Technizen

I often share files, although more often than not with myself rather than with anyone else, and because I'm a bit of a luser in computing terms, I welcome new ways to do things like that. Although my USB flash drive is a cool way to move files from PC to laptop, and gmail is fine for sending photos (and flickr for sharing them), and I'm sure I could set up a home network if I could be arsed, I like the look of Tubes, a new filesharing thingo. I don't know whether it works, because I've only just installed it, but I'm going to give it a go. It sounds (and looks) great though. If you have it or get it, you might get presents from me. Or you might not, depending on how naughty you've been. (If T gets it, he can have some music, because I owe him an album worth.)

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About five years after everyone else got it, I am now BitTorrenting. The reason is that I wanted the Software for Starving Students, which is a huge collection of free- and sortafreeware. Of course, I already have some of this stuff but I wanted the cool things like the drawing package and the raytracer and some of the other packages. Even if I never use much of it, I like acquiring software, particularly when it's freeeeeeee.

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I also have Skype, about a decade after it became fashionable. It's incredible that you can phone people for free, and given that you can, doubly incredible that we are not all just doing that. Unfortunately, Mrs Zen thinks that I would use something like that inappropriately (and she's absolutely right), so I have to be surreptitious about it. Ridiculously, I cannot use it to telephone my mum or my sisters without Mrs Zen's plaguing me with her suspicions about who else I might be telephoning. As anyone who has shared a phoneline with me will tell you, it's a trial anyway, and why anyone would want to do it is a mystery to me. As I mentioned in a previous post, I tend to the distracted monotone or the overgarrulous bullshitter, with no happy medium. Both are outcomes of fear, of what I'm not certain, maybe just that my correspondent will find me dull, secretly be wanting to hang up, not be enjoying it. Those are all bad things for someone like me, who wants to be a positive, an addition, not a negative. I've only used Skype once, and I think the person I spoke to now regrets it and is politely avoiding doing it again (while as in all things, although I fear rejection, I don't actually ever feel hurt by it, which is odd, and I don't mind at all people's saying they don't want something from me, or that they do, but I feel uneasy when I'm thinking they're beating round the bush -- which often they are not; combining agoraphobia with paranoia gives you a very silly boy). It would have come in monster handy in China actually, had Mrs Zen had it installed on our home machine. All internet cafes seemed to have it installed and it worked okay. I had no idea then how easy it is.

Is it horribly weird, I wonder, to be quite happy to chat with people on gmail chat or MSN, or if not happy, willing, or if not willing, not protesting over much, but completely unwilling to, erm, chat with them? For someone who multitasks, it is surely easier. Yeah, but hey, if I did things the easy way all the time, what would I have to whine about?

posted by Dr Zen @ 5:22 pm