Today is Shutdown Day, apparently.
It is obvious that people would find life extremely difficult without computers, maybe even impossible. If they disappeared for just one day, would we be able to cope?
Be a part of one of the biggest global experiments ever to take place on the internet. The idea behind the experiment is to find out how many people can go without a computer for one whole day, and what will happen if we all participate!
Shutdown your computer on this day and find out! Can you survive for 24 hours without your computer?
Obviously I haven’t been successful - I tried for a whole 45 minutes to not switch on, this morning, but then found that I really needed to see if so-and-so has emailed me (they haven’t), check what library books I need to return this morning (I suppose I could have waited until the library opens in two and a half hours to find out), and ohh I want to listen to music (all on the computer). And how am I going to draft my blog posts and those articles I’m working on? (Actually pen and paper will do just fine…)
I thought it would be easy to switch off, when M mentioned this exercise to me yesterday evening. After all I do go for weekends without touching the computer, don’t I? In reality although I might not switch my own PC on, I often use M’s machine just to check email or whatever.
Will I be more prepared for next year’s Shutdown Day? Shall I shutdown after I post this?
I have a day off today - Time Off In Lieu, TOIL (I love ironic acronyms).
I haven’t got anything planned but so far I have been:
- Playing with Ubuntu. Found out yesterday that a number of the doctoral students I support use open source tools like LaTex and Inkscape and KBibtext (they don’t use EndNote! ¡Ay, caramba!) I don’t have to learn how to use LaTex, for example, but I hate not knowing anything about it. And this gives me an impetus to play around with Linux a bit. Thanks for M for installing it on my PC (we’re using virtual machine software so I can keep running things like iTunes on Windows).
- Watching the birds outside my study window. I’ve been leaving seed out for them for a few weeks now. Initially they didn’t touch the food, but after almost a fortnight I guess they realised there was no longer a cat around to make things hazardous, and they’ve been enjoying it.
- Cleaning my fountain pens. I’m sure this isn’t particularly interesting, even to fountain pen users, so that’s all I’ll say about this
Plus the usual reading, pondering and general pottering around the house. It’s so nice to have a day off!
…The 16-week-old Chihuahua. He came from Sebdah Kennels.
“Where’s my dinner?”
Paco spent the night in a basket in our room, lying in an old doona. He settled quite well. He whimpered a bit but soon quietened when he realised we were going to sleep and he wasn’t going to get any attention. Initially i’d had the brilliant idea of confining him in the laundry for the night, but he hated this, and soon showed us that although he might be small his voice isn’t. He began by whimpering and grizzling, then started yipping and completed the performance with a serenade of amazing howling barks. I was sure we were keeping the whole neighbourhood up, so we relented and let him in our room. He’s obviously used to sleeping in his own bed, because he stayed there quite happily all night.
