I keep looking forward. At the latest games, movies, books. Avoiding retro games, old movies, old books. Only the latest.
What I’ve played, watched, and read, serves as a reference, a reminder, a history of consumption. Keep looking forward to what is coming out next and when. Adding each of interest to my to get list.
Just consuming like a digital animal, always hungry for something new, the next juicy piece of entertainment. Never repeating, re-playing, re-watching, re-reading. Time is precious so only the new.
Keep looking forward.
Fast Tech
We are an impatient lot. We love our fast food and our fast tech. The latter, a term used to define cheap electronic gadgets and devices. You can go online and have one delivered to you tomorrow for less than the cost of a meal.
Portable battery chargers, adapters, fans, night lights, wireless doorbells, motion sensors, bag trackers, and just about anything else that you or someone can dream up and develop cheaply and have shipped by slow boat from Asia to your country for you purchase next day delivery.
These gadgets use a lot of rare earth minerals and other materials that are both costly to collect, manufacture, and recycle. The result is that all this fast tech is ending up in landfills and amateur processing plants around the world. Just look on YouTube at the videos of people collecting circuit boards to melt off the precious metals, or others burning the plastics to clear the mountains of e-waste. It is both damaging to the environment and human health. Yet we keep buying more and more of this fast tech because it’s cheap and serves a current need, just like fast food.
Expensive train travel
I love the idea of traveling or commuting by train but the reality in the UK is that it’s just too expensive.
The trains are overcrowded during rush hour so it’s generally standing room only. Assuming you can get a seat, and if you do, you rarely get a table or enough space to work, or peace to read or even think. And the price of a ticket? Scandalous. Absolute rip-off. Yet somehow despite these high prices trains are still cancelled, or are never on time are uncomfortable and not very clean.
Travel to other countries though and trains run smoothly, are on time, cost a lot less, and are very comfortable and clean.
I do enjoy travelling by train, but the only time I really get to do it is in another country.
Has AI killed SEO?
People use search engines to find answers to questions, and today’s search engines are using AI to answer most of those questions. Gone are the days when the web sites with the strongest keyword match were shown first. Those days are long gone. In the last few years the first four or five links were usually sponsored anyway, so no amount of SEO tricks would get you above them. Now, above the sponsored links is AI, attempting to answer the searcher’s question, pushing your heavily SEO’d content further down the forever scroll.
So has AI killed SEO? Yes and no. Yes if your aim is to get your content on the first page and your end goal is traffic. No if you sell or market the product that is the answer to the question. If someone wants to know what is the best in a certain product category then your aim is not to SEO that you are the best, but get the customer feedback that you are the best. That way AI is more likely to mention your product.
So yes I believe that AI has greatly affected the SEO industry. The game has changed from one where content is king, to positive mentions are king.
Navigating without Sat Nav
I was loaned a courtesy car recently. It had no sat nav. In fact you couldn’t even connect your phone to it. It was slow and well-used, and basic.
It was great.
No one could reach me and I had to navigate old school, by looking at signs and landmarks. It took me back to when I first learned to drive. My first car didn’t even have a working radio. The thrill and freedom of owning a car, being able to go wherever you wanted when you wanted was enough. You didn’t need tech to keep you entertained, to keep in touch with people when driving, or to navigate.
Just you and the car.
It was nice.
Treacle vodka
I saw someone drinking a treacle-coloured alcoholic drink recently and it immediately took me back to my University days and a drink some Scottish friends of mine would drink: Treacle vodka.
They would place a bottle of vodka in the freezer and leave it there. It would never freeze but it got very cold. Later they would place ice in a glass with Irn Bru and pour the cold vodka over it. Voila! Treacle vodka. A lethal drink but great for late night coding or gaming.
I wonder if anyone still drinks it?
That’s the price
I hate it when you know that people are price gouging, or that you can buy something cheaper elsewhere, or online. But I want it now. Convenience buying, and pricing.
I’ve come to realise something: That’s the price.
It comes down to supply and demand. People are free to set the price of something to whatever they want, no matter how you feel about it. You don’t have to buy it, but if you do you have to pay the price stated.
Either pay it or move on. What’s the option? There’s no point moaning about how someone is ripping people off. So what, it’s called commerce. If people are willing to pay it then there is sufficient demand for it at that price. Otherwise they’d lower the price.
That’s the price.
Technology of the past
I walked by a public payphone. One of those old red boxes you hardly see anymore. There was a phone inside. Also rare. Not a collection of second hand books or a defibrillator. An actual phone.
It took me back to my University days. I practically lived in those phone boxes. I knew where every one was within walking distance of campus. I didn’t have a mobile phone, yet. I used calling cards to phone friends all over the world. We used messaging services and mailboxes.
I started thinking about all the technology I used to use that my children will never use, or possibly see, outside of a technology museum. My Grandma’s rotary dial telephone. The kitchen phone with its long curled cable so you can hand the phone to someone in the dining room. The VHS player, or VCR. Cassette players, record players, mini disc players, even CD players. Full fat TVs, walkmans, pagers, PDAs, and tiny flip phones. All gone, replaced with the latest technology and digital streams.
There’s still a few public payphones around though. For now.
Bad associations
It’s interesting how the brain, or memory, can associate bad things that happened, with objects. For example I see a Skoda Fabia and I instantly think of the time a kid out for a joy ride tried to run me off the road in one. I have a bad memory associated with that particular model of car. So when I was loaned one recently my brain immediately went oh no. Yet there was nothing wrong with the car itself, only a bad association.
Objects can trigger memories, good and bad. Having bad associations can affect your decision making. You may be less likely to make use of something if you have a bad memory associated with it, even if the memory is not of that object itself being bad in any way. And that can be a bad thing in itself. Especially if the object in question could be good for you, or is the best option in the current situation.
One thing you could do is to rewrite the narrative. Try and find some good to associate with the object, to counteract the bad, or cancel it out entirely. With the Skoda, my friend had one for years and loved it to bits. It was her favourite car. It served her well and even I had a few lifts in it. It wasn’t the car that was bad in my association, it was the driver. So switch the narrative to them, not the car.
The car is just one example. We all develop these bad associations over time. We link them to foods, drink, vehicles, people, places, and just about anything.
It’s worth looking at the memory as a whole and working out where the actual bad lies.
Career Vs just getting paid
Life is just a game. Careers are just a part of that game. Some people take it way too seriously. Optimising their chances to get to the top of some perceived career ladder, with each rung a goal that they have set for themselves. Reaching each rung, achieving each goal, the top of the ladder ever closer. Yet everyone is playing a different game with every game both separate and overlapping. Beating the competition to obtain a job role that will help you get nearer to your end goal.
Look at LinkedIn. It’s a forum for those who play the game. Making contacts that can help you achieve your goals. Promoting yourself, talking game theory, planning, techniques. Hours spent playing the game.
Go back a generation or two and everything was different. It wasn’t all about having a career it was just about working, earning a wage in order to pay the bills, to live. True, there were some who wanted to rise to the top of their field. Probably banking or government. The rest were just happy to be earning. Work was something you did to get paid.