never be able to autosync with.

seriously though, I am finding the virtual memory that iTunes/Spotify and particularly YouTube are building up to be a true modern boon. Roll on the memory implant, as far as I'm concerned, even if we end up in this dilemma

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1999Natur.402..239W

as a result.

The other day I was in the lounge with Mrs V. She was watching Ladyhawke on TV; I, having decided that a little Matthew Broderick in sackcloth goes a very long way, was sitting next to her, arsing about on the Internet.

"I wonder where that was shot," she mused. "It looks like it could be somewhere in northern Spain."

With virtually the same speed as any utterance of normal telly-watching chit-chat, I opened another tab in my browser, typed "ladyhawke locations" in the Wikipedia box and replied, "It's Italy. Torrechiara castle in Parma province."

"Ah," she said, and continued watching the film as if nothing at all had happened.

You hear any tune- on TV, when you're out, wherever

You press the button on your Shazam app and it within seconds tells you what the tune is. But if you are not in mobile coverage zone it stores it until you are. Also all the tunes you tag are nicely filed with links and next options eg email details.

It is fab-works for the most obscure tracks- and found this track that way

...Maybe you could ask the guy in the shop or go on some other tortuous search to find it..but this works just fine

Thanks to a chip you can follow his progress on the internet. This is a miracle. It would be even better if he and his mate hadn't swapped chips by mistake.

but no one would know I'm here. Phone, I-touch, and laptop all function as normal. I'm dialled into my work emails and server. I can pass pages of the magazine I work on in London from a garden in Gard.

I may never come home.

who admitted playfully skyping one another from laptop to laptop across the kitchen table if internet-induced attention deficit became too severe..

drifting along aimlessly in the internet and feeling fed up I came across this

http://dontevenreply.com/view.php?post=59

I'm still laughing my cock off. But I'm not sure it's relevant to the original question above. It's about technology tho', ain't it?

...the internet can bring you into contact with people so geographically and socially removed from your own situation, that you could never hope to meet them in any other set of circumstances.

I’ve known some of my online contacts for years and although we have never met face-to-face, I communicate with them regularly and count them as friends.

"I've Got No Chicken But I've Got Five Wooden Chairs" by Edward Barton, which I had last "enjoyed" on The Tube in 1984. Without leaving the dinner table I was able to Googlebrowse "chicken chairs barton blogspot" on my phone, and the aforesaid song was at my table and playing before my pudding had even micro-pinged.

"Isn't modern life amazing" moments I would never have stooped so low as to suggest that you were in any way jaded.

Until 1973 the BBC used to broadcast Trade Test Films on BBC2 every morning to assist retail television engineers in the days when the first wave of colour sets had to be delivered, installed and calibrated on site by a trained professional.

As a child I was fascinated by these films, which were never listed in the Radio Times, and was saddened and frustrated by their sudden disappearance from the schedules.

I had always hankered for another chance to see these films, but resigned myself to the fact that I probably never would. Until, that is, the miracle of Youtube arrived.

Attached are three: "The Colour Television Receiver", a highly technical film narrated by Michael Aspel which explains the hitherto arcane practice of degaussing, and which in its own way is as hynotically reassuring as The Shipping Forecast; "Evoluon", which features Dutch children blowing into things; and the thoroughly charming "Giuseppina", the story of a sweet young Italian girl who is driven into the murky world of arms dealing as a way of escaping the boredom of her long, listless summer, and which was the last test film ever broadcast.

Youtube user brian55b has loads of them on his channel, although you should definitely avoid "Pan-tele-tron" if you've been eating the brown acid.

I can die now (although I hope I won't just yet).

several thousand miles from home looking for an ATM. I was chatting to my father on my mobile phone who was back in Blighty as I walked. I got out my cash card and got some cash out and put it in my wallet, finished the conversation and went to meet a mate for a pint.

Compare this with the 80's - when getting cash abroad and calling home took forever. Absolute miracle to do it them easily.

modern technology permits acts of cowardice that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

This video is Not Safe For Work.

Kelly - Text Message Breakup

I regularly have these "technological-innit-marvellous" moments. On Friday, I was on a bus, checking out Twitter wherein Graham Linehan led me to a link from the previous night's Rachel Maddow show on CNBC which I then watched. Last week, the baby demonstrated first steps to the grandparents in Dublin via Skype.

As a child of the 80's with my Speak & Spell and Commodore computer, I have enjoyed the online revolution and the recent developments of mobile connectivity. After years of techy daydreaming, the iPhone has delivered pretty much everything I used to want from a gadget as a kid: all you can eat music, you can watch movies on it, video camera, connected to a world wide network of people, Scrabble, and infinite shopping potential, as pointed out above...

The fun part is that technology will move on, and in 10, 20 years time this will all seem quaint. It's in the cloud, people! It's a bit like this...

Having amassed two seperate iTunes libraries - one on the PC in the office, one on the macbook - I was overjoyed to discover that not only can I listen to tracks from my mac on the PC (and vice versa) but also drag and drop files between the two machines!!

The two things that are the most "must-have" items for the discerning Wordista are:

a phone that does everything but "beam me up Scotty" (for now) - and a set of mono albums by a band that broke up 40 years ago

After doing a circuit of the London skyride today I stopped in St James's park for lunch, during which I uploaded a photo I'd taken to facebook. Within minutes I had a comment on the photo from my cousin in Waterloo, Ontario. I too wonder at how recently such a thing was completely implausible.

...I was listening to these two tunes on rotation which my kids and I loved after seeing them on the T4 Chart Rundown show. Turn my PC and stereo* on, login to Spotify and party time, while my wife and I were getting ready to go out. I really marvelled at the wonder and simplicity of it. (*note reference to my past and often luddite present).

These are great getting-ready-to-go-out records, by the way.

(the GLW hates it, although she was a Palm Pilot user for many years).

Being able to sync it with a laptop and keep schedule/phone book a password safe (encrypted) and GPS applications on a phone is brilliant.

Having worked with portable computing since the early 80s, syncing is so much more seamless now.

Not wireless (although Bluetooth) and not an MP3 player, but saves me carrying phone and PDA - genius. I don't need email at all times - so the Blackberry thing passed me by.

Still have to carry separate company phone though for work - different provider - split billing and accounts still has a way to go.

At a recent social occassion I found it desirous to insult the pig-headed oaf that is my father-in-law. Wishing to do it in Hungarian , for that is the scoundrels native tongue, and not wishing to trouble my wife, I was able with the help of my online dictionary to come up with a suitable word and the correct pronunciation.
"Mayom" means Ape.

In the middle of another thrusting, vibrant day at work - I found I had to attach a receipt from a hotel in order to claim the expenses back.

I knew where the receipt was. It was in the glovebox of my car in the basement of the building where I work. What a pain in the arse. I had just sat down.

So, without flexing a single buttock muscle, I emailed the hotel and asked them to send me a scanned copy of the recipt. Within 10 minutes, they had sent it to me through the cyber-marvellousness of email.

I marvel at being able to watch obscure footage of my favourite bands on youtube, i know it's old hat now but it still amazes me - particularly live gigs from 20 30 odd years ago, shot by audience member, or tv appearances from usa/australia etc. couldn't have imagined it a few years ago and yet seems obvious now - anything can be transmitted, if it exists. amazing.

(it won't be there forever you know, it still seems like a mirage)

recently the wife looked up the 1911 census which is now available online (national archives, Ireland) and got a photo of the actual census document which chronicled the presence of my grandfather and his siblings and his parents at his house on that day in 1911. mind boggling.

i used to think the computer recognising a cd's song titles was amazing but i don't anymore - is there a term for that?

receiving a text message in the supermarket about a necessary item is pretty nifty too doncha think