Saturday, November 05, 2011
Technology old and new
Yesterday was a day for new technology, starting with iTunes and with the challenge being to tell iTunes that it was to use an external disc drive rather than an internal disc drive. Get off to a bad start by being told by iTunes that the help page no longer existed. So off to Google to try there, where I find plenty of places which will sell me an external disc drive and some places which offer help on how to connect one to iTunes. We take a look at one of these and think that we are on the move. But we think too soon because the helpful article from Google turns out to have been written in terms of some other version of iTunes than the one we are looking at. Spend some poking around the various iTunes menus and eventually light upon a hopeful looking dialog box about moving house. Click on the move button to be presented with another dialog box which contains a small box in which I assume I am supposed to enter the address of the new house. Much faffing around. Much confusion about whether folders called 'My Music' are real folders or artefacts of Windows Explorer. But complete failure at getting iTunes to digest the new address. In desperation phone up the help line, which does indeed provide help. Oh sir, you are not supposed to type the new address into the box provided. You are supposed to navigate to the new address and let iTunes type it into the box provided. Which works. Everything now seems splendid and we hang up. Decide to test the system by renaming the old iTunes master folder so that iTunes won't be able to find it even if it tried, which it should not be doing anyway. Close iTunes, open iTunes and lo and behold, the old address has reappeared. Our iTunes universe has been emptied. Panic, panic. Furthermore, iTunes seems to be interacting with Windows Explorer in some tricky way, making all the files containing the tunes invisible. One has to deduce their presence by the size property of the folders containing the files. More confusion. Phone up the help line again. Go through what seems to be exactly the same procedure and this time the thing sticks and the iPod appears to do a proper synchronisation with the new address. Having expended much energy over two hours, at this point we decide to quit while we are ahead and head off to the boozer.
Where we are treated to a demonstration of a telephone, from the same stable as iTunes as it happens, with which you can have a voice conversation. A conversation which took the form on this occasion of you talking to it and most if its answers being displayed on the screen. One could spend happy hours poking around at the boundaries of the things's capabilities. It knew how far away the moon was. It knew the square root of a million. It knew about the size of blue whales. But it did not know where Mount Everest was or the name of the longest river in the world. It did not know what make of car was driven by the superintendent in charge at Tooting Police Station, although it probably knew where that police station was. It was not very good with Geordie accents. Sometimes, rather than displaying a succinct answer it would fire up a Google search or pop you into some hopefully relevant place in Wikipedia. It knew where you were and whether you were at home or not. You could tell it to wake you up in a couple of hours. You could tell it to wake your son up in a couple of hours. Clever stuff and it would be interesting to see some description of the underlying systems.
Today was a day for a mixture of old and new technology at Hampton Court Palace, a place the interior of which I have not seen for more than ten years and FIL for more than fifty, this despite our many visits to the exterior. Off to a flying start as FIL is both old and has a blue card, which means that the two of us got the whole deal for £13.50 or so, with parking free. FIL thought he could try the audio guide, a thing looking rather like a large mobile phone which was helpfully connected to a gadget hung around his neck which would talk to the loop feature of his hearing aids. You punched in the number for an area of the Palace and you were treated to some time watch type banging on about the area in question. In the event, FIL not that impressed with all this, but luckily help continued with privileged access to a lift and to various parts of the Palace which were shut to ordinary visitors. This last being needed to avoid the many staircases which one would otherwise have to negotiate to get from one part of the palace to another.
The Palace itself was rather odd. A massive, rambling place with all kinds of odd nooks and crannies but with not all that many star attractions, although the few that there were were impressive. Lots of large and rather shabby rooms containing not much apart from low grade pictures or rather faded tapestries. Lots of people standing around with audio guides murmuring into their ears. Lots of trusties standing about in smart red coats, ready and waiting to do their rendition of a time watch presenter. Also ready and waiting to lead us through the special stair case avoiding doors and corridors.
Down one of which we came across an interesting & ancient wooden contraption, looking a bit like the sort of thing a farmer might move bales to the top of his barn with or a tiler might move tiles to the top of his house with, but which was actually used to lift grot out of the moat. Presumably for spreading on the rose garden in the autumn.
Another bit of old technology was the barbie in the kitchen. Whacking great log fire with a whole lot of spits in front of it. Plus various lads and lasses dressed up in Tudor gear preparing to roast real meat on the real fire. I was pleased to hear that the meat was actually to be eaten later in the day, although I quite understood that it would not be practical to feed it to the punters in this age of H&S.
All in all an interesting visit. The Hampton Court Experience or how to liven up an old and rambling building with a few resting luvvies.
Wound up proceedings with lunch in the Tilt Yard Café, just about open while the place is being refurbished. Three portions of gluten free beef stew for the two of us made for a very reasonable lunch. I was also reminded what factory white bread was like. I might not too happy with the stuff that I make, but it is a lot better than that which is dished out here - despite it being sliced off the loaf in front of you.
Wound up the day with yet another bit of new to me technology, taking delivery of my very first new CD, from Amazon. Casals playing the Bach Cello Suites to replace my very tired Tortelier version on vinyl. Perhaps tired by having been played too many times of one of those gramophones in a smart vinyl covered wooden box, maybe a cubic foot's worth, which were all the thing in the late sixties. Casals very good, despite the low background hum which preseumably reflects the CD having been engineered from some older technology. As it happens, both CD and vinyl from EMI.
Where we are treated to a demonstration of a telephone, from the same stable as iTunes as it happens, with which you can have a voice conversation. A conversation which took the form on this occasion of you talking to it and most if its answers being displayed on the screen. One could spend happy hours poking around at the boundaries of the things's capabilities. It knew how far away the moon was. It knew the square root of a million. It knew about the size of blue whales. But it did not know where Mount Everest was or the name of the longest river in the world. It did not know what make of car was driven by the superintendent in charge at Tooting Police Station, although it probably knew where that police station was. It was not very good with Geordie accents. Sometimes, rather than displaying a succinct answer it would fire up a Google search or pop you into some hopefully relevant place in Wikipedia. It knew where you were and whether you were at home or not. You could tell it to wake you up in a couple of hours. You could tell it to wake your son up in a couple of hours. Clever stuff and it would be interesting to see some description of the underlying systems.
Today was a day for a mixture of old and new technology at Hampton Court Palace, a place the interior of which I have not seen for more than ten years and FIL for more than fifty, this despite our many visits to the exterior. Off to a flying start as FIL is both old and has a blue card, which means that the two of us got the whole deal for £13.50 or so, with parking free. FIL thought he could try the audio guide, a thing looking rather like a large mobile phone which was helpfully connected to a gadget hung around his neck which would talk to the loop feature of his hearing aids. You punched in the number for an area of the Palace and you were treated to some time watch type banging on about the area in question. In the event, FIL not that impressed with all this, but luckily help continued with privileged access to a lift and to various parts of the Palace which were shut to ordinary visitors. This last being needed to avoid the many staircases which one would otherwise have to negotiate to get from one part of the palace to another.
The Palace itself was rather odd. A massive, rambling place with all kinds of odd nooks and crannies but with not all that many star attractions, although the few that there were were impressive. Lots of large and rather shabby rooms containing not much apart from low grade pictures or rather faded tapestries. Lots of people standing around with audio guides murmuring into their ears. Lots of trusties standing about in smart red coats, ready and waiting to do their rendition of a time watch presenter. Also ready and waiting to lead us through the special stair case avoiding doors and corridors.
Down one of which we came across an interesting & ancient wooden contraption, looking a bit like the sort of thing a farmer might move bales to the top of his barn with or a tiler might move tiles to the top of his house with, but which was actually used to lift grot out of the moat. Presumably for spreading on the rose garden in the autumn.
Another bit of old technology was the barbie in the kitchen. Whacking great log fire with a whole lot of spits in front of it. Plus various lads and lasses dressed up in Tudor gear preparing to roast real meat on the real fire. I was pleased to hear that the meat was actually to be eaten later in the day, although I quite understood that it would not be practical to feed it to the punters in this age of H&S.
All in all an interesting visit. The Hampton Court Experience or how to liven up an old and rambling building with a few resting luvvies.
Wound up proceedings with lunch in the Tilt Yard Café, just about open while the place is being refurbished. Three portions of gluten free beef stew for the two of us made for a very reasonable lunch. I was also reminded what factory white bread was like. I might not too happy with the stuff that I make, but it is a lot better than that which is dished out here - despite it being sliced off the loaf in front of you.
Wound up the day with yet another bit of new to me technology, taking delivery of my very first new CD, from Amazon. Casals playing the Bach Cello Suites to replace my very tired Tortelier version on vinyl. Perhaps tired by having been played too many times of one of those gramophones in a smart vinyl covered wooden box, maybe a cubic foot's worth, which were all the thing in the late sixties. Casals very good, despite the low background hum which preseumably reflects the CD having been engineered from some older technology. As it happens, both CD and vinyl from EMI.
# posted by Jim @ 8:26 AM 
