Diversions – Good Design

Good design is hard to describe, especially for someone like me who is not naturally oriented as a visually creative person. But it’s sort of like pornography – you know it when you see it.

I am thinking about all the hype over the iPhone and I am telling myself I have no reason to buy a new phone just for the sake of having the latest. I bought a new Blackberry a little while back. I had the Blackberry 7100t model and liked it, except it had a chronic problem of the port for the charger getting worn out. I got tired of replacing it.

I could hold it in my right hand and use the trackball and the keyboard with that hand and leave the other free for driving, eating, drinking my latte, holding the dog’s leash or talking on my other cell phone.

Don’t say it… I know. I’m nuts sometimes. But it’s sick how the brain gets used to something. Your brain starts working in a particular way and has to unlearn and new-learn techniques when you change apartments, cars, guys etc. These electronic devices are a particular obsession. But I guess I’m still alive if I can still learn a new routine and adapt to someone else’s vision of what’s more efficient, effective to use.

My new Blackberry Pearl, (black not white, since I’m more of a black person…) has a trackball, not a trackwheel. But after only a few days, my thumb was still going for the side of the device and the trackwheel instead of the middle front and the trackball. This model has a camera on the right hand side so I accidentally turned on the camera and took some pictures inadvertently.

After a few days, I was typing as fast as I was before, even though the device is much smaller than the previous one.

And it’s slippery. Something about being new and black makes it feel slicker. I didn’t receive any kind of cover in the box, not even a cheap leather or cloth one. And it took me a few weeks to learn how to lock the keyboard, so the phone doesn’t call Mexico by itself (like it did yesterday) while it’s floating around in my purse.

I like having the camera. I never had a camera phone. I’m a bit of a Luddite in that respect. I never thought I needed one. But I started to feel funny because I would talk about my dog to people and fellow dog owners would show me their dog pictures on their phone and I couldn’t do the same. I suppose if I had children I would have been guilted into having a camera phone more quickly. Now I really get that obsession, too.

My first photo was one of my nieces. She’s a cutie. Making her picture my phone wallpaper was an easy way to get a really big hug from her. When I got home, though I took a photo of my dog. And now my Rosie is my phone wallpaper.