[BITList] Technology

[HUGH]

Amid all the streaming and apps and fire and splash whatevers, my problems are slight, but puzzling.

Yesterday I was one of a group being taught the ins and outs of transcribing oral interviews, eg, the kind where someone is led by patient questions into describing their life story.  During the afternoon session we were each assigned a computer and a pair of earphones, and the task was to type out the interview, as best we could, from an audio file.

My first problem lay in the fact that I hate other people's computers - they never quite resemble my own in desktop layout, and they often have arcane made-up names for desktop icons.  However I got the bloody thing going, all the while fending off well meaning assistance from a chap who thought I was displaying the kind of symptoms old people display when confronted with technology.

Second problem was that the left side of the earphones didn't work, the master volume of the computer had been turned right down,  and the icon for the volume control was not on the desktop.  Others, even young persons who are really up with technology, had the same problem, so it was fixed.  The chap supervising the class worked out that the earphones were OK, it was the computers that were not OK, and the young persons all agreed. Nonetheless, I got a different model of earphone from him, and it (a) wouldn't fit on my head, and (b) wouldn't work on the left hand side. Not wishing to display any more symptoms, I soldiered on, clutching the earphones to my right ear (the one with wax in it) using my left hand, typing with the right.  There was a microphone attached to the earphones, preventing them being clutched to the left ear.

Third problem was that the interviewee was a great one for saying "umm", and "err", and changing tack, and lived in a house with a Gaelic name, and we were not given any background, so it took me near an hour to work out that he was talking about his father.  Each time he started to mumble I had to note the time, stop the audio, and fast forward from the start - the "back" function didn't work.

There was some discussion at the end about the lack of lights at the harbour having caused the father (an alcoholic) to fall into the water and drown and be taken out on the ebb tide. I demurred.  I told them he was most likely pissed.  Great grandfather George McIntyre drowned in a harbour here, New Year 1916, and was taken out on the ebb tide, and it wasn't the harbour lights to blame.  Nor was it when uncle Willie Steele did the same in a Greenock harbour in 1953.  Neither were teetotal.

I took the earphones home with me, and the left side doesn't work on my own computer.

Hugh.

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