Technology

On Saturday night, my phone decided to die from one second to the next. I was not pleased. The two of us have been through a lot together, basically from day one, and I had grown quite attached to it despite its less than perfect battery life (which is probably due to my obsessive charging at any opportunity). I was a lot more chilled, though, than I was when I realised I had lost my phone in Zurich on a business trip a few years ago. This time, it happened a few subway stops from my home and I knew I was about to return to my flat where I had a landline and spare (old, but functioning) smartphone waiting for me. Not a tragedy by any means, but a nuisance. I was up until rather late, reading forum posts and watching some YouTube videos of people taking their phones apart and fiddling with screwdrivers, hairdryers and the like, which I had no intention of doing, before I realised it was a common LG bug called "bootloop" and there was nothing I could fix myself.  I am now hoping that when the Pixel 2 comes out this week I will be able to get my hands on a Pixel (1) phone for a decent price. We shall see.

On another tech-related note I also wanted to recommend a book I am currently reading, called Bored and Brilliant. If you have ever thought that your use of electronic gadgets and the internet is stealing precious time of your day and you would like to change that, it is a worthwhile read. Well-written and not preachy at all. I was actually surprised that due to one of the smartphone-usage-tracker apps that were recommended in the book, I was not such a bad junkie as I had thought by any means...meaning that there are people out there wayyy more addicted to their phones than I am. Some people in my life might find that hard to believe, but that is another story.