Friday Quotations: Computer Stuff

"He's as near to naked despair as has ever been shown to me by anyone not in a film. Here, in that place, we have no shame. He has seen me sleeping on the floor, drooling. We have both seen Danny's puffy white midsection--young as he is, it's a pity--when he stripped to his underwear in the heat of the machine room. I have seen Joel's dandruff, light coating of cat fur on his clothes, noticed things about his body that I should not. And I'm sure he's seen my sticky hair, noticed how dull I look without make-up, caught sight of other details too intimate to mention. Still, none of this matters anymore. Our bodies were abandoned long ago, reduced to hunger and sleeplessness and the ravages of sitting for hours at a keyboard and a mouse. Our physical selves have been battered away. Now we know each other in one way and one way only: the code.

--Ellen Ullman, "Closer to the Machine."

Me vs. The I-Phone

I took the Xpress bus home today, because it goes right by my local library.  It means a longer walk home from the library, but I had a book that was being recalled--Too Many Curses by Gil Martinez.  I won't be doing a full book review, so here goes the quick version: Wizard with a castle full of various monsters dies, and his kobold apprentice is left to hold things together.  Good premise, but the execution is a little pondering.

But that's not the focus here anyway. The story really begins after I return the book, and decide to take out another one.  I try to scan my library card, but the barcode is too faded. So I go up to the librarian, and she tells me that I need to replace my card, which is what I figured.  Then she told me that replacement will be $3.  That's kind of annoying, since it's not my fault their cards use ink that fades fairly easily, but well, it's only three dollars, and I value the service the library provides.  So I pay up.  Then this happens:

"Are you still at XXX St?"
"Oh, no, I'ved moved. I'm at YYYYYYY Ave now."
"Well, then, we'll need to see a proof of address to issue you a new card."

This is not a new problem.  And I am still a student living in a building where the landlord takes care of the utilities, I don't have cable, and my phone bill is about three addresses behind at this point. So the only proof of address I have is the original lease.  And I certainly didn't bring that with me, since I wasn't expecting this problem to begin with. But--and imagine a lightbulb appearing over my head--I did have my iPhone. I could just present the digital lease copy that the landlords sent me.

And this is where the nightmare proper begins.

I barely ever use my phone to surf the Net.  I try to limit my use of online things except when I'm on a local network, and if I'm on a local network, I generally just use the laptop anyway.  So it takes me a little bit to locate the university website. Then a bit longer to figure out how to get to the email (our university has a fairly stupid web layout, and I usually just use the autofill on the address bar of my laptop to get to my mail). Then I have to log in, which takes a few attempts because it's not easy to switch back and forth between  capital letters and small case letters on the iPhone, in order to type the password. Then it's a simple matter of searching through 4000+ emails to find the one from my landlord.  Problem is--and I had no way of knowing this going in--the iPhone version of my university's email system doesn't have a search bar under the default minimal settings.  Or, as I eventually determine, regular settings.  Finally, I find a search option, but it only lists the first seven emails that contain the name of my landlords on the immediate screen, and I can't control the drag bar on the side because every time I touch it, the iPod thinks I've touched the edge of the screen and scrolls down on the main window rather than this sub window.  I also  take time to spend a moment cursing the fates, that my landlords' last name is also a very common regular noun, and is thus found in no less than 360 of my emails.  Of course, searching for them in the "from" category rather than "body" would have found them immediately, but the iPhone version of the email site doesn't have that option.  So I get the idea to sort all my emails alphabetically, and look for them that way.  Good idea, but the execution is slow: the option for next page is right above the option for previous page, and again, even enlarged, the links are too small for me to not hit the wrong one about one time in three. And when I get to the appropriate letter, I figure out that the email sorter is taking a very liberal perspective on the term "alphabetically sorted"--in short, their emails aren't where they should be.  So I set it back to chronological order, and start going through each page of emails--starting with 1 of 247.  Finally, after a good dozen or so pages, I realize that I can skip ahead by changing the number in the address bar. Starting on page 124 and dividing the remaining entries in two every time, I eventually whittle the correct email page down to 101. And I find the email.  And I open it. "Here's the lease, Michael!" and the attachment.

This is when I realize that I can't open attachments on my iPhone.

I explain all of this to the librarian, at great, great length, and eventually she lets me sign out one book, probably to get me to leave.

The worst part is, I can't even hate the phone, because thanks to it, I got to snap some pictures of a bad-ass snowman I passed on the way home:

These photos don't really demonstrate the scale of the snowman--my head came about up to the top of the middle ball.  He's a big fella.

To sum up:  Snowmen good.  Phones good for pictures.  Phones not good for library.

Later Days.


*EDIT: Crap, I just realized I had my laptop with me the whole time. I could have opened it up, logged on, and shown the attachment in under two minutes.  You know.... some days....

Next, I learn what the buttons on my iPhone do

I just figured out that you could use Google to search specific sites for key terms. Considering the nature of game journalism, where many quality articles are buried in the push to produce, and tagging is less then well-planned, this is useful for my research. So I got to feel like an idiot AND learned something useful. It's win-win! Later Days.

Bibliophile: He Shoots, He Glowers! : The classic NHL gothic romance that never was, and some books that actually exist from University of BC

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

This is Bibliophile.

We're returning to University of British Columbia this week, the largest university in BC (apparently, population-wise; I would have assumed the biggest was Simon Fraser, so there you go). 

Friday Quotations: People are Like Art

"MABEL CHILTERN is a perfect example of the English type of prettiness, the apple-blossom type.  She has all the fragrance and freedom of a flower.  There is ripple after ripple of sunlight in her hair, and the little mouth, with its parted lips, is expectant, like the  mouth of a child.  She has the fascinating tyranny of youth, and the astonishing courage of  innocence.  To sane people she is not reminiscent of any work of art.  But she is really like a Tanagra statuette, and would be rather annoyed if she were told so."  --Oscar Wilde.  An Ideal Husband.

I recently made a breakthrough with my new iPhone.  See, you can't walk down the street reading a book.  It's socially unacceptable.  Ridiculous.  Crazy.  But it's fine to walk down the street staring at your iPhone.  A few ebook downloads later, and I've got a library on the go.  A library filled with things like Oscar Wilde plays. 

Later Days.

Sister is My New Mother Now

...Well, if Sister was an acceptable appellation for the Internet, anyway.  Otherwise, this is just me trying to shoehorn in an Arrested Development reference.  Anyway, for whatever reason, I managed to get through life without picking up some basic skills at the point when they're commonly learned.  It was university when I learned how to do my laundry (which isn't that uncommon), and three years later--my first year out of student rez--when I learned how to do my own grocery shopping.  I don't even want to tell you when I learned to tie my shoes.  Some skills I've just never picked up at all--I have no idea, for example, how to cook any meat more complicated than a hotdog; I switched to vegetarianism long before my "pay attention to people cooking" moment kicked in.

Recently, I've started using online how-to guides.  It's all the information of a book guide, but without having to use those judgmental librarians as the go-between.  I've learned how to iron things (which I actually had been taught explicitly before, but ironing appears to be a skill I need to relearn every six months or it just atrophies from lack of use).  I've learned how to tie a scarf (slipknot style.  Very simple, never would have stumbled on it in a hundred years let to my own devices).  And, just this morning, I learned how to properly scramble an egg (the step I was missing was mixing the yolks before dropping them in the skillet.  Previously, I just sort of cracked the eggs straight into it, and let the cards fall where they may).  I fried up some hashbrowns as well, and it feels nice to be eating a proper breakfast for once (not quite as nice as sleeping through breakfast, but we all carry our burdens).

Every year when when I go back to Saskatchewan for X-Mas, I tell myself I'm going to pay more attention to the daily routines of my parents.  And every year, it doesn't quite happen.  Last year, the siren call of Skyrim beckoned.  The year before that, Dragon Quest IX.  And so on and so forth until you have 2008, and my decision to regain every one of the achievements I once had in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  This is the first X-Mas since I got really creative on Steam, so who knows what it'll be: Batman: Arkham City?  The Witcher?  STALKER? Civilization V?  I don't know, but I think we'll all be pleasantly surprised.  ....Or I suppose I could just talk to my family.  But really, what are the odds of that happening?

(Honestly, it's enough to make you think Sherry Turkle was right.  I'm so glad I downloaded her e-book.)

Later Days. 

Bibliophile: Lethbridge--Oxbridge's less fictional cousin

In Soviet Russia, the books read you.

That is an outdated joke.

This is Bibliophile.

Bibliophile: End with a Bang

It's 9 degrees out, and feels like 6. There's also supposed to be scattered showers. Do I have any excuses for not going out in weather like this? Oh, right. This is Bibliophile.