[There are over 1600 words in this article.] In many small ways I am all about efficiency and productivity. On journeys that I make regularly on the London Underground I always know the best place to stand (or sit, if it’s not rush-hour) to ensure that you are ideally positioned for the exit or any… Continue reading Small gains for many or big gains for a few
I have no intention of using fingerprint recognition to access any of my devices. The time may come when none of us has a choice about this but for now I will stick with increasingly complex passwords and 2-step authentication. An enthusiastic Windows Blog from late last month announces the following: We’re excited to announce… Continue reading “3 times faster!”
In the late 1990s I caught up with an old friend from university days. We hadn’t met for something like seven years. She had briefly worked in London in the 1980s but had then moved around, usually about an hour’s drive away (in places like Brighton and Oxford), and also spent some time working in… Continue reading The Tariff Bore: mobile phones
CamelCase involves capitalizing one of the letters in a word to make it look like two words. The following words all use CamelCase: PowerPoint, WordPerfect, YouTube, McDonald’s. I had never heard the word before until there was a question about it on “Only Connect”, a second round question where the contestants have to say what… Continue reading Word of the week: CamelCase
In many day-to-day ways my instincts are to do things the way we used to, either in the “pre-digital age” (and I appreciate that typing that phrase makes me sound like a dinosaur), or in ways that have been superseded by newer technologies. I spent decades using landlines before acquiring a mobile phone, so my… Continue reading Still adjusting to the modern world
Many years ago Woody Allen made a comment about how American teenagers spend all their time with their headphones on, and their lives would be complete if they could grow a third ear to allow them to speak to their friends on the phone at the same time. This was back in the 1980s or… Continue reading A third eye or a third ear
Back in January I wrote a couple of pieces under the heading of “Technology Sucks” (you can read the first one here, and the follow-up is here). Maybe, to avoid tempting fate, they should have been titled “Sometimes Technology Sucks”, or “Technology Woes”, like this piece. At the start of the year we were counting… Continue reading Technology Woes
We have a new PC, for general home use. It has Windows 10 and Office 2016 and works fine. I also have a Windows 10 phone and am happy enough with it, though (as I wrote last month, in my Farewell to WhatsApp) it feels like I am currently supporting the underdog. As I wrote… Continue reading Windows 10 and Never 10
I had some phone troubles at the start of the month. After a few games of pinball at a local coffee shop, with the children, I put on my jacket to find two of the three components of the phone – the back cover and the battery – were lying on the floor beside my… Continue reading Farewell WhatsApp
I have just started reading “Shakespeare’s Local” by Pete Brown. It’s about the George, a pub near London Bridge that can trace its history back 600 years. It’s more about beer and London history than about Shakespeare, but it seemed appropriate to start reading a book with Shakespeare in its title as we approach the… Continue reading Backing up
The Compartments 