Robert Ebsen

Many years ago, before the home computer, I enjoyed searching for items in books and articles using indices. I enjoyed sorting items, using metal rods poked through cards with holes in them. The desired cards would literally fall off the sorting rod.

Today, I enjoy searching and sorting with the help of my Mac computer.

The Mac’s Spotlight tool performs amazing searches. It finds whatever is on my computer, including my connected external hard drive. For example, I just randomly entered the term purple in the Spotlight search bar. Here is what came up:
28 documents, including an essay I wrote about grape juice in 2010, a paper I wrote for my students about colors in 2002, a psychology report my wife wrote in 2006; 3 folders; 2 PowerPoint presentations; 2 spreadsheets; 6 pdf documents; 70 images (photographs) I scanned in and labeled; and 4 images from my Silhouette picture-cutting program.

I enjoy searching my archived Gmail. For example, searching for purple, I found 100 emails, dating back to 2006. I archive everything – mostly so that I can search for whatever.

Today, I enjoy sorting with the aid of my Notemaster App, which allows me to add pictures of country emblems, as well as to list what each emblem shows. If I enter the word tree, I will be presented with a list of countries that have trees in their emblems. I then learn about the kinds of trees those countries have. I learn about a variety of flowers, animals, mottos, and many other interesting things, such as why so many countries have the Phrygian Cap on their emblems.

How will I decide which emblem to input next, of the 194 countries I have listed? Siri, my computer companion, provides me with random numbers for that task. “Siri, give me a number between 1 and 26” (for the letter of the alphabet). And then, “Siri, give me a number between 1 and x” (where x stands for the number of emblems appearing under the previously chosen letter.

Let’s get the next emblem. “Hey, Siri, pick a number between 1 and 26.” Siri: “The answer is 19.” That’s the letter S. “Siri, pick a number between 1 and 28” (the number of countries beginning with “S). Siri: “The answer is 3.” The third listed country is St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Here it is. But what are these two ladies doing?

Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertebsen@hotmail.com