Technology has been helping make our lives easier… or has it.

Those of you who read my posts know that, upon occasion, I make flub ups when I text or post.  I can type fairly fast and usually fairly accurately.  Recently, an update in the iPhone IOS and suggestions from friends to use the “SWYPE” app that imitates features that Android OS has had for quite some time,  have led to more errors.  The latest batch of IOS updates have installed Predictive Text.  SWYPE allows you to slide your finger across the keys without having to type each letter.

Predictive Text gives the iPhone the ability to predict the next word you are going to type or SWYPE.  This is done in one of two ways, by looking at the first few letters you type or at the context of the sentence typed before.  These features allow us to type much more rapidly on our tiny little keyboards…  Most of the time.  I frequently run into a problem when my brain is thinking about 8 words ahead of my fingers.  I forget to look at the words Predictive Text is displaying (those three words right above the keyboard).  This creates a couple problems.

The first problem happens when I don’t catch that Predictive Text has looked at the context of the sentence and recommended a different word than the word my brain thought of several milliseconds ago.  This becomes a problem because I typed/SWYPE’d the first 3 or so letters of the word I wanted expecting Predictive Text (PT) to keep up.  PT has actually tried to catch up to my brain and ignores what I typed.  I hit the space bar.  “Taa Daa!” A magic word appears that isn’t the word I had started to type… Often it doesn’t even fit the context of the sentence which I have finished typing by this point.  Remember, My brain is several words beyond my fingers.  This means that my eyes skip over words to keep up with my thoughts.  The loss of synchronization generally isn’t apparent to me until I click post or worse… after I read it later.

The other problem I have with PT is that, after a few of the above glitches, I stop paying attention to PT and become totally affixed on what I’m typing.  Now… my brain is pre predicting what PT is going to insert.  My typing slows to a crawl as I check and recheck everything I type.  I start leaving out complete words because my brain is 8 words ahead but keeps jumping back two or three lines to make sure there are no errors.  I can’t seem to win.

The other fun thing I’ve dealt with over the holidays … Malware.  I tinker with building websites.  I have my own, one for the WM Class of 85, one for WM Class of 88 and the West Middlesex Sesquicentennial.  Just before Christmas, I got a notification that my personal site had been infected with malware.  I read the report… Ugh.  97 hits on sites and 2 blacklisted malware links.  Naturally, the security program, that I pay my Web Host for, was not able to repair these items.  Manual cleaning would be necessary.

I’ve been wanting to simplify my site for some time.  This was the perfect opportunity.  I’ve had this site up with very few changes since 2010.  It was time for a change.  I’m keeping the site simple.  Pictures and updates will be posted via this blog and my photo gallery.  The old site is still up if you know the links.  I’m sifting through photos and information to make sure I have everything archived.  Some of those items may still make their way up to the new pages.

Speaking of Technology… Tomorrow… Back to work.

~Cappy