New beginnings
Over the past few months I have been without a phone, a laptop, a Satnav and for the most part a good camera. Highly surprisingly in our modern society I have actually survived without all of these things while rushing around the world. However as soon as I returned to the UK I especially realised how dependent modern life/relationships are on technology. It was very difficult to organise meeting my friends without my phone, (phone lost in New Zealand, SIM somewhere in the land of "down the back of the sofa"), I couldn't navigate my way to Cardiff without the Satnav and don't get me started on my mental distress of not being able to get my laptop to work!
Accordingly I decided it was time for an upgrade, and after much faffing (and a lot of help from Dave) I signed up to a new mobile phone contract with a HTC HERO handset. My mum also decided she needed an upgrade and has recently got an iPhone so between us we are testing the best the mobile market can buy! (Exempting the Hero's next upgrade model which I can't afford, and a Blackberry which my dad already has and uses.) The first problem I had with my Hero was my lack of ability to find a user manual in the snazzy box it came in. I didn't find the electronic user manual for almost 2 days and so have had to learn how to use my phone without it. This caused much grumpiness;
"I can't get the dam thing to text!"
"Where is the off button?"
"NO I don't want to upload all my photos to facebook!!!!" etc.
To top it all off because setting up a Gmail account is very essential to the Hero I did this and promptly forgot the password. This means that I will very probably have to reset the phone handset, thus loosing all the small things I have accomplished on it already!
I have now mastered most of the basics off it, and even downloaded a clever cow jumping game called abduction. These are small events in comparison to other news stories around at the moment, but modern journalism is very dependent on technology. Over the next few months I will be uploading all sorts of journalism work, in a variety of different formats, all very probably without user manuals, and I am looking forward to the challenge. I can only hope that I explain things clearly enough so that you can access the content without user manuals.
Finally mum still has not got her iPhone out of the box, although if she isn't careful my younger brother might pinch it off her! My mobile number has not changed, so if all those people who have my number could text me theirs, that would be appreciated. I need people to talk to.. once I have worked out how to answer a call