Demon-infested technology

 

That sound you hear is me beating my head against a wall.*  I have wasted nearly two hours trying to get the second half of Alex Bellos' ALEX'S ADVENTURES IN NUMBERLAND onto Pooka.  Need I even tell you that I downloaded both parts when I downloaded the first?  No?  I didn't think so.  First part ran fine.**  And ran out, while hurtling this morning.  I pressed the arrow for the second.  'The audio is not available,' I was informed.  'Please resume download of title to continue audio playback.'  I made loud snarling noises of the sort that cause people to back away from you on the street, and which the hellhounds, being well accustomed, ignore entirely.

            I made a couple of brief stabs at deleting and re-downloading the wretched thing in between other more urgent activities.***  But tonight I thought, okay, I'm going to get the sod, because I want to listen to it on tomorrow morning's hurtle.

            I'm not going to be listening to it on tomorrow morning's hurtle.  It has defied me in every direction.  I've re-downloaded it something like six times.  I've seen it swim over the link from my computer three or four times.  It's still not on the iPhone.  'The audio is not available.'  It appears in Pooka's audible library as downloaded.  It's also in the iTunes' back-up library—claiming to be present and ready for action on Pooka.  Nothing happens if I drag and drop.  I did manage an interesting do-si-do that enabled me (theoretically) to drag and drop from audible's download manager:  'Not all the audio files were copied onto the iPhone, because they must exist on iTunes first.'  They do exist on frelling iTunes.  They bloody well play on my laptop.  I don't want to play them from my laptop.† 

            This is a fairly classic technology-will-kill-you bind as far as I'm concerned.  I totally love having audiobooks on Pooka.  Not only has it revolutionised hurtling around town, which is basically horribly booooooring for us bipeds who aren't much into sniffing pee, chasing cats and eating bugs, but audiobooks are brilliant for knitting (as of course violinknitter has been telling us for years††).  And www.audible.co.uk (I assume there's an American/Australian/Guamian/Patagonian equivalent) is affordable.   I'm not going to have a problem getting through a book a month, and the monthly membership fee is a quarter to a half of what most books cost on CD, if you can even find them on CD.  If audible and I can't reach a compromise in which I can listen to the books I buy without destroying hours, throat lining and the equilibrium of husband and hellhounds . . . I'm going to be devastated.††† 

 * * *

* Or possibly a bookcase.  Not a lot of blank, convenient walls for the purpose around here. 

** I have very little idea why I thought I'd like this book.  As allergies to maths go, I am at the dangerous anaphylactic end.  It got a good review in the GUARDIAN http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/alex-bellos-adventures-numberland-maths but then lots of things get good reviews in the GUARDIAN that I wouldn't touch with a barge pole.^   I suppose the awful truth is that some crumb, some fragment, some iota of curiosity about how numbers work in the real world^^ survived the combination of my education^^^ and my lack of maths brains.  But my lack of bell ringing brains hasn't stopped me ringing bells and maths . . . is a language, you know?  And a way of seeing the world in other colours and other dimensions than in our usual literature-major word-words.  It's the stuff that can't be true, the stuff no one can get their heads around that appeals to me—hey, you know, I write fantasy.  But take pi, for possibly the most obvious example.  How insane is that?  And yet everyone knows pi, and uses the freller in a careless and familiar fashion.  Or how about logarithms?  Take something mind-breakingly complicated—something you have to have a calculator to figure out in the first place;  pre-calculator there were log tables—to make ordinary SCREAMINGLY BORING but straightforward stuff like multiplication easy.  Easy = not screamingly boring.  Fast.  Non-brain-numbing.  All you need is these psychotic logarithms.  I like the philosophy behind this system even if I don't understand it even a . . . ahem . . . fraction.

            So.  Yeah.  I am enjoying this book a lot.^^^^  I want to hear the rest of it.^^^^^ 

^ My allergy to misery memoirs, for example, is even more severe than my allergy to maths. 

^^ Barring anything to do with money.  I hate money.  I just want there to be enough of the stuff when I have to pay for something.  Banks?  Shudder.  I'm not surprised they do things like lie, cheat, steal and crash.  I find economics slightly fascinating in a don't-come-near-me-with-that-thing way, and banks are always there like the wicked uncle. 

^^^ I've told you about my algebra II teacher who, first class after lunch, was too drunk to copy a problem on the chalkboard correctly.  He was, I admit, the culmination of my mathematical education—I managed to opt out after that—but there were one or two other notable high points, like my first algebra I teacher who told me I was the stupidest child she had ever tried to teach in thirty years and that I would never grasp even the most basic concepts.  Oh.  Fortunately my father got transferred shortly after that and my second algebra I teacher was one of the nicest women on the planet.  

^^^^ Although if I get around to reviewing it it's going to lose a star for Bellos'—who does the reading aloud himself—appalling accents.  His Arizonan numerologist is grotesque and his Slavic Brooklynites not a lot better. 

^^^^^ Speaking of the long-lasting effects of bad education:  I can listen to this book when I would have had a lot of trouble reading it.  This audiobook thing is not exactly efficient because finding anything on audio that you want to think about some more is not a good option . . . so of course I have to have hard copy too.  And as soon as I'm looking at the equations—even though they're mostly easier to take in in their entirety that way by someone who is as visually oriented as I am—I can feel the old school-maths fog settling down over me. 

*** Work.  Voice lesson.^ Bell ringing, speaking of bell ringing. 

^ . . . which was due to be a disaster.  I had a couple of days of mutant-virus semi-laryngitis when my voice would just drop out for a syllable or a word and I thought 'uh oh' so I didn't sing for four days . . . thus discovering how deep those roots are beginning to run.  I was expecting a Cement Day when I sang yesterday—when your throat is like cement and your working range is about three notes, and two of them are squeaky—but in fact it was not too bad—as if my voice is also beginning to think this singing lark [sic] is part of the way things are supposed to be, and is eager to get on and do stuff.  And while my cough-cough Italian has frelling backslid—it's like my eyes stop reading what I've written down of what Nadia has told me and it takes her telling me again for me to register what THOSE WORDS MEAN—even I can hear that my dubious voice-equivalent is steadying and strengthening.  Mind you, it's one of those Shetland-pony-in-a-field-of-thoroughbreds things:  I'm not going to get very far by thoroughbred standards.  But I'm out of the barn. 

† Brief unenchanting vision of taking my laptop along in a large knapsack.  No. 

†† Long before I was knitting. 

††† And while I'm whining about the malice of technology, does anyone know how to query being blocked on Twitter?  Jonathan Carroll, @JSCarroll, has blocked me.  Whimper.  I really like his stuff—I used to RT it fairly regularly—and I miss it.  I thought I'd just got defollowed somehow, which does happen, so I went to refollow and . . . was informed I was blocked.  But—but—!  I'm a real person!  I'm a fan!  What have I done?  I tweeted him, but he hasn't answered.  I've also tweeted Twitter but I'm not surprised they haven't answered. . . .