Rewinding to ones computing past

I'm not feeling that great today to be honest with what feels like a winter cold coming on that I hope clears in just over a weeks time but be that as it may, I was looking a bit at the statistics Google give you about what posts people read, where they're from, any sites they used to find this blog and so on and one thing that struck me was actually some of you do read the older posts. It was that which got me thinking.
I think must of us are aware of how our experience of the Internet has changed over the years, how that's fed into what we use to access it and the different programs we've had connected with our use of computers.
I suspect many of us have what you call a desktop that after some seconds, comes up often with a colourful design.

Well as some of you have been reading posts from 2008, here's one of mine from December that year that tells you quite a few things.
To start with like now in 2008 I also was in love with Miss Kitty so I made it the main image rather than that bland Windows XP Pro  screen.
Also look at the dimensions specifically the aspect ratio, it's 4:3 that tells you I had more traditional CRT monitor the time compared to the near universal 16:9 or 16:10 Widescreen Lcd ones we have today.
Also, it's resolution is 600x800 which is very low by modern standards.
Looking at the toolbar you'll spot firstly Microsoft were highlighting an urgent security issue with that shield with ! mark and Skype was set up on the machine although I didn't use it much.
Like today you'll spot the Avast antivirus program (the blue ball with an A) that I've always used, a program for a separate webcam I no longer use, the Nero 6 Smartstart cd writing program and Yahoo messenger that I suspect a good number of us had back then as we used Yahoo's services like Geocities, messenger and email. I seldom log into Yahoo today with services from Google being that much better overall.
Also you'll spot a trio of Mozilla Foundation programs such as the browser Firefox which was much better at the time when it came to security and features than Internet Exploder 6  (I.E to some), the email program Thunderbird which I used with a lousy Internet Service Providers (I.S.P.) email services until I moved to web based mail exclusively, that organized my mail and allowed me to have coloured backgrounds and text that help my dyslexia and Sunbird, a desktop based calendar to help me with organizing my life which is effectively replaced now  by the Google cloud based Calendar.
I now use Pale Moon a Swedish forked version of Firefox as my main browser on my laptops and the old desktop is gone!
The keenly eyed will also have spotted the installation files for the free cd copying program, dbPoweramp and the shortcut for music player Winamp both of which are installed and much used on my newer laptops. There was no iTunes installed as the machine was incapable of running it although it was very popular back then.
I wonder how many of view still have pictures of your old desktops and can tell the story behind them?

Teenbeat XVI - Rumer

After the last few posts here's a return post in our Teenbeat series that does link a bit to the previous posts in that they are connected to past rituals if not likes from my actual childhood.

 

No, that wasn't my actual phonograph although it does so perfectly depict that whole girls gathered around it listening thing perfectly that we did.

Now on to the featured artist, a Pakistan born Britisher going by the stage name of Rumer ('real' name Sarah Joyce) with her new lp entitled Into Colour released this month that features the much airplayed track Dangerous.
It's usually a dangerous task to define an artist by others, but it's fair to say her style is very much routed in the singer songwriter mode and has many things in common with the late Karen Carpenter, which as seasoned blog readers know was the stuff very much on my stereo back in the 70's when I was a child (one can hardly say growing up with a straight face!).

Much to some peoples surprise in 2012 she released this album, Boy's Don't Cry which was a covers album drawing from the 70's although the lead off single P.F.Stone actually goes back to the 60's.
Initially some folk issued groans thinking she was jumping on the lucrative covers bandwagon but she makes every single song on it sound as if it was her own. 

 This was the album that started off her solo career, 2010's Seasons Of My Soul which as belatedly issued in the States the following year featuring the singles Slow and Aretha which were followed by an EP recorded with Burt Bacharach on download and very limited 7" vinyl.
She performed A House is not a Home, a  Burt Bacharach and Hal Davis song at the White House May 9th 2012 event honouring Burt.

Rumer's lp's feature different cover art from the corresponding cd and digital download editions usually designed by her and it is in that form  my collection of her recordings exists and is enjoyed.

I have made 'vintage' minidisc editions of these albums for posterity with the first two combined to a single 'extended play' disc.

Totality of indentity (a kind of essay)

After last week's entry which seemed to flow better than I anticipated, I sat down thinking a bit about about the follow up.
Some people write research papers, lecture and even publish lengthy books about things like Identity in all it's different forms and I purposely say forms because we're all different and from my point of view you can see it  as a Venn diagram  with it's overlapping elements.
For some people what can lead to an exploration of their own persona  can be a person they have a close nurturing relationship with in childhood or for some even into adulthood although for me it was more that I had that already but without the space to be me.

No doubt if I had the  space I'd been more like her as whenever I draw myself that was it and 'drawing in class' brought some of this stuff back to me recently and the crazy but true happening that upon seeing the  white frilly socks, Mommy bought me a pair and  a lolipop I could suck in her presence no less!
 Part of identity for me certainly includes an interest in ideas, people and what one could call the arts being brought up where we belonged to a book club, went to the theatre and thanks to the record club had from an early age records of favourite ballet and other classical music.
I still have a number of the books in a bookshelf.

That was one and funny enough I could say the minute I saw the cover that I had it when I was younger as the smaller ones were a special offer you got and many were 'gifted' my way.
Another one I bought used when I was around 13 from a Country Fair was this

That rather formal portrait is of the late conductor Herbert von Karajan and this record was from 1954 in a performance I'd never really forgotten being played on my stereo phonograph even though the record was mono and I was able to get a cd with this on it a short while back.

For reasons best known to themselves my folks got me one of these with a load of accessories like a radio and search light although I tended to play more with them as peace keepers rather than depressing Germans vs Allies  WW2 stuff and as far as I recall my female cousin inherited and played with them which was out of the norm back then.
Personally I wanted Barbie instead but there you go!

One of the great things about this life is the extent to which you can rediscover play, feeling free to play more on the notion of what it is you'd rather be doing rather than any gender based restrictions by parents, play groups or schools that for some of us were issues at the time.
For me it helps deal with certain more specific to me issues such as my learning disabilities that can and does make deal with adult responsibilities very frustrating when you struggle with the means because I can focus more around things I can do, enjoying them. And so being disabled too for me is also a big part of my identity (I'm not with one, I has one in my whole being) too having had it from birth.
So this identity thing is pretty important for us personally although I don't feel people should put up rigid barriers between themselves  based purely upon that, focusing more on what we have in common.

On lifestyle (An essay of sorts)

It's a while since I looked at the statistics of this blog, in part cos I think they can be a little misleading at times, but it appears it's had over 51,000 page views since it started and is one of the prominent alg blogs around.
The person who worked out it also could be described as a slice of alg  life blog got that right because its coverage is broader than just about me being a little/middle it's also about the life and how I see that from it.

For I suspect most of us, this life in its differing aspects such as our child-like interests, sense of dressing more as a little - for me little/middle girl - gender presentation for some and so on comes from within.
Certainly speaking purely personally it's something I've felt for a very long time in my so-called real life even if some individual aspects may of changed over time like my more recent feeling comfortable with the more frillier side of being alg.
It is something that we feel, something that we need perhaps in our lives not that we may not have balance this sometimes with more adult responsibilities like paying the bills and for a good many, needing to work too.
We own that sense of self, working it as best we can to suit our requirements and we're in control of that at all times. In other words we're responsible for our sense of little and where we take it.
This is I feel a bit different than what you may see elsewhere where it's portrayed as being "Forced" although I'd say that's not an accurate description so much as the person doing that is more the one enabling, using psychological suggestions, a sense of wanting to be enabled in the subject as no one can in the everyday sense of the word make you do feel or do something you don't wish.
The person buys into it in other words and I suspect they may not have the confidence to just do it by themselves if that's really them. 
It's a different feeling I think from any sense  of, if you're transgendered, wanting wrongs in the form of gendered presentation to be put aright as being enabled to say attend school in the gender you feel which I can well understand from personal experience.
That's just about you as the child back then, being able to be yourself, the gender you really feel, and to have the childhood involving  play and schooling you deserved and all to often never got although through the miracle of age-play you may well be able to recreate something of it such as at meets or in creating say school based role playing especially if it can be face to face.
All I know is I loved some of these elements at Camp, they made me feel more complete and very happy. Maybe it does for you?