This is my fourth day without access to my flat, and therefore the fourth day without access to my work on my machines. This has led me to several different realisations about the technology I use:
Dropbox is awesome
While I always knew Dropbox was good, it has really come into its own since I've been here! I was able to dig up my 1999 Vaio laptop from my dad's loft and get it to sync all my files and folders to its home directory as if they were its own. This means that I have all the work I had done before I left, exactly where I expect it to be. Plus, as I edit them and save them, I know they will continue to be updated in the "Cloud" ie Dropbox's servers, and on my machines back at home. A wonderful piece of technology!
No hardware is too old to be useful
The '99 vintage Vaio Z600 I'm typing this on has an old Pentium III processor running at a rather sedentary 650Mhz and 256MB of RAM. Its trackpad and mouse buttons don't work, and its battery lasts a matter of minutes. However, with a few trips up to the loft for more accessories, a bit of Google-Fu, as well as several hours of updating the Lubuntu OS, the apps and my own Dropbox stuff, it is now up and running fine! I'll have to write something on that, maybe others with 'ancient' machines could find something interesting in it, or could suggest something better!
I miss my iMac and its screen
Working with the Vaio and its 12" 1280 x 768 screen really shows the increased productivity that you can have with a larger monitor and the iMac I have at home has a 21.5" screen which gives me plenty of room to work with! The iMac is also much more powerful and I can have many different applications running at once, whereas I am currently running a text editor and a web browser, with any extra programs really slowing the machine down! Everything takes just a little bit longer, which throughout the day takes up a surprising amount of time!
Ah well, fingers crossed I can get back into my flat on Tuesday, and leave this hardware in my dad's loft for another occassion where I am without my keys or any computers!
David x
Preamble
Yesterday I left the flat without the usual smartphone and Bluetooth headphones, hoping to charge them both before going out for a run with Zombies, Run! later, and instead I had my old iPod - I could at least listen to something while I headed to the supermarket! However on returning to the building I found that I had also left the flat without its keys.
It turns out I had picked up the large jingling mass of keys that consisted of my dad’s house keys, my car key, Tesco’s clubcard fob and the fob to access the university computer lab out of hours, but failed to remember I had taken the flat keys off earlier that day so I could run without the extra hindrance. Oh dear. Luckily I had my dad’s keys and my car keys. So at least I could drive over and stay with him.
And so...
Sadly I can’t get into the flat until Tuesday as the letting agent isn’t open until that morning and my girlfriend isn’t back from home until that evening. So this got me thinking, what changes could I reasonably make to either prevent this from happening again, or minimize the impact of leaving my keys in the flat? They may even help me out in other bad situations!
1. I intend to put a spare phone (and charger) in the car.
I have several spare mobile phones from the past 10 years and most of them are perfectly viable devices. I bought a GiffGaff sim to chuck into one and will charge it overnight before putting it in the car. This means that I’ll hopefully have a working phone in case of emergency, but also a charger for longer-term use. I know I could have done with that today, trying to call the letting agents, my father etc. Also need to add all necessary numbers to it!
2. Keep the keys altogether
This may seem obvious, and used to be the usual way of things. However, running with all those keys in a pocket takes up a lot of space and in a bag produces an absurd amount of jangling. However perhaps to avoid risk I should just suck it up and carry the lot, at least then I’ll know whether I have all the keys or not! And perhaps I could wrap the keys in something to make them quiet!
Previously successful!
Some things I have done to prepare for this sort of thing have actually helped me!
1. Cloud storage
I already keep all my documents in a Dropbox folder, so everything work-wise is available online. This has saved me before and has allowed me to access my work on any networked computer. Very useful!
2. Spare clothes
I have a bag with a spare set of clothes at my dad’s just in case. Luckily I have never had any cause to use it before. Thankfully I also have loads of spare clothes in the loft from “mostly” moving out of my room. So I have loads of clothes, but sadly no flat keys!
All this is really a bit of a #FirstWorldProblem, however, hopefully this will give me more time to get work done and maybe a few more blog posts! Next time, perhaps I should just remember my keys?
David x
