Two Toes in the Water

I’m not complaining really.

So far I have created a blog and proudly posted this success. Since then I have managed to manipulate how it looks with a limited degree of success. The colour scheme is fairly staid and the typeface is safe and homely – but typefaces should be safe and homely. After lots of wrestling with cruelly slow Internet connections I have managed to download two iconic photos, one of Kilimanjaro and one of Yorick, both giants in their own milieu. Incidentally I think that en route I have lost my password, so it could be that this whole thing is destined to be a short lived affair.

I am sure that there are more exciting ways of presenting this stuff but for the moment I am content with the generality of the thing. I am even more content that I have selectively waded my way through tonnes of computer speak in order to reach this point.

Going through this exercise reminds me yet again how far behind I have slipped in my IT knowledge.

Once I prided myself in my abilities to pick up IT technology quickly and be able to manipulate it to my advantage, but no longer. I spend hours on what are laughingly called “Help” pages. Hours, because  what on first glance seems to be a fairly simple one page help script is actually littered with hyperlinked blue underlined words, phrases and even (heaven forfend ) whole sentences. These can’t be ignored because they go to the very root of the subject matter, at least they ought to. I spend these fruitless hours diving deeper into a labyrinth of layered web pages to the point where I cannot find a way back. If only I had a guttering candle I could follow the zephyrs of fresh air to the surface, or a ball of string that I had carefully unravelled as I slid down these dank tunnels that could guide me as I retrace my steps. But no, the reality is to hit the escape button yet again to be able to rise to the surface, bobbing up and down in the swell of computerdom clutching a couple of brand new definitions in my sweaty paw.

And there you have it. It’s all to do with language. Or rather jargon. I do accept that any new discipline or science needs to adopt appropriate and descriptive language but you’d think that some conformity would be adopted so that everyone can understand compuspeak. It seems that we have Googlish competing  with MSski. Both have the same language root but are different dialects. Which brings me elegantly back to spell checkers.

Why is it that even though I slavishly change the setting for new document templates on MS word  to anything but “English (US)”, it reverts within a day to endorsing “color” and “labor”? And it is still a mystery that the “Blogger” spell checker does not recognise “blog” bloggers” and “blogging” except when they are cosseted in inverted commas. Now that is interesting!

Enough of this though, there is plenty of future opportunity to continue this thread.

I have plunged a couple of trepidatious toes into the tepid and turbid waters of blogdom (that last word also comprehensively failed all spell checks). The time for navel gazing is over and some real blank and pristine pages await.