In my recent blog post Our Electronic Dependence II (link below), I described my recent experience regarding the failure of my laptop. I am pleased to be able to write that my laptop has been repaired and that it has been fitted with a very modern solid state drive. Not that the difference between a HDD and a SSD means anything to me you understand.
For the very reasonable price of £125, the repair included the fitting of a one terabyte hard drive and a general service. I am very pleased and indeed I am delighted, to have my favourite laptop back in working order. The repair only took a couple of weeks and I was able to collect the repaired device in the middle of January 2024.
The downside of all this does mean however, I have spent £345 since Christmas on computer hardware. My ‘new’ travel laptop as described in my previous post and the actual repair. I hope that you my dear reader will appreciate the sacrifices I make in the pursuit of our literary endeavours.
I still find myself somewhat puzzled by the way our society has embraced modern technology and the manner in which some of it has been forced upon us. I have a mummy and baby laptop now, which is all very quaint and charming no doubt. It does not however, deflect us from the point that I had to get a replacement computer. We cannot in this the twenty-first century, function without such technology. The Internet, computers and modern communication devices are the curse of the modern age, as they have become mankind’s necessary evil.
As explored in the blog post below (Confide in no one and be on your guard), I do not even use my mobile telephone in the same way as others. I do not have my emails or any banking applications on my mobile telephone. I use it as a telephone, a calculator and torch. I occasionally go online to look up something but that is not its main function. I do have Facebook on my mobile telephone and I also have Whatsapp. Both are used as messaging services supplementary to the standard text messages.
I remember growing up without a telephone. We had a house telephone fitted when I was a teenager. Before that time, we wrote letters or used the public telephone box at the end of the road. This would have been the nineteen seventies and things were very different then. We did not use the house telephone very often, as it was very expensive and access was strictly controlled by my parents. A weekly call to the grandparents was the principle use and for us children, frequently the highlight of the weekend.
I am considering getting a new printer. I have an old Epson and it is showing signs of wear. I am not particularly happy with the equipment. To use it I have to ‘clean the heads’ each time and this is annoying. Equally annoying is the requirement that as a colour printer, I must have all colours available when only printing in black and white. Why?
There should be no reason and I can see no sensible reason, why I should have an ink cartridge in every slot to print monochrome. This requirement is unacceptable. It is clearly the manufacturer’s policy to force people to buy more ink. It’s almost criminal and it is certainly immoral. It cannot be justified.
One operating factor that I find most peculiar with regard to modern electronic devices is their manner of activation and deactivation. It should be a simple matter of switching them on and off. What we have instead is an on screen message, a tune or perhaps both. Why can’t they just switch on and off? I don’t want my equipment to say hello, goodbye or to play a dance-track. It is an unnecessary ‘gimmick’ and it is of no importance to me.
Like many of my generation, I despair at the way society has embraced virtual engagements and this in preference to actual physical interaction. Our shops have done away with manned tills in preference to self-checkouts. Today it is almost impossible to talk to a real person representing a business via customer service. The use of cash is threatened here in the United Kingdom, despite the move being almost universally unpopular. Our right of free choice is sadly undermined and there is little hope of this ever being addressed.
My generation is being increasingly excluded from society due partly to our unwillingness to embrace technology but also because of our inability to do so. The convenience that is talked about is a fantasy. Those of my generation, who are not confident or familiar with the Internet, do not see a convenient tool but rather an obstacle. They see not the ascending ladder of progress but a hurdle blocking that progress; this is a cause of distress for many.
If I did not write and therefore, require a computer to produce my work and the Internet to communicate with editors; I could with satisfied content embrace an electronic isolation. There is much within our society and across the Internet, with which I do not wish to be associated. There are a great many things that I would avoid if it was in any way practical to do so. I seek my freedom, my independence and the ability to choose. I deeply resent this enforced dependence upon the World Wide Web and this computer only culture that is so strongly advocated today.
It is the first week of the first month of the new year of 2024 and as is my usual want, I sit here preparing a review of the previous twelve months. The last twelve months have been positive and the success of my blog in 2022 has continued throughout 2023. In my previous blog review (Blogging 2022 – an end of year review), I did set myself some rather personal and arbitrary targets. My aim was to average one hundred hits a week and to finish the year with a minimum of five thousand overall. This I have certainly achieved. I have finished the year with over nine thousand hits for a total of eight hundred and eighty posts.
This gives me an average of ten hits per post, which is not as pleasing as I would like. My daily hit statistics have been quite inconsistent; my eventual high score finish is the result of some exceptionally successful days and weeks. Despite this qualification, I remain satisfied with the performance of my WordPress blog. I have averaged seven hundred and seventy seven hits per month or one hundred and seventy nine per week. These figures do sound rather more impressive than ten hits per day.
As I have outlined in a few of my more recent blog posts, the links to which can be found at the end of this post (see ‘An obscurity of poets’ for example), I am sometimes disappointed by my perceived lack of reach. There is little in the way of consistency. I can write a post that is all but ignored, perhaps only receiving a dozen or so hits. I can produce another and the hits of that post will be measured in the hundreds. It seems that social media is still a factor in reaching the public and as much as we may like to criticise it, Facebook remains the flagship social media outlet.
One rather odd and idiosyncratic aim that I was originally intending to end, I have continued. I had almost accidently discovered that I was engaged in a consecutive run of daily posts. Being able to say that I had posted consecutively for one full calendar year pleased me and amused me. I derived some satisfaction from that achievement but I did declare my intention to stop. Indeed I wrote in my last annual review; ‘At the time of writing my streak of consecutive days posting to WordPress continues and I have now sailed past the 530 days mark. I do not however, have any intention of continuing this magnificent record indefinitely. Although I have several scheduled posts and will I suspect pass 550 in February 2023, I am satisfied with my achievement and I will soon be halting this streak. In part, I feel that bombarding my followers with daily posts to eventually reach 1000 consecutive days; is just plain silly. There is a time to halt such games and to call it a day. That time is now.’
In this I did not keep my word but have rather continued to ‘bombard’ my followers with daily posts. I have finished 2023 with a streak of eight hundred and seventy consecutive days but it is getting silly, I accept that. The time has come to end this game and that I intend to do once I reach the target of one thousand consecutive posts, which should be sometime in early May. This time I will keep my word.
My target to produce an original post, weekly throughout 2023 I achieved but only just. Some very short posts, poetry and some quite curt announcements finally enabled me to achieve this target. Once again, it has proved surprisingly difficult to keep to a fixed schedule and whether I can continue to do so through 2024, will remain an open question. I am not promising anything this time and I am not setting targets for 2024. Once the consecutive run is complete, I may take something of a sabbatical.
Away from the blog I have also enjoyed success with regard to my other activities. I have seen my name in print at least four times during 2023. Twice in ‘Tumzantorum’ published by ZOSHOUSE, once in a new publication ‘Coire Ansic’ and for the second time in Enquiring Eye, which is published by the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic. There may have been an unconfirmed fifth publication but I am unsure. Sadly not every editor will send a complimentary copy or even an acknowledgement. Such unprofessional behaviour does not endear the publication to the writer or encourage further participation. Links to the named publications can be found in the posts below and I recommend them all.
I also saw my work appear in the online version of the Nursing Standard, which was published by the Royal Collage of Nursing on the 23rd of February 2023. I reproduce the text of that work below:
Regretfully I am not entirely happy with the presentation of that piece, as I feel that the editor has been rather heavy handed in their own rewrite. A link to my original piece is provided below. Read and compare, make up your own mind.
My extracurricular activities within the nursing environment are not something I share often but I have done so with increasing frequency since the coming of the Chinese plague. I am well behind in my posts regarding my activities in 2022, including the reading of my poem at Lichfield Cathedral. It was partly on the strength of that appearance, that I was nominated to participate in a BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast on the 5th of July 2023. This included the reading of my original poem ‘When this is over’ and a link to my poem can be found below.
My employer quite naturally chose to publicise these activities as much as could be done, while avoiding any unseemly saturation. I found myself in the rather peculiar position, of seeing my face on the internal Trust web and on TwXtter. Following the broadcast of the interview, I was even recognised by my voice while in the hospital library. It is a situation that I am not at all used to.
That was not the only time I was recognised in 2023 but it was the only time by voice alone. As I have often stated, I do not consider myself to be a name but I do accept that I am ‘known’ in some rather close circles. While out in the Peak District with friends on one very hot summer day, we stopped to talk to others enjoying the scenery. Two women had paused for a picnic near an ancient monument, situated in a fairly remote area of Derbyshire moorland. When introduced, I was recognised by one of them by my pseudonym ‘Chattering Magpie’ alone. This was a surprise to me but caused some amusement to my friends. Although my friends did observe, it is far more likely I will be recognised while visiting a henge-monument than a supermarket.
I was recognised a third time in the November of 2023 but this time it was by sight. I was at work and on the ward when recognised by a patient. He was looking at me quite intently during my administration of medication and eventually asked, ‘Do you have a Facebook page, do you wear a bush hat and carry a camera?’ It took me a second or two to assimilate his words, then it dawned on me, he had seen the banner picture of my Facebook page. The obvious answer to his questioning was of course, yes, yes and yes!
It transpired that he had read some of my concert reviews that I had posted to a Facebook group and then followed the links back to my page. I was naturally rather pleased with this momentary celebrity, it is a novelty and I hope it never becomes so common place that I should take it for granted. Later that week although not on the unit in uniform, I did visit the ward to see him prior to discharge. I was told later by another patient that my unplanned visit was much appreciated by the gentleman in question.
Another novelty that I experienced during 2023 was the receipt of fan-mail. I sometimes joke with my famous friends that they must receive dozens, if not hundreds of email enquiries and Facebook messages. I do not. For me fan-mail whether it is in the form of a card, an email or a message via social media, remains as much a novelty as being recognised. I received three such examples in 2023, which may not sound very much but for a relatively minor name as I, it is. Once again, I hope that the novelty remains fresh and exciting.
Presentations and lectures have never been my main area of activity, as I regard them as being an adjunct to my literary pursuits. The plague of the last few years has curtailed many public events but even without that awful occurrence, I recognise that public speaking remains a rarity for me. In 2022 I gave a very long talk exploring the Robin Hood mythos and that was filmed. On the strength of that very successful appearance, I was invited back to Nottingham to explore the subject of Witch-bottles. That presentation was also a great success and my opinion of the Nottingham Pagan community remains high. It is a community of intellect and friendliness, engagement with them is always a pleasure.
At the time of writing, I am already aware that I will have work appearing in print in a minimum of four publications during 2024. I am as we enter the New Year, in an unusually positive frame of mind. I am looking forward to the coming twelve months, with a far greater confidence than has been apparent in the previous post COVID years.
As stated above however, I have no intention of setting targets for 2024. I intend rather, to carry on as best I can, writing articles, posting reviews and blog posts. I hope that my hit count remains constant and may even increase, yet a decrease will not disappoint me unduly. I recognise that my in-print articles carry rather more prestige than any blog post and probably reach more people than I realise. If 2024 is as successful as 2023, I will be content.
Back in 2019 I wrote of the disaster that was the catastrophic failure of the hard drive of my laptop and the heart-breaking loss of work that was the result. Now as I write in the January of 2024, I am acutely aware that I have never really caught up with the ensuing backlog of work. The loss and disruption has been too great, too much to rectify and at times, too painful to even comprehend fully. I write about that experience in the post below:
In the November of 2023 I became aware of certain failings of my main laptop. It had become progressively, a battle to use and frequently failed to do what I required. I slowly came to the realisation that I could not ignore this and that I would have to do something eventually. It had to be frank, never worked correctly since I upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 10 and that action I began to regret. The laptop would no longer recognise various plug-ins, such as my DSLR and my external speakers. Fortunately the external hard drives were still recognised and I could continue to write. I still had access to the Internet and this blog was therefore, still maintained.
By the Christmas of that year the failings had become too great for me to accommodate any further and I had begun to transfer all my vital files. Even Microsoft Word eventually ceased to function and that was a major concern. I am a writer; I am an essayist and I am a blogger. As much as I may complain about writing, how difficult and how painful it can be; I must write. This drive, this mad hag-ridden desire to express and to explore ideas beyond that of the common; it is not something I expect those who do not write to understand.
Between Christmas and the New Year, I had managed to avoid the issues I faced with the failure of Microsoft Word, by using Google Docs and Apache Open Office. These two mediums had been recommended to me by family and friends. They are both mediums that I as a writer, will now recommend. Then a day or two after Christmas, the laptop finally failed altogether. I was left without my electronic ‘voice’ and the pain was unbearable.
It was Wednesday the 27th and I had plans to meet a friend for lunch. Taking the opportunity of having the morning free, I popped on the bus and took my now sickly laptop to a computer repair service that I have used before. The engineer there had effectively rebuilt this same laptop from the inside out, inserting a much larger hard drive and increasing the RAM. I left it with him and I could only hope for a successful report in the New Year. I was trying very hard not to be pessimistic.
Of course this still left me with a problem, I had no laptop, no Internet access and I had approaching deadlines. I had spoken to my friend on the telephone prior to our lunch appointment to acquaint him with the situation and so it was that once joined by his daughter and her partner, we set off in search of a replacement laptop. I set myself a budget of £200 and I wanted something small, easy to use and capable of replacing my reserve laptop. I had previously a reserve laptop you see but unfortunately, this too had failed in November. It was now beyond any hope of salvation. That one had served me well for a few of years and it had endured three holidays in Scotland. That final trip in the October of 2023 had been its death knell; I had returned with a battered, cracked and a slowly expiring piece of equipment.
My friend had suggested that we should try a pawnbroker or as they are now called, a cash-converter outlet. This was an option that had not occurred to me. Here in the United Kingdom, pawnbrokers suffer from a historically poor and quite unsavoury reputation. They have in the past and perhaps still are, perceived as being rather ‘seedy’ and as the ‘front’ for a variety of stolen goods. It is in an effort to shed this poor reputation, that pawnbrokers have ‘rebranded’ themselves as the aforesaid cash-converters.
We visited if I remember correctly, some five or six of these outlets. We found several potentially good and useful pieces of equipment on sale, many of which were at remarkably good prices. It was in the second shop that we had visited, where I had spotted one that I particularly liked. A rather small HP laptop, pre-installed with Windows 10 and Microsoft Word Starter Edition, which is quite adequate for my needs. The hard drive of the laptop was admittedly rather small at only 120GB but since I primarily use external hard drives, this was not very important. Of rather more importance was the RAM, which at 12 GB would be more than capable of managing my external equipment. We returned to purchase and although at £230 it was over my budget, I came away quite pleased.
In reflecting on this literary adventure in the world of the electronic and the ‘virtual’ reality of our existence, I wish to return to my introductory paragraphs. We see once again, how awfully dependent we are on modern technology. This entire episode is an illustration of this reliance and our collective inability to function without technology. I remember when I first began to write for magazines and that was last century, I used a typewriter and I posted manuscripts to editors. They in turn would write back to me with either an acceptance or a rejection. In the early years of this century I had a combined word processor and printer, on which I wrote articles and my university essays. There was no Internet connection and no permanent internal memory; I saved my work on floppy disks. Some of you reading this may not know what floppy disks are or perhaps I should say were? Today they are I believe, as rare as hen’s teeth and unicorn eggs; so I suggest you Google them as it will be quicker.
The manner of submitting work as described above is unacceptable today. Editors quite understandably expect materials to be sent via email and almost all resulting communication is in an electronic format. No serious writer today would dream of submitting a typed manuscript or one that is handwritten, which would be even more unacceptable to most editors. In only a quarter of a century we have moved from the typewriter, passed through the standalone word processor and become almost completely reliant upon the personal computer. It is a remarkable technological evolution of the methodology of self-expression and communication. There are clear benefits that we have gained by the harnessing of this modern technological wonder but part of me still feels a sense of disquiet deep within my artistic soul. That we have become a little too dependent civilised and that we have lost our self-reliance is the cause of my spiritual unease.
Back in 2019 I wrote of the disaster that was the catastrophic failure of the hard drive of my laptop and the heart-breaking loss of work that was the result. Now as I write in the January of 2024, I am acutely aware that I have never really caught up with the ensuing backlog of work. The loss and disruption has been too great, too much to rectify and at times, too painful to even comprehend fully. I write about that experience in the post below:
In the November of 2023 I became aware of certain failings of my main laptop. It had become progressively, a battle to use and frequently failed to do what I required. I slowly came to the realisation that I could not ignore this and that I would have to do something eventually. It had to be frank, never worked correctly since I upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 10 and that action I began to regret. The laptop would no longer recognise various plug-ins, such as my DSLR and my external speakers. Fortunately the external hard drives were still recognised and I could continue to write. I still had access to the Internet and this blog was therefore, still maintained.
By the Christmas of that year the failings had become too great for me to accommodate any further and I had begun to transfer all my vital files. Even Microsoft Word eventually ceased to function and that was a major concern. I am a writer; I am an essayist and I am a blogger. As much as I may complain about writing, how difficult and how painful it can be; I must write. This drive, this mad hag-ridden desire to express and to explore ideas beyond that of the common; it is not something I expect those who do not write to understand.
Between Christmas and the New Year, I had managed to avoid the issues I faced with the failure of Microsoft Word, by using Google Docs and Apache Open Office. These two mediums had been recommended to me by family and friends. They are both mediums that I as a writer, will now recommend. Then a day or two after Christmas, the laptop finally failed altogether. I was left without my electronic ‘voice’ and the pain was unbearable.
It was Wednesday the 27th and I had plans to meet a friend for lunch. Taking the opportunity of having the morning free, I popped on the bus and took my now sickly laptop to a computer repair service that I have used before. The engineer there had effectively rebuilt this same laptop from the inside out, inserting a much larger hard drive and increasing the RAM. I left it with him and I could only hope for a successful report in the New Year. I was trying very hard not to be pessimistic.
Of course this still left me with a problem, I had no laptop, no Internet access and I had approaching deadlines. I had spoken to my friend on the telephone prior to our lunch appointment to acquaint him with the situation and so it was that once joined by his daughter and her partner, we set off in search of a replacement laptop. I set myself a budget of £200 and I wanted something small, easy to use and capable of replacing my reserve laptop. I had previously a reserve laptop you see but unfortunately, this too had failed in November. It was now beyond any hope of salvation. That one had served me well for a few of years and it had endured three holidays in Scotland. That final trip in the October of 2023 had been its death knell; I had returned with a battered, cracked and a slowly expiring piece of equipment.
My friend had suggested that we should try a pawnbroker or as they are now called, a cash-converter outlet. This was an option that had not occurred to me. Here in the United Kingdom, pawnbrokers suffer from a historically poor and quite unsavoury reputation. They have in the past and perhaps still are, perceived as being rather ‘seedy’ and as the ‘front’ for a variety of stolen goods. It is in an effort to shed this poor reputation, that pawnbrokers have ‘rebranded’ themselves as the aforesaid cash-converters.
We visited if I remember correctly, some five or six of these outlets. We found several potentially good and useful pieces of equipment on sale, many of which were at remarkably good prices. It was in the second shop that we had visited, where I had spotted one that I particularly liked. A rather small HP laptop, pre-installed with Windows 10 and Microsoft Word Starter Edition, which is quite adequate for my needs. The hard drive of the laptop was admittedly rather small at only 120GB but since I primarily use external hard drives, this was not very important. Of rather more importance was the RAM, which at 12 GB would be more than capable of managing my external equipment. We returned to purchase and although at £230 it was over my budget, I came away quite pleased.
In reflecting on this literary adventure in the world of the electronic and the ‘virtual’ reality of our existence, I wish to return to my introductory paragraphs. We see once again, how awfully dependent we are on modern technology. This entire episode is an illustration of this reliance and our collective inability to function without technology. I remember when I first began to write for magazines and that was last century, I used a typewriter and I posted manuscripts to editors. They in turn would write back to me with either an acceptance or a rejection. In the early years of this century I had a combined word processor and printer, on which I wrote articles and my university essays. There was no Internet connection and no permanent internal memory; I saved my work on floppy disks. Some of you reading this may not know what floppy disks are or perhaps I should say were? Today they are I believe, as rare as hen’s teeth and unicorn eggs; so I suggest you Google them as it will be quicker.
The manner of submitting work as described above is unacceptable today. Editors quite understandably expect materials to be sent via email and almost all resulting communication is in an electronic format. No serious writer today would dream of submitting a typed manuscript or one that is handwritten, which would be even more unacceptable to most editors. In only a quarter of a century we have moved from the typewriter, passed through the standalone word processor and become almost completely reliant upon the personal computer. It is a remarkable technological evolution of the methodology of self-expression and communication. There are clear benefits that we have gained by the harnessing of this modern technological wonder but part of me still feels a sense of disquiet deep within my artistic soul. That we have become a little too dependent civilised and that we have lost our self-reliance is the cause of my spiritual unease.
Daniel Bran Griffith - The Chattering Magpie 