Saturday 9 November 2013

Winds, power cords, thingies and photos

Home after caring for my grandchildren, there are many things to be done. Some food shopping, going to the market this morning for flowers, bread and fruit and vegetables. Watering the plants. Wondering why a long thin electrical looking cord, which yesterday was attached to the side of the house, has fallen down. It must have been the wind. What is this cord for, and does it matter that it has fallen down? Will I have to find a handyman, one who can explain to me how the air conditioner in this room works? It used to. Sigh.

The Knitting and Crochet group has decided it would be good to have a photo album made of our many and varied works, accomplishments, festivities, the exhibition, and displays of expertise and accomplishment. Generally I have been the person who has brought along the camera, and so most of the photos are on my memory cards and the computer. A couple of the girls are coming around here on Wednesday to work through the photos and to organise how to get them all into an album, multiple copies thereof.

My very talented and efficient younger daughter, a professional photographer (mostly of racehorses) whipped through these photos a while back, improving them as much as possible. This was due to family love, and to pay back for my looking after her children at regular intervals. All I have had to do is select them and copy the photos on to a thingy.

I used to be able to do this. It is not (I fervently hope and believe) age and inevitable decline that has given me problems, oh no, it is the fact that the Apple software updates have somehow or other (and they probably did this deliberately) have made it much more complicated, puzzling and difficult to copy them on to anything. They really do not want you to copy stuff and go elsewhere for an Album, No,  they want you to do it all through Apple. And therefore their Help does not encompass the sort of directions I needed, although I am sure that it used to. This sort of capitalist plot can make the hapless user feel very badly done by.

My collection of things I am not quite sure of how to use includes CD-Roms and DVDs, so I assumed it would not be beyond the ken of the inexpert user to do this without too much carry-on. Alas, No.

However someone thought or uttered the magic word, describing the little gadget you stick into the computer to move things onto. It took a while for the collective wisdom nearby to remember, but it, of course, turned out to have several names, such as flash drive, memory stick and USB. With luck I won't forget these terms in a hurry.

So here I sit, gloating away and feeling as smug as a haplessly ignorant user is entitled to be. I think that perhaps, maybe, we are about to count down and lift off.

In the meantime there are squares to be crocheted...

4 comments:

Elephant's Child said...

Good luck - and revel in your smugness. It doesn't come around often enough, and should be cherished.
How is your grandson? Fully recovered I hope.

molly said...

I seem to run into those same capitalist plots. I also used to be able to work those "thingies." If we could just agree on one name for them it might reduce the confusion for the easily befuddled, but alas, as you so rightly say, no, ain't gonna happen!

VioletSky said...

It took me awhile to realize that flash drive and USB were the same thing, but I'm not sure about memory sticks and SD cards, etc. (they all tend to be used interchangeably) and I'm still a bit fuzzy on gigabytes.

Grandson is doing well, I hope?

Pam said...

I feel for you. Well done so far!