Everything is Fiddly – Call for Listener Contributions

Back in 2015, I wrote an article entitled “Everything is Fiddly” where I basically ranted about all of the things that are supposed to “just work” and yet don’t. In 2018, Helma from the Netherlands followed up with her own story for us of how everything is fiddly. As my life continues to be filled with little fiddly bits to this day, I was remembering how cathartic it was to get all of that off my chest.

And then I had what I think will be a fun idea. When something fiddly happens in your tech life, I’d like you to send me in a short recording describing it. I bet we can make this a regular segment, because, well, everything is fiddly!

Here’s the kind of thing I’m thinking of:

“When I’m on a walk for exercise, I use Siri to remind myself of things I need to do when I get home. She interrupts my podcast playing in Downcast while I’m talking, sets the reminder, and then restarts the podcast I was listening to. Except today where once Downcast kept playing while Siri and I were chatting so I missed a bunch. Then later she did interrupt the podcast but didn’t restart it, and when I asked her to resume, she picked a completely different podcast! Everything is fiddly!”

If you write it out as a short script, that’s even more fun. If you want to do an even longer-form fiddly bit, that’s an option as well. We needed a jingle, so Lindsay got my grandson Forbes to supply the voice and Steve added some music and we’re ready for business!

Hope this sounds as fun (and cathartic) to you as it does to me. All apps, all operating systems, all “smart” assistants, all IoT devices are fair game for this! Send your contributions to [email protected].