Bryce Moore's Blog, page 112
April 5, 2019
Question Common Knowledge, and You Might Be Rewarded with Delicious Food
Ever since I moved to Maine, one of the things I’ve missed the most (from a cuisine perspective) was the abundance of great Mexican food places in Utah. Not just the Tex Mex stuff, but the actual, real Mexican restaurants. It didn’t make any sense to me that there wouldn’t be any in Maine. I mean, the best Mexican restaurant I ever ate at was in Nebraska of all places, so if Nebraska can have fantastic Mexican, why not Maine?
I asked around some, but no one really had any great suggestions. Chipotle is all fine and good, but it doesn’t cut it for me. There were some burrito places that have popped up in the area, and there have been some food trucks that did their own sort of Mexican food, but I never found anything that came close to the places I’d go in Utah. Great, cheap restaurants with fantastic food, huge portions . . . Mmmm . . . .
So imagine my surprise yesterday when I was in Bangor and asking around for ideas of places I should eat. The Bangor library director asked me if I liked Mexican.
“Yes, but they don’t have the good stuff here in Maine,” I said.
“Have you ever tried Las Palapas?”
Friends, I hadn’t even heard of Las Palapas. He told me it was great, authentic Mexican food. I was skeptical, but I tend to value the opinions of librarians more highly than the opinions of the general masses. We’re trained information professionals, for one thing. And we don’t mess around when it comes to good food.
I went off to give the place a shot. It’s not the easiest restaurant to find. It’s tucked back between a couple of hotels just off the freeway, over at the Bangor Mall. But when I walked in, the smell was just right, and when I sat down, they plopped a huge portion of fresh tortilla chips and salsa in front of me, and they were fantastic.
Needless to say, it was a wonderful meal. Rice, beans, and a burrito smothered in cheese. It makes me hungry just thinking about it again. So why in the world did I not know this place existed?
To explain, I need to tell another story. When I was on my mission in Germany, I was told early on that “Germans don’t have fresh milk.” This was something all the other missionaries I came in contact with took for granted. The only milk Germans ate came in a box that didn’t need to be refrigerated. It was nasty stuff, but if you cooled it down, it was quasi-edible.
Why did I believe this? In hindsight, it seems preposterous. An entire first world country that just doesn’t drink milk at all? And yet for the first half year of my mission, I believed it completely. Missionaries would go shopping with other missionaries, after all. And navigating a grocery store in a foreign language is tricky for an adult, let alone a 19 year old guy. So we all knew what other missionaries ate, and we stuck to that. (I shudder at the memory.)
Until my mastery of the language improved, and my sense of adventure increased. I started branching out into other areas of the grocery store when we went each week. And one week, I was looking for cheese, and I came across this strange box in the chilled food section. It said “Frische Milch.” “Fresh milk.”
I remember even bringing it over to my companion. “Check this out,” I said. “Do you think it’s real?”
“Germans don’t have fresh milk,” he assured me. “It’s probably a marketing gimmick.”
But my love of cereal and milk in the morning was great enough that I decided it was worth a 2 Mark investment. I bought the product. It turned out (surprise surprise) to be perfectly normal fresh milk. And from then on, I became an evangelist not just of the Gospel, but of the existence of fresh milk to my fellow missionaries.
Why hadn’t we known about fresh milk? A couple of reasons.
The milk came in different containers than we were used to. Instead of jugs, it came in plastic bags or boxes. So the thing we identified as “milk” by sight didn’t match up with what we were seeing.We accepted the experience of missionaries who had come before us, and we weren’t exposed to many other missionaries at once. “What do you drink for milk” just wasn’t a common conversation topic, so for the first six months, I think I’d gone shopping with a total of 4 other Elders.We didn’t question the reality we lived in.
I’d like to think I put all of that behind me years ago, and yet there I was yesterday, believing Maine had no authentic Mexican food for 11.5 years, only to find out one day that I was wrong. All it took was asking the right person. Of continuing to question and wonder and be curious, and then be open to the answers I got back.
So what other areas am I limiting myself right now? Maybe I should just ask the public at large. I could really go for a great German restaurant in Maine. Anyone got any recommendations? (Or am I expecting too much?)
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
April 3, 2019
On the CMP Corridor
This post might be a fair bit shorter than many of you might expect. I haven’t said anything about the CMP corridor, despite it being pretty big news here in my home in western Maine. For those of you outside the state, it boils down to this: there’s an effort to bring Canadian power down to New England, and to make it happen, it has to go through Maine. That much is established fact. What’s far from established is what all of that means. To illustrate, allow me to quote the summaries that supporters and objectors are using for the project. Guess who says what.
First:
The New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) is Central Maine Power’s proposed 145-mile long corridor of thousands of high-voltage megatowers cut through the Maine woods. CMP’s corridor would be as wide as the New Jersey Turnpike, and the towers each as large as the Eastland Hotel in Portland. This corridor would be cut through pristine Maine wilderness in order to bring electricity from Canada to Massachusetts, with no stops in between.
Second:
Why do so many people support New England Clean Energy Connect? Because it will create jobs, revenue and economic opportunity for Maine residents and cleaner air throughout New England at no cost to Maine residents.
To say there are strong feelings around this project would be a severe understatement. But it’s also far from as straightforward as either side would have you believe. How can you know that? Well, it’s a project that received support from both our Trump-lite former governor Paul Le Page and our staunch Democrat new governor Janet Mills. (Though they supported it for different reasons.)
Of course, some would say that’s just a sign of our politicians selling out to big business, but I need a few more facts before I decide to whip out the old tinfoil hat, and I tend to think many “conspiracies” are nothing more than people choosing to read the facts in a certain light.
So where do I fall in all of this?
Nowhere. I have been unable to find reliable information sources that convince me one way or another. At this point, big money has entered the picture on both sides of the argument, and both sides are using the exact same arguments. If you love the environment, then you either hate this project for slicing up our pristine woodlands, or you love it for bringing clean energy and cleaner air to all. If you’re about economic development, you either want Canada to take its power and go home, or you want all these jobs that will come to Maine.
Frankly, the arguments all make good points. (At least as far as I’ve studied them, which is admittedly not extensively.) And I have heard no argument strong enough to persuade me to get off the fence where it’s nice and comfy. At this point, it feels like they’re all talking around in circles, and so I stop really caring what decision they come up with and just wish they’d come up with a decision. Either way, we’re still going to have both the end of the world and a bright new ecological utopia, so just pick one.
If I had to vote one way or another, then I would vote in favor of the corridor. Why? Because people I know and respect have heard the arguments far better than I could, and they’ve come to decide that’s the best choice. I don’t personally know Governor Mills, but I have friends who do. I don’t believe she’d fold to corruption in the few months she’s been in office. I think she heard the arguments, for and against, given by experts, and she reached a conclusion.
Fair enough.
But that’s only if I were forced to vote. In reality, I’m not, and so I won’t. Not even to advocate that you support or reject the corridor. (Though I’ll likely get friends telling me I’m wrong no matter what.) In an ideal world, we’d have more time, hire some independent analysts, and really get a handle on what the impact of all of this will be. But it appears we don’t have time, so . . .
Whatever?
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
April 2, 2019
Putting Home Videos on YouTube
8 years ago or so, I took all the old VHS home videos I could find and transferred them to DVD, thinking I was saving them and making it so they’d be much more watchable in the future. (The process at the time involved the purchase of a VHS/DVD player that was specifically made to make those transfers. It took a long time–it would literally play the VHS and record it on a DVD as it went.)
Of course, at the time, YouTube looked like this. The thought of just taking all those movies and turning them into digital files and then uploading those files to the internet didn’t even occur to me. We’d be talking about gigabytes of information. The average internet download speed then was 4mbps. Upload would have been much worse.
Of course, technology has come a long way since then, and in the intervening years, I discovered that I’ve mostly stopped watching movies on disc. I prefer streaming. (Don’t we all?) And DVDs can get scratched and stop playing. So . . .
This year I decided to take all those DVDs and put them on YouTube. (I made them unlisted, so that people with the link can see them, but they won’t show up in just anyone’s feed. I could have made them private, which would mean only I could see them, but I wanted other family members to be able to see them.)
The process itself was about as problematic as getting them off VHS. I used Handbrake, a free program for transferring movies from one format to another. (At least I didn’t have to deal with any privacy locks on the videos.) Basically, you open Handbrake and have it scan the DVD, then have it transfer it to mp4 format. Once that’s done, you upload it to YouTube. Your main limiters are internet speed and the speed of your DVD drive. I did it all in small sessions, because I didn’t have time to do it all at once.
Overall, I’m very pleased with the end result. I can watch those movies anytime, anywhere I can view YouTube. So I’d definitely recommend it to others. (Of course, the question remains as to whether or not I actually WILL watch the movies. As I posted back when I first did the VHS to DVD project, home movies often depress me . . .)
But if you’re looking to make your movies more accessible, this is a process I can give my stamp of approval to. Just make sure you have plenty of time.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
April 1, 2019
Movie Review: Free Solo
I’d already heard good things about Free Solo before it won the Oscar for best documentary this year, even though I hadn’t had the chance to see it before the awards. It aired on National Geographic TV the other day and I DVRed it, and we finally had the chance to watch it this weekend.
As far as documentaries go, it’s quite straightforward: it tracks the efforts of Alex Honnold to scale El Capitan, a 3,000 foot rock cliff in Yosemite. It’s been climbed by plenty of people before, but never by someone without a rope. Which, naturally, is what Alex decided to do. By himself.
It’s a riveting watch (made even more riveting by watching it on as big of a screen as you can find). And it’s an excellent reminder that stories don’t need to be flashy to be riveting. Set up a simple problem, raise the stakes high enough, and you’ve got all the drama you could ever want. Of course, in this case it’s done by a very capable film maker, who does a good job of establishing who Alex is and what he stands to lose if he should fall. Better yet, they go into detail about just why this rock cliff in particular is so difficult to climb, and where the trickiest spots will be.
I’m not a rock climber (and after watching this movie, I have no plans to become one). But through the course of the movie, I felt like I knew enough about what was happening to have a full understanding of the challenges as they came up. I won’t tell you how the movie ends, but it was definitely worth the watch. I gave it a 9/10. Suitable for just about anyone, except anyone with a fear of heights. (Seriously. I have no idea how these people do this. My palms were sweating just watching the guy start his climb. I’d have slipped to my death in the first hundred feet, even if I had the skill to actually climb things . . .)
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
March 29, 2019
First Steps in 3D Printing
We opened up a new 3D printing lab in my library a month or so ago. It’s nothing elaborate at this point: just two MakerBot Replicator+ printers and a computer to go along with them. But it’s a first effort in branching out into the area for us, and I’m glad we were able to do it.
The space is right outside my office, so I’ve been able to watch people come in and out to use the printers. (Access is for university-related people only, so no public 3D printing just yet.) To be able to use the printer, people just need to take a brief 15 minute class that goes over the basics, like what not to touch, how to start a job, how to stop a job, what to do when things go wrong, and basic etiquette for the area. Once they’ve got that done, we put a note on their library card, and they can check in with us to have us go unlock the room for them. Printing is free, for the time being.
It’s been a lot of fun to watch people’s reactions to the area. Some have come by and just been disappointed that the room is no longer an open study room. (A reaction I can certainly understand, as study rooms are often at a premium at my campus. Though in my defense, I just opened a new study room on the second floor, so the space ended up being study room neutral . . .) Some stare in confusion at the boxy printers, wondering what they are. (For this reason, I’m trying to always have something printing in there. It’s much easier to tell what the things do when you see them in action.)
Some people recognize the 3D printers and are very excited. I had one student talking on the phone outside my office, gushing about how awesome this was. (This made me very happy, of course.)
But my favorite reactions are the ones of the people who come and take the class and then start actually printing things. When 3D printing first popped up on my radar, it was generally as a “gee whiz” sort of technology. Something that was cool, but which I didn’t know if it would ever really be useful or not. But as I’ve used it more and more since then, I’ve come to appreciate just what a game changer it can be. The ability to think of an idea and then turn that idea into a tangible object, without any real need of tons of experience, is pretty incredible.
I’ll compare it to drawing on my iPad. I have an Apple Pencil now, and I bought a cool drawing app that I’ve loved to use in what spare time I have. I like to doodle, but I’m always messing up when I draw. I’ll have a line go astray, or get something wrong along the way. Yes, I could always erase before, but there’s a limit to how much of that you can do before the paper begins to disintegrate. Drawing electronically lets me get just the right light. It lets me do exactly what I want, and if I don’t like it, I can undo it.
3D printing brings that some concept to the real world. Better yet, you can see something someone else made, and then print it and have it for your own. Right now a faculty member is printing a small printing press that she’s going to use to print tiny manuscripts. Talk about meta.
So it’s been a fun experiment, and I really hope it continues to blossom. It’s bringing something to the area that is quite cutting edge for western Maine. Yes, it’s more common elsewhere, but I only know of two other places that do 3D printing within 30 minutes in any direction. If we can add etching and engraving and other technologies in the future . . .
That would be great.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
March 28, 2019
And He’s Off! Fiddlers 2019 Trip
Tomas headed off on the road early this morning to go with his school music group, the Franklin County Fiddlers. They’re going throughout Maine and Boston as they zig zag from place to place, fiddling all the way until they come back on Tuesday. As he was packing up and getting ready for the big trip, I couldn’t help but think back over some of the different school trips I went on.
Funnily enough, there are quite a few of them that I just can’t remember anymore. I’m pretty sure I went on a whale watching trip in . . . 6th grade? I think I remember being on the boat, and I seem to recall watching some of my classmates eat lobster, but I can’t remember where exactly we went. Boston? I couldn’t tell you if you paid me. The trip is a blur. There are even later trips that are also really fuzzy. We went to Baltimore one time for orchestra. Or was it Annapolis? I remember going to King’s Dominion. I think. (Man, when did my memory get so bad?)
On the other hand, there are some trips I still remember very clearly. Our marching band trip to Paris my Junior year of high school. We were there for the New Year’s Day Parade. I remember seeing Notre Dame in the rain. Marching in the parade. The New Year’s Eve dance. Seeing Paris from the Eiffel Tower. Having lunch at the cafe in the Louvre. All of that’s up there in my memory no problem.
My senior year, I went on another orchestra trip, this one to Germany and Austria with the All American Youth in Concert group. I remember that very well, too. Well enough that when we visited the places I played back then this past summer, I still recalled what they looked like and what we did there.
And of course, none of these count the tons of marching band trips to competitions across the area, or the Dixie Band trips to nursing homes. Small little day trips here and there that when I think about them, formed a big chunk of my high school schedule.
As I look back at all of that as a whole, I’m surprised at how much I did. I think it’s important to go on trips like that away from home. It gives you a chance to do things on your own and find yourself a bit better than when you’re always near your parents. Of course, it also gives you a chance to do stupid things, but you’re going to have that chance sooner or later. Better to have it on a chaperoned trip so you get used to the “freedom” one step at a time.
Anyway. You won’t see Tomas around for the next few days. Unless you’re down in Boston, in which case you can catch him this weekend. Have fun, Tomas!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
March 27, 2019
How Do You Deal with Disappointment?
Disappointment. We’ve all had it, and I don’t think any of us really enjoy it. (I mean, that’s kind of tied up in the definition of it, right? If you’re happy you’re disappointed, then you can’t be disappointed . . .)
I’ve experienced plenty of disappointment in my life, whether it was the first time I asked a girl to a dance and she turned me down or the time I applied to doctoral programs and didn’t get into any of them. Disappointment is a part of life, and learning to handle it is an important part of the maturation process, sadly. You’re not always going to get what you want.
One of my least favorite parts of being an author is just how multifaceted disappointment can be in the field. You’re never really free of it at any point in a project. You write a book. You think it’s great. Your agent doesn’t like it at all. Disappointment. Or your agent likes it, and you submit it to editors, and none of them like it. Disappointment. Or one of them likes it, and you finally publish it, but the reviewers or the readers don’t like it. Disappointment. Or most people like it, but you still come across a review from a reader who hated it.
At any point in time, putting your work out there to get feedback from others will almost inevitably lead you to disappointment at some point in the future.
I’ve gotten better at handling it, of course. In my everyday life, it’s easier to steel myself for disappointment ahead of time. I typically know when something’s coming up that might be a letdown, and I can prepare accordingly. But when you’ve submitted a manuscript to 15 or 20 editors, you’re never sure when they’ll get back to you. Checking email becomes a precarious thing, as you might have a rejection waiting for you at any time. Even then, though, you get used to it. Have enough projects out there, and any single rejection loses some of its sting. (Like the time I received a rejection for MEMORY THIEF after it had already been published. That was not a disappointment.)
Even then, there are new and exciting ways for you to be disappointed. I’d sold MEMORY THIEF and had back and forth letters with my editor about the revision, and then the publishing house that bought it closed. That was a big disappointment. Yesterday, a project that I’d already dismissed in my head suddenly popped back up in a big way on my radar, as an editor expressed interest in acquiring it. Things were looking great, and I couldn’t help but start getting my hopes up.
Until the book didn’t make it through the acquisitions meeting. (The editor had liked it, but the other editors . . . had not.)
Thankfully, I’ve been through this enough now that I know one thing that inevitably seems to cure disappointment for me: time. I know the feeling I have when I first find out about a let down, and I know that feeling subsides over time. It becomes less important. I move my focus to other things. In writing, often the best cure for me is to dive into a different project. To always have something new to focus on.
How about you? How do you handle disappointments in your life?
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
March 26, 2019
Heavy Meta #21: Moral Contagion with Michael Schoeppner
In this episode, Kelly and I are joined by Michael Schoeppner, Assistant Professor of History at UMF, whose book Moral Contagion was just released by Cambridge University Press(!) It’s a fascinating look at a real problem in history I had no idea existed until this episode, and it’s got some very interesting implications for the present day. Check it out!
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March 25, 2019
What, Exactly, Did You Expect the Mueller Report To Do?
Ever since Mueller began investigating Trump and the 2016 election, the whole effort seemed to snowball in importance. More and more people began to talk about what the report was going to do. We all watched it develop, and some read so much into the slightest bits of news that would come out. The argument was Mueller was a genius, and he was going to prove once and for all that Trump was crooked. It was all one big masterplan, and once it was complete, the world would know at long last all the Truth about what really happened.
At least, that’s what people came to believe, it seemed. And now the report is finished, and Trump’s Attorney General read it and assured us all that it cleared Trump of any wrong doing. (In other news, Cruella DeVille’s lawyer read over the independent investigator’s report into a string of dognappings and assured the public Ms. DeVille was totally exonerated by its findings, though maybe the report wasn’t ever going to be released to the public . . .)
Of course there’s no small amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but I’m left wondering what, exactly, people expected to get out of this report. Yes, I realize it was the mythical silver bullet that was going to Solve Everything, but anyone who believes that somehow still believes the problem lies solely with Trump. That if we could just get him out of office, then all would be well with the country again.
As I’ve said before, President Trump is really just a symptom of deep seated problems in America. 90% of Republicans think he’s doing a swell job. 1 in 3 independents think the same thing. Heck, even 4% of Democrats like what he’s up to. Yes, he’s able to cause all sorts of problems from his seat in the Oval Office, but the continued tolerance for him and his approach to politics and life in general isn’t going to go away with the wave of a wand or the lines of a report.
Imagine, for a moment, that the report said Trump was 100% guilty of collusion. That he’d personally called Putin up on the phone and asked him to help win him the election. Imagine that phone recordings of the conversation were even included, complete with a Dr. Evil-style laugh fest at the end of the talk, as they all contemplated how awesome this plan was going to be.
I honestly don’t think even that would have moved the needle enough to do anything other than further divide the country. Yes, it likely would have persuaded more independents, but in this day of Deepfakes and altered media, it’s too easy to dismiss anything. You’d have Republicans claiming the tape was doctored, and they’d trot out evidence of it, then all assure each other that evidence should be believed.
If you think I’m dreaming, then consider for a moment the response by some to the shootings in New Zealand. Livestreamed on Facebook. Manifesto published by the killer online. And yet you still have people claiming it was all done by actors. That it’s one big conspiracy. (I’m not going to link to any of it, and I don’t recommend any of you check out the idiotic arguments. They’re not worth the digital bits they occupy on a hard drive.) Never mind the countless witnesses. The law enforcement. The hospital workers. The news coverage. These people are fully ready to dismiss all of that as a conspiracy.
I understand the hope. The thought that somehow the general public will come to its senses and give Trump the boot. But it’s not going to happen through a Report. Trump’s power is rooted in fear. In making people afraid of people who are different than they are. That the country is changing, and that we are under attack. The only real way to combat that is either to somehow get those people who are afraid to overcome their fear, or to wait for those people who are afraid to be drowned out by people who don’t share that sentiment.
I don’t have solutions in this post. I know yelling at Republicans and calling them names won’t solve anything. The same is true for putting all your faith in Democrats, as if they’re the morally superior party. I personally believe the best shot we have at getting out of this is by breaking out of the two party system and the lie we’ve agreed to believe that one side is Right and the other side is Wrong. But one thing I’m sure of is that it’s going to take a whole lot more than a Report to make all of this go away.
We’ll have another presidential election in 2020. And we’ll see how the country’s feeling at that point. But it can’t be a “right vs. wrong” mentality that gets us out of this. Republicans aren’t 100% wrong, and Democrats aren’t 100% right, or vice versa. If you believe they are, then I’d argue you’re part of the problem too. Dismissing Republicans as “evil” or “bigots” is just another flavor of dismissing the Other.
But at this point, I feel like I’m just turning preachy. My apologies. It’s Monday, and no Report is going to solve any of my problems today, it seems.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
March 21, 2019
Technology: Harder than It Looks
I love me some technology. Whether it’s editing movies on my iPad, playing games on my PC, or tinkering with webpages online, I’m a self-confessed technogeek. But for as much as I love technology, it’s easy to start to take it for granted. To just assume it’s always going to be simple to use.
Until it isn’t.
The thing is, you never quite know when it’s going to bite you. When you’ll be trying to do something straightforward, only to have to stare in confusion at a screen for a few hours. Sometimes it happens with my A/V system at home. Something goes wrong, and the next thing I know I’m up to my eyeballs in Google searches as I try to figure out why the sound has stopped working. Or something might break on a webpage, and so it’s off to the internet to look for solutions.
Typically these things happen with areas of technology that I’m only generally familiar with. I can get through them on my own, but it takes a long time of research and study to figure out how to do just what I want. Of course, at the end of all that study, I’m good to go, but then I set it and forget all about it . . . until it breaks again, and I’ve forgotten all about how I set it up in the first place.
This also happens when I try to do something I’ve never done before. I’ll approach a new task with an “I’m sure it can’t be that difficult” attitude, only to discover just how difficult it is. Sometimes it’s the very nature of technology that makes it seem straightforward. For example, say you have a VHS copy of a movie, and you want to get that copy onto YouTube. They’re both videos, right? Moving pictures and audio? Isn’t there some sort of . . . cable that could connect your old VHS player to your computer and . . .
Off you go to Google.
(For the record, the way I’ve done it in the past is transfer the VHS to DVD, and then the DVD to mp4, and then upload the mp4 files to YouTube. But all of that takes a lot of time. For a half hour movie, expect it to take you an hour or so, and that’s once you’re familiar with the process.)
That said, I’ll still take technology any day over the old fashioned way of doing things. Because 90% of the time it’s easy peasy, and that’s worth 10% of pain in the rear.
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