UNDAUNTED

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Last evening I went to a Boston College webinar (above). They were kind enough to let me in before it started. So I was there when the crisis struck. The speaker for the night had locked himself out on the three connectable devices in his house. There was no way he could now get into the webinar.

What to do? Would the event have to be abandoned? There was a suggestion that we go from webinar mode to normal Zoom meeting mode and discuss the subject among ourselves.

And that's the way it was looking when Michael Cronin at the Dublin end (fourth from the left in the top row above) realised that he was in contact with the speaker, James O'Halloran, on his phone and that he could sort of patch that sound into the meeting. It would be analogue, but no matter. And Michael had James's Powerpoint anyway.

So we had the full webinar with James speaking and Michael manipulating the images.

I love it when man (in this case) outfoxes the machine. Well done all.

And here's another one.

This is set in the library in Raheny,

The talk was to be on the Jacob's archive and it relied absolutely on the images.

With a few minutes to go, the speaker arrives with his Mac which is duly plugged into the projector. Image appears on the screen. But wait, it's upside down. Is there a cyber doctor in the house? Many from the audience volunteered but to no avail.

So we were scuppered, or so we thought. Then someone had a bright idea on how to overcome the machine's stubborness.

One of the attendees sat in the front row with the projector upside down on their lap.

Job OXO.

Another occasion I attended turned up a similar problem.

It was Sr. Margaret MacCurtain's 90th birthday and the hosts had organised a video of Michael D wishing Margaret a Happy Birthday. The projector was rigged up (above) and the Presidential video was on standby.

But, alas, the room was so crowded that there was a heavy crush of bodies between the projector and the far wall.

No problem. Our sound/vision man, Cody Sanders, simply lifted the projector shoulder high and held it there for the duration of Michael D's greeting.

My final version of man versus the machine is of a different order. And it's not a man this time, it's a woman. And thank God for that or I'd be ostracised by the sisters for a complete lack of gender balance. Bad enough as it is.

I was in Hickey's to buy three little tubs of those dyes you put in the washing machine. Found them without any bother and brought them to the counter.

"I'm afraid I can only sell you one of these" said the assisstant.

"Why is that?" sez I.

"Well, the machine thinks we've only the one and it refuses to register the other two"

And so the lady supervisor is summonded, thinks for a minute, and with her magic key confidently overrides the damn machine.

Full marks.

Maybe you've come across stuff like this yourself. If so feel free to comment.