Of Coffee With Light Up Keyboards

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If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle of words and ask you to feel at home, just don’t touch my shiny new-to-me-but-preowned laptop with a light up keyboard. Might have to let you duel to the death with my nephew who wants to eat my laptop.

Toddler playing with laptop

I have mentioned about how one day I would get myself a fancy laptop with a light up keyboard because, confession; for a “writer” I don’t know the locations of the keys on the keyboard as well as I should. Now imagine trying to type something in the dark and with our electricity challenges that are ever permeative, night time writing becomes a nightmare, unless one were writing a horror story.

First of all quick shoutout to all those who have bought me coffee over the past years, each small bit added up. Almost ¾ of my laptop budget was covered exclusively by the support of the generous patrons of Becoming The Muse, I am ever grateful and appreciative of you, you and you and yes you too. ☕

Big Fan 😂

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that while the price tag was nowhere near as hefty as the ones our government almost contracted for $10 000 dollars a laptop this one came at a modest cost – being a pre-loved machine but still good condition. In my head I have nicknamed it Beauty, as in Beauty and the Beast…Since it’s a thing of beauty with beast specs and of course in some circles I am a Beast too.

Laptop in a dark room with a Backlit Keyboard

I am still in awe of a laptop that can power up in under 30 seconds and be ready to handle whatever you throw at it. I cant even imagine how I used to operate with a machine that needed almost half an hour to fully start up. The other day I was uploading the video for an Afrobloggers Meetup while running a video editing software, jamming music, several browser tabs open and other things when I accidentally started running the whole Adobe Suite of applications which it handled without breaking a sweat – if anything I might have been underutilising its full resources.

Design Applications on Windows

Now that I have the processing power, I am calling the next Chapter Technology. I have been checking out ChatGPT and I think the singularity is closer than we think… The singularity will occur when computers will be able to delete us – incase you aren’t familiar what that means. Have you heard of ChatGPT, tried to use it or you still live under a rock? In one of my next articles I will muddy the waters with my thoughts on AI.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that speaking of muddy waters, Zimbabwe is opening up to the seriousness of a drug crisis. I once shared a bit about The Drug Pandemic. Now that the demographics show that even school kids are exposed to the scourge of drugs with drug dealers being on the prowl in schools the government has decided to change tact and take a stricter approach towards dealing with drugs…

Drug Dealers on the prowl in schools

The government has declared war on drugs through launch of a national anti-drug operation dubbed No To Dangerous Drugs And illicit Substances; See Something Say Something. Government has introduced new measures where drug abusers will now be treated as criminals and not victims; anyone found under the influence of drugs is eligible to arrest and they will have to confess when they sober up where they would have bought the drugs.

On one hand, I must commend them for their commitment to taking action, already the drag net has caught a couple of drug dealers with sniffer dogs carrying out random drug searches in public transport. On the other hand, an approach that stigmatises the drug user is not in the best interest of rehabilitation.

The people who have been caught so far are small fry, whispers on the streets seem to implicate powerfully connected people as being the drug lords and that those being caught are simply sacrificial pawns. My knowledge from watching investigative movies and tv series is that if you really want to make an impact on the war on drugs, you don’t go after the person with a few grams of drugs you shake up the tree at the bigger branches, at the points of entry.

Or maybe make positive use of  Surveillance Balloons instead of just spying on each other and blowing them up for no good reason, use that tech to catch drug shipments or something.

The U.S. military shot down a Chinese balloon that the Pentagon has said traveled over several sensitive sites. PHOTO: JOE GRANITA/ZUMA PRESS
The U.S. military shot down a Chinese balloon that the Pentagon has said traveled over several sensitive sites. PHOTO: JOE GRANITA/ZUMA PRESS

What’s been going on in your neck of the woods?

 ~B

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25 Comments

  1. Props on a cool new computer. Light up keyboards are lovely. I’m jealous. Maybe mine with die and need to be replaced one day.

    A lovely bit of micro poetry.

    Per the riddle – you’re a toddler. Even if that’s not the answer, it’s the truth 😉

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    1. Thank you Michelle I’m considering it add a late Christmas present slash early birthday gift slash congrats on 10 years of blogging… I should be revamping my site appearance shortly wish me luck last time settings are no longer where they used to be.

      The answer is toddler 🤣🤣 I was babysitting my nephew and it kinda came to me🤡

      ~B

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  3. Wow this looks awesome, I didn’t know there were backlit keyboards. I
    Brilliant how much faster it is, I use a Chromebook and love that it starts in a few seconds.
    I don’t know what ChatGPT, so a post would be good.

    What’s happening here?
    More strikes because the French govt wants to raise the retirement age to 67.
    In my town, the opening of a 4 month David Hockney retrospective art exhibition (Tate Collection). Love the poetic riddles, very good.

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    1. Back-lit keyboards are such a life saver for some us without typing dexterity 🤣🤣
      Cheers to fast starting machines… Sometimes I am not even sure if it actually shuts down or just pretends to be off 🤣🤣 like by the time you finish opening the lid boom it’s wide awake 🤓

      Do drop by this next article to see an article written by ChatGPT curious on your thoughts about it.

      https://becomingthemuse.net/2023/02/08/of-love-in-a-time-of-ai/

      Aaah strikes and more strikes so are in support of raising the retirement age… Before AI stills our jobs 🤔

      Thanks for dropping by

      ~B

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  5. Congrats on your new laptop!! I got a new one for Christmas and am delighted with it too.

    I know what ChatGPT is, but haven’t played with it at all. Some AI tools are pretty slick though…

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      1. I’m mostly stoked that the keyboard works as it should—the keyboard for my last laptop was warped and cause incessant typos. I could really only trpe with an external keyboard, which is a giant pain to have to lug around and find space to use. In other words, I have a legit LAPtop again…and I coukdn’t be happier.

        Yup, ChatGPT is definitely pretty slick!

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  6. Oh wow, lots of changes in your neck of the woods! Your new laptop seems pretty cool: mine pretty much dies whenever I launch Adobe suite 🤣

    I’m convinced that there’s no good way to deal with drugs. On the one hand, if people are selling drugs to children, then they definitely need to be arrested. But like you said, heavy-handed tactics usually don’t touch the drug lords (who often have so much power that they’re above the law), and they don’t address the underlying problems that are leading people to use drugs. A healthy economy and fair government are probably the best ways to reduce dangerous drug use, but there don’t seem to be many countries interested in either of those things right now.

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    1. Laptop is pretty cool and I don’t envy you, my old laptop has given a kind of trauma 🤣🤣 I’m healing slowly thanks to the amazing speed of SSDs and ram in double digits.

      You actually cut through to the heart of the problem – for obvious reasons I can’t spell it out but, yes, the issue with drugs is more a symptom than the actual ailment.

      Thanks for dropping by

      ~B

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  7. I’ve heard of ChatGPT, but have not looked into it further.
    Keyboard that lights up – My new work laptop has that ability and the first thing I did was switch it off. (Is there data on how long this thing can survive being turned on?) It just didn’t make sense to have it on when there’s daylight. I can see how that is important for you when you have a power outage, but it wouldn’t be much use to me. I worry about my eyes so I try not to do any work when there is no surrounding light around. The laptop work would only aggravate them more, I think.
    P.S. I love your laptop stand! It keeps the laptop away from warming your knees and yet it has holes for the laptop to vent!

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    1. I heard of it and FOMO had me look it up and I’m shook, shocked and fascinated.

      I usually keep the backlighting off in daylight, have tried to gauge the impact on battery power off or on and for now it seems negligible –
      Oh and my screen is usually on minimum brightness at night with anti – blue filters apparently less strain on the eyes.

      Yeah the laptop has an interesting fan array at the bottom and needs adequate ventilation otherwise its metal case gets rather hot when running resource heavy software (or playing HD games)

      Thanks for visiting
      ~B

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  9. Pingback: Of ChatGPT And AI – Becoming The Muse

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