BLOGAHOMA

Desk Top Gizmos Circa 1935

Can someone be born a techie? I believe it’s a genetic predisposition. My father loved tinkering, he took pride in fixing appliances in our house. He marveled at the old inventions as well as the new inventions. My husband’s father having never taken a class in engineering, taught wiring, welding and architectural rendering. My husband who is an artist by profession, also thinks like an engineer.

Gadgets have fascinated me from my earliest memories. many of these that captured my attention were classified office tools like my dad’s stapler, Dictaphone or his humble ticket punch. His AutoPoint mechanical pencil which had a red lead end as well as a blue lead that I took apart and examined and his ticket punch that we used to play conductor. My mother had an egg beater, the manual type, and a meat grinder that once secured to the table, I volunteered to make ham. I prefer using scissors or a paper cutter over and X-Acto knife. I had my share of dolls but I also like my brothers toy gas station with its working car lift. By the time the Etch-a-Sketch made its debut I was too old (or so my parents thought) to have one. I had to wait until have children of my own to get to play with one. Get earned my “great gizmo” seal of approval.

My own son, at the age of 18 months, disassembled the old-style ballpoint pen (the kind you must unscrew to open which revealed an internal spring which enabled it to click) and reassembled it. This clearly indicated excellent small motor ability and a pension for gizmos. As he began to toddle his dexterity was made even more apparent as we found cabinet knobs  unscrewed. By the time he was in primary grades he was asking for things to take apart.  For fear of what he might consider taking apart, my husband, Michael, got a hold of an old motor and let him have at it. Today he is a website manager with expansive skills in website programming. In hands-on mode he has a bike which he is constantly tinkering. He has definitely graduated from taking part to being able to reassemble with aplomb.

In 1985 I have decided that we needed a computer for the home. Not just any computer but one that allowed us to create in color. The Amiga fit the bill and It fulfilled my hunger for all things techie for while. My husband, my son and I taught ourselves computer. One of us would make a discovery and share with the others. We still do this today. The 2 Amigas were followed by a series of Macs. Our children like the children of our generation grew up with computers and are very comfortable with them.

As a family we have a complexity of interests including art, technology, history, music, books, film and so much more. I would say that we mash them together. For instance I collect vintage staplers (I am an inveterate collector) and create art with them is the subject. My son adds music and art on his creative websites. My husband’s websites often include historic and vintage books references.

Among my friends and family, our people adverse to anything that is computerized. I do not try to convert them over to the tech world. I believe,   like many other interests, you either have a propensity for technology or you don’t.

DISCLAIMER
Keep these points in mind: I am old enough to be on Social Security, I have only had my smart phone (Pantech Breakout) for 3 months now and I’m more interested in utility than anything else. Note that my smart phone came with a bunch of apps already in place half of which are bloatware which I just hid. I would absolutely recommend that your smart phone have a camera front and back so that you can use Skype (any type smart phone) or FaceTime (iPhone), Nuance speech recognition, and Swype ( a way of moving your finger across the keys versus hitting each one individually).   Right now I do not need it anymore recommendations as I am all app-out.  To some of you experts out there these are not the best applications however the optimum word here is EASY!

SOCIAL MEDIA
Why choose a go-between when you can get the direct app. I use the following: Facebook, Twitter, and eBay. Enough said.

PHOTOGRAPHY
My Pantech Breakout is a smart phone for the budget minded therefore the camera leaves a lot to be desired. After trying many apps here are the ones I use the most for photography manipulation: Vignette offers one the option to use it to take a picture by touching anywhere on the screen. It has a whole lot of effects but I feel the choices and menus a little over the top and yet it still doesn’t do everything I’d like. Paper Camera is a funky little app that can turn your image into a pencil drawing, comic strip or give it a poster like appearance you can make your choices as you scroll through the effects. I especially like the drawing effect. Pic Say is a fun app to allow you to use captions under photos however I think it has one of the best editing tools out there for contrast, brightness, tint, exposure etc. a cool app enabling you to send that picture you just snapped as a postcard to whomever. The postcard is just $.99 and will be sent to anyone in United States.

DAILY ORGANIZER
For day-to-day diary entries I use Private Diary (it comes free but I bought the real deal because it’s making irritated me). Once again simple good graphical look without a lot of add-ons. I’m on a diet (once again) and the easiest way for me to lose weight is write down everything I eat. The app  My Diet Diary keeps track of the calories and nutritional value, your weight and your goals. My newest Is Out of Milk another freebie that takes care of your grocery needs, pantry contents and to do list. Once you have your grocery list compiled the Of your finger will cross out when you put the item in your cart. It can then put it back on your list by tapping it when you run out of it at home. It also scans in barcodes which will enter the brand and all the nutritional information.. Because I have allergies and asthma I use Allergy Alert to keep track of the pollen count.

GAMES
I am not an arcade kind of woman. I prefer well-designed word and number games. My favorite game of Scrabble and I do have it on my iPod touch but so far the android version is free and annoying I am waiting for the paid version. My favorite word game so far is Boggle Lite fast fun and with the good vocabulary. For card games I prefer Klondike and Free Cell by Softick. if you into sudoku I recommend Sudoku Daily, Which Serves You up A Fresh Group of Puzzles Every Day.

UTILITIES
I have found the following useful in small ways: Gesture Search, by writing with your finger you can find most anything on your smart phone, Barcode Scanner is a way to look up information quickly by, what else, scanning or codes for products or websites. Flashlight I think any flashlight (any app will probably do) can guide you to your car or to your bed at night, Alarm Clock, (the Pantech came with a perfectly fine one) and aCalendar which is clean, clear and functional.

Not surprisingly I am using my smart phone for whole lot more than I was ever aware. I bought it to be able  to find our way while we are traveling, and it works for that, but it is useful for a lot of things I had never considered. Currently 50% of those who have cell phones have smart phones which is not surprising because of the usefulness of smart phones. My hat off to Steve Jobs and Apple for leading the way.

In the month of December before the year was out, we had appliances and electronic equipment breakdown. It all happened within a couple of weeks. Where it began I can’t tell you. It may have been my new smart phone. It just stopped working. I went into my Verizon store and the salesperson (after trying several things) agreed with me I had a defective battery.  Next our printer, not new by any standard, gave out in the middle of our Christmas card printing. We replaced it with a Canon Pixma MG8120.   We did have to wait for it as I ordered it online to get the best price. Some of our recipients got their Christmas card a little late or maybe we should just call it a New Year’s card.  No sooner was that problem solved then refrigerator fan, that had made questionable noises for a long time, gave out in the refrigerator shut down, forcing us to move its contents to our neighbors freezer and our refrigerator items to the screened in porch. Over the next 3 days the repair man, a congenial guy from Mr. Appliance, had to make 3 calls to get  everything working again. Meanwhile my MacBook trackpad decided to stop, altogether, this meant a trip down to Wichita Falls about an hour from us, and several hours waiting. We decided to make the most of our time while were waiting in Wichita Falls lunching at Casa Mañana. Arriving home  we believed,  it was all fixed, but no! The 1st time I tried to export an image via Bluetooth from my smart phone to my computer, I was informed that Bluetooth was not installed! Not that I wanted to see  Wichita Falls again so soon, but we had no choice but to go back. The  Bluetooth in fact had not been connected correctly by the tech (its complicated). It is said that bad luck comes in threes, our breakdowns numbered four. So let’s knock on wood or metal or plastic and welcome in the new year!

We waited in the Milo Gordon Kia dealership for Shane to complete the paperwork to our purchase of a Molten Red Kia Soul+, a techie little car ready to drive us into the next decade.  To make use of the time I began futzing around on my new Pantech Breakout smart phone. In the waiting area was a 70 something dignified little woman waiting for her oil to be changed. We’ll call her Margaret. Margaret asked if we had bought a new car and I responded I did. We began chatting about gizmos the car came with. She said she no longer wanted to learn another thing. Curious but believable. I get it, where learning something new, might tire one out. After all the amount of information and systems those over 60 have already absorbed is mountainous. It would be one thing if the new tech I was learning went smoothly like syncing my telephone book on with data back up on line. Suffice it to say, learning the new phone was not going smoothly, it took several  attempts just to get the kinks in my plan worked out.  Margaret, on the other hand, was only  interested in her church group and traveling. Margaret’s husband did even less, not even traveling.  While we waited we watched the “Occupy Wall Street” latest news on TV. Her reaction, “Why don’t they stop all this nonsense and get a job?” Margaret did not watch television or the news.  I did relate to her that my niece was part of the demonstration and she did have a job. Margaret pulled out her cellphone. It was the kind they advertise in AARP magazine for seniors.  “This” she said, “is all the complicated I want to get.”

I admit I occasionally get digitally drained, and yet there is something in me that does not want to be left out of the ongoing parade of fascinating inventions. Frustration with a new media can lead to hacking and actually finding out the stuff that is not in the sad excuse for documentation that nowadays accompanies hi tech gadgets. After a long night at redoing my contact list I am getting quicker with highlight-cut-paste and delete. For instance, I have now taught the computer how to pronounce our last name by putting in the phonetic “Fairy in” for Fahrion (otherwise I would have to say “Fa Rye In”). I have pretty much decided to leave  the learning Kia tech gadgets to my husband to work out like solving the mystery of the three buttons on the bottom of the rear view mirror. To be fair the Kia Soul manual does a decent job of explaining. Currently the car’s UVO (voice recognition and activation) does not understand my husband, perhaps there is a bit of West Virginia intonation still in his voice. But there is a solution to his dilemma, he will have to teach the UVO to understand his dialect.

What I need now is to NOT take on any more new technology for a while. Pardon me as I go over and put a piece of toast in the toaster. I’ll just turn a nob to 5 minutes and wait until I hear a very mechanical sound “ding”.