How I know, I just know, that Google Maps is edited by a man

I love, love, love Google Maps. I'm sorry if you're a Mapquest fan - is anyone these days? - but Google Maps is just so much better than anything else out there.

I can spend hours zooming round the world. I don't, because I reckon I already spend too much time in front of a screen  in idle pursuits. But it's fabulous, isn't it? You can SEE so much. I wish my father had lived in the era of Google Maps. He loved travel, geography, thinking about other cultures. He used to read travel books, and look at atlases. He would have loved zooming round the world. How it feeds your imagination! It's like being a child.

Google Maps are so USEFUL too. I love the street view. A house has come up for sale near our one (which is STILL on the market, waaah). I can have a quick look at it on Google Maps. Oh yes. THAT one. I recognise it. Going to a new place in our new city, and not sure if I'll find it ok. Quick scoot around Google Maps to have a shufty in advance so I know what to look out for. Feeling nosey about an area for some underhand reason? You can have a snoop from the privacy of your own desk. I trust the routes and timings of Google Maps far above our GPS - though if Google Maps added a voice, called itself Emily, and insinuated itself into Husband's trusting heart, then I'd probably turn against it too. It's MARVELOUS, that's what Google Maps is. And I try not to use upper case words too much in my writing (lazy emphatics, in my opinion), so when I do so, you REALLY know I mean it. They've started showing buildings in 3D on the map now, when you go in close. That's fairly incredible.

I like the odd quirk of humour too. If you set a route from England to America, it tells you to swim the Atlantic (at least it used to... I've just tried it, and it didn't seem to work). And there's a place in Antarctica where they've added a little cartoon penguin (not that I'd encourage stereotyping the culture of any geographical location, but they do have a point).

But...

Google Maps has just changed the way one of its features works, and it's a disaster. Now, it has to be said, I'm not the world's most spatially competent person. I'm a bit slow in three dimensions. I remember the days when I instinctively wanted a mouse to operate in left/right the other way. You get what I mean. I wanted to move the mouse to the left, and see the cursor move to the right. Apparently it's quite common, and don't worry about me. I got over it some years ago. I can cause hilarity by trying to learn a new Playstation or Wii game. It involves a lot of expletives, and questions like "but why does it go THAT way, when I turn the console THIS way?" (more lazy emphatics, sorry). If I'm in a lift, and I want to hold the doors open for someone who's hurrying to get in, it's very hit or miss whether I will improve their chances. I look at those arrows and lines, and in the heat of the moment, pressure on, hit both, one after the other, until I get the desired result. I really, really, really can't imagine the solar system, with planets in orbit on different planes. They should be in a straight line, like in the pictures in books. No... operating 2D to 3D isn't my strong suit.

In fact, in the early days of Google Maps, when you had to click on a small arrow on the side of the frame to move the map from left to right or up and down, I found it counter-intuitive. I pointed out to Husband that if you click on the arrow on the left, the map moved to the right. What was the logic of THAT? He helped me re-wire my neural pathways on that one, by suggesting I think of it in terms of "you click on the arrow that points in the direction of the bit of map you want to see next". Good old Husband.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Google Maps has changed the way you get the camera to rotate around, when you're in Street View. Once you've got over the initial excitement of being in Street View ("Oh my goodness, look at the DETAIL... it's AMAZING..."), you can usually turn around, to the left, to the right, and then walk up and down the street. But they've changed the little operating thingy in the top left hand corner. You used to click on the arrow that points in the direction of the bit of world you want to see next. The left arrow for looking to the left; the right arrow for looking to the right. Easy peasy. Now, they have a compass, and when you hover over it, you can "rotate compass clockwise" or "rotate compass anti-clockwise". This is totally bewildering. It means you click on the left side of it to go right, and the right side of it to go left. WHAT IS THE POINT OF THAT? It makes me feel like I'm driving from north to south and someone won't let me turn the map round. That's what it makes me feel like.

And THAT, dear Bloggy Friends, is how I know, I just know, that Google Maps is edited by a man.

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Google, Blogger, my dishwasher, and my ill child

Am I the only one who is getting fed up with Google? (Oh yes, you can always rely on me when it comes to being up there at the vanguard of blogging technology.)

First and foremost, I never know whether the word should have an initial capital or not. And is it different according to whether it's a noun or a verb? Do you write "I looked on Google" or "I looked on google"? Do you write "I Googled an old friend" or "I googled an old friend"?

Then there are the glitches. My Google Reader (ooh, initial caps there, it seems) now opens two copies of the blog I want to read when I click on it. I have no idea why. I didn't change any settings. It just started doing it. I'm annoyed.

A few days ago, again for no apparent reason, the format of my gmail page changed. I can't sign out from it. The words 'sign out' used to be in the top right hand corner, but where they were, there is now my name. If I click on my name, I get a drop-down list, which does have 'sign out' on it, but it won't let me click on it. If I try to, before I can get the cursor there, quick as a flash, it whisks the words away and reloads the page. I'm annoyed.

Blogger is full of glitches too, and they're getting worse. Does anyone else think so, or is this just me? I sometimes get an email notifying me of a comment on my blog, but that comment doesn't appear on my blog itself. I'm guessing that for every time I notice this, there are several when I don't pick it up. Life is short, Bloggy Peeps, and when I'm reading comments from my email account, I don't bother to go to my blog to check that they're there. It's just that I've noticed a few times. I'm annoyed.

Plus, our aged dishwasher needs new baskets. The plastic is all peeling off, leaving sharp rusty stumps, which I've cut myself on. The cutlery basket has holes in the bottom, so that if you don't stand the cutlery up in just the right way, it falls through. Because the model is such an old one, it would cost us $280 to replace the baskets. That's $150 for the bottom one and $130 for the top one. We can buy a new dishwasher for that. I'm annoyed.

AND... when children are off school because they are sick, you have to pick up work for them. There's always loads of it. Loads. It's like the teacher feels the need to punish you for letting your child get ill. (Note I say "you", not the child - because where do you think the burden of this task falls?) It's bad enough for one day, but if your child has been off for three, they pretty much have to write a couple of theses as they struggle back to health. I'm annoyed.

Pea coat, the question on everyone's lips

Why is a pea coat called a pea coat?

Several Google results say this:

The name 'pea coat' comes from the heavy twill material that the coat is made of. It was called pilot cloth, which became known as P cloth. The P coat became the pea coat.

I like my blog to contain educational content. Now you can all impress your friends next time pea coats come up in conversation.

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