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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I love you all, but...

... no post tonight.

You know you're not in America, when you move house and have to wait over a month for a landline and internet connection. Yes, you read that correctly. Over... a... month... A very long month. Because a BT engineer has to come and activate our internet hub thingy (already installed in the house), before anyone from any other company can do whatever they do to get us connected. Apparetly BT are very busy. 15-yo asked if that didn't count as a monopoly, and if so, why was it allowed. I didn't know the answer.

All I do know is that not having a landline or the internet is a pain in the proverbial, though also strangely useful. It does mean that life is remarkably uninterrupted, and that unpacking can happen at our own pace. On the other hand, it also means that you can end up driving for over an hour round the city, because you're using the GPS to tell you where things are, instead of looking them up on the internet. The GPS tells you that a vet surgery (more on that in a minute) is 3.5 miles away. What it doesn't tell you is that the vet surgery it has in mind is the other side of the city centre, where there are serious semi-permanent roadworks, a zillion tourist buses, roads closed because of some international arts festival or other called "The Edinburgh Festival", and that it's lunchtime. I resorted to stopping at a petrol station and asking the way to the ring road after the vet surgery, which actually was a very clever move. I've only lived here six days and I'm already more savvy than the GPS. That's a relief. I hate being out-smarted by a GPS. That smug tone of voice... That know-it-all superior attitude... Though it has given me a good idea for an epitaph. I think I might have "Recalculating your route" written on my tombstone.

All of which is to apologise for the fact that I'm not posting much at the moment. BT are too busy to connect us up to the internet at home. When I do sneakily find internet access, hidden away in Husband's office (it takes three keys to get in here, but I get a splendid view of the city from the window), I have a whole list of boring admin things to do. Plus I did absolutely promise the kids that I would look at the Scottish Kennel Club website. A promise is a promise, so I must do so (though they are incorrect if they think it will make me more likely to get a puppy in the next three weeks before their term starts, rather than waiting sensibly until we are a little more settled in - as I have explained to them more than a few times). Faced with the choice of engaging with my beloved, but patient and far-flung, bloggy friends, or satisfying the impatient and close at hand demands of my children, I'm afraid I'm opting for the Scottish Kennel Club website.

This dog lark... it's a part-time job, I tell you, and I haven't even got the blessed thing yet.
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Bugs

Apologies to those of you who are squeamish about creepy-crawlies, but I am returning to the theme. They have been a feature of the past week or two. The fireflies were a high point; it's been downhill all the way since.

First off, I have discovered that I am sensitive to mosquito bites. Everyone seems to have an allergy these days, so I think I could say this is my one. I’ve had mosquito bites before which become the size of a 50p piece and a bit puffy, but we’re talking different league here. The mosquito here asks “do you want me to supersize that?” as he bites, and my body, without my permission, says “oh yes please”. The bite becomes the size of a beer mat, and then it starts changing shape and moving in a rather intriguing way. Up an arm, round the side of a leg, morphing into less tidy shapes as it spreads over the contours of muscle and joint. It’s red and hot and swollen and angry. The only saving grace is that it isn’t particularly itchy (although if I confess that, I will obviously receive less sympathy), and I am relieved that they’re not spider bites. The first bite had me worried, especially when a very friendly and helpful pharmacist used words like "venomous", and told me to look out for evidence of tracking up a blood vessel. But I have now caught a mozzy in action, which is useful diagnostic work on the one hand, but on the other, not a very cheering prospect for the summer. There are sprays for yourself and for your back yard, and you can eat lots of garlic, but the bottom line is cold compresses and anti-histamine tablets which give me a sort of brain fog for about 3 days per bite. The alternative is never setting foot outside my house, car, or destination, which isn’t very appealing, although it would give me a real flavor of life as an average Midwesterner – ouch, did I say that?

Next,10-yo has been doing a Young Scientist's Camp each morning this week. This involved exploring in woods and ditches. Good childhood stuff. He came home and said "you've got to do a tick check on me". Once I'd finished wearying patient Husband with jokes about putting any ticks I might find in boxes, and whether they'd be ticks or checks once in the box, I realised I didn't know what I was looking for in any case. I have people I can ring up and ask these things, so I did that. Then I looked up the information on the internet. This is always a mistake. in just a few minutes, you can go from hearing that ticks are really nothing much to worry about, to knowing that they can carry Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. You can see what a Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever rash looks like. You can learn that most cases respond to antibiotics, but that 3% don't.

This is one of the difficult things about living abroad. You don't build up knowledge gently over many years. You have to get it brutally all at once. You don't have the backdrop of years of plucking ticks out of scalps, and of your mother plucking ticks out of yours, to give you a reasonable perspective in which to put the very occasional horror story. You can't download that kind of knowledge from the computer. Human memory files work in a rather more cumulative way. I'm not sure you can rely on finding short cuts.

So you can see why I am fed up with the bugs here. I'll have to make sure I go and watch my friends the fireflies again this evening to redress the balance a little.