Oh crap.

Mike Cane has kindly reminded me of a horrific film moment from my childhood. I have just one scene in my head, because it is the only one I watched. That TV went off damn quickly, but the scene stayed firmly embedded in my head.

Stills from that scene are on Mike’s blog post. The film is The Reflecting Skin. I did not know that until just now.

Funny, how the emotions stay with you.

Deep breaths.

There is only one other film I can remember when I had a similar reaction. I remember it had subtitles and to my great surprise my first view of an adult penis. I was so shocked that I turned off the TV!

Next day I was a very confused young man. Kicking myself for turning off the TV and trying to convince myself that it was only the woman I was interested in seeing again. That scene is still firmly embedded in my head. Still no idea what the film was called.

Funny how the emotions stay with you.

Deep breaths.

I was recently fiddling around with Inkscape when I discovered the feature for converting raster images into vectors. For fun I tried it on a random drawing I had scanned into my computer. The result is below:

I was really surprised by the result. I know it’s not the most amazing of images, but it’s the first pencil drawing that I’ve managed to successfully import onto the computer so I thought I’d put it on my blog.

When I find time to get on the scanner, I’ll try importing some more successful drawings.

1. Find the correct remote control. It’s the one that looks practically the same as the one you’re holding. No, the other one that looks the same.
2. Press and hold the red ‘On’ button for about 3 seconds. No, you’ve gotta hold it down. Yes, that’s it. No, only once. You’ve turned it off again.
3. Okay, press the number for the channel you want. Wait a few seconds for it to register. No, just press it once, you’ve gone to channel 44. Try again, but only press the button once.
4. hmm, it’s not working. Maybe it’s on the video channel. Try pressing AV. It’s in the middle there, near the top. Okay, press AV again. And again. And again.
5. That’s it. We’re in TV mode now. Oh, but we’re in analogue TV mode. We need to put it in digital mode. Try pressing the TV button. It’s the one next to the AV button.
6. Right I think we’re in the correct mode. Let’s try moving to Channel 4.
7. Hmm, BBC One, Two and Three is here. And the 24 Hour News. And some children’s channels. But where the hell is Channel 4?
8. Duh. Pressing the ‘4′ button will obviously bring it up. Try that.
9. No, that didn’t work.
10. Oh, it’s only currently showing the channels we’ve made as favourites. Let’s show all channels. I think the blue button will change that. Okay, press it again. There we go.
11. There it is. Now just scroll to that channel and press enter.
12. Cry.

Next week: How to record a show before the series has finished

Ring ring.

Ring ring.

Ring ring.

“Hello”

“Hello, is that Alan?”

“Yes it is! Hi Grandad. How are you?”

“Oh we’re ever so pleased. We got our new television today. The men from the shop set it all up for us. Really, helpful.”

“Oh good. So you’re happy with it.”

“Yes. It’s a wonderful picture. And we got one of those new CD recorders with it.”

“Great!”

“I was wondering if you could come round and explain how to work it. Me and your nan have a bit of trouble grasping all this new technology at our age.”

No Granddad, it’s not your age.

I’ve just spent the entire afternoon round their house trying to figure this thing out.

To be fair, they want to do complicated things. You know, things like recording their favourite shows and changing the channel.

Yep, it took me about half an hour to figure out how to change the channel. Televisions have beautiful picture quality these days, even without high definition. But what’s the point when it’s so difficult to use?

Right now there are gaping holes in the market for products that are simple to use. Not just for Granddad, but for everyone that would prefer not to spend their vacation time reading instruction manuals.

The only hope I can see on the horizon is, yet again, Apple. The Apple TV is not yet good enough to replace my Grandparent’s complete setup, but I believe it will be in good time.

It would just be nice if someone beat them to it. They need some proper competition.

Maybe Sony are working on something in secret?

Ha, ha, ha, ha

I crack myself up sometimes.

I’ve just made a subtle change to the design of the site. If you look at the comments or the post’s meta information you will see I now explicitly state that the times are in UTC (or Universal Coordinated Time). They always have been in this most wonderful of time zones, but I didn’t tell you before. This meant you knew what time the comment was posted within a range of hours from 1 to 24. In other words, completely pointless.

What an idiot I have been.

I go downstairs for something to eat. Down the hall. Enter the kitchen. And there, on the worktop, is half a chocolate cake.

I look at it.

For some reason I want some cake. It’s junk food, and I know it’s bad for me but I don’t care. And no, not because I’m weak willed. I hardly ever eat junk food, so I don’t feel guilty when I do.

I cut myself a slice.

I remember that chocolate cake goes well with ice cream.

Scoop. Scoop.

Into a bowl, add a spoon and I’m done. Then I rush upstairs to enjoy my simple creation.

Or rather I don’t.

I’m sitting here right now with that bowl in front of me. It’s half finished and I don’t want any more.

I feel sick. Not in any dramatic way. Just that the more I eat, the worse my body feels. I’m not used to that any more. Food is supposed to make you feel better. That’s what it normally does.

I could leave it; but instead I’m going to force myself to eat the rest. I want to memorise how disgusting it is.

Then I’m going to eat something nice. Probably some walnuts (a food I used to hate).

The other day I wanted McDonalds randomly. I had to remind myself of the last unhappy meal I had there some two years ago. It tasted the same as it always had before. I remembered the taste from years previously and it still tasted the same. It’s just this time I actually realised that it tasted of rubber salted cardboard. For some reason I’d stopped liking that.

We must all know this food tastes disgusting right? We must know from our lips to our anus that it makes us feel awful. I think we’ve just stopped listening. Or we assume it’s normal to feel bad. And when we try eating actual food again, we have trouble tasting properly.

Leave the crap alone for a few months. It might help you remember.

It’s been a long time because I’ve actually been doing some work. I’m learning to exit dream-mode and get on with some practical things for once in my life.

(You can’t blame me, school lulled me to sleep for so many years. Yeah learning is good, but doing nothing but learning for almost 20 years is actually a bit insane. Some people believe they wake up when school ends and reality hits them. In truth, most have simply stopped dreaming.)

I’m busy partly with more education (a part time psychology degree). Like I said learning is good; you’ve just got to be doing something practical as well.

The practical element is that I’m starting up a business.

This was inevitable I think. I was a bit of a childhood entrepreneur until I went to high school and they kicked the spirit out of me. (Why didn’t I just rebel?) Anyway, as soon as I exited full-time education the numbness started to fade. Looking at a job advert was like the splash of ice-water on my face; a stark reminder that the only thing worse than dying is dying after a lifetime of corporate misery.

Coming in a few days I’m going to be putting up my new blog where the main topic will be user interface design (primarily from a website perspective). My hope is to improve the technology climate a bit by making some of it easy to use.

My core belief is if you make technology easy, you give more people more power. Which is usually a good thing, but granted not always! The alternative is to only give power to the government and huge corporations; which is sometimes a good thing, but very rarely.

On a wider scale my interest is in how people interact with technology. But I want to keep my focus reasonably narrow and practical so I’m making no commitments to write anything about that wider interest.

This blog is going to become my outlet for writing about whatever I feel like. I don’t care if nobody reads it; that is pretty unimportant. In fact I don’t even have any statistics for this site; and that’s refreshing. Sometimes I just need to write. This is a place for my key presses to go.