One more box

The other day, I came across one more box.

A good part of my family history has been captured on videotape. My first camera weighed about 15 pounds. It was a used one that we bought when our firstborn boy was at the stage where the proud parents want to capture every breath, twitch and burp. The camera was a used one in the Sony Beta format (remember how VHS won that battle?). It produced pastel colors in all lighting conditions, but through force of imagination, I could convince myself that they were vivid. And the viewfinder was a tiny TV monitor inside an eyecup, in black and white.

Then we graduated to a compact VHS format that produced a very high quality picture but sound, not so much. So we now had two different formats, neither one compatible with the other. However, with the aid of a special adapter, it was possible to play the new format in a standard VHS player. The old camera got thrown out somehow.

Then came DVD, and the need to convert the old formats to the newest and greatest. To handle the original betas, of which I had many, many hours, I eventually found a working Betamax on eBay for $100. I went through all the tapes and dubbed them and did a bit of editing, ending up with about three dozen DVDs. The compact VHS was a little easier, because the camera had outputs that would connect directly to the DVD recorder. And for those old movies that I had already converted to VHS, I bought a combination machine, one half VHS and the other DVD burner.

The Betamax stopped rewinding fairly early, so I hastened through the task and ended up completing it just as the machine gave up the ghost.

Without going into more tedious detail, let me say that I was well satisfied with these amateur conversions, and made a few copies for my progeny (after all, it was mostly their hockey games that were featured) and other interested parties.

Then, the other day, I came across one more box.

My grandparents would have disbelieved if confronted by the archival capabilities of today's digital technology. My parents would have been thrilled to be able to have sound instead of silent 8mm recordings of their young. Sound film did come in during the latter half of my childhood, but they would not indulge in the wasteful practice, because it cost more and involved special projection equipment. I remember them as having only one Kodak projector for their entire lifetime, and how hot it became to the touch after an evening of shows. Sprocketless film handling was a new feature that they never experienced, and that was a shame, because as the films got older they became more brittle and intermissions became more frequent as Dad spliced the films, often in mid-show. At first, it was a special acetone-based cement, but later, little tabs of splicing tape took its place. And who could forget those sudden bursts of circular color wheels which receded to white as the film became stuck and melted in the fierce Fahrenheit fire of the bulb?

Not all memories can be kept. Not all should be kept. But still, I have to wonder, as I gaze into that one more cardboard box, what have I forgotten that I am not likely to see again? A child spitting up some offensive baby food? A father and son building a snow bear? A Doctor Snuggles cartoon?

The generation that follows will not have the luxury of forgetting. It will all be there on YouTube.

J has a feel for pushing buttons

Last night I went over to the house of a friend of mine whose computer was showing all the signs of dementia. After an hour and a half of running cleanup programs and diagnostics and making a few educated guesses, we got it working again at a reasonable rate of speed. But computers are always lagging behind developments. They may be bleeding edge when they're still on the store shelves, but not necessarily even then, because it all depends on when they were made. And everyone knows they begin their descent into obsolescence as soon as the ink dries on the check (cheque).

The current buzzword, of course, is Vista, Microsoft's newest version(s) of the Windows operating system. You can find every possible point of view about the merits and demerits of this offering on the web: thousands of reviews that have been penned since the product launched in January.

Most of the seniors I teach, however, want a reliable computer than can do email, surf and search the internet, and show slideshows of their grandchildren to anyone who cares to stop and watch. Modest requirements these are, and yet every time a new version of Windows comes out, it seems they have to drop what they're used to doing and start upgrading and relearning. The computer makes life more interesting but also more complicated. Screens get bigger but print gets smaller, just at the time when it should be getting bigger.

One gentleman I used to see in a nearby town asked me to come over and help him sort out a problem on his computer. It turned out that his machine was a relatively early IBM PC. He had used it for all his research and correspondence for years, but now it was showing its age, and refusing to print.

When it finally became apparent that his machine was past retirement age, he cast about amongst his friends, and someone donated a more recent model which was functional, although not significantly advanced beyond the ailing machine. He was very pleased with this turn of events, given that he was not anxious to part with good money for something that really didn't need to meet complex demands.

I guess it comes down to what a person needs to be satisfied. In my case, life is simple. If I want to watch a prerecorded television program, I ask J to watch it with me. I lack the remotest interest in learning how to program or control the digital video recorder. The number of buttons on the handle is daunting. And in any case, what I need is the company, the companionship and the mutual interest. J, on the other hand, is a master of anything remotely related.

How does J learn to operate all this stuff? Not by reading the manual. That's for sure. She just presses buttons and watches screens until she has her muscle memory programmed to feel for the right button. It is all a great source of wonder and amusement to me. Come to think of it, that's enough for tonight. She wants to watch something. Excuse us, will you please?