RIPC

So, 40 might yet be the beginning of my life... but it was the end of my computer's. Last Friday I went to turn it on... and nothing. The motherboard was kaput. A nice local computer-fixing man gave it the burial it deserved and managed to salvage the hard drives and locate them in a new home for a very reasonable price (considering my current lack of funds). So I'm back up and running... just. (I won't mention the Cartman-like Tantrum I had when I thought the new pc didn't work either... turns out I'd plugged the monitor cable into the wrong socket.)

While mourning the pc, I rediscovered the outside world, walked in the sunshine, lived my life without constantly thinking "I'll just pop on the computer for 5 minutes when I get home" and remembered fondly the days before this bloody box ruled my life. But it's back now... and I'm saved having to live without it for one second longer. Because the world is scary without it. How did I ever live before it?

In other news, those robbing b@stards at the Royal Mail are putting up the price of a First Class stamp by 14p. Thanks, guys, that'll really help my already-desperate attempts to supplement my non-existent income via eBay... and will probably mean I'll have to raise the price of Too Much Sex & Violence to nearer £3, giving readers even more reasons not to buy it.

Still, at least the sun's out...

Going South (5): Dorchester Dinosaur Musem

Have you noticed how high tech a lot of museums and tourist attractions are becoming these days. They're not content unless they're bursting to the seems with 3D computer simulations, interactive holograms, teleporters and Hadron Colliders. Not like when I were a lad when museums were all "Do Not Touch" signs, plastic replicas of squirrel droppings and dusty fossils. Having said that, sometimes I long for the simple times. It's like Doctor Who. The modern day monsters might be impressively realistic CGI creations but there's still nothing as scary as a dustbin with a sink plunger on top. Maybe our imaginations worked a little harder back in them days...

All of which brings us to the next stop on our journey south, the Dorchester Dinosaur Museum - where the ancient relics are more than just the skulls of sabre toothed tigers and woolly mammoth tusks. Many of the exhibits here transported me back in time not just to the Jurassic Age, but to the museums of my youth, before everything came with bells, whistles and flashing lights to grab our attention deficient youth. (What a fogey I must sound. Isn't it ace?)

That's not to say this museum was entirely without audio visual or interactive elements. For the former, there was a video of Jurassic Park on continuous loop. And for the latter... who needs computer games when you've got red plastic plates? Simply press the "button" to reveal the answer...

They certainly kept me entertained. Well, them and the huge plastic dinosaur that greeted us as we arrived...

Technology Is The Thief Of Time

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier. It's supposed to save our time and allow us to accomplish more with the time we have available. But lately, I'm finding it does exactly the opposite. I sit down at my computer to do what I think will be a simple ten minute job... and two hours later, I haven't even started on that job because I've had to do some urgent software update... or an urgent software update I haven't even chosen to do at that time has started anyway, slowing my computer down to a snail's crawl. Why does software have to update so frequently? Half the time it updates and you don't even notice a difference. It's just stolen 20 minutes of your life for no reason at all. Not to speak ill of the recently departed, but the absolute worst culprit here was iTunes... which is why I removed that service from my computer and refused to ever use it again.

Or I log onto a website I haven't used in a while to carry out a simple task... and suddenly it wants to know my password. Now I know you're not supposed to use the same password for every site you visit... but you're not supposed to write your passwords down either. How can I remember all those different passwords when I can barely remember to put my socks on in the morning? So I click 'Forgotten Password'. And then it asks me a security question. Can I remember the answer I chose when I set that security question? Can I heck. So then I have to call the helpline... and don't even start me on helplines.

I could go on, but you get the point. I have no witty observations to make about this subject, nor do I have any radical solutions (other than smashing the looms and going back to writing on slate with chalk). I just needed to get this off my chest. I spent three hours last night trying to fix my Blackberry which had stopped receiving emails. I rebooted the device, I went on the Blackberry website (which told me nothing), in the end I called my service provider... who informed me I wasn't alone. "Didn't you hear?" the woman at the call centre asked (after I'd wasted 25 minutes listening to recorded messages and pressing the right combination of keys that wins you a real human being). "It's been on the news and on the BBC website and everything." "No," I told her. "I haven't had time to watch the news or surf the web... I've been trying to fix this @%&#! computer!"

The Captcha Code

I don't know about you, but I object to the fact that whenever I'm given a captcha code to fill out during my daily online meanderings, not only am I verifying my true identity as a human being rather than a robot, cyborg or a breakfast TV presenter... I'm also helping boffins decipher old texts.

A lot of those wavy captcha texts (particularly the ones you struggle to decipher and often end up keying in the wrong word and having to pick an alternative) are taken straight from digitised books, magazines and sacred scrolls... and because computers are too dumbass to read them properly, us human lackeys are being made to do their job - for free!

I object to this on two fronts: firstly, now I'm self-employed, I want paying for my work as a translator - I reckon five quid per captcha isn't too much to ask; and secondly... this all feels a little Dan Brown to me. Not only do I not want anyone to mistake me for Tom Hanks... but what if I accidentally decipher a captcha that foretells the end of the world... 40 days of rain (or worse, 40 days of frog rain)... or that Homebase will be closing early next Sunday?

How can I live with that kind of responsibility?

So in future, no more captcha codes for me. Apart from the one in the comments section on this blog. I promise there's no hidden text deciphering involved there.

Speaking of hidden codes - this week's thoughtballoons character is The Riddler (my choice), so do pop over to the thoughtballoons site and check out our 1-page scripts. My own offering, "Wise Men Fold", started the week... and there's more head-scratchers to come...