Whiplash! – “P”culiar, that’s what this whole thing is.

Whiplash: An injury to the neck caused by an abrupt jerking motion of the head, either backward or forward; And in the case of writing or speaking, can be caused by a rapid change of topic without prior notice.

Whiplash! – “P”culiar, that’s what this whole thing is.

I’m not the kind of person that listens to music a lot. I like to hear people talking. As I grew up I spent little time listening to music on my transistor radio. I always liked sports talk shows and sports and news broadcasts. Now, when I drive or go on walks by myself, what I listen to most are podcasts.  All of the podcasts that I listen to involve people talking to me. For technology, I listen to the weekly podcast, “MacGeekGab” podcast. It gives me lots of tips on using Apple Products. They’ve even answered some of my questions. For storytelling, I listen to “StoryStory” podcast, Sid Valley Radio’s – “Janets Story Cafe”, and the “Folktale Project”. I also listen to some radio dramas: “Decoder Ring Theater”, “Icebox Radio Theater”, and “Case Closed!”. Learning languages both English and foreign I listen to: “Grammar Girl”, “Coffee Break French” and “Coffee Break German”. These are just a few of the many podcasts I subscribe to in those categories. I listen to a number of other podcasts too. You can search them out on your phones, tablets, and computers.  It’s actually, in my opinion, better for me to listen to talking when I’m driving than something that will make me tap my foot.

Whiplash!

Passwords, you need them for everything you do nowadays. You need codes for ATM machines; you need codes for online shopping transactions; you need passwords for every online site you go on that you that involve discussion groups or hobbies and will allow you to save material online, like knitting sites or sites for technology geeks. And all those passwords need to be different and somewhat complicated. I have hundreds of different passwords for all the things I do. At first, I started by making up complex combinations of words and numbers that I could remember. That gets tedious as you acquire more and more sites that need passwords. And forget it if your account gets hacked. That requires changing all those passwords.

It’s a good thing they make password managers, like LastPass and One Password. Let the managers keep track of all my passwords. Let them generate their random 20 character passwords for each site and warn me when I have duplicates. They’re much harder to hack. Remembering them, when my manager is not around can be a problem, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Whiplash!

Back in the day, you had a camera, you loaded a roll of film and you took pictures. Sometimes it took a while before the roll of film was completely used. Then you had to wait a period of time, usually about a week, to get the photos developed. Of course, you never knew how well the picture came out until you actually saw the finished product. A lot of the pictures were blurry, or they had your finger inadvertently part of them. The lighting was poor or the subject you thought was placed right was cut off. Some were great. Knowing you had a limited number of pictures you could take, you planned each one carefully before taking it. You would get these photos back and then have to decide, which ones to put in an album, or as in the case of my ancestors, just throw them in a box. Rarely did you label the picture, who was in it, where it was taken, or when it was taken. If you were lucky the date of the developing was printed on the photo’s edges or back. Note this was not when the picture was taken.

Nowadays we take digital pictures. We take them, and we take them, and we take them. Instead of a roll of 12 or 24 pictures, when we go on a trip, we end up with hundreds of them. We can plan a shot and after taking it get instant feedback, so we can take it again if it didn’t work out. Using burst mode you can take multiple pictures at once by just holding down a button. Not only do we get to see the photos instantly, but we can edit them on the spot. We can create pictures of people and things that aren’t even real. And what do you do with the thousands of photos you take. You keep them of course.  

Do you really think that over time you will actually look back at all the pictures you’ve taken? With the old albums, we used to make, you just might have.

Whiplash!

So are you a music or a podcast listener? Do you use a password manager? If not how do you remember all those passwords? And how many photos do you own both printed and digital? Do you have a preference? When was the last time you looked at them?

If you’re ready to move on…“Q” up for the next topic in this line of writing.