Gypsy blogging

I'm writing this from a McDonald's playground. Could be worse, I suppose. I could have been reduced to texting this post from my cell phone. Since it will take up to a fortnight to get my Internet connection repaired, I suspect that I'm going to see a lot of libraries, cheap restaurants, and coffee houses before I'm done.

It's amazing how much we've come to depend on the Internet. I don't just mean for the obvious things like e-mail or banking, but things like software that hasn't anything to do with the Web, but goes into a conniption fit if it can't make a connection while you're working. For example, I figured that I'd fill some of the down time by doing site maintenance. Trouble is, my HTML editor keeps trying to load the adverts onto the pages I'm working on and goes into a sulk when it can't.

I've also discovered that I'm completely out of touch. I'm so used to getting my news by checking my RSS feeds while I work that I'm amazed how ignorant I am of the news now. I don't subscribe to any papers, I,ve long fallen out of the habit of watching television news, and I loathe American radio to the point where I pretty much confine myself to Radio 3 & 4 on the Intertubes, so my main sources of information now are conversations with passing tinkers and watching for signs of the masses fleeing for the hills. The latter is generally a reliable indicator that Something Is Up.

Then there are those tiny inputs that I never had ten years ago and don't noticenow until they're gone. What the weather like? Glance at the the weather widget. What's the definition of dysphemism? Dictionary widget? What's Russian for "My hovercraft is full of eels?" Translator widget. What are my appointments? calendar wideget. It becomes particularly annoying when I want to look something up because I no longer have the groaning huge stack of mouldy old reference books, so I can't look up this quote or that figure at two AM. In many ways, it's not so much being thrown back to the 1980s as it is to the Edwardian era--which is probably a lucky thing because under the reign of Edward VII the collars were more presentable.

Anyway, if the balloon goes up, would someone be good enough to send along a man with a message in a cleft stick? I'd hate for Armageddon to roll in and then miss out on it.