The Technophobe News, the flagship magazine of The Technophobe Press is now open for business.

That is, it would be if the Editor, Printer, Binder, Distributor and only Author of this rather short lived journal wasn’t quite so terrified of his printer.

It happened yesterday. Previously the offices of The Technophobe Press were inhabited mostly by a comfortable old HP Laser Printer that had formerly been the property of BT and had been thrown away because it was obsolete. Obsolete is a word that the The Technophobe Press like. In our dictionary the entry for Obsolete reads:

ob-so-lete (adj): See Comfortable, Familiar and Useful.

The Technophobe Press were tempted yesterday by the offer of a supposedly obsolete colour laser printer. This offer sounded too good to be true, pretty colours would boost our readership no end and since this printer came with toners, it would save some load on the ageing HP. We were informed that it was large, we didn’t contemplate how large.

The first issue is that the offices of The Technophobe Press only have mortally sized doors. This is not a printer for mortals. The only place it would fit was in the porch so we had to clear away a whole pile of mouse eaten junk to create it a new home. At this point we were already in mild fear of it and wanted it to feel comfortable. A couple of hernias, some broken fingers and a lot of bruises later, The Printer was now settled and had power. Getting a network connection to the porch was a slightly more complicated matter involving moving a hub into there. When you have a hub in the porch, you know things are starting to get ridiculous. To make The Printer feel more at home, we introduced him to some locals, and tried to make him look as in place as possible.

It was time for a test print. After pressing buttons randomlyfor a while, a noise like a small jet engine started to issue from the innards of this beast; it rattled somewhat in the way the Tardis used to rattle back in the days when Dr Who had more comfortable special effects and after a little whine, it started to shoot out sheets of paper faster than should be possible. They weren’t blank sheets of paper, they were all full of tecnical stuff that looked important. At this point, we started to get suspicious that we may have allowed a Trojan Printer into our midst.

After downloading new drivers, setting the IP address and things that are not too complicated, and permissable to us here, we sent a few colour photos to The Printer. The house shook, the Tardis spoke and the colour pictures appeared as if from nowhere. Somewhat curled up but none the less excellent quality. Something that would have taken about 5 minutes on a mere mortal printer.

Now firmly convinced that something was wrong, it was time to search the Interwebs for details of this beastie. The results were shocking. It can print 28 sheets a minute in full colour and just under 40 a minute in black and white. It can take just about any size of paper you throw at it, it can print it on both sides and it has four drums inside it so that it can simulateneously print all the colours at once in a single pass. As if that isn’t enough, it can print its 1st print in less than 10 seconds and can hold over 3,000 sheets of paper inside it.

The staff of The Technophobe Press are now in fear. The porch has become out of bounds because we are scared to breath on it lest one of those hundred zillion parts gets a slight warp and breaks everything inside there. If this happens, it may well cause chaos not just to the porch but to the Universe as a whole. We can see it, on the network staring at us, begging us to use it but so far, we are resisting temptation whilst we ponder our fundamental position on this matter. What if we start to get attached to it and one of the zillion irreplacable parts breaks? Who will look after it? And importantly… What does it eat?

Come to think of it… If it eats mice, it can stay for ever.

The offices of The Technophobe Press will keep you informed. Watch this space.

The High Council of Master Bloggers and Online Mass Debating rejected my essay on the basis that it didn’t say what they expected to hear from a Master Blogger. Apparently, my point of view was completely at odds with the rest of the Mass Debating Society’s.

On the other hand, I pointed out that since I owned their website, they should reconsider and as such, I have been reinstated with full honours. I may now consider myself a Master Blogger and do my worst.

Ha!

So…

I have just had a message from the High Council of Master Bloggers and Online Mass Debating and I have been stripped of my title pending requalification. I was still in my probationary period and missing a day without prior notification broke the terms of this.

The High Council are not without heart, however, and have sent me a short exam. If I complete this and pass, I will recover my title and all that it entails.

I shall repeat the questions here, whilst I ponder on which one to do:

1) You must find a fully qualified Master Blogger to act as a mentor and have them send you an approved personality test. These comprise a series of questions such as “What is your favourite colour?”, “How well do you think you know me?” or “If I asked you, would you suck my toes even though I had athlete’s foot?” Firstly, these questions will require short and honest answers from you and secondly you must send your completed test to all of your friends and colleagues and get them to fill in the test and return it. The results of this personality survey must be posted in your Blog for all to see and comment on.

2) You must express an opinion on online security and freedom of speech as it effects you, the Master Blogger. You will be expected to talk at length about your right to complete privacy as you share your life with the world and how encryption on your IMs will protect you from the authorities. You will be expected to show the technical know how in how to do this, and explain the methods to other people. Finally, you should write a short political endpiece on how 1984 is upon us and how the governments of the world are more and more interested on spying on their own people and how your rights to free speech are being eroded more and more every day. The essay should end on a positive note about how you, as a Master Blogger are armed with the Internet Toolset to “Stick it to the Man” and a pledge to do so.

3) For this question you are required to search the journals of a number of other Master Bloggers and to pick out a number of pertinent online tests which you will then answer and place in your journal. Although this question may sound like an easy option, you will be judged mostly on the relevance of the tests to the style of your Blog. For example: If your Blog is an Emo Gothic affair concerned mostly with how terrible your life is then there is very little place for a test that shows that if you were a fruit you would be a Banana. On the other hand, a Blog concerned mostly with the latest in Slash Fiction may very well benefit from the addition of a “What Lord of the Rings Character are you?” test. To obtain full credits in this question you should also comment on the journals where you found the tests, discussing your score there as well as in your own Blog.

I have three weeks in which to complete one of these questions so I shall give it some thought. For obvious reasons I am rather drawn towards number 2.

Well I finally gave in and got my hair chopped off. It was nice seeing it go all curly but it started to bug me by getting in my eyes. It had to go but now my neck and ears are cold. Grumble.

I just received an email out of the blue which somewhat surprised me.

I think it is possibly the writer’s equivalent of a Hendrix fan receiving a mail saying “I was Jimmi’s assistant for 18 years and have his favourite guitar still. Do you want it?”. In my case, it wasn’t Hendrix, it was Sir William Connor (Cassandra) and it wasn’t a guitar, it was his “Tripewriter” on which he penned most of his articles.

Anyone who knows me well will know that Cassandra was my biggest influence in writing and indeed, in quite a lot more so it is a fair thing to say I am quite pleased about this. Although it has reminded me that I am really not making much progress on the biography of him that I was mean to be writing. We’ll gloss over that for now though, won’t we?