Hawkman
08-11-2011, 08:03 AM
Yesterday I was tempted by technology. There I was, meandering through the supermarket aisles as I shopped for the aged P, now almost permanently confined within his flat by galloping infirmity, and there it was.
A gadget.
At only £9.99 I was consumed with an overwhelming desire to possess it. I reached out and plucked it from the shelf and guiltily consigned it to my trolley.
I continued shopping, and finally, having selected six bottles of papa’s favourite medicinal alcohol, I proceeded to the checkout and paid what was due.
On returning to my father’s mountain fastness, I separated my purchase from his groceries, and leaving it in the car, proceeded to climb the three flights of narrow stairs to the door of his keep. This involved carrying four bulky, and somewhat weighty, shopping bags. It was a process made more than a little trying by those accidents of nature and design which conspired to equip me with arms just long enough, that, when combined with the length of handle and capacious depth of the shopping bags, required me to carry them with bent arms to prevent their banging on every step and smashing the more fragile purchases as I ascended. The width of the passage also demanded that I walked sideways, like a crab, with one pair of bags needing that extra lift to accommodate two sets of risers.
At last I arrived at the dread portal and admitted myself. Thrusting the excitement and anticipation over unwrapping my new toy to the back of my addled mind, I steeled myself to the regular ordeal of enduring a pleasant evening, eating an excellent meal washed down with numerous glasses of palatable wine, whilst listening to stirring classical opera. There would, of course, be a genial discussion over the relative merits of the sjambok in the execution of colonial administration, and possibly an entertaining reminiscence or two concerning an unsuccessful tiger hunt in the days of the Raj.
The music on this occasion predominantly featured Wagner, but only after we had listened to a compilation of East German Radio’s recordings of the works of lesser musical genii. Next, came a 1942 production of Parsifal on CD, recorded in Berlin and cleansed by the magic of electronic wizardry of all the hiss and crackle usually associated with old disc recordings. This was followed by another compilation of the Beast of Bayreuth’s best tunes. You must know them, Die Valkerie, Der Fligel Hollander, Gotterdammerung, Liebes Todt, etc.
Anyway, eventually I felt that I had eaten enough of his food, drunk enough of his wine (and endured enough Wagner to have earned both) and could now safely take my leave without appearing to have done so with discourteous haste. At last I could return to my garret and play with my mysteriously tempting and wonderful new thing.
What was it? I hear you cry, impatiently. Peace, gentle reader, all will be revealed.
Soon.
Possibly.
Oh, all right, you win. I’ll tell you.
It was an electronic weather station.
You might, quite reasonably, ask, “Why on earth would he want one of those?” It’s a good question and one to which I have no satisfactory answer. Perhaps it is one of those sibling rivalry things. Both of my brothers have one, you see, and they have had them for some considerable time.
The eldest has an all singing, all dancing, fully developed, meteorological monitoring system which runs on his computer. He never does anything by halves. When he builds something it stays built. He’s been working on an extension to his bungalow for years and it might just be finished by the time his kids reach middle age, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is that the thing has the durability of one of Albert Speer’s WWII Berlin flack towers, which survived Barnes Wallis' earthquake bombs and numerous allied attempts at demolition after the war.
My other brother acquired his as a present from the aged P. But is sibling rivalry really the only reason I wanted one? After all, we’re all grown men and well into middle age.
No. I don’t think so.
I think it’s got more to do with the zeitgeist. We have become conditioned to crave plasticy, computerized gizmos that bleep at us, and sometimes show us pretty pictures. It’s as good a reason as any. Now I’ve got one too. But I digress, and will return, forthwith, to the unveiling and trial of, The Device.
Having returned home I opened the box to discover that it contained not one, but two separate elements, complete with batteries. The primary object was a sleek, black, rectangular mini-lith which would have given Arthur C Clarke a wave of dejas vu. It even had a little stand. On its face were five buttons and and an LCD screen which took up two thirds of the available space. The other bit was a white, plastic, blobby thing with a red LED. This was the external monitor.
I extracted both parts from their discrete pockets of bubble-wrap and admired them for their pleasing ergonomic design. Then I read the instructions. Yes I did, honestly. Sorry to dispel the myth that the male mind instinctively knows how gadgets work without recourse to prior learning.
I inserted the batteries into the white blob and its LED flashed, once. I then inserted the batteries into the mini-lith.
It bleeped.
Even more satisfying was the appearance of little icons on the LCD screen. The instructions informed me that the time and date were radio controlled by an atomic clock in Frankfurt which was accurate to one second in a million years. This was very reassuring. When the signal stabilized the clock was an hour fast. This was less so.
I returned to the instructions and eventually found out which buttons to press, (and in which order to press them) to correct this. Despite the assertion that the thing was preset to GMT it actually turned out to be running on Central European Time so I had to inform the internal computer that I wasn’t.
Turning my attention to the other functions I was delighted to discover that the temperature readouts for both indoors and outdoors agreed with each other. This was a good indication that it was time to mount the external monitor externally. I went down stairs and out into the back yard and found a convenient place to hang it above the ferret hutches. I then went back indoors to re-compare the readings. After a few moments a believable difference of 10 degrees was displayed.
So far, so good.
The internal monitor told me that the humidity level was running at 67%. It declared this as comfortable but I rather felt that this was an optimistic assessment. I didn’t doubt the reading, merely the classification. The thing has three. Above 70% it regards as ‘Wet’. 40 -70% as ‘Comfort’ and less than 40% as ‘Dry.’ I felt distinctly clammy.
It was time to set the weather forecast facility. This has four pretty pictures: bright sun, broken cloud with sunshine, a pair of clouds and a pair of rainy clouds. The instructions told me to set the appropriate picture to match the prevailing conditions. Well, apart from the fact that it was now 10:30 at night and the sun isn’t renowned for shining at this time in these latitudes, I had a quick look out of the window and extrapolated a likely match with the sky, or at least what I could actually see of it. I opted for broken cloud.
The instructions don’t actually make it clear if the little pictures are supposed to tell you what the weather is doing currently, or what it is likely to do soon. However, there is a little bar graph displayed under the current picture which indicates if the conditions are stable, deteriorating or improving.
Having set the thing up I went to bed, eagerly anticipating the morning, when I would be able check what the weather was going to be.
This morning duly arrived and it was pissing down. I went to check the weather station. The bright sun icon was flashing away merrily at me. Oh well, I thought, maybe it wasn’t broken cloud last night. I re-set the picture to rain.
A couple of hours later I was sitting at the computer, typing away, when I noticed that the sky was definitely brightening. I went to check the weather station. It told me that the weather should be constant and still raining.
It wasn’t. The sun was definitely shining, albeit only occasionally, but it definitely wasn’t raining. It definitely isn’t raining now either and the sun is equally positive in making its periodic appearances. The weather station still doesn’t agree though. Now I understand why the instructions tell me to listen to the local weather forecast on the radio.
So am I pleased with my gadget?
Of course I am.
I have an atomic clock, accurate to 1 second in a million years (that I have to inform what time it actually is) and which I have to be standing next to in order to read, unlike the old mantle clock which I can see from across the room. I have an electronic barometer with pretty pictures, which is nice to look at, even though the old altimeter which my father removed from a pre-war, Lockheed Constellation, sits on my mantelpiece and gives me a pretty good idea what the barometric pressure is doing.
I now know what the humidity is, even if I have a better idea than the machine whether it’s comfortable or not, and I now know what the temperature is outside without actually having to go there to find out. This is, in fact, really handy, as it won’t be such a shock to go down to feed the ferrets and find that they’ve frozen to death overnight.
The mini-lith even tells me what day it is, together with the date. So that’s handy too. If I want to, I can even use it as an alarm clock, even though I have two already, one of which doesn’t even need winding up.
So, £9.99 well spent then. I’ve got a bleeping gadget with pretty pictures, just like my brothers. What more could I want?
Well, I wouldn’t mind a laptop that would do everything that my desktop PC can do…
A gadget.
At only £9.99 I was consumed with an overwhelming desire to possess it. I reached out and plucked it from the shelf and guiltily consigned it to my trolley.
I continued shopping, and finally, having selected six bottles of papa’s favourite medicinal alcohol, I proceeded to the checkout and paid what was due.
On returning to my father’s mountain fastness, I separated my purchase from his groceries, and leaving it in the car, proceeded to climb the three flights of narrow stairs to the door of his keep. This involved carrying four bulky, and somewhat weighty, shopping bags. It was a process made more than a little trying by those accidents of nature and design which conspired to equip me with arms just long enough, that, when combined with the length of handle and capacious depth of the shopping bags, required me to carry them with bent arms to prevent their banging on every step and smashing the more fragile purchases as I ascended. The width of the passage also demanded that I walked sideways, like a crab, with one pair of bags needing that extra lift to accommodate two sets of risers.
At last I arrived at the dread portal and admitted myself. Thrusting the excitement and anticipation over unwrapping my new toy to the back of my addled mind, I steeled myself to the regular ordeal of enduring a pleasant evening, eating an excellent meal washed down with numerous glasses of palatable wine, whilst listening to stirring classical opera. There would, of course, be a genial discussion over the relative merits of the sjambok in the execution of colonial administration, and possibly an entertaining reminiscence or two concerning an unsuccessful tiger hunt in the days of the Raj.
The music on this occasion predominantly featured Wagner, but only after we had listened to a compilation of East German Radio’s recordings of the works of lesser musical genii. Next, came a 1942 production of Parsifal on CD, recorded in Berlin and cleansed by the magic of electronic wizardry of all the hiss and crackle usually associated with old disc recordings. This was followed by another compilation of the Beast of Bayreuth’s best tunes. You must know them, Die Valkerie, Der Fligel Hollander, Gotterdammerung, Liebes Todt, etc.
Anyway, eventually I felt that I had eaten enough of his food, drunk enough of his wine (and endured enough Wagner to have earned both) and could now safely take my leave without appearing to have done so with discourteous haste. At last I could return to my garret and play with my mysteriously tempting and wonderful new thing.
What was it? I hear you cry, impatiently. Peace, gentle reader, all will be revealed.
Soon.
Possibly.
Oh, all right, you win. I’ll tell you.
It was an electronic weather station.
You might, quite reasonably, ask, “Why on earth would he want one of those?” It’s a good question and one to which I have no satisfactory answer. Perhaps it is one of those sibling rivalry things. Both of my brothers have one, you see, and they have had them for some considerable time.
The eldest has an all singing, all dancing, fully developed, meteorological monitoring system which runs on his computer. He never does anything by halves. When he builds something it stays built. He’s been working on an extension to his bungalow for years and it might just be finished by the time his kids reach middle age, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is that the thing has the durability of one of Albert Speer’s WWII Berlin flack towers, which survived Barnes Wallis' earthquake bombs and numerous allied attempts at demolition after the war.
My other brother acquired his as a present from the aged P. But is sibling rivalry really the only reason I wanted one? After all, we’re all grown men and well into middle age.
No. I don’t think so.
I think it’s got more to do with the zeitgeist. We have become conditioned to crave plasticy, computerized gizmos that bleep at us, and sometimes show us pretty pictures. It’s as good a reason as any. Now I’ve got one too. But I digress, and will return, forthwith, to the unveiling and trial of, The Device.
Having returned home I opened the box to discover that it contained not one, but two separate elements, complete with batteries. The primary object was a sleek, black, rectangular mini-lith which would have given Arthur C Clarke a wave of dejas vu. It even had a little stand. On its face were five buttons and and an LCD screen which took up two thirds of the available space. The other bit was a white, plastic, blobby thing with a red LED. This was the external monitor.
I extracted both parts from their discrete pockets of bubble-wrap and admired them for their pleasing ergonomic design. Then I read the instructions. Yes I did, honestly. Sorry to dispel the myth that the male mind instinctively knows how gadgets work without recourse to prior learning.
I inserted the batteries into the white blob and its LED flashed, once. I then inserted the batteries into the mini-lith.
It bleeped.
Even more satisfying was the appearance of little icons on the LCD screen. The instructions informed me that the time and date were radio controlled by an atomic clock in Frankfurt which was accurate to one second in a million years. This was very reassuring. When the signal stabilized the clock was an hour fast. This was less so.
I returned to the instructions and eventually found out which buttons to press, (and in which order to press them) to correct this. Despite the assertion that the thing was preset to GMT it actually turned out to be running on Central European Time so I had to inform the internal computer that I wasn’t.
Turning my attention to the other functions I was delighted to discover that the temperature readouts for both indoors and outdoors agreed with each other. This was a good indication that it was time to mount the external monitor externally. I went down stairs and out into the back yard and found a convenient place to hang it above the ferret hutches. I then went back indoors to re-compare the readings. After a few moments a believable difference of 10 degrees was displayed.
So far, so good.
The internal monitor told me that the humidity level was running at 67%. It declared this as comfortable but I rather felt that this was an optimistic assessment. I didn’t doubt the reading, merely the classification. The thing has three. Above 70% it regards as ‘Wet’. 40 -70% as ‘Comfort’ and less than 40% as ‘Dry.’ I felt distinctly clammy.
It was time to set the weather forecast facility. This has four pretty pictures: bright sun, broken cloud with sunshine, a pair of clouds and a pair of rainy clouds. The instructions told me to set the appropriate picture to match the prevailing conditions. Well, apart from the fact that it was now 10:30 at night and the sun isn’t renowned for shining at this time in these latitudes, I had a quick look out of the window and extrapolated a likely match with the sky, or at least what I could actually see of it. I opted for broken cloud.
The instructions don’t actually make it clear if the little pictures are supposed to tell you what the weather is doing currently, or what it is likely to do soon. However, there is a little bar graph displayed under the current picture which indicates if the conditions are stable, deteriorating or improving.
Having set the thing up I went to bed, eagerly anticipating the morning, when I would be able check what the weather was going to be.
This morning duly arrived and it was pissing down. I went to check the weather station. The bright sun icon was flashing away merrily at me. Oh well, I thought, maybe it wasn’t broken cloud last night. I re-set the picture to rain.
A couple of hours later I was sitting at the computer, typing away, when I noticed that the sky was definitely brightening. I went to check the weather station. It told me that the weather should be constant and still raining.
It wasn’t. The sun was definitely shining, albeit only occasionally, but it definitely wasn’t raining. It definitely isn’t raining now either and the sun is equally positive in making its periodic appearances. The weather station still doesn’t agree though. Now I understand why the instructions tell me to listen to the local weather forecast on the radio.
So am I pleased with my gadget?
Of course I am.
I have an atomic clock, accurate to 1 second in a million years (that I have to inform what time it actually is) and which I have to be standing next to in order to read, unlike the old mantle clock which I can see from across the room. I have an electronic barometer with pretty pictures, which is nice to look at, even though the old altimeter which my father removed from a pre-war, Lockheed Constellation, sits on my mantelpiece and gives me a pretty good idea what the barometric pressure is doing.
I now know what the humidity is, even if I have a better idea than the machine whether it’s comfortable or not, and I now know what the temperature is outside without actually having to go there to find out. This is, in fact, really handy, as it won’t be such a shock to go down to feed the ferrets and find that they’ve frozen to death overnight.
The mini-lith even tells me what day it is, together with the date. So that’s handy too. If I want to, I can even use it as an alarm clock, even though I have two already, one of which doesn’t even need winding up.
So, £9.99 well spent then. I’ve got a bleeping gadget with pretty pictures, just like my brothers. What more could I want?
Well, I wouldn’t mind a laptop that would do everything that my desktop PC can do…