Ordinary Gweilo

I remember a long time ago when it was a good idea to have a screen saver on your PC. I have seen screens that really did have an image etched into them because that was what they were displaying almost continuously. Now, computer applications are designed differently and screen technology has improved significantly, so it is no longer a problem.

Yet people still load stupid screensavers on to their PC. My all-time favourite was an office where I worked in the UK that had a corporate screensaver with a slide show of pictures of their products, their unlovely sixties office building and their even less attractive board directors. This monster ate up most of the processing power of the PC when it swung into action, and yet it was installed throughout the company.

Where I am currently working, the lady who sits in front of me has a screensaver that displays pictures from (I think) Switerland. When I am sitting there trying to think about something, I can see this wretched thing cycling through its small range of photographs of mountains and snow and cows (and motorways), and it has an hypnotic effect. My train of thought comes to a shuddering halt and I start thinking about the mountains and the snow and the nice visual effects as each new slide appears. Drives me mad…