somebody told me

I have been gathering quotes today from people who noticed I was starting this ramble. Here are a few posts to my facebook page from people whose research I respect (I just had to mention that I use facebook as well as predictive text. Easiest way of keeping in touch with physically distant children. Maybe I should start listing the technologies I can use?) Anyway, here are the quotes:

The assumption is always that old ladies are part of some techno wasteland. But grannies are not as old as people think they are :) And pretty soon most grannies will be part of the techno generation

and

http://www.thenotquiteyet.net/?page_id=9 Grannies and grandads doing stuff with tech and networks..

and

Half the population of western europe predicted over 50 by 2030 - we'd better change expectations of 'old people' and tech by then, or we're buggered....

My mum finds remote controls tricky, because she now has a freeview box, a dvd player and a tv with integral video player, so she has three remotes to juggle. Most of the time she manages by not using the dvd and not attempting to use on-screen menus - who needs to when you have the Radio Times? When I stayed there I managed to work out how to use the different remotes, which was handy when my sisters were there a week later and had problems getting mum's dvd player to work. I had to talk them through it over the phone, pointing out that one handy way you can tell which remote goes with what, is if you check the manufacturer name on both the remote and the tv/box/player and match them. Maybe my sisters were having problems because they'd been drinking a little.... At one point I was desperately trying to remember if the dvd they were attempting to watch had a trailer at the beginning with a giraffe on it. Didn't want to attempt getting them to fast forward. Was about to give up when we realised there was a video running that they had switched on by accident.
Next time I went down I retuned the freeview box so now mum can get ITV2 when she comes out of hospital. She was getting frustrated with seeing adverts for things that she couldn't watch. Hopefully she won't stumble across some of the other more laddish channels that arrived too. Maybe I should have sat down and worked out parental guidance settings on the channels so as not to perturb my parent.