There are certain things that happen when you’re using technology that makes you go ooh, look at that.  On certain occasions, Google’s search page picture of the day can make the news.  Not today though, it’s just boring old Google search. These are things that add absolutely no functionality to the application or device that you’re using, but they make the user interface a little nicer, usually while you’re waiting for something to happen.

People who use WordPress online will be familiar with this:

It pops up for a few seconds while a new post is launching.  You have NO IDEA how quick I had to be with my CMD+SHIFT+4 selection to get that screen grab.  Quickasaflash, that’s me.

Things have come a long way since the early egg timers of Windows, whichever it was I started out on – the one that was out around 1989? Windows 3.0?

That might be from a Mac, but I remember the absolute thrill of Windows 95 and the arrival of: ANIMATED HOURGLASS

Not only was it colour, it spun around and the grains of sand moved in the icon.  So many man hours must have gone into the creation of this single element of the whole desktop experience.  And you could customise the whole thing.

It never ceased to amaze me that people didn’t invest that two minutes of their time to do this and to make their desktop beautiful (as much as Windows 95 would allow).  Oh. My. Fucking. God. [I never spoke like that back then] What was wrong with these people that they didn’t change from the default background?  And why didn’t they alter the screen resolution so everything wasn’t so fucking MASSIVE? These were really options that suddenly came available to us and people just ignored it.

Can’t

Use

New

Technology

Still

These days, our devices and desktops still have ways of telling us that they’re fannying around, unable to cope with, oh, I don’t know, being just as slow as they ever were when you really need them to do something right away.  We get aero themed timers, or other flash things that spin around to calm us, to placate us, to reassure is that our software really is trying and not to throw our smartphone or PC out of a first floor window.

 Awww, the spinny thing in different contrast make it all better.  No shouty hypnosis.

 Aero thing whizzy round, take my mind off killings.

Bouncing iMac desktop icons

One thing that Mac users, and I am one, and yes I’m also a fucking hypocrite, in fact, my anti-Apple rants are so numerous that I can’t even link to them, but there are examples here, here, here, here and here.  Anyway… one thing that Mac users encounter, along with a file system that you can’t customise, beautiful design, the loveliest clicky keyboard, super mouse and all round “ooh, you got a Mac” factor, is… the bouncing desktop icons in the dock.

This is what my dock looks like.

It needs tidying up.  It’s the thing on the desktop that gives you immediate access to all the applications that you use most frequently.  It’s not a bad concept.  Whoever at Apple was in charge of this, whoever it was who decided that it would be a good idea for dock items to bounce when an app needed your attention, that person needs to die… on fire.

Why even do that? When you start your computer, you generally want to get going pretty quickly, you want to concentrate on doing what you need to do.  You do not want to be distracted by the fucking Spotify icon bouncing because, fuck knows why, it just does, every bloody time!  It’s just the way things are designed, if an app needs your attention, it bounces.

There’s a sound effect that goes with it too.

The person who designed this is Animated Hourglass’s doppelgänger.  Some evil little fucktard who just has to take desktop aesthetics that little bit too far.  Skeuomorphism is dead… nearly dead, but this shit lives on.  It’s almost as bad as these fuckers:

Now confined to the dustbin of time, they will haunt office workers’ nightmares for the rest of their lives.

Geek chique

I saw a man walking down the street the other day.  He looked fairly ordinary.  He was wearing normal clothes: jeans, shoes, t-shirt.  On the front of the t-shirt, in white lettering, was the word “Geek”.

Would a geek wear such a thing?  Would a geek even be out in broad daylight? Wouldn’t they be indoors, doing indoors things with technology? Or on an internet forum or something?

Over the past five years or so, it’s become quite trendy to be a bit geeky.  Girls wear big glasses… I wear big glasses. I say it’s trendy to be a bit geeky, it’s trendy to look geeky.  If any normal person came across a high-up-the-aspergers scale, into gaming and comics, background in science and technology, obsessive-compulsive real geek, they still might make fun of them, or find them odd, or find it difficult to make conversation with them.  But conversely, who with any ounce of intelligence want to try to drag out some tedious conversation about shit new music and whatever else real people talk about these days.  Hashtag GBBO.

Otto

Otto is staying with me for a fortnight.  Rocky is extremely jealous.  He can’t stand anything or anybody else getting my attention.

The little cat has had enough of being sniffed and is currently hiding at the bottom of my walk-in wardrobe, lying on top of my shoes.  Some things never change, but at least he’s kicked his ketamine habit.