Twitter

Sometimes, the torment in which I writhe in an effort to get round to writing words here would astonish you. I do everything short of losing sleep, I really do. This guilt is very counterproductive and actually makes me feel worse. Then, all of a sudden I find myself sipping a strong, black Americano in the comfort of a Plymouth eatery. Mild boredom has set in between coffee arrival and food arrival, and as is my usual habit, I tap the screen of my awful HTC Legend (more on that later) and see what the world is up to. If you’ve been outside at any moment in the last 3 years, you may have noticed other people doing this. I used a bus recently and whilst my life dribbled away “waiting” for it to arrive, 8 out of the 9 people at the bus stop were tapping away on their phone. It’s not unusual and despite what some would have you believe, it does not represent the end of the world, any more than colour television did when it arrived.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

“Oh christ, another bloody tweeterer…”

I wasn’t sure I had heard it properly at first, but even before I could look up properly…

“Why don’t they just f**king talk to somebody real?”

In a perfect world, I would let rip with an incisive reposte that would leave the intolerant nutsack quivering in their Reeboks. Alas, a whole day later, I still haven’t thought of anything suitable (although I am starting to think “f**k off nutsack” has a certain ring to it) and in any case, he was a bigger than me and had he given chase, would probably have caught up with me in good time. Even allowing for the fact that his knuckles dragging on the ground would give me a sporting chance of reaching the Rover 214, my key fob is unreliable at best and I think it was Oscar Wilde who said, “it is better to shut the f**k up than to bleed to death on the bonnet of your car with the last syllable of a cutting witticism on your lips.”

So, with my cheeks blushing in self-rightious anger, I ignored him. I wasn’t even on Twitter and was in fact trying to get the generously offered Free Wi-Fi to work. Had I achieved this, I would indeed have gone on Twitter but until Free Wi-Fi becomes even semi-usuable in this great land of ours, I am slightly hesitant to waste too much of my mobile data allowance.

Anyone wondering where I am going with this?

Well…Twitter. I love Twitter. I know loads of people who love Twitter as well. If you don’t like Twitter, shut the hell up and leave us alone. I completely fail to see how someone tapping their phone in virtual silence is any sort of inconvenience, annoyance or threat to you. There is more sense, intelligence, wit, empathy, tolerance and inight expressed online than you will ever know or experience.

Let’s analyse the specific comments of the dribbling, imbecile who had the good fortune to sit near me yesterday morning.”

“Why don’t they just f**king talk to somebody real?”

Twitter, my bird of choice.

This concept has always bothered me a little. If someone is not in the room with you, are they somehow not real? As I have said, the problem they seem to have with you, is that they are not talking to them. Really? Why would I talk to them? They don’t even believe that themselves, so what is the real problem? Is it really just that something is going on they don’t understand? Perhaps. Is it because they consider it impoliite? Hardly. A few minutes later, his companion’s own phone rang and she answered it and spoke at the sort of volume that would suggest she didn’t give a flying hoot about anyone else nearby.

In the end, I gave up. I could say that I wasn’t bothered about what he thought, but the paragraphs above would suggest otherwise. It did bother me but only in the way that most intolerance does. Those who know me will know that I am an not-uncritical evangelist for The Internet and the technology that surrounds it. I have long held that the best way to combat such intolerance is to ignore it and wait for it to disappear. This sometimes takes ages but it does happen. Forty years ago, people complained that colour television was too distracting and heralded the end of civilised society, when it was nothing more than a natural progression. I am not saying that everyone should shape up and start Twittering, Facebooking or Beebooing, just that they should do what every educated person should do about the world around them. Stay informed and decide for yourself, don’t just decide because The Daily Mail says you should.

In a detail that sounds almost perfect, said imbecile had in fact been reading The Daily Mail and it lay next to his plate, clumsily folded and ragged as only a free paper can be after 20 people have flicked through it. After they left, I took it and mainly because it was the only paper nearby, I began to read. It was only slightly more acidic and vile than when my last barber shop haircut had forced me to attempt a similarly ill-advised read. I only managed to get some way through a slightly cruel and amazingly ill-informed piece about Jonathan Ross and his “weird” family before my food arrived. I located the online version this morning before writing this and read it in it’s entirety. Please feel free to do so too.

Click here to read it.

I am assuming that the Ross family had nothing to do with the piece but I do hope it finds a permanent home on their fridge door.

Amongst the “evidence” of the family weirdness are the following…

1. Ross installed internet connections in every room of the house.

I think this is called Wi-Fi and I have a similarly elaborate setup in my own house, as I believe does about 54% of UK homes. The article makes more sport of their lavish expenditure, including (believe it or not!) a “home” cinema. Big deal. If we all could, we all would. The same applies to remote-controlled toilet seats. Go on..admit it…

2. The Ross family communicates via Twitter.

The clear implication here is that they don’t communicate in any other way. They don’t say it but it’s blindingly obvious that we are suppose to infer it. The simple fact is that they all use Twitter and follow each other on Twitter. This is far more astonishing in a positive sense than those who don’t Tweet will know. I know of one family who do this and it’s nothing sort of charming. An example is given where one his daughter asks her dad to bring her a glass of water via Twitter rather than go down an get it herself. I think this is what is known as “funny” and nothing else. I have followed Mr & Mrs Ross on Twitter from the beginning and their communications show nothing more than a happy bunch of people who have committed the cardinal public sin of being happy, loving each other and staying married for an awfully long time.

Incidentally, I regularly tweet with people at work who are only sat a few feet from me. This almost always makes them smile, as do their replies. I occasionally look out of the window to see if the sky has fallen in or if the moon has turned to blood. So far, nothing to worry about.

Oh and before I forget, Twitter has a website but it is not A website. I just wanted to clear that up.

Android & Apple

My Phone - I hate it.

I am kind of hoping that the mighty Google spider doesn’t index this next bit and that hordes of nerdly open-source enthusiasts don’t fill my comment box in the same way the Doctor Who crowd did a few months back, when I dared to express an opinion.

Anyway, I have an HTC Legend and I hate it. I hate it because I hate Android. There, I said it.

“Why don’t you have an iPhone then?”, I hear 3 of you cry.

“Because I can’t afford one”.

This simple statement also answers the questions “why don’t you have an iPad”, “why don’t you have a Porsche” and many other similar enquiries.

Cost is pretty much it. I love my iPod and I would love an iPhone and an iPad but they are too expensive for me.

My HTC is my first monthly contract phone and it costs me £21 a month. Last time I checked, an iPhone would cost me about £60. So there we are. I could handle criticism of an iPhone on the basis of cost but on little other. They are beautiful and iPads are even more so. They just are.

I am not completely blind to the iPhone problems either. The “leather case” problem earlier in the lift of the iPhone 4 was laughable but it’s easily solved by doing something that every sensible person does anyway.

I love the argument “I would never buy an iPhone” or “I have never touched an iPhone”. An interesting perspective, if nothing else. Incidentally, I realise that my iPod is not an iPhone but it’s pretty close and I have used an iPhone. I know of what I speak – a little anyway.

My HTC phone crashes a lot. It gradually slows down until the only solution is to switch if off and on again. Memory is a constant concern and I find it amazing that so many people recommend a “task killer” to kill apps that haven’t closed properly.  These work a lot of the time but it would be nice if they weren’t needed in the first place. It’s not even that I play with a lot of features on my phone. On a daily basis, I check my Email, use Facebook & Twitter and look at a few websites in break time. Not exactly a heavy user but such activity regularly brings my phone to it’s knees. Not good at all. I have never had trouble getting a signal but sometimes the button just locks up. This happens both at the beginning and end of the call, often leaving you to wonder whether you have hung up at all.

The same apps are infinitely better on the iPhone/iPod than they are on Android. Facebook and Twitter are prime examples. The printed word hardly does this argument justice but there is really no competition. The official Twitter app on Android is so awful that most people don’t use it – me included. Incidentally, I would love to uninstall the Android Facebook app but you can’t. Uninstallation of apps actually requires a third-party app to be anything like usable. Guess what you do on the iPhone? You press the icon for a few seconds, tap the x in the top left corner and it’s gone. Better still, do it on iTunes when you get home.

Android itself. It’s open source and anyone can write an app and start selling it, unlike that evil overlord Apple who must approve every app before it’s allowed to be sold. Thank god they do. Have you seen the crap in the Android App Market? The Apple App Store is not perfect but jesus christ. Incidentally, some of the most popular apps in the Android store are complete launcher replacements. Hardly a ringing endorsement. If you want copyright-infringing sound boards, there’s only one place to go. Incidentally, there is a growing feeling online that the sheer number of different Android phones and configurations thereof will significantly hamper app development.

So I have an HTC but I hate it. In 8 months, I will upgrade and hopefully have an iPhone and this burning anger inside me will subside.

Libraries

That's not me, I'd never get up there.

The imminent plans to close many local libraries is a tragic reflection of the times in which we live. Either that or it’s something that was bound to happen sooner or later. When did you last go to the library? I can’t remember exactly but it must be something like 20 years or in other words, something like the time the Internet arrived in my house.  I took my mum to one on a semi-regular basis a few years ago but then she got hooked on audiobooks and that was that. This Christmas, she got a Kindle and I fear she has borrowed her last book.

I am not naive enought to suggest that the Internet has removed any need for libraries, just that it has removed it for a huge chunk of society. I suspect in a few years time, a Kindle or something similar will cost about £20, most books will be cheaply downloadable and we will look back wondering what all the fuss was about, much the same way that most people remember the board game, the fax machine, common decency, respect for elders and cartoons before the news in the evening.

Literature hasn’t died, knowledge hasn’t died and I am pretty sure Amazon would attest to the fact that books haven’t died. If you can listen to Stephen Fry read Harry Potter, one of his own books or actually anything at all out loud and still say that books are dead then you are a dullard.

The end of a lot of libraries can be sad and yet still be inevitable at the same time. I just think that, although inevitable, it’s just not time yet.

…and so it came to pass. Britain was flung into what the tabloids choose to call “commuter chaos” yesterday as nature unexpectedly blew its wad all over our fair nation. Big fluffy crap not seen since those long distant days at Guston when snow was the best thing since sliced bread.

Actually, when Messrs Mansfield and Wheelan built a snow Hovis outside Wolseley, it was in fact unsliced bread.

Now, as a driver, snow is not so nice. A bit like Christmas really, when you get to that age when you actually have to SPEND money in December.

Several colleagues stranded on Bodmin Moor failed to make it to work and some a little closer tried the same. As a consequence, I learnt of a very bizarre Royal Mail rule that states “If you are unable to attend your normal place of work due to inclement weather, please make you way to your nearest Post Office or Mail Sorting Centre and make yourself available for service”. The idea is that if manager of said establishment declines your kind offer, you still get your day’s pay. In theory. I don’t think anyone has tried it yet. My nearest Post Office is in Tamerton Village and the old dear would probably call the police if I turned up broom and kettle in hand offering to be her sidekick for the day.

RIP George Best. The slavering journos and their eagerness to get on with the obituries was sickening as usual. The poor guy lay in bed with his family around him as the radio pretended he had already gone. I really don’t care how much he drank or what he got up to off the pitch in recent years any more than anyone should care what any of us get up to out of work. I don’t even like football that much but he was undoubtedly a great sportsman and that should be enough for one lifetime.

But even as I type, the news on the radio is discussing his career and how recent players like Becks and Rooney are nowhere near as good as him. Best is gone and now they are moving on to others in their cackling, hyena-like way. What have the other two got to do with this and what have they done to deserve such criticism on the day of another’s passing? Few of us are lucky enough to do anything outstanding in our lives, so why does the media insist on pulling apart those who do for us all to see? There is a bizarre contradiction in celebville these days, the media thrives on their celebrity and bathes in the sparkling limelight that these famous people shine on it but at the same time it still insists on inserting microphones and telescopic lenses into every secret crevice of their lives. One probably couldn’t exist without the other but I don’t agree that the achievement of fame and fortune should immediately invalidate your right to a life and privacy and neither should it mean that they have to be perfect. I know I am not.

Anyhoo. One last thing to end on. It is the early 70s, George Best is one of the judges at the Miss World show. A cuban cigar hangs from his lips and a very expensive bottle of champagne is at his side. The most beautiful women in the world parade past him and he leans over to the judge sat next to him…”I don’t know mate…where did it all go wrong?