Christening, Cluedo, tablets and Jobs

Yesterday, the family gathered in St. Josephs church in Stepps once more where my Cousin Sarah's third child was baptized. Sarah Jane and Brian looked on happily as baby Daniel was baptized with a little help from Yvie, Daniel's older sister, who held the small pot of oil up for the priest. Christopher, his older brother, was also asked but he preferred to sit behind with his Granpa.
Once more the priest of St. Josephs church started giving us his Star Wars talk about the light side and the dark side, just as he had done at Christopher's baptism, reminding us all how easy it is to slip into the dark side like Darth Vader.
“You mean Anakin Skywalker” I muttered under my breath, correcting the priest once more.
Back at the hotel afterwards Daniel jumped about happily in his parents arms, kicking his legs up and around as gathered relations took some photos of the happy, growing, family. We all enjoyed a soft drink whilst awaiting the tea and trying to get some food from the giant buffet of which only egg sandwiches were left by the time I got to the front of the queue. Uncle Tom after complaining about the visibility of my collar button also decided to retie my tie recommending a windsor knot.
On returning home Ka and myself found ourselves a little depressed for obvious reasons. Uncle Tom had advised going out for a run. The best cure for clearing the head. Usually I'd absolutely agree but Ka and myself were not in the jogging mood yesterday.
Instead we sat, like couch potatoes, bored, watching another dreadful bunch of 'Come Dine with Me' episodes, showcasing another bunch of dreadful people, making dreadful meals in each others' dreadful homes.
The kind of dinner parties that you wish turned into a murder mystery where the diners would get knocked off one by one, leaving only the show's one redeeming character, the commentator.
As a desperate effort to cheer the two of us up, I even suggested a game of Cluedo which was quickly and unequivocally refused by Ka. Besides, Colin and Jillian were not about and we seem to only play board games when they’re about these days.
I'd been playing Cluedo (or Clue, as it's known in America) last weekend in Ka's hairdressing salon. Bored waiting on Ka who sat perched on her usual chair, Alan, Ka's hairdresser and sole employee of the 'Nutters' female hairdressing salon, gave me his iPad to toy with. He uses it as a design tool now. A portable gallery of female haircuts for all his clients to mull over. Fortunately Ka was the last client to be finished so I had the waiting area to myself and didn't have the usual array of eyeballs looking me up and down as I awaited the wife.
With the iPad on my lap, Alan snapped an unexpected picture of my mug through the Photobooth app and planted it on the shoulders of a chubby dwarf in a vest and beret, smoking a cigar. He found it hilarious. Not sure why.
Alan then proceeded to show me his gallery of customers which he'd snapped and put on to a vast assortment of bodies, creating a hideous gallery of freaks and unfortunates, all with hair in varying states of disrepair. To be honest, most of them didn't need much modifying in an effort to be scary looking.
After Alan rushed off to get on with the final stages of Ka's hairstyling, I loaded up the Cluedo game and had my first shot on the iPad, failing to get used to the touchscreen control. I only had enough time for the introductory level of the game, deducting the murderer to be Ms. Scarlett with the razor blade in the study.
Cluedo's changed since I last played it, that's for sure.

Razor blades? What happened to the lead piping and the candlestick? In stead of Ms. Scarlett giving someone a quick bang over the head, she's now waiting in a darkened study, jumping out behind the victim and running a razor blade through his throat. Reverend Green, who, incidentally, now looks like Shaft, would be shocked and disgusted.
I've fancied an iPad for some time. The sleek design, the multi-touch display with it's sliding app icons, it's ease of use, zooming in and out from screen views, the onscreen keyboard. Fantastic stuff, but I just can't justify spending that amount of money when I have a perfectly good iMac at home and an iPod hooked to my ears.
The death of Steve Jobs during the week was a great shame. He has always been a bit of a hero in my book. Here was a guy with no degree, a college drop out, and he became not only one of the world’s richest men but one of it’s most influential.
Jobs revolutionised the computer and in doing so, the world, and our everyday lives. He transformed the computer into a stylised, sleak, platform which communicates, collects, informs, reminds, entertains and has the ability to almost organise and run a life on it's own. It was his ideas and creations that inspired the countless other remakes released by other computing manufacturers. Touch screen computers, or tablets (I love tablet... Mum made great tablet...) are now part of the mass market, something I just couldn’t possibly imagine when I was sitting shooting my Sinclair ZX Spectrum’s gun at the living room tv in the late eighties. Steve Jobs put our whole record collection on a slim, pocket sized, 8cm long slip of plastic for gawds sake!
I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that Jobs, and Apple, transformed the world. Okay, Jobs didn’t single handedly create this computer revolution but he was certainly a significant driving force. Jobs was a crazy, stubborn, idea fuelled inventor who appreciated the style as well as the substance. The machine’s Apple produced only a few years back are already considered classics – a testament to how the world seems to be on fast forward all of a sudden. Technology is speeding forwards at every moment, the rest of the world struggling to keep up, and Jobs had been at the forefront.
The question is, with Jobs now gone will apple remain at the forefront?
Will there be an iPad 3?
How much further can the tablet be developed?
And will Mum ever make any more?