Speaking of technology, and these days who isn’t, how can any regular person deal with the biggest contradiction in retail (though not as big as between what they charge and what’s in my account).<\/p>\n
From not only the advertisements but consumer journalism, your living room is supposed to have flat-screen LCD plasma four-wheel-projection HD televisions on the one robotic arm, and on the other steel limb, you also need a cell phone with camera and a video camera eye staring at you from your computer.<\/p>\n
Cell-phone pictures are fuzzy. The ads promote increasing numbers of pixels, but what about the lens? It’s the width of a sardine’s whisker. You’re not going to want an 8×10 of your knee against the steering wheel with that (because you accidentally pressed the phone’s shutter while you were reaching around for your seat belt).<\/p>\n
Today’s Wall Street Journal<\/em> (subscription) advises how easy it is to video yourself via home computer. Those would be moving-mouth monologues. They’re as sharp as those screen captures that dominate YouTube (why iTunes but YouTube?). In other words, they look adequate on a monitor. Plug those into your entertainment center googolplex, and both the dish and cable companies will cancel your contract for fuzzy thinking.<\/p>\n Add into that the time it takes to download images, and now movies, into the home computer. … Waiting for entertainment to happen — just isn’t. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Speaking of technology, and these days who isn’t, how can any regular person deal with the biggest contradiction in retail (though not as big as between what they charge and what’s in my account). From not only the advertisements but consumer journalism, your living room is supposed to have flat-screen LCD plasma four-wheel-projection HD televisions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technical-difficulties"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":371,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/11\/compression-fracture\/","url_meta":{"origin":274,"position":0},"title":"Compression Fracture","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It never occurred to me to presume this, probably because I'm not a technophile. But here I sit with a new computer (waiting months for the Apple operating system update as a few pieces of both hardware and software on my blue 7-year-old iBook fail), and it asks if it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":339,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/07\/security-is-observation\/","url_meta":{"origin":274,"position":1},"title":"Security Is Observation","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This week, the newspaper says, the town of Lowell is installing a $1,500 Panasonic video camera on a 200-foot cell tower. It will record the \"south, west, north and portions of the east sides\" 24 hours a day. Mayor Perry Long says, \"It will be used for security, not for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1402,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2009\/06\/opening-volley\/","url_meta":{"origin":274,"position":2},"title":"Opening Volley","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"LOS ANGELES -- I'm about 20 years too early to have hearing aids, but there it is. I've had one in my right ear since mid-2005, and six months ago had to begin wearing them in both. Each new auditory circumstance, rather than getting, \"Wow, birds chirping!\" often starts with,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Few Bullets More"","block_context":{"text":"Few Bullets More","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/ventura-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":50,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/01\/i-invented-the-wheel\/","url_meta":{"origin":274,"position":3},"title":"I invented the wheel","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 7, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Friday, January 7, 2005. It's important to be efficient. To not reinvent the wheel is my oft-repeated goal, likely annoying others. Definition: Coming to know what works and what doesn't, what is tolerable and what drives you batty. It's a process of elimination, where over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":42,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/01\/decisions\/","url_meta":{"origin":274,"position":4},"title":"Decisions","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 13, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2004. The old chestnut of a philosophical construct: If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today? Ideally, you'd spend lots of time in the park, barefoot (the sun would be warm and shining of course), using\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":251,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/12\/take-five-and-five-more\/","url_meta":{"origin":274,"position":5},"title":"Take Five, and Five More","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 5, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"It's not that I see a lot of concerts. I don't. So in the context of relative superlatives let it be henceforth: Sunday's concert of the Dave Brubeck Quartet followed by the Ramsey Lewis Trio was the best jazz concert I have ever seen. This includes seeing Mr. Brubeck in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Brick Bats Reportage"","block_context":{"text":"Brick Bats Reportage","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/brick-bats-reportage\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}