Imagine a level of fame so intense that you start to question your sanity. Imagine having a life so minutely examined that you are no longer sure where you end and the rest of the world begins. Now imagine that this fame is so closely restricted that you can walk down the street unmolested, as safe as anyone can be from unexpected intrusion. It's the ultimate double life, and it is tearing me apart.
An Examined Life - an excerpt
...but, strangely, the clients love it. The insurance sector is, as Andy intuited, not terribly sexy, and this particular company has absolutely no idea why they want a website – but they want me to design it. So, after various proposals mainly based around using the company logo as a background, and using lots of pictures of the Chairman, I casually mention the webcam. Immediately the marketing guy wants to know more.
"Well, it’s not something you see very often, but it might give your customers a feel for who you really are, and what you look like." I say, somewhat lamely; "It would certainly provide a point of interest – in fact, since it’s so unusual, you might want to do a little PR on the concept and generate lots of free publicity, and lots of hits." This guy doesn’t really know what a website is, but someone’s told him that lots of ‘hits’ are good. Suddenly the whole meeting becomes less about me trying to convince him that I am only the designer, and I really don’t know enough about insurance to write every word, and decide what needs to go in, and what doesn’t; and is all about how soon we can start, and how much the Chairman is going to love this. I finally escape by promising him some concepts for the following week, and on the train home, I realise that the only way I can demonstrate this is to rig a camera up in my own home, and show him that. Well, Andy better have something for me to try, I think.
And, of course, he does. His bottomless fund of gadgets has actually turned up two of the things; one of which looks like it was built by some kid in his bedroom, and the other which looks rather like a golf ball. Neither of them looks like they could possibly be any use.
Naturally, the home-built contraption works best – it only takes three hours to install the software, and there’s enough cable so that the image is of something other than the back of the monitor – and after a lengthy bout of swearing, a picture finally emerges. I feel rather like Logie Baird must have done – even in this age of home video, and public access, to see myself on the monitor is rather startling, and curiously rewarding. At least, I think it’s me – the quality is dreadful.
"I seem to remember the pictures from the moon were a little more distinct than this" I comment over my shoulder to Andy, who has spent the evening sulking on the sofa with his guitar, endlessly repeating some arpeggiated introduction, and occasionally threatening to break into ‘Stairway to Heaven’, which causes me to growl rather menacingly. I won’t let him near the PC because this is my project, and although he could probably have sorted it out in half the time, he won’t ever tell me or show me what he’s doing, and that makes me prone to peppering his skull with large, heavy objects. So he sat and sulked while I fiddled, and now, of course he’s all reason and sensitivity…
"Well, you’ve probably done something wrong – are you sure it’s configured for the correct video setup?"
Occasionally, just occasionally, he might be right about something, but it won’t do to let him know that:
"Yes, I’m sure, but I’ll check it again…." He’s right, of course – but I manage to conceal my changes, and pretend to fiddle with something else, until suddenly, I am presented with a crystal-clear (well, significantly less fuzzy) picture of the side of my head and the fireplace beyond. I move – nothing happens. Two minutes later, the camera clunks alarmingly, and the picture starts to refresh on the screen. This picture is even less flattering, catching my reaction to the clunk (which can’t be right – surely it clunks as the picture is taken), but I am enchanted. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get the image onto a webpage, and how much I’ll overcharge the client for installing the camera….
Of course it’s not as simple as that. The clunk was not, as I had fondly imagined, the picture being taken (Andy earned a patented icy stare for asking which part of ‘video camera’ I hadn’t understood). The camera is, obviously when you think about it, a video device, and the picture on the screen refreshes every so often – in this case, the default setting is two minutes. The clunk turned out to be terminal – something to do with the power source giving up, which apparently fries the thing, and is a ‘known problem’ according to the "help" desk at the manufacturers.
How I hate "help" desks – if you search the web, you’ll quite quickly find any number of pages devoted to ‘tales from the helpdesk’: often very funny anecdotes from the poor souls who man these lines. They get me every time, until I catch myself – that’s me and you they’re laughing at. They’re laughing because people ring them up to get help because they don’t know anything about computers. Some poor soul’s been given a PC and some incompatible software; no-one’s even thought to tell them about system units and monitors, or where the on-switch is, or why it makes a funny whirring sound, or anything. After two hours of watching the thing refuse to perform any kind of logical task, and getting increasingly demented, they call the number in the manual. And the guy who answers is the kind of guy (and yes, it’s a guy – not a man or a woman or anyone with a name you can relate to) who’s been building PCs in his spare time since he was 12. He knows everything there is to know about the subject. You need his help, you’re very frustrated, beyond rational thought, and the one person in the world who can help you is actually going to laugh at you.