When a Duvet's No Longer a Duvet and Other Related Thoughts

One of the (few) good things about getting older is being able to recognise changes in society first hand. Prior to reaching a certain age you have to rely on the possibly inaccurate accounts of elders but from the dizzying heights of forty-five or so the landscape of the previous quarter century stretches over your own life, and the memories belong to you. This can enable you to assume an air of authority as you insert the occasional ‘well, I remember back in the eighties’ or ‘ah, yes, the long hot summer of ‘76’. It can also turn you into a bore, particularly if you start spouting that ‘things were better in my day’.
Each new year now of course, when records from thirty years ago are released, they describe events that are clearly remembered, and you wonder why the news and review programmes seem to view them as ancient history.
So it’s only comparatively recently I’ve come to realise that marked changes in human thought and behaviour can occur in a reasonably short period of time; certainly within a couple of decades. Take drinking and driving as an example. In the early 1980s there were still a large number of people I knew who would drive after having a couple of pints. Some of my acquaintances would get behind the wheel after drinking considerably more. At that time we were all just beginning to think it was not such a good idea but were a long way from today’s situation where the vast majority of people opt not to drink at all if intending to drive.
It’s the same with smoking. A quarter of a century ago it was the non-smoker who was something of an outcast. I remember school staff rooms that were filled with clouds of smoke every break and lunch time and if anyone had suggested banning smoking from the premises they would have been thought mad.
And so we come to duvets. When I was a very young child I remember being told that foreigners slept under a single covering which many of them hung out of the bedroom window to air in the morning. This was described in such a way as to sound a bit weird. Certainly nothing like as sensible as our cotton sheets (flannelette in winter), blankets, quilts and possibly coats. Mind you, the bedroom itself was a different animal. Possibly no fitted carpet or central heating and double glazing was years away.
And then, perhaps as the instalment of central heating became widespread, the duvet was suddenly no longer foreign. It became ours. Certainly by the time I left home to go to University, the Continental Quilt, as it was more commonly named then, was used by many people I knew.
My somewhat limited research informs that the Victorians also had quilts but these were more for decorative purposes and were by no means the only covering one would have on a bed. Throughout the early and mid part of the twentieth century it was sheets, blankets and possibly quilts or eiderdowns before the duvet invasion of the 1970s.
But now perhaps our sleeping habits are changing once more. Two or three years ago it was I began to discover that many of my friends were making their beds with the inclusion of an extra sheet: one which went between themselves and the duvet. The general feeling seems to be that it saves on having to wash the duvet cover quite as often as it no longer comes into direct contact with the body (let’s not discuss nightwear right now. A new topic entirely).
I adopted this same sleeping tactic a while ago. I was therefore surprised to discover recently that Next has not caught on to the mini-trend yet as they do not sell flat sheets (there’s another development of the late twentieth century: the fitted sheet). The assistant admitted she herself used a covering sheet and helpfully advised me to go somewhere they sold both if I wanted them to match.
so I end with a couple of questions. How widespread is this sheet on top malarkey? If it is, has the nature of the top covering changed once more? Has the duvet reverted to being a quilt? Does anyone care? In the overall scheme of things - not me!
Next instalment: Whatever happened to the Car Coat?

New Year Fitness?

It’s probably the same where you live, but here in the UK the TV ads are full of advice as to what one needs to buy to recover from the excesses of the holiday period. Whether it’s diets, detox or a new fitness regime, we are all being encouraged to make health and activity part of our New Year resolution list.
Which got me into thinking about us Mac lovers who spend endless hours in front of our machines, both at work and at home in our leisure time. Are we less fit and more prone to obesity than the wider population? More interestingly, are we really achieving a better sedentary-activity life balance than our PC counterparts, as the appearance of the characters in the famous Mac-PC ads (both UK and US versions) would have us think?
Not surprisingly, Google reveals little regarding this particular query. There’s a lot about safe ways to sit and avoiding eye sight problems when using the computer and there appears to be much fitness software on the market. Keying in ‘obesity’ and ‘computer’ brings up pages about children and the harm caused to them by poor diet along with too much time spent with the TV, computer and other indoor ‘toys’.
So we could be breaking new ground here. Would it be fair to say that Mac lovers, if we don’t watch ourselves, can be easily seduced by Apple’s marketing methods? We have to regularly remind ourselves that Apple is in essence just another big company that wants our money. Yes, it makes great, reliable products that look good but that’s where it ends. A Mac is not a lifestyle. And yet there is something about its advertising, on TV or web that might attract a certain kind of person? One who values a lifestyle which includes a certain level of activity and fitness? What do you think?

MacSpeech - To Buy or Not To Buy?

Been thinking about buying this software ever since I heard a positive review on Adam Christianson’s The MacCast. MacSpeech is voice recognition software and, according to Adam, is much improved on earlier versions. It claims to learn one’s voice patterns, thus becoming more accurate over time. Always on the lookout for potentially easier, faster ways to write, and seeing the price has dropped to a more affordable £143, this morning I decided to carry out a little more research on Amazon, Twitter and by writing to Adam himself:

‘I was intrigued by your review of the updated MacSpeech software a number of episodes ago.  I'm still considering whether or not to buy.  I'm assuming you are still viewing it in a positive light as you have a banner ad for it on your site.  Is that so?

I only ask as the reviews on Amazon are fairly mixed (although the positive ones are very positive)

Also you did mention that the software improves with usage.  Is this still so?

Funny thing - I twittered a question about MacSpeech.  Within seconds MacSpeech was following me.  I wrote something about them probably having an automatic following set up. Almost immediately got a DM:

No robots here. I'm just awake late here (USA). I use Twitter to find out what users want to do with MacSpeech Dictate. -Jay-

Personal service, hey?’

Rapidweaver to Wordpress?

This is surely becoming more of a dilemma for me. Been using Rapidweaver on this site for quite a while now and in the main have been more than happy with it. Get fed up with the look and it’s so easy to change, either by fiddling with the styles within a theme or swapping themes altogether. For my little projects I need various display capabilities and the native application together with the many available plug-ins can make the whole effect very attractive.
And yet, when trying to decide whether to use the blog page as supplied with the program, as I’ve done here, or to tie it in with Blogger or Wordpress, as I’ve done with my other site (bantamspast), the whole thing becomes much more complex.
Well … not really. It’s quite simple to set up using another plug-in in called RapidBlog. Set up the Blogger account. Fiddle around with RapidBlog for a few minutes and it’s done. But then you’ve got your Blogger blog, and it’s synced with your Rapidweaver blog and then throw in the fact that they use Haloscan for comments and you really want to use Disqus and you start to think to yourself why not use Wordpress? Then you cut out the middlemen. No syncing. Just a dashboard with an empty box for you to start writing. And the latest version, 2.7, is so beautiful and simple to use.
I’ve just begun following a blog from sunny Tyneside - Fruitbytes - and in addtion to liking the great comments on Mac and other techy products, I also admired the feel of the whole thing. It’s based on a Wordpress theme. And I started to think, I want one like that. Yes, I know. Wordpress is really for blogging, not whole websites. But you can have other types of pages on Wordpress as well.
And yet, I really like the Rapidweaver people. Not just the company itself. The whole community is so helpful and friendly. I visit the forums, read the blogs and follow the tweets. I just hate to let people down. And I’m quite tempted by the upcoming Stacks plug-in from Yourhead software.
As I said. It’s a dilemma.

Holiday Good Wishes


Playing For Change: Song Around the World | Stand By Me from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.
My good friend Michael from the Bronte Blues Club sent me the link to this video. A good one for Christmas reflections.

Strange Goings-On In the Twitterverse

Been on Twitter for a number of weeks now. I really like it. Suits my approach to blogging in that I am often reluctant to write huge tracts of text whereas the odd sentence or two comes along quite easily. It’s good in terms of audience as well. Without really trying the number of my followers has grown to 40 or so and I’ve had regular correspondence with many of them.
Having bought an iPod Touch recently I have since had some trouble finding a suitable Twitter app for it. Twitterific is one I’ve used on my desktop mac but somehow for me it does not transfer well to the Touch. Next came Twitterfon. This was better but it still lacked something in terms of looks and usability. Thanks to FruitBytes, I came across Tweetie. This app comes at a cost (£1.79!) but it is a small price well worth paying. It has many benefits over others including the ability to handle more than one Twitter account. Its speech bubble listings and clever use of colour also give it a distinctive look and an element of style.
Reading a few of the latest tweets before being overcome by sleep last night, I came across one of Tweetie’s weirdest features. It takes advantage of the fact that the Touch can ‘know’ one’s location (if you decide to let it), and so Tweetie can find the latest tweets from others in the area. Using Twitter regularly, you get a feeling of knowing those you follow. In many cases they share some interests and so become friends, sort of, even though you have almost certainly never met them (and in all likelihood never will). So to see this new list of complete strangers, well, more complete strangers than your friend-strangers is most err…strange. Perhaps it’s the time of year, but several of their tweets were admissions to being more than slightly the worse for wear. Give it a try. See if you have the same reactions as me.

Obama Twitters No More?

If you should happen to be doing some idle Googling (?) as I was yesterday and if you should search for Twitter as I did (I was on a different computer and had forgotten its site address), you will notice that, at the time of writing, the second entry on the list is the name of Barack Obama himself.
Excited by this, I clicked on the link, expecting some micro-thoughts on his latest recruits, the ecoonomic crisis or even mundanities such as what he was having for breakfast. Disappointed was I to discover he hasn’t tweeted a single line since November 5th!
Now you would have thought that if he could tweet on a daily basis during the madness of a Presidential campaign, he might manage a line or two maybe even once a week during the more relaxed President Elect period.
Hold it! Wait a minute. Was November 5th about the time of his election? Please don’t tell me his Twitter account was just another piece of cynical political marketing? He wouldn’t do that! He’s the Change We Need. He wouldn’t do that. Would he?