Evolution of the mouse - Ken Gibbs

Evolution of Man

 

I come from a farming generation where men were men and mice were a b****y nuisance. I was born on a farm simply because there were few sterile maternity homes at that time. This ‘disadvantage’ has accompanied me throughout my life and I am sharing some of my experiences so that members of the younger generations might understand why we – of my generation - do what we do.

Unlike some of the younger generations, we never kept mice or rats or guineapigs as pets. Such small animals encouraged the snakes which preyed on them, and snakes were best avoided altogether, especially the sharp end. Being bitten by a snake tended to be terminal so that ophidiophobia was common.

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By a curious set of circumstances, we landed up in Bangladesh, working for UNICEF and in need of periodic self-entertainment, so we rented a piano and many were the evenings that Bach, Gluck or Scott-Joplin could be heard. This was because my wife was an accomplished pianist and she felt that because a couple of my friends had reasonable voices, she could also train us to sing on key and in-tune. Well, that was the theory anyway, but we were almost defeated by a mouse – would you believe?

To avoid wasting the reader’s time, this is where the Bangladeshi mouse may be found: Click here

By an interesting coincidence in timing, this was when UNICEF was dabbling with the possible global use of PCs (Personal Computers rather than Political Correctness). For XUNICEF members who were active in the organisation at that time, they will remember it well, particularly the associated devices which were deemed essential to their function, like disc drives, different monitors, QWERTY and other keyboards, microphones and speakers, PC-cams and, last but not least, the mouse.

While all these devices were being further developed, the mouse suffered many redesigns until it could do almost anything bar speak to you – that will come later, for sure. At the moment, I refuse to use a touch screen as I would have always to have clean, dry fingers, which means that I would have to forgo soggy chips while working on the computer.

So, I have progressed sufficiently far that I now use a wireless, optical mouse with a clickable wheel. That’s progress, especially as I can eat what I like while using the computer.

Then came the XUNICEF blogosphere with demanding editors. Oh, dear!

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I digress a bit here to note that there are ‘editors’ and ‘editors’. I hope I am not confusing the ‘editors’ imposed on me during my time with UNICEF (usually in the guise of ‘Communications’ who were sometimes given the task of polishing up reports that the Representative at the time felt were not showing UNICEF up in a good light) with the XUNICEF Editors (please note the Capital ‘E’ used here), who, most happily, are not constrained in the same way. The XUNICEF Editors have been known to be – well – truthful, and I can’t believe that I am the only one to have benefitted from this.

Any reader who has made it thus far will understand that this is about the need to streamline how XUNICEF blog articles are prepared by the authors for the Editors who have lives of their own to lead, and who, by virtue of having volunteered to be ‘honorary’ (in the British sense of the word) Editors need to be handled with care and sympathy. Such it was that my own training in blog article preparation and presentation was undertaken. I now have five A4 sheets of instructions/discussion which I have filed under ‘Not to be discarded’ with a sub-folder named ‘From Idiot-o-sphere to Expert blogger’.

Here I am going to quote from part of his detailed explanation:

“Option 2: Do you have a mouse? Use it. Especially the right-click button. To cut and paste text (from anywhere), highlight the text, then right click. You also can use ctrl-c if you have to. Then go to and move the cursor to the place in the document or e-mail where you want the text to appear. Right-click again and you can paste the text. In the right-click menu, it gives you the option to ‘paste’ or to ‘paste as plain text’. This even works in the native gmail mode. If your mouse doesn’t have a right click, then it is time to upgrade your IT equipment.”

Following this explanation, and remembering (probably incorrectly) that the first computer mouse was supposedly made of wood, I went in search of a suitable Wikipedia entry only to find that there were many, many versions of a mouse none of which was apparently made of wood. Hopefully, the default mouse does always have a ‘right-click button’.

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Perhaps the time has come for one of our XUNICEF members who has an artistic flair to update the ‘Evolution of Man’ for the ‘Evolution of The Mouse’ ? There are endless possibilities. . . . .especially as to how the mouse lost its tail. Dare I suggest that ‘Thereby hangs a tale’ ?

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