The art of walking and talking

I haven’t yet mastered the art of walking and talking. It sounds strange to say that out loud but it’s true. When I’m out and about, especially in crowds, I tend to focus my attention on my surroundings and who is near me. When I receive a phone call that all goes to pot. My situational awareness is reduced. I try to find a place to the side, an alley or alcove, somewhere I can focus on the phone call while remaining aware of who is around me and who is listening.

Somehow both my attention to the caller and my surroundings is reduced. It’s worse if I continue talking. You shouldn’t use the phone while driving, and I definitely shouldn’t use one while walking. I lose half the conversation and get in peoples’ way.

The exception to this rule is when I’m in the countryside. With no one around I can enjoy both the walk and the conversation. With a hands-free kit the experience is even better.

I’m sure there is an art to walking and talking but I have yet to master it.

Something went wrong

Something went wrong.

I hate that message. It’s both a statement of fact and unhelpful at the same time.

Your laptop, device, car, whatever piece of technology that you are currently using has failed to complete the requested task and instead is showing you those three words: something went wrong.

What went wrong? How do I fix it? There is no help because it does not know. The exact scenario has not been catered for in advance. There is no exception handler for this particular exception. Instead you’ve fallen down to the bottom of the switch case and landed at the default, if nothing else show them those three words code branch.

Something went wrong.

Political music in minutes

You can now create professional sounding music in minutes thanks to AI.

You can write a country song for your girlfriend on your anniversary with careful written lyrics with meaning only to the both of you. And it can sound like a professional singer and band recorded it. All from the comfort of your own home, and laptop.

A new trend is political music. Music with a political message or bias complete with propaganda lyrics designed to resonate with your target audience. Available in all musical genres and styles. Rock, metal, jazz, classical, pop, you name it, whatever you want. Type in your message and the AI will create the track for you faster than you can make a cup of coffee. Fine-tune it and release. Voila! Your political message or viewpoint is injected into the music streams of your choice ready for the masses to consume.

Amazon takes responsibility for the delivery

I hate it when you leave feedback on Amazon for a problem with the delivery and the response is always:

Amazon takes responsibility for the delivery.

Except they don’t.

They don’t take any responsibility. They just post that useless statement.

Do they reach out to you and offer compensation? No.

Do they issue you a refund, discount, or ask for feedback? No.

Nothing happens other than them posting that useless statement.

And we just accept it.

The bad delivery. The package tossed over your fence into your garden, the dents and rips, the excess of packaging, no packaging.

Amazon does not take responsibility for delivery.

I wish I knew

When I was younger I wish I’d understood finance more. I wish I knew how pensions worked, and taxes. I wish I’d understood how I could have made up years towards the state pension, how I could have reduced taxes with self assessments, paid off a mortgage faster, and benefited from tax-free investments.

I learned all of the above the hard way. By being overly taxed and having a rubbish pension. By learning what I should have done after-the-fact from others.

They should have taught this stuff in school, but they didn’t. Instead we are taught maths that we will never use. Why not teach us how to balance an account, how bank accounts work, about loans, pensions, and investing? Teach us something that will be useful when we enter the world of adulthood and financial obligations. Or at least point us in the right direction.

Error not found

There’s a fault with my car so I took it to a garage. They said it was too complicated for them and to try another with more technical equipment. I did. They said it has no fault codes.

I find this concept very strange. That cars have gotten so complex that a mechanic’s first impulse is to connect a tablet to your car to determine what is wrong. The problem is that when the car says nothing the mechanic gives up, they don’t even look at it.

There’s nothing they can do without a fault code they say. Come back when it has an error.

The car generated an error. I had multiple lights on the dash. The garage said bring it in tomorrow. I did. No fault codes are stored in your ECU they said, so there is nothing we can do. Clearly there is a problem. I describe it. I’m talking to myself. The mechanic has a glazed expression across his face.

I phone the dealer. We can run diagnostics, they say. There is a diagnostics fee. They’ll connect it to their more expensive computer. It’s much better than non dealer garages they say.

I’m not sure if I’m driving a car or a laptop.

Problem empathy

I suffer from problem empathy.

It’s where you worry and stress about problems that are not your own, but those of friends or family.

When catching up with a friend or family member and they tell you about their woes, something that happened to them recently, maybe they were ripped off, scammed, or threatened, and are obviously upset. You begin to feel angry as if the problem has befallen you and not them. That you were the person that was wronged or threatened and you need to sort it, to make things right.

This is problem empathy.

You get worked up about this thing that has not happened to you, yet somehow feels as if it has. It can be really frustrating. Your loved ones may not even understand, telling you that you are worrying and stressing over nothing.

OSINT on old TV shows

I found myself carrying out OSINT on old TV shows. I didn’t realise I was doing it at first. I was watching an old episode of one of my favourite shows and I wanted to know where it was filmed. IMDB and a quick Google returned no information.

I started freeze-framing one scene, advancing frames looking at the geography, buildings, and business names, phone numbers, anything. I was geolocating the scene. It took me minutes. I had it.

Google street view confirmed it. Some minor changes to the buildings and layout but definitely the right location. I had the location, obtained out of mere curiosity and some OSINT skills. Information that the show’s wiki and even IMDB did not have.

There is data in these old TV shows if you know how to extract it.

Jiffy bags

My child was excited about receiving her first post. It was just a children’s magazine subscription, but the excitement was real. The postman had posted something through the letterbox that was actually addressed to her.

We forget how fun the post used to be when we were younger. These days in adulthood the sound of the letterbox triggers thoughts of bills or junkmail, rarely is our first thought that it could be something exciting or fun, for that fix we turn to our phones for instant digital gratification. A message from a friend or family member delivered in full animated colour straight into the palm of your hand. No stamp required.

As I dwell on her excitement I recall a time long ago when I used to trade warez from the demo scene. Not a day would go by without a handful of jiffy bags falling through the letterbox onto the mat below. Except Sundays. There was no post on Sundays. Each parcel filled with 3.5” floppy disks containing the latest releases. This was the internet of my childhood. Parcels from all over the world bringing digital joy. Plus hand-written letters from each contact. Sometimes the letters were typed and included on one of the disks.

Most of my pocket money was spent on stamps, parcels, and sellotape. It was worth it though. It afforded me pen-pals on a whole new level. We would swap and trade software, swap stories of our lives from our little corner of the world, and share our own creations and ideas.

Those were the days. Now with instant gratification thanks to the internet, that sense of anticipation, expectation, the wait for the postie, is long gone. The memories recalled but for a moment by the joy momentarily witnessed on a child’s face when receiving a magazine in the post addressed to them. 

Christmas at Grandma’s

I remember Christmas at Grandma’s.

The decorations were old school. Crepe-paper thin ceiling hangers that expanded out, pinned from the corners to the central light. Pieces of wool pinned along the walls in sagging lines from which to suspend all the cards she would receive from friends around the world. A lifetime of friendships, many lines of wool.

The tree would be small and white. The old record player moved so that its home could now be used as a base for the tree.

The Christmas cake that was started just after the summer ended. Needing time to mature. Iced nearer to Christmas ready to be eaten with cheese.

The decoration boxes lived on top of the wardrobe. Stared at all year round and brought down but only once.

Memories and emotions of Christmases past. A glass or two of Baileys by the gas fire playing gin rummy or knock-out twist.

Merry Christmas Grandma.