High Tech, Low Tech, and On-line Afflictions

My husband’s last name is Einbinder.  We’ve always assumed the German translation (one binder) meant that it was the moniker for the trade of bookbinding. It’s a rare name. In fact the only other person we’ve ever met with any connection to that name is the movie director Mike Binder. One day, years ago, at the Pumpkin Patch in our neighborhood, we struck up a conversation with him.  Blank Man, a movie he directed, was absolutely the funniest movie that year.  It still holds up.  David Allen Grier kills in it.  Of course, he always kills. It turned out that Mike’s last name was shortened from Einbinder.  Since then, when we see him places, we exchange that twinkle of recognition of our ‘kinship’.

Recently I decided my copy of The Joy of Cooking deserved better than duct tape holding it together.  Months ago I’d read an article in Daily Candy about Charlene Matthews who practiced the lost art of bookbinding. I put it in my email archives under “of interest”. I’m actually getting things done on my list of long avoided tasks and this was one of them.  What an adventure. 

As you may know, I like to view my very-nearly-fifty-year-old self as all hip and early adopterish. I have an unnatural dread of youngsters snickering as I hold up my new-fangled thingamabobber and look at it over the rims of my glasses, saying something like “tell me again, what button I push to see the grandkids in their space pod?” So when I started reading about Pinterest, I begged an invitation and checked it out.

As it turns out, Pinterest can be a useful tool or a waste of time and energy, or both. I am finding it tremendously useful, but it took some time and tinkering to sift out what I really wanted to see and “pin” to my virtual pin boards. At first, I saw no point in looking through hundreds and thousands of pictures and picking those that struck my fancy. A lot of what I saw seemed like nothing more than an extension of the bumper sticker or the Facebook profile - one more way to show off a little and tell the world that one had read (and liked) “Bleak House,” or spent time in Uruguay. There were also hundreds of cute animal pictures, cute kid pictures, and inspirational sayings of various kinds, things that might be diverting for two seconds but I am unlikely to “pin” and revisit anything along the lines of LOLCats.

The beauty of a good “pin,” though, is that there is a narrative portion that can tell you whether a picture is just “for pretty,” or whether one can click through to a recipe for that cupcake, or directions for making wall sconces from Dollar Store funnels. For me, the recipes and how-tos have been amazingly useful. I admit that I “collect” pretty pictures of things that I like, moons, owls, birds, flowers, and Paris street scenes…images that make me smile when I am stuck someplace for fifteen minutes and want a reminder of the beauty in the world. That’s good, but that’s the fluff.

One of the things I feel is emblematic of being a California Girl is the love of cars.  The Peterson Automotive Museum is having a Low Rider exhibit right now.  Bitchen, right? Personally, I can’t wait.

My earliest memory of the low rider culture was a song by Thee Midniters, probably the first significant Chicano rock bands to come out of Los Angeles.  They had several hits, like Land of 1,000 Dances, but anyone who grew up loving music and cars in the 1960s couldn’t forget “Let’s take a trip down Whittier Boulevard, yeehaa, Arriba , Arriba!” It’s part of my DNA just as much as the love of surfing. In fact, when you listen to the song, it has that early surf sound.  That reverb electric guitar Dick Dale made famous.   But that’s a whole other story for another time. 

The Mini has arrived and it's a big leap forward.

Having used some of the other 7-inch tablets on the market I wasn't really excited when I heard Apple had decided to crowd the market with their version.

Thankfully I ordered one anyway and I'm very impressed by what they’ve accomplished. Ever since the very first iPhone, I’ve been underwhelmed by Apple’s annoucement presentations, but overwhelmed when I finally got each new device in my hand.

It is so light that you don't even think you are holding anything. This makes it so much easier to be the “around-the-house” iPad. Laying outside typing an article like I'm doing now, surfing the web, or reading in bed are perfect activities for this new device.

For daily work I'd still stick with my 9-inch iPad but I can see where this will fit perfectly in my life.