4 June 2020

Zoom

Until COVID 19 seeped into our lives, I had not heard of "Zoom". In the past, I had occasionally used "Skype" and I was aware of "Facetime" but "Zoom" was new to me.

My relationship with "Zoom" has been quite fractious over the last three months. To begin with it was very hard to access - partly because Lady Pudding had made an abortive attempt to sign up to it and had forgotten the password she used. 

We had agreed to join three weekly quizzes that brought a few households together locally or from across the country. Once or twice we couldn't participate as the links we were sent didn't appear to work. But gradually we got the hang of things and the link problems dissipated.

I have been participating in pub quizzes for years and possess an enormous amount of general knowledge. I am naturally inquisitive and want to know things whereas many of my fellow human beings don't seem to value general knowledge very much at all.  In all that multitude of pub quizzes, I never once had to look at myself on a screen while quizzing and in "Zoom" I have found this to be quite off-putting. Incidentally, Lady Pudding will sometimes apply lipstick and a little eye makeup before we enter a "Zoom" quiz. No comment.

Within "Zoom" there is a mute facility and sometimes people have the mike on when they shouldn't or off when they should have it on. This has caused no end of problems or accidentally you hear participants blurting out answers. Sometimes you miss the actual questions because of other people's remarks or laughter and often you can't tell who is talking.

Lady Pudding does not share my hunger for general knowledge. Let's suppose a question has been posed, such as "What is the capital of Portugal?" Immediately I write down Lisbon and Lady Pudding might say "Are you sure it's Lisbon? Isn't it Madrid?" and as she's saying that the quizmaster or quizmistress is reading out the next question so I miss it as well as having to explain to my dear spouse that Madrid is in fact the capital of Spain.

Then a health question might crop up such as "How long does it take for the average human body to expel one unit of alcohol?" and I will turn to her and she'll say "How should I know?" and I'll say, "But you're a nurse, can't you have a guess at least?" But she won't so I have to guess instead

And you get other participants making philistinic remarks after an Art question - "Art's not my thing!" or after a simple question about the world's oceans - "How are we supposed to know that?" And you get situations where the quiz leader hasn't thought through the allocation of marks - deciding on the hoof how points will be awarded.

Yes. I have found "Zoom" stressful. We have won several of the quizzes. The dubious reward has often been to prepare the next quiz. I try to strike a nice balance. You don't want the quiz to be too hard or too easy and you need to remember that it is all meant to be fun.

With "Zoom" it is nice when you can show on-screen images during the quiz though this requires the "host" to allow screen sharing which has again been problematic on occasions. In one quiz I presented several flags which typically invited another load of unmuted grumblings - "I don't like flags...", "I have never really looked at flags" etc.. Jesus God!

Here's three of them... Please test yourself before searching Google Images:-

  
If I never have to join a "Zoom" quiz again I will not be complaining. In fact,  it's one reason I want this bloody virus gone sooner rather than later. Let it zoom off into the distance and never be seen again.

50 comments:

  1. I have never Zoomed and really don't want to try. It is bad enough for us deafies trying to follow multiple conversations at the best of times but I think Zoom would make it impossible for me.

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    1. You do right to avoid it JayCee but if it was one-on-one with your sister or your niece it might work well.

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  2. Have you never thought of applying lipstick too YP? I have talked once or twice on What's App videos and I didn't feel very comfortable and I didn't like the sound of my voice. Oh to sound like Basil Rathbone.

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    1. I bet you sound like Liam Gallagher.

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    2. No. Much more broader Lancastrian. Oasis are one band who have really grown on me over the years. Especially when I found out Liam likes the Dublin band Aslan. We saw them down here and thought they were superb.

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    3. Broad Lancashire? Do you have to walk around with a subtitles machine round your neck? Like watching a foreign film at the cinema.

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    4. Probably YP. I remember when we use to go to Scarborough and the Yorkshire Post had a dialect part at the bottom of the front page.

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  3. I too have had "issues" with Zoom - I've got an old laptop and it wants me to update continuously but then that led to new problems. I now just call in to the weekly staff meeting.
    Others who found it useful to start are now starting to get a bit fed up with it as well - you seem to spend the first 10 minutes of every meeting trying to get people sorted. There is a comedy sketch show here called "Saturday Night Live" and the first week of broadcasting from home they did a sketch about zoom meetings and have to admit that it had me in stitches - mostly because it was true!

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    1. I would like to see that Margie. I will search for it later.

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  4. My friend Marla and her husband had a Zoom birthday party for Carsen a couple of weeks ago. I had to download it on my phone because I don't have a camera on my desktop computer. It was not a very satisfying experience, holding a phone up to my face to participate. After Happy Birthday had been sung and the candles blown out, I excused myself and then deleted the app from my phone.

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    1. I can see how it might be useful in the business world - avoiding a lot of unnecessary travel.

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  5. You aren't competitive, are you?

    I like Lady Pudding. Not only does she appear to have a wicked sense of humour (who on earth has heard of Lisbon?) but got the measure of her wanderer.

    Zoom? Yes, out. I remember a time when the forecast was that all that technology (not least "paperless" society) would save time. Bull. I'd rather not think of the amount of time I have wasted on screen trying to solve a tech issue and/or retrieve a document when once upon a time I'd just pull a file off the shelf in a jiffy.

    As to your being a fountain of factual knowledge my father who too is a fountain once gave me an excellent piece of advice (pre-google): "It's not WHAT you know but knowing WHERE to look for the answer". HA. Obviously that's no use when you are stuck in a pub quizz.

    U

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    1. I admit that I am a bit competitive but I take most pleasure from simply knowing things. By the way, in pub quizzes I have often seen people cheating on their smart phones. They should be pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables down at the village stocks in my humble opinion.

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    2. I wonder why she keeps her files on shelves in padded bags.

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    3. Ha-ha! I see what you mean - jiffy bag!

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    4. Tasker, who is "she" when she is at home? And don't talk to me about padding. A few years ago I was flash flooded. In the middle of the night. Rain with nowhere to go. Other than through the ceiling. I put the damage down to fluke.

      YP, I don't condone pelting - even if the fruit is soft, not rotten or stone hard. Re your smart phone cheaters: Serious question and since you were a teacher you'll probably have more insight into this than others: Is there any joy in "winning", be it a maths test, a race or a quizz, knowing full well that you are a fraud?

      U

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  6. You are far braver than me YP; I'm afraid I ventured into it once because the meeting gave no alternative, ended up in the 'waiting room' and got no further! I was completely baffled by the whole thing, got completely stressed out and have no desire to try zooming again. Like Jaycee, I too struggle to follow multiple conversations, and to add my technical deficiencies to the equation is a recipe for disaster, but I understand that many competent technically astute people are also finding these web interactions uncomfortable and studies are beginning to show how the way we interact with the technology influences how we are perceived by others - a new version of non-verbal body language. It will be interesting to see how much of this web-conversation carries forward into post-lockdown days, which organisations and institutions continue with its use and which ones are only too glad to relinquish it.

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    1. I can easily see how "Zoom" could reduce business travel. The ability to share documents in the middle of a "Zoom" meeting is powerful but best between just two or three participants I think. Thanks for calling by again Elizabeth.

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  7. I wonder what you would think of one of my son's Zoom trivia games. I can almost assure you that you've never attended one quite like his, either in real life or digital.

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    1. You are right. I have never visited Hankworld. Is it something like Disneyworld?

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    2. Not even in the slightest.

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  8. Perhaps you should apply to go on Mastermind. (I have little problem finding the answers, unfortunately I can rarely hear the questions.)

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    1. I normally do well on the general knowledge round of "Mastermind". For my specialist round I might pick The Life and Literary Works of Alain-Fournier. Very narrow subjects are easier to revise. Trouble is I am too shy for that sort of thing.

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  9. I've never been on Zoom and would dislike looking at myself on screen because surely I can't really look that old:)

    As for the flags, not a freaking clue, although I do enjoy trivia. I am a fountain of useless information.

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    1. On Zoom I notice that some people appear as silhouettes with lights placed strategically behind them.

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  10. I know that many people of all ages have been using Zoom since the start of the pandemic but I have never used it. There are so many different apps that do the same thing these days and I have used a few of the other ones. Like you I don't like to see my own image on the screen. I think I scare myself.

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  11. I saw me looking at me in "Zoom" and I felt like fighting that guy! What you looking at mate?

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  12. Having just spent an hour and a half queueing at the tip to dispose of 8 bags of garden waste, watched by 6 blokes in pristine yellow waterproofs sitting around doing nothing except making sure that no more than 2 cars get in at a time, I now have to attend a zoom meeting, and I'm really not looking forward to it. I've had enough of enforced idleness for today.

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    1. Those guys in the yellow waterproofs must be keyworkers. Let's give them the clap!

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  13. Hmmm...on the flags, I would guess 1) France 2) Fiji (or maybe Tonga?) and 3) Swaziland. I'll check myself in a moment!

    I'd never even heard of Zoom before coronavirus. I expect Skype is kicking itself over not dominating this market and offering a multi-user platform that worked well enough for people to use it, rather than having to find an alternative.

    If the "prize" for winning the quiz is preparing the next quiz, I think I would deliberately lose!

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    1. I checked the flags. Re. number 3 -- argh! But Swaziland's flag DOES have a shield. And I learned that Swaziland renamed itself in 2018! It's now Eswatini. I had no idea!

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    2. Kudods to you for trying Steve. The answers are of course The Netherlands, Fiji & Kenya.

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  14. For work, I am in video/phone conferences almost all day. Almost all of my clients have different systems for that, some working better than others, but none of them are using Zoom; they all have payware, mostly for data and information security reasons.
    I find the talking over each other rather annoying, too, but am now pretty much used to this new way of having meetings, after I've been doing this since March 17.

    The pub quiz is something I really miss! As you know, my team and I are often among the three winning teams and walk home with a prize, sometimes we come 1st. It is a mix of enjoying the competetive part (which is not very strong in my personality) and having a great night out with my friends.
    I wish someone would invite me to a virutal Pub Quiz! Or maybe I should start one for my friends...

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    1. By all accounts Germany is getting back to normal - isn't it? Perhaps you should be planning your quizzes for the NEXT pandemic!

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  15. Zoom sounds like a nightmare to me and I am so glad I don't have to use it. The talking over one another would drive me crazy for sure. The 'prize' you get for winning your quiz does seem rather non-incentivizing (to use a verb I heartily dislike!). I expect you would be a formidable opponent in a trivia quiz.

    I got the flag of France, but only because of the connection between it and the Acadian flag! In a flag quiz I'd have to cheat.

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    1. I hate to tell you this Jenny but that top flag is the flag of The Netherlands. Same colours but the stripes on the French flag are vertical. But please don't worry - I won't tell any of your friends.

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    2. WHAT??!! Oh crap

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  16. I am on a Zoom Grand Rounds Pub quiz night with the Princess in Minnesota. It's fun...our team has even won a couple of rounds, with my help, of course. Even Big Bear has learned to Zoom for weekly board meetings. I don't like having to be quiet for the couple of hours of those meetings. Me, who spends the day singing around the house. I wonder what will happen to all the commercial properties in this country when half the businesses figure out their employees can work from home most of the time?

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    1. Singing round the house? I guess you are a bit like Samantha in "Bewitched"?

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  17. When our two daughters were living away from NZ in Melbourne and London we often had Skype catch ups. It was wonderful to see them and their surroundings on screen but I always hated the way that I seemed to look so odd on camera whereas they looked normal. When Skype meetings became part of my working life I hated them and always tried to stay in the background. What I didn't know, until I found a You tube tutorial recently, was the importance of your camera placement, the angle of lighting on your face and the benefit of a little strategic makeup. Get these right and it's not quite such a horrendous picture you're sending out to the world. Unless you're going to get up and move around you only have to worry about your top half.
    So when our local craft group offered Zoom sessions to replace the Covid 19 cancellations I decided to give it a go. I've just done 4 weekly sessions with our hilarious Japanese tutor teaching us not just the art of crochet but also how to use Zoom, how to mute and how to respond on screen without talking by using the clapping hands or thumbs up emojis . I was expecting it to be difficult but it was great fun. The 10 minutes spent checking the camera height and light and application of some lipstick etc before joining the meeting paid off as I didn't look any less human than the others.
    Zoom is another great technology benefit but it's not the same as a face to face meeting. All the subtle unspoken communication that we use to manage meetings is missing. Still, I'm glad I mastered it as well as the granny square.
    I'm a constant reader and I used to enjoy charity Trivial Pursuit quizzes until the arrival of smart phones and cheating took away the enjoyment. I like the daily challenge of the Cryptic Crossword while my husband struggles with the standard one. He has a go then I gift him some letters in strategic spaces to encourage him to complete it.
    The first two flags were easy, Netherlands and Fiji but I missed the mark on Kenya, mistaking it for Malawi. Have you been to Kenya on your travels?

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    1. No, I haven't been to Kenya. In Africa I have only been to Morocco and South Africa. Regarding one's appearance on "Zoom", I like to wear a rubber monkey mask. It's a bit hot under there.

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  18. I think Zoom will be improved and many things will be done on Zoom including your quizzes.

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  19. Like you I was a Luddite
    Now zoom Is an almost daily event

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  20. A stupid wife , are you Sure she's got a brain ?

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    1. Possessing a broad general knowledge is not the same as intelligence which manifests itself in many different ways.

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  21. Thanks everyone for your zoom experiences. I don't think I'll bother, and I don't like real pub quizzes never mind virtual ones.

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  22. I usually use WhatsApp for my virtual meetings but occasionally it's Zoom and has to be if there are more than 8 people as there will be when we all toast a friend's 60th Birthday on Sunday. It's going to be interesting to see how a Zoom meeting with 30 people works. I dislike quizzes of any sort - my mind doesn't work that way and I have difficulty responding quickly enough even when I know the answer. It doesn't help that I am definitely not competitive - I was a lousy team player at school for that reason. Winning a game seems one of life's pointless exercises. My view was always "If it's so important to you then, fine, you can win."

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  23. The two book groups that I usually attend are both now on zoom and they work really well. It is necessary to be courteous and not cut in or talk over other people, but if everyone manages that then it is a straightforward and enjoyable means of communication.
    I FaceTime my small grandson almost daily and would be lost without it as I've been unable to see him in person since December. I'm in the vulnerable group so my social life is on hold, so thank goodness for these digital means.

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Mr Pudding welcomes all genuine comments - even those with which he disagrees. However, puerile or abusive comments from anonymous contributors will continue to be given the short shrift they deserve. Any spam comments that get through Google/Blogger defences will also be quickly deleted.

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