I fought technology and technology won. Yet again

NET RESULTS: Once more I am defeated by a pile of unread technology books, a crammed inbox and un-updated apps

I DON’T know about you, but come December every year, I say farewell to another 12-month span in which my technology to-do list failed to get any shorter.

The start of January always seems so promising. There are the geek books I feel I will finally have time to read – a mix of technology classics I’ve never read, and books that came out in the previous year (okay, the previous few years) that still sit on my shelves with unbroken spines. This, I say to myself, will be the year in which I make plenty of time for reading all the books I want to read.

Then there are the websites I run, which still look pretty much like the websites I ran the year before, when I also vowed I would get around to updating content, adding new features, and learning how to do a little basic scripting in PHP, a language used to add capabilities to sites. I can add in a script created by someone else to accomplish a task, but I want to understand how to create some of these myself.

Then there’s that old chestnut, “organising my email” (cue derisive laughter). Who among us does not have the goal of neatly categorised folders into which we purposefully file our daily mails? I have even done one of those classes in which someone with a formidably tidy email system proselytises to us slobs. I left with light step and a sense of purpose. Ha.

For what it’s worth, I remember the rule was that you should only “touch” an email message once: read it, and then either delete it, act upon it, or save it as reference. I am ashamed to say that, rather than adopting such an admirable system, I continue to fondle my email constantly, so to speak. I “touch” them many times, re-reading them, moving individual messages here and there, and the vast majority I never read at all, except for subject headings.

Do I delete them? No. Do I file them? Almost never. With shame, I report that I have 6,520 email messages in my inbox. This is no way to run an email life, but year after year, I remain a hostage to my email programme.

Every year, I begin with a plan to tweak my home wireless network, too. I have a lovely Apple Time Capsule that I bought to back up my desktop and laptop, er, three years ago. It’s been sitting in my basket of miscellaneous cords, adapters, and old mouse mats for most of that time. In my defence, I did set it up and had it working right after I got it.

Then I changed broadband providers, they gave me a different kind of modem and router, and for more than two years I have intended to figure out how to get the Time Capsule to fit that set-up. Intended. I forget about it until, every now and then, my Mac tells me that it is now been 783 days since I last backed up my computer to my time capsule. As 2012 begins, I feel it is going to be many days more.

As for using my laptop to stream films through my television set? This, too, is something I have had great plans to do ever since I got my new flatscreen digital set (replacing a very old, very small Sony analogue set so primitive it didn’t even have teletext).

This, at least, is a more straightforward job than the Time Capsule, because all I really need is the little attachment that enables me to link the laptop to the TV. Alas, I have no idea where I put it after I bought the laptop. I am sure it is somewhere in the house along with similar adapters for all my previous generations of laptops. I never use those little adapters, so they get thrown into boxes or drawers, or retreat under sofas. Now that I actually want to use one, it has vanished out of my life.

And don’t even get me started on apps. Apps! Once upon a time, there was a little handful of must-have apps for the iPhone. Now the entire world is doing apps, apps for everything. I find it overwhelming to try to keep up with all that is available. I have fallen way behind in looking at new apps as they come out, even though I have an iPhone and an iPad waiting to receive them with open digital arms.

As it is, I can’t even remember to update the apps I do have. Every time I check my iPhone, the App Store app (yes, I do realise that sounds like a receding hall of mirrors) is marked with a little red circle with a double digit number that tells me how many updates I have failed to download.

The guilt I feel over this evidence that I don’t even use the apps I already have prevents me from downloading all the new apps I should really be exploring.

Checkmate. Once again, in 2011, the technology has won.

But this is the year it will all change. Really. Just wait till next December.