BLOGGING AND IT

This blog has from today a new function, a link to previous episodes. If, for instance, I want to refer to Monday's blog on Yoghurts With Bits, I simply write Yoghurt With Bits with this funny underlining, and you, dear reader, can go directly to it merely by clicking on it.

I should say up-front, that I did not work this out on my own, but had to use the IT-skills of my elder son (who, incidentally, was the person who set this blog up in the first place). I sent him an E-Mail asking him if he could sort it out. Being under the age of 25, he quite obviously could.

However, the process was not completely painless. He thought he could show me how to do it by ringing me up on the phone and talking me through it. This was overoptimisitic, to say the least. The fundamental problem was that he did not grasp, did not understand, just could not get his brain around the concept of, how much of an IT-moron I am. He kept on referring to basic concepts I did not know, and I could hear his frustration in my ear, every time I said "hang on a minute". In the end, he rang off, wrote the whole thing down in a Word file entitled "How to insert a link in a blog for dummies" and sent it to me by E-Mail. That worked.

It is the bane of every generation, I think, to find that the previous generation has difficulties with new technology. My mother has never used a computer in her life, and never will. I can use them; but I still have residual fears of crashing, and it is only recently that I have dared to have two programmes open and running simultaneously. For my children, computers and other gadgets are merely an extension of their bodies, like fingertips. When cars first appeared, people used to run in front of them with a red flag in order to warn pedestrians. In discussions with my children about IT, I often feel like the man with the red flag; namely, a bit of a prat.

Anyway, we may not have knowledge or skills, but this older generation sure has stubborn staying power. So I will now go through the whole of this blog, and do all of the appropriate links. Even if it does take me a while.

Walter Blotscher