Harry's Blog

Like many blokes I do rather have a love for technology - and it is after all part and parcel of my career¹. Which means that if anyone actually wants to watch something on TV here they have to wade through a ridiculous collection of controls.

Connected to our HDTV are a Tiscali set top box², Sony DVD/surround system, PlayStation 3 60GB and Xbox 360 Elite. To complicate things further three of these reach the TV via a HDMI splitter box and reach the surround system via an optical cable splitter.

And we don't watch DVDs on the DVD player, oh no. That would be far too simple. We watch DVDs via the PlayStation 3 as it upscales very well. So to watch a DVD you have to make sure the HDMI splitter and surround switcher are routing the PS3 output correctly and then you've got the TV on the HDMI channel.

Yesterday I brought a new piece of technology into the house. I'm selling my Canon EOS 400D camera and (hardly used) hybrid bike to pay for a new camera - a Canon EOS 40D. And quite a beast it is. Compared to the cute and cuddly 400D it's a very unfriendly thing at first glance.

It's not welcome here. Jo reckons it's cursed. It's too big, too heavy and way too complicated for our home. Being the accommodating sort I did offer to have some sort of exorcism ceremony for the 40D before smashing it into pieces in the garden. But in the end we decided against it.

Should I die, I doubt anyone would be able to watch the TV here again. A minimum of three remotes are required to see anything on it. I've overly complicated the house, filled it full of nerdy gadgets that (apart from for work purposes) we don't really need.

The truth is that games are less important to me than they ever were - they are just my job now, rather than a hobby I spend a lot of time engaged in. If it wasn't for my job I could quite happily wave goodbye to all the TV related technology. I could wave goodbye to the laptop and the new work PC for our study.

Yet you'd still find me clutching onto my new camera. As a child I was heavily into art - particularly pencil drawing. I would spend hours at it every day. That particular part of me, the artistic part, found different outlets as I grew older - both in terms of writing and song writing.

And now photography is my passion and one I really think is always going to stay with me. It may seem another mad technological fetish - you'd think so looking at the 40D - but I've found a way of removing myself from the stresses and strains of the world and expressing my artistic leanings³.

So if you see me carrying the new Canon monstrosity, don't think I'm continuing on my mad boyish techno-fetish. I'm just painting pictures in a way that results in prettier images than my cack-handed reflexes could manage with a palette, brushes, canvas and easel.

_{¹Such as it is.
²That's not my fault though.
³I know I'm a real beginner, but I'm enjoying learning.}