EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILICON LINING

I've been outside looking at the clouds. Well, not just any cloud, my own personal cloud. I'm not totally sure, but I think I spotted it. It's a white fluffy one just above my house.

You see since I updated my computer and my phone they now use something called iCloud. As I understand it I have signed up for my own personal cloud which has my email address on it. It also stores all of my data - you know - stuff like diary entries, contacts addresses and phone numbers, that sort of thing.

Let me explain how it works. When I type in a new diary entry on my phone, the information is whisked up to my fluffy little cloud and kept all safe and snuggly there. The cloud, realising that it has a new bit of data, sends it straight to my computer so that as I type on my phone, I see the result appear on my computer within a few seconds. Amazing isn't it? It means that I no longer have to plug my phone into my computer to 'sync' it.

My only concern is that on sunny, cloudless days, I'll have to return to the old method.

THE COOL CYBER SCHOOL

I was interested to read India Knight's report in The Sunday Times of an enterprising school in Lancashire which put the recent enforced school closure due to bad weather to good use. The subject which benefitted was creative writing since the children were asked to blog about the weather situation and other matters.

Boys will be boys and with their inherent affinity with all things techno they, in particular, took to this with great alacrity discovering that writing had suddenly become 'cool'.

The school has now officially incorporated blogging into its curriculum and as a result, the percentage of students who achieved an above average grade has leapt from 9% to 63%. Other schools are following their example.

If this techno approach can work for creative writing just think of all the other possibilities.

For instance it is a well-known fact that children hate sprouts but what if a new online space hero thrived on them? 'Supersprout' has a certain ring to it don't you think?

Or perhaps a pop-eyed, tattooed sailor who gains his strength by eating cans of spinach? No, that's just too ridiculous to catch on.

VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO BELIEVE

I have been fascinated by computers ever since 1980 when I bought my first machine, a Sinclair ZX80. The ZX81 followed and then the Spectrum and a whole host of other computers which now reside in techno museums somewhere.

It wasn't long before I discovered role-playing games and spent many hours in a virtual world usually with a virtual sword in my hand and my heart racing as I wondered what would be around the next corner. Of course sometimes this was a monster of some sort or a massive warrior who would smash though my feeble defences and dispatch me to my virtual grave.

The joy of these adventures was that by frequently performing a 'save' of the scenario which I had reached, I could easily 'restore' myself to the situation as it was before my demise. Of course, now that I was aware of what lay around the corner I would be all ready to deploy my sword before the creature had time to draw virtual breath.

I rarely indulge myself in such adventures nowadays but there are many thousands of people who do. I completely understand why people would want to bring excitement into their humdrum everyday lives by taking on roles which are normally the stuff of dreams. It is easy to escape from reality and emulate your heroes by being victorious in battles, winning races or becoming a 'guitar hero'.

What I can't get my head round, is those people who choose to live in a virtual world which is close to their normal lives.

In 2009, a Korean couple became totally addicted to a role-playing computer game called Prius. The game involves raising a virtual child called 'Anima'. Indeed they spent so many hours in an internet cafe looking after Anima that left alone back home, their own 3 month-old baby starved to death.

Sadly, the couple cannot restore their lives to an earlier time to retrieve the situation.

LIFE IN THE DARK AGES

Imagine for a moment that you need to place a classified advertisement in a Gothenburg newspaper. Now this would not be a difficult task if you lived in Sweden. You could perhaps look up the phone number in a directory and call them.

But for the sake of this exercise you live in England. How will you set about the task? I'm going to reveal my amazing mind-reading powers and predict that your plan involves making a search on the Internet - right?

However, when I needed to place this advert, it was 1967 so there were no home computers let alone internet. So what did I do first in order to accomplish my mission?

While you are thinking how you will achieve this, it's worth reflecting on just how reliant we are on computers and the internet for such matters. However did we survive before they existed?

The way in which I began the task was to contact what was my first port of call whenever I needed help. I went to "The Citizens' Advice bureau", an amazing organisation who could find out anything about anything. Their offices were manned by volunteers back then and it was a free service.

It was set up as a temporary measure but is just celebrating it's 70 year anniversary! Their brief history is as follows:

"In 1938 when the prospect of a world war loomed, the National Council of Social Services, the forerunner of today's National Council of Voluntary Organisations, established a group to look at how to meet the war-time needs of the civilian population. The group recommended that Citizens Advice Bureaux be established, particularly in the large cities where 'social disorganisation may be acute'.

War was declared on 3 September 1939 and the first 200 bureaux opened on 4 September. Arrangements for bureaux varied wildly; one even operated out of a horsebox. Seven decades later we are, each year, advising two millions clients on six million problems from 3,300 locations."

Back in 1967 they managed to locate a firm in London who could perform the service for me and my mission was soon accomplished. You may wonder why I needed to place the advert but this will be the subject of another post.

GET THE MESSAGE?

To my amazement, I still encounter people who choose not to embrace e-mail and who continue to doggedly use snail-mail. I heard one such person remark that in their opinion, e-mails were for those people who can't be bothered to use the telephone.

I would take issue with that. In the first place, sending an e-mail is free compared to making a phone call. Much more importantly though, a phone call is so intrusive.

There I am, right in the middle of cutting my fingernails when the blessed phone rings. Is this the call to tell me of my long lost relative who sadly died but left me a fortune in his will? Nope. It's that firm who call me roughly every 2 weeks and ask to speak to the person who used to live here over 4 years ago. You can imagine how polite I am as I explain their error for the 382nd time.

The wondrous thing about e-mails is that I can deal with them when I have the time and inclination to do so. Of course the phone has it's place. (Mine is just to the right of the TV). It's primary purpose is to contact someone from whom you need an immediate answer - such as when you're cheating during a quiz.

One of the ways I while my time away is by teaching ladies of advancing years how to use their computers. I recently bestowed the power of e-mails onto an 83 year old who is now e-mailing away with her numerous grandchildren.

As she said to me yesterday (in an e-mail) 'I feel rather proud of myself'. I just feel a warm glow.

TEMPTED BY THE APPLE

It would seem that had I been partnered with Eve in the Garden of Eden, I would have fared no better than Adam. I too have been tempted by the apple and now I have taken a bite.

It all started when I had a close look at the iPhone. You may recall from my earlier post 'Rotten Apple' that despite drooling for one, I am unable to have one - yet. Well the thing is, having reached the firm impression that it truly is God's machine, I was tempted to look at the Apple iMac too. Obviously this was only out of idle curiosity you understand. After years of being shackled firmly to Microsoft and Windows, there was no way I was going to take a quantum leap into the unknown by switching to an iMac...... and yet .....

They are beautiful machines. I have learned that Apple have ploughed serious money into making sure that they were much more attractive to behold than regular PCs. Yes but beauty isn't everything. No use them looking good and then breaking down all the time. What's that? They very rarely break down? If they do break down those nice smiley people from Apple will have it fixed before I can blink.

Yes but sorry, the bottom line is, everyone knows that there is much more software written for PCs than for iMacs. I couldn't manage without certain programs which won't run on an iMac. Pardon? I can run my Windows programs on the iMac very easily using a widget called 'Parallels'?

So as we speak, a shiny new iMac is winging its way to my home. How long before an iPhone is nestling in my hand too?