Monday 29 March 1999

Pic of the day: Fake drawing, courtesy of my computer.

This site is not the only illustrated online diary (or Web Journal). Not even the best, unless one happens to know me already. Take for instance the Nova Notes, tastefully illustrated by actual colored drawings.

Me, I gave up on becoming an engineer because I absolutely flunked freehand drawing. I could not draw an ink bottle, try as I might. The theory of perspective and all the rest was easy enough; but my hand refused to submit to my brain, and thus it has been ever since. And before, for that matter. As a child I stuck to some very few themes. Sheep, obviously. Pigs, seen from the front. (Wall outlets don't have eyes and ears.) Tractors. But the subtle difference between a horse and a cow? Those were beyond my skills.

So, somewhere around my fifteenth year, I started having these vivid daydreams about a computer that could draw. Please note that this is like 25 years ago, but science fiction was my style. The computer of my dreams would of course fill most of my room, but it would be able to scan in pictures and manipulate those electronically, rendering my dreams visual. I estimate the age I was from the uses of these electromagical skills. (No need to be graphical here.)

Five years later, I was at a school that actually had a computer. It was only a quarter the size of my room (well, perhaps a third) and it could write both UPPERcase and lowercase letters and even ring a bell. My programs, far superior to any other student's, were carefully stored on punched tape. I still have one of those.

Now this box on the desk beside me does unspeakable things to my JPG pictures if I demand so. I do have some fun with it at times; though some of my dreams have changed in 25 years, others have not. I still find it hard to draw anything on my own, even when I can do so pixel by pixel. I guess some guys just have it, and other don't. I still can't draw, I still can't dance, or (come to think of it) anything normally located in the right half of the brain. (Though my left hand will occasionally assist me, such as when touch-typing.) It would be insufferably ungrateful to whine about this deficiency, though, when I already have an IQ of 140. I guess I got my share and then some, and should go away with a happy heart. Especially now that there are crutches for the mind.

In other news, I've paid some bills today. I do so with Telegiro, entering the data over a touch-tone telephone. Thanks to the warm weather, or perhaps a lack of sleep, I entered the first two bills with due date 30 april instead of 30 March. Then I discovered it, luckily, and entered them again with the correct date. So now they are going to be paid tomorrow, and then again in a month. Not funny.

To forestall this, I consider closing my bank account sometime in between and move to another bank. Any other bank, since the one I use is Norway's worst. "Den norske Bank" has higher transaction costs, high interest rates on loans but not on deposits, and unimpressive service. While even small county banks now have Internet banking, DnB has tarried and promised and tarried some more. I don't know if they've got it up now, though I doubt it. I confidently predict that if they do, they charge a leg and an arm for it. Time for the rats to flee the sinking ship. The only thing that has kept me for the last few years is sheer inertia. I hate having to take new photos for the card, and memorizing a new account number.