Farewell my dear Sennheiser

This is my Sennheiser PC 350 headset.

And it's broken.

Without doubt the Sennheiser headset has been the best of all the headsets I've owned over the years, if for nothing else than the amount of time you can use it without your ears feeling like they've been squashed by a tractor.

Plus, I won them by dancing on stage (the video is out there somewhere should you really wish to see...) which is far better than paying for them.

The Sennheiser headset was a last reminder to a time gone by, when I used to go to LAN parties (where a load of gamers meet up for a long weekend gaming and not sleeping), and I had what at the time was some high end kit - I had a Logitech G15 keyboard, with its own little LED screen, and also my beloved Logitech G5 mouse which was absolutely awesome and lasted almost as long as my headset. I do still have some relatively decent computing gear, but I've not taken any of it to a LAN party or any sort of gaming event, and my gaming now tends to be more the social kind, or an hour or so on Call of Duty, whereas I used to happily sink tens of hours into World of Warcraft.

Sadly now, however, the microphone has died and the headphones are flaky at best - which after seven years isn't too bad really. I've got a cheap headset for the time being but I'll certainly be looking for something more like my old headset for the long term.

Do you have any beloved items possibly past their best that need replacement? Or something now gone that you've never really replaced? Let me know in the comments :)

Electrical Appliances (Warning: Harsh Language!)

Be warned, this post does have a modicum of bad language.  Some people say that if you're truly funny, you don't need to swear.  If you agree, you might want to skip this post - maybe you'll like the yoga one though!

I've been thinking, on and off, about how it's funny that certain electrical appliances we "trust" more than others.

For example - when you go out of the house for a day, there are some appliances that you're happy to leave running, and others you're not. I've done my best to categorise them into trusted, somewhat trusted, and untrusted - see if you agree with my categories:

Fridges / Freezers - TRUSTED. Fridges are absolutely salt of the earth, we don't understand how they work but we're happy to travel around the world and leave it running.

Mobile phone chargers - TRUSTED. Despite the fact that you're probably using a cheap knockoff charger off a market or from some sort of cut-price shop, because you don't want to take out a second mortgage to buy a charger made by the company that made your phone, you're happy leaving these things run at full pelt while you sleep.

Computers - SOMEWHAT TRUSTED. Computers aren't really trusted (being hot running machines with fans that suck in inflammable dust and scatter it liberally on hot internal components) but you'll leave them on if:

1. You're running an anti-virus scan and need to go out shopping
2. You're halfway through Call of Duty and really really REALLY need a pizza (so bad you can't wait for delivery)
3. You hate having to wait twenty minutes for it to boot up when you turn it on

Sky box aka DVR (Digital Video Recorder) - TRUSTED. Despite having the same attributes as a computer (it's a hot box probably full of dust), you trust this enough to leave it on indefinitely, because heaven forbid you miss season three episode sixteen of CSI: Honolulu, or wherever the latest spinoff is based.

Lights - SOMEWHAT TRUSTED. You're happy for lights to be on in the house, even in rooms that you are not, but you probably turn them off when you leave the house. Except you may keep one on, so it "looks as though someone is in". So you trust that one. But none of the other buggers.

Tumble driers - UNTRUSTED. Everyone knows that tumble driers are untrustworthy bastards which are liable to catch fire the moment we step outside. We don't even like them running when we're in the house.

Washing machines - TRUSTED. somehow trusted more than driers, even though they consist of the well known magical triad of electricity, water, and heating elements.

Televisions - SOMEWHAT TRUSTED. We trust TVs on the whole, but if going away you unplug it, just in case it decides to turn itself on and burst into flames. Plus that little red standby light is really annoying.

Toaster - EVIL BLOODY UNTRUSTED DEVICE!!! Toasters are the most evil of all electrical appliances, because time and again we are convinced "this time, THIS TIME - this time, we won't burn the toast, we will set the toaster so it comes out crispy but not burned."

And we fail. Because at some point, we'll turn our back on the toaster, and the toaster furiously burns the toast as fast as it can to send out smoke, to wake up the bloody smoke alarm again.

Are there any appliances that I've missed, or do you disagree/agree with my views? Well, you know where the comments box is :)

Battle of the Generations

I've always considered myself relatively good with computers.  I've completed a degree in Computer Information Systems.  I use computers every day, and have a tablet and a smartphone which I regularly use as well.

Yet my son, who isn't four yet, can already teach me stuff on computers.  He's far more comfortable working with the tablet than I was at first - all I can think is that I am used to working computers a certain way (e.g. with a mouse and keyboard) and he doesn't have any preconceived ideas as to how it 'should' work.  The other day he tried to hack a neighbours wi-fi - didn't manage it, but full marks for effort. (I jest of course, he stumbled on the menu by mistake, but he still had a great time typing away into the password box)

I was watching this video from Sky Sunrise about tech savvy kids, and I do agree that parents do need to be concerned about how many hours their children spend using technology.  My son probably uses a tablet at most perhaps half an hour a day, to watch a cartoon or play a number of educational games I've installed for him.

The makers of the games, as an aside, are very cunning, because the free versions of the games are packed with adverts and of course these adverts behave differently to everything else in the game - for example, you might press on a picture of an apple, and the game speaks "Apple.", but if you press the advert next to the picture of an apple, the game closes and the tablet takes you to the website selling the thing on the advert.  This frustrates my son so as a result I'm looking at buying full versions of the games he finds most popular (which to be fair isn't a bad thing - it supports the makers of the games and the full versions generally have more features anyway)

I'd be interested to hear your views.  Should kids be kept away from technology? Or should they learn to engage with it from an early age?