iChat conferencing

As much as I love technology for it’s own sake (yes, I know it shows), I love it even more when you use it in real world situations and it just fits.

Case in point: last evening we (at our home) and another couple (at theirs) needed to talk in order to discuss some strategy and business. There where four of us on two homes, each home has an ADSL connection (from different providers, by the way) and has a NAT setup.

We had a iBook on each side and I had my USB webcam (with the required software installed) connected to the iBook.

All it took was for us to fire up iChat, start the (one way) video conf and we spent an hour just chatting as if we where all there. If the other party had a webcam it would have been better but hey… ;-)

So in effect it is voice conferencing in a totally convenient way, you just put the iBook down and talk away.

What a great technology. What a great use for it.

Instant Messaging Madness

While I’m a big fan of instant messenger both for personal and for professional use, the current state of affairs can sometimes lead to some quite absurd situations.

In order just to be able to communicate in the way with everyone I want or need to communicate with, I now have 8 different accounts in a total of 6 different services.

Madness, I tell you!

Shocking!

Sorry to mislead you this is not that kind of a post.

In fact it is quite literally about shocking events. As in static electrically shocking.

It is a fact of life (well, of my life at least) that sometimes I go through some periods when I’m quite electric. Meaning that I can’t get in or out of my car without getting shocked when I touch it. Sometimes it even gets worse and I get shocked while touching other objects or even people, but the car is a sure fire way of knowing I’m in one of those “electric moods”.

For a few days now I’ve been like that and, sure enough, I’ve already picked up all the protective habits I slip myself into when this happens. This is not a deliberate effort, but I do hate getting shocked and so my head starts instructing my body to just defend itself without triggering any real awareness of it.

So now I’ve gotten to the point where I always get out of the car without touching it in any way while exiting it, then I touch the outer paneling of the door with my hand. But not in any way, oh no! You see, I’ve already decided that to touch it with the middle section of the fingers is the most painful way, because the finger “joints” (right word?) really hurt for quite a while after the shock. So I either touch it with the tip of the fingers or with the back of the hand. And in a quick slapping or brushing way to get it over with ASAP.

I’m actually adapting to the fact that I do get electric shocks and I’m researching the least painful way of going through it and I’ve never even been fully aware of it. In fact , I’ve just became fully aware of this this morning. Funny how the mind works, heh?