Cars and games

I almost forget that I own an iPad. Because ever since the speaker stopped working all of a sudden (the voice is very very feeble) , I haven’t been using it for my Skype calls. And since Kindle replaced my iPad as my reading device (I did use my iPad for almost 3/4 years as my reading device) I hardly find any use for it. But the only ones who have been using it are my nieces and nephew whenever they visit me or I visit them. Recently when I took it to a service center to see if they can fix the speaker, which apparently they cannot and suggested me to do exchange it for a latest version…..No, Thanks!, I realized that most of the apps that are there in the iPad are all games and none of which I play. I am not into games. I don’t have any game on my phone. I did install some during our Bali and Cambodia trip but those were mostly puzzles and were used only in groups. When I took stock of the games on the iPad I was surprised to the see the number of games related to Cars. Yes, those belong to my nephew.

I don’t know what I expected from the kid who has this collection at his home.

Can you count the number of cars in this photograph? And this is just a small set of the ones he owns. My sister didn’t find a big enough table to display the whole set. 🙄

I can’t wait for him to come visit me next weekend and he has already told me that he wanted a Thomas and Friends set and like a good aunt I have got it ready for him 😉

Nope, that monster is not in my car.

For almost a week, one of the news that is making waves is Pokemon Go. Everytime I see a news headlines with that word, I wonder what the hell it is all about. I remember hearing about Pokemon and I thought that was a cartoon character in a TV series. At least, that is the extent of my knowledge about Pokemon. Remember, I am neither a comic book nerd nor a gaming person. And I don’t collect information in my head just because. So yeah, I have no clue about the game or the TV series or whatever that is. Finally after seeing so many news healines going around, I went and checked what Pokemon Go was all about.

Augmented Reality? Really? Not that I have any problems with it. It is all cool, but I am not sure about people going around trying to catch Pokemon’s ( I sincerely hope that is what they are trying to do) albeit it is still on their phones even though the environment is close to the real world (because it is the real world reflected on the game). Technically, it is an awesome thing. Once in place it will pave way for lot of such stuff (more so than what is has already in that area). Remember touch screens? I remember my mom trying so hard to play Tetris (that was the only purpose of her having a phone other than to make or receive a call which we had taught her to do) in the keypad based phone. Now with her smart touch screen based phone she plays Subway Surfers, Temple Run, Angry Birds and may be some Bubble Shooting. Now I am worried about her finding out about this game or worse, my niece or nephew learning about it from my brother and teaching my mom. With her bad knee and ankle along with the already very bad back, I don’t want her roaming around the house (since she can hardly go out for a longer period of time on her own) trying to catch Pokemon’s. Even though it might be a fun thing to watch her learn it (she is very cute when she tries and eventually learns stuff. She can now WhatsApp very well, but that took her an year) I don’t want to take risks.

Also what about the security risks? I assume it (the game) uses almost all the permissions that it can avail from your phone. Isn’t that huge security risk? I am not very good with security details and have always found it hard to comprehend other than the basics of it. I have totally nothing against the game but am worried about this huge popularity of it and its negative effects on the day today life. That is all. I hardly play any game on my phone so this game won’t change anything for me but sometimes we have to wear the safety gears like helmets or seat belts not because we are being reckless drivers but someone else might be.

As if it wasn’t already bad enough earlier with people walking around looking at their phones and crashing into the traffic, now I have to pray that they don’t see Pokemon’s in the middle of the traffic or worse on the top of my car or worse inside it. 🙄 Can we develop an app or a game to revolutionize humanity instead?