Loading and other Sensations

created, =this.created & modified, =this.modified tags:computerstechnologylifelist

NOTE

I keep adding to this list and I’m not sure what the connective thread of the elements is. But there is a feeling, and then I place it here.

Possibly it is a human thing, where an experience is felt that is somewhat unique, but also familiar (to the individual, and to a human). There is some unexpectedness but also conditioned familiarity.

Little observations.

I also know that you might have felt this.

• That sensation when a process load takes longer than an error, so you know you’ve successfully logged in.

• Racing your mouse cursor across the screen to catch an UI element before it closes or falls behind in window order, and failing and repeating this but faster.

• When you have left a place that has a sticker or wristband for access, and you later become conscious that you have the wristband on after leaving.

• When your address bar autocomplete produces an long forgotten URL from your past. Which you click.

• That sensation when you feel that what you ordered new, is somehow a used product refurbished.

• The feeling the greenness of spring grass, and a blue sky is almost too green and fake.

• Getting a text when you are busy, ignoring it. At a later point it comes back to you that you must respond.

• Editing colors of photographs all day, and the spaces between differences in hue adjustments that become so miniscule that a correct choice becomes arbitrary and color has lost some meaning. This is brought up in [https://writingwithimages.com/6-problems-and-possibilities-for-writers/] The problem, from a writer’s point of view, is that manipulated images call attention to their production. As a reader, especially if you use photo software yourself, you’re drawn into speculating how the author changed the images. That’s the Photoshop Effect: being taken out of the narrative, or out of the pictured scene, and being distracted thinking about palettes, curves, healing brushes, layers, contrast, color balance, and filters. For me at least the most distracting thing of all is noticing where the author did not know enough about Photoshop (or other software) to make the improvements she clearly intended. This happens, for me, in Eco’s Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, which has some incompetent soft brush effects.

• The idea here being that you become to aware of the production of the image, that the sense of the image falling over you is lost. I felt this too when doing photography. I was precisely aware of the minute focus of my vision, my consciousness of the details while losing the greater scene. Maybe this is partly the joy of the broken and the incomplete, because you are forced to de-focus and de-fixate allowing your mind to wander to fill the cracks.

• When you get off wrong exit and find yourself in a strange upstate suburb or brooklyn neighborhood, rerouted and defeated (I just want to be home) but mixed with new adventurous wonder. You resign - I suppose I’ll just live here.

• Trying to find someone, not everyone or anyone or noone. The one-ness of these words but the differences in their other root. Some-, every-, any-, no-.

• A solo podcaster’s embarrassment of what they are doing, should another party come by.

  • Example sitting in a car talking to a microphone (theoretical audience of thousands) but completely embarrassed and stifled by prospect of someone pulling up directly next to them in the lot.

• On your birthday how all these automated messages and services bombard you with happy birthday messages and a false sense of intimacy (often some people close will forget your birthday as well).

• When you realize a bit of your watch, or phone is reflecting light in the room and you accidentally control the beam.

• When you lose your phone, but it was charging.

• When you pull something that is charging away, but it is connected and charging and pulls the entire apparatus from the wall.

• Early instagram posts seem to have more aggressive filtering in general. As in color treatment or garish film emulation, not as in morphing filters which are of another timeline stratum.

• Thinking you accidentally moving a folder or file, and not knowing where it is or if you moved one.

• When traffic is rerouted and you and other cars clearly following GPS blindly find yourself on this sidestreets mission and you feel a sense of connection/camaraderie that you didn’t already

• When a mosquito is around, and you swat at it and you cannot be sure if you so pulverized it completely it is gone, or you have simply missed it.

• When a screen is so bright, and turns white and hurts your eyes.

• Shaking your mouse to be aware of how much movie remains.

• Being sad by algorithmically generate “remember when” messages that dredge up past photos.

• When a building denies you entry, such as an automatic door at the grocery store. You wave and attempt to engage it. There’s a bit where it is bent slightly, either the cause of the mechanism failing or mark of people forcing it open.

• When others are made aware of a vibrating phone, and there is no attempt to suppress the vibration.

• When you find plastic wrapping on an object, like a thin protective transparency on electronics days or months or even years after use.

• When you purchase something new but cannot shake the sense that it is either refurbished, or someone has previously used it/repackaged.

• When you set yourself up as prey for a mosquito you only hear first, only to trap her before her bite.

• That period of semi-consciousness where you work to disable an alarm sound.

• When you set off your own car alarm.

• Being first at a traffic light that is red, and it feels too long and you wonder if it is actually working.

• In user input, making an error which causes a sequence of errors

  • a simple form would be turning off a video that was already on, and missing what you wanted to video.
  • a more complex would be with form elements on a page, which shift causing your memorized location sense to falter, which results in further misclicks (often window closes or other error cascades)

• When a piece of technology fails, and you adapt around it in an awkward loophole state

  • a laptop keyboard fails and you attach a full sized keyboard.
  • a laptop trackpad fails and you use a mouse.
  • the button a cell phone fails and you use on screen display as a home button.

• You start a new device with plenty of memory space. You don’t really think about the limits to the storage. Then you finally exhaust it, and live in the red zone for the rest of the time you use the device. Periodically clearing small items so that you clear it off, but never really in the green again. Why is that?

  • I have had 1 GB left on certain computers of 3/4 of the life on the machine at this point. How am I constantly supporting this existence? Always finding space, deleting but putting new stuff in. It almost defies physics.

• Moving too fast. Looking something up, getting off it really quickly and realizing you didn’t fully process it.

  • check the time, check it again.
  • check the weather, go back and check it again.
  • click on a webpage element, it transfers you, realize that the prior webpage had info you need.
  • send an email, realize the email had an error as you send it.

• Watching someone type, but the focus of the field is off - so they aren’t actually typing anything. The words are just being eaten up to a void. You are unsure to tell them.

• When you are drinking a drink, read the label and discover it is in fact caffeinated.

• Waiting at a green light because someone ahead of you hasn’t noticed it has turned green.

  • Their head is down, checking their phone

• When someone jumps the gun at a red light, inching forward impatiently.

  • For some reason these people also are late off the jump when it actually turns green
  • I’ve wondered the psychology of these, perhaps it’s some kind of revealing their hand/eagerness too early and then “playing cool”

• Keeping a notification live on the phone so that you can see it after

• When you see the silhouette of a squirrel crossing a wire above a highway, only briefly as you pass under it.

• Writing a list like this, that grows unwieldy an being unsure if you’ve already written the entry on the list

• Stumbling upon a three year dormant social media profile.

• When you want to lower a volume that is already too loud and you accidentally raise it further.

• The feeling when you encounter you name, but it isn’t in reference to you but another.

  • Can be your first name, or both names.

• The accumulation of a single food product by virtue of you eating a product regularly but not using a particular part of it.

  • So a bunch of disposable chopsticks accumulating etc
  • A packet of flavoring
  • napkins from takeout

• When you are at a red light, and far back on a line cars waiting to go, and feel at once the need for a collaborative spirit for everyone to make the light.

• When you get the sense you might have repeated yourself, with an entry on this list, but you put it on the list anyway.

  • If already it is on the list, wonder the difference between the two entries

• Seeing a notification appear at the periphery of vision, but missing it and not being able to find it.

• When something is ordered and it isn’t immediately pressing or necessary, but your delivery service/courier treat it as such

  • I just ordered some salad for the upcoming week from uber eats, and was alerted that they are sending out two couriers, one for each package of salad

• Returning to an old website you have an account on and finding your notifications for the past couple of years filled with spam or other useless junk

• Writing with your mouse cursor

  • An act of desperation and depleted communicative options
  • Here I am, your professional man, sending you this reduced to child-form scribble to tell you where to click to send the email.

• When you’ve trapped yourself in fullscreen mode, unable to escape or find the keyboard shortcut necessary.

• A mark on your screen and you’re uncertain if it is something within the screen or a superficial mark.

• Hearing a phantom USB device disconnect or reconnect sound

• The vague sense of uncertainty after completing the online checkout process while shopping

  • Are we done here?

• Having an idea and being distanced from the place where you can record it

  • Driving a car, an idea will come upon you. You attempt to store it. Someone cuts you off, it is lost. You walk through the threshold of your home upon returning, a vague sense of loss comes over you. You cannot recall the thought. Later, brushing your teeth it comes back.
  • In the conversation, a thought occurs to you. Then another, then another. There is no place to share it. The moment is gone. There is a tension.

• When you see someone in the comments being swindled or scammed or engaging with a bot

  • “All of us at MusicProductsRecords loved this. If you have a minute join our live session!”
    • “Thank you! I’ll check it out!”

• When a hand sanitizer produces hand sanitizer in the absence of a hand, resulting in a pile under the spout

• Approaching the person you are on a phone with in real life

• The discovery of an exploded pen.

• Having a hat on your head and forgetting it was on

• The blemish of a finger blocking a cell phone photo

• When you message someone and by some feedback in the interface you are aware they are suddenly activated to your message.

  • There’s the sense of a person, like a shadow under a door frame, then often silence.

• A notification that disappears before you can register it, and cannot be found again.

• Searching through bubble wrap for something that isn’t there.

• When you’ve situated yourself in such a comfortable way, wrapped in blankets or lying down, and realize you’ve left some essential item across the room resulting in a dilemma of accepting the loss or interrupting your comfort.

  • The import of comfort is magnified, and even a moment and a few feet of interruption feel too difficult.

• When you hear your computer making a sound, or the drive is noisy but you can’t fully explain why it seems to be crunching.

• Keyboard sounds on a voice call.

• When a table or piece of furniture rocks every so slightly when touched or moved

  • Like when you type and the monitor shakes, first loudly then reverberates to nothingness.

• Forgetting something, but then remembering it when re-encountering it because of some digital record-like note you’ve made in the past, which instructs yourself

• Doing something wrong, and because the algorithmic habit is so ingrained, you restart to try again and do exactly the same thing you did wrong again on your second try

• Copying and pasting something, but your precision is off so you accidentally leave off the first letter of the sentence you are copying, which you just write.

• Searching for an unfamiliar icon in the taskbar

• Being exposed by recommendations or watched clips on streaming sites

• When you are listening to a playlist for background music, and a song pulls at you for a name.

• When your autocorrect corrects a word incorrectly, but you send it. Then make the correction and it autocorrects it again, but you send it.

• Clicking on link, then immediately regretting it between the space of a load, because you see someone on the unloading page that you actually wanted to click, but is now lost on return because of some kind of feed refresh, or algorithm runaway, or even you forget precisely what it was that you wanted to click in the first place.

• Hearing someone say “Am I allowed to swear?” after cursing in some digital format (podcast, video interview)

• When someone shows up on your YouTube feed and you don’t recall them or where you added them.

  • You see they haven’t posted anything in multiple years.

• When you are waiting for your turn for something online, that has a countdown. You drift away, miss your time and restart your wait. This sequence happens many times.

• When your phone starts speaking and it’s telling you the definition of “grub hub” or something because it misregistered some input or voice command.

• Listening to the inside of someone’s pocket for too long because the pocket dialed you.