P is for Phones and Predictive Text

P

Grrr...

My mobile and I have a vexed relationship.  It's right on the edge of irreconcilable differences and divorce.  Our needs are so different. 

I want something to make phone calls and send the occasional text for me.  It has much grander plans.  It nags me constantly about updated accounts, fresh ways to link to my friends, demands that I use all its gadgets.  Frankly, it's a bit needy. 

All of that is bearable.  Where our relationship really breaks down is over sending texts.  It thinks it knows me better than I know myself.  I have news for my phone.  It does not.

Take, for example, the little matter of Northallerton.  This charming market town emerges from my phone's predictive text mechanism as Mortgakleston.  Sondheim appears as Some hens.  School becomes scowl.  Winter turns to water.  Partridge in a pear tree became partridge in a rear tripe.  Grudging props for getting partridge right I suppose. 

I'm aware that I need to spell out the words for the phone.  It can't be expected to know these things without some input from me.  However, even after the relevant words have been carefully given to the beast it remains smugly convinced that it knows better. 

Carrier pigeons anyone?

G is for Getting to Gen Con

G

"Meet you by the troll in an hour, OK?"
"Synchronise your mobiles."

First exchange from our dream-fulfilling visit to Gen Con Indy last year.  The plan itself was simple.  We're a family of gamers.  Naturally we would want to make what amounted to a pilgrimage to gamer Mecca - Gen Con Indy.  Typically, it took on the scale and feel of a military operation very quickly. 

Heitlers do not travel well.  Like good wine, we get shook up and all the unpleasant sediment of our personalities rises to the surface.  Heitlers also do not travel light.  Previous excursions abroad have inevitably ended up with us buying an extra suitcase to bring stuff back.  I took all this into account before getting online and hunting for hotels and flights.

For a technophobe, I'm rather good at this.  I can riffle through pages of flight and hotel combinations with great speed and in due course came up with something ideal.  Flights that came and went at sensible hours, a hotel within walking distance and all within budget.  Only one stop - in Philadelphia.

I did not know that Philadelphia airport is a byword for awful.  We found out.  Apart from the long, long queues and incomprehensible announcements that are part of any airport experience, we met possibly the world's least empathic immigration official.  A ten hour flight followed by "Hey, your name is really funny dude, your mom must have been a crazy nazi-lover" did not go well.  Particularly as my husband is Jewish.  Realising that socking this guy on the jaw would achive nothing but a strip search, we kept schtum.  Which I've regretted ever since.

We made it.  We found the hotel.  The hotel was wonderful and the staff made us feel like their long-lost family.  Thank you Crowne Plaza.  Unfortunately, there were some things completely out of their control.  If you recall, last August America had an unrivalled heatwave.  It was hot in Indianapolis.  Hot to the point that our plans to spend a couple of days acclimatising and wandering about were scuppered.  Going outside was like being hit in the face with a huge boiling blanket.  Three days before Gen Con started and we wilted in the heat and wondered if we'd have been better off not coming at all. 

Deprived of wandering, we spent a lot of time in the Boar's Head icecream parlour.  A name that tickled me greatly.  I kept wondering what Falstaff would have made of a hot fudge sundae. 

Ice cream parlour

We also worked out that the convention centre was huge.  As in airport huge.  This wasn't rocket science, but it did get us thinking about how we could stay in touch with each other.  Cheap mobiles was the answer.  Got those and practiced communicating with each other.  "Hi, I'm eating pancakes, want to join me?"

All this background took us to the first morning and our mile long trek down to the main entrance.

Something about the ten foot tall troll, the abundance of ocarina playing elves, the shops of dice and the halls full of people talking about everything game told us we'd arrived.

"Meet you by the troll in an hour, OK?"
"Synchronise your mobiles."

We had the best time.  We'd go back.  Even through Philadelphia.

The halfling and the barmaid

I've complained a goodly amount about technology and the internet, but in a small attempt to redress the balance, here's something I'm deeply grateful for. 

This is a story of an internet friendship. 

When we met four years ago, I was a barmaid with a suit of chainmail under her bed, and he was a halfling druid with a large dog.  It was an online game (what else?).  Some of us felt bold enough to divulge our real names and befriend each other on Facebook.

Halfling druid

Barmaid.  Chainmail under bed and therefore not visible

A conversation started shortly afterwards which has endured ever since.

Pat and I communicate almost every day.  I've watched him turn his life around in more ways than I can sensibly count.  He's watched me clamber through my various artistic traumas and teaching shenanigans.  We've both tended to be there for each other when the going got really rough at some points. 

Our ongoing conversation has taken us through politics, films, philosophy, gaming, more gaming, his work, my work, family, rules minutae, routes out of depression, character building and recipes.

We've met three times in the flesh.  Pat has come to visit the UK twice and has just walked through the door and felt like part of the family.    My son, who doesn't take to new people easily, immediately felt at home with him.  The home gaming group absorbed him instantly as a player.  He sat in our kitchen and broke up chocolate for brownies and peeled potatoes.

Husband, son and I went to Indianapolis for GenCon last year and met up again for a couple of meals.  As always, it felt like he lived next door and had just dropped by.

This good and lovely man met his soulmate last year, and on Tuesday, they eloped.  I'm using this post to say thank you to the internet for our ongoing conversation and to offer him congratulations and the best of good wishes.  Few deserve them more.  And yes, of course I asked his permission before I wrote this.

I am assured the elopement didn't look like this.

Overheard

Sitting downstairs putting the finishing touches to a madman's mask, I was roused from wondering where to put the eyeholes by what sounded like a massacre going on upstairs.

That level of bellowing usually means one or more of the following:
(a) the cat has caught a mouse and somehow managed to drop it.
(b) a major domestic tragedy has occurred - such as lost clothing.
(c) an appliance has broken.
or
(d) the toilet paper fairies have failed in their duties.

Mask in hand, I pounded up the stairs to see what was going on.

"You could just be a bit sympathetic - I have NO MANA."
"But you have a ton of dudes."
"But I can't buff them."
"So, I have mana and no monsters."
"OK, let's try again."

Suddenly I remembered.  Husband and son have been playing an ongoing Magic the Gathering duel online for days.  Dwelling in the depths with the sewing machine, I'd missed most of this.

The sweet irony is that although they're playing online, they are one room apart and yell at each other through the walls.  Hence the kerfuffle.

Oops ...

You can guess where this is going already.

The dream baby, the sewing machine that has been blissfully well behaved for a week, is failing me.

It sorted out sack masks and bloody remnants and trousers with perfect equanimity.  Confronted with stiching a bit of ribbon to the inside of a top, it suddenly freaked out and produced massive loops of thread across the bottom rendering it rapidly inoperable.

I've taken it apart and am just sitting quietly for a moment before I start screaming.

My precious ...

It's arrived.  My own personal sewing machine.  I can safely and happily destroy this one as it is under guarantee.

My relief knows no bounds.  It has an instruction manual, does overlocking and more importantly than anything else, I CAN THREAD IT and REPLACE THE BOBBIN without having a breakdown.

Sanity looms.

Sewing machines again

Sorry to bombard everyone with this ongoing saga, but I'm finding my own ineptitude both funny and frustrating.

I put out a plea for the loan of a sewing machine last night and got two immediate offers.  Wonderfully.  So I went and picked up the volunteer this afternoon.  Threaded it and bobbined it up with no trouble at all.  Felt smug.  Too soon.

The machine works just fine - except that it seems to have tension problems.  Half an hour, a ruined top and a small screwdriver later, I too had tension problems.

I'm buying my own machine.  I really can't deal with breaking another one that doesn't belong to me.

It's due to arrive on Friday.  Lay your bets now for how long the all new idiot proof machine lasts in my hands.  It was recommended by the WI, so it ought to be safe enough, but at this point I don't trust myself.

There will be an inevitable delay on the costume front.  Sorry, Antigone cast.

Button pushing for beginners

So, I took my first turn on the lighting board for the panto yesterday. Got in early to learn the ropes and watched the cast doing their very thorough physical and vocal warmup.  As always, it looked and felt like a small arcane world - craftsmen going about their business.  Very understated, very calm.

The lighting box is a great place to be.  You get the best of all possible worlds - the backstage chat, the show going on in front of you and the audience going nuts as well.  Sitting above the stage, you don a headset and listen for cues - punching buttons when you're told to and generally trying not to stuff it up.

Lighting board.  The One Button not shown.

This is made pretty simple, because there is just the One Button.  Should be easy.  Sort of is easy.  Except ...

What you hear is something like this:

Stage Manager:   Standby LX10-13, drop and there's a monkey
                           coming up your ladder

Me:                     Standing by ...

On stage:             Oooh, you are awful but I like you!

Audience:            He's beeehiiinddddd you!

Stage Manager:   Stand by stage right trap

Stagehand:           Standing by, trap open.

Front of House:   The missing school's just arrived, I'm sending them in.

On stage:             song about how wonderful Sinbad is starts

Audience:            *clapping along with increasing vigour*

Stage Manager:   LX10 

Me:                     Sta ...

Stage Manager:   Go.

Me:                     Hitting the One Button - Gone.

Front of House:   They're on their way.

Stagehand:          Monkey on its way down.

Stagehand:          Trap secure.

On stage:             as latecomers file in:  And what's your excuse?  

                           I hope you brought a note?

Stage Manager:   LX11 go

Me:                     Gone

Stagehand:           Stage right trap secure

For two and a half hours.  The big problem is that panto audience are vociferous.  It's an even bigger problem if they're not.  But it's dashed difficult to tell one cue from another when 50 ten year olds are bellowing "Don't DO IT DAME DONNA" at the top of their lungs.

By the way, theatre isn't glamorous, but it is immense fun.

(Also by the way - I'd love to know how to make blogger understand tabs.  Not lists, tabs.)

Technology and why it is both awesome and vile

It's a drug, this technology.  Since acquiring a taste for it, I can't readily remember how I did things before it was there.   In this instance, the culprit is Skype.

I love Skype and use it a lot - mainly because it's stable and reliable.  Was stable and reliable.  It has failed me.

Two days ago, Skype got fancy and decided to reinstall itself.  Don't ask me why.  Maybe it got bored with my refusal to use the webcam or something and wanted to teach me a lesson.  Anyway, since the self-imposed reinstallation it has not been working.  I've done all the things I normally do.  I've turned it on and off.  I've reinstalled it beause I chose to.  I've deleted myself and given myself a new identity and password.

I've also done several less technical things like jumping up and down and yelling at the computer, growling, hoovering the keyboard in case it's a hidden cat hair problem and threatening to throw the whole thing out the window.

I want Skype back.  I know, I know, there are other message systems, and G+'s talk feature is very good, but I like Skype.  Whinge.