For the software that you feel you cannot do without, the Internet is not always the most co-operative of channels. For example, you want that programme to read PDF documents, because some individuals insist on sending you material in that format. Without going into too much tear-your-hair-out detail, one provider takes pains in causing you pain by presenting you with a list of products sporting efficient-sounding labels that include numbers. Epithets such as ‘So-and-So 7' should be eyed with suspicion. What went wrong with ‘So-and-So 1' through to ‘So-and-So 6'? Were they all rubbish? Were they too slow or too infuriating to manipulate? Could the designers not think of a better label? As for the people who devised the programme that irritatingly reminds you of its existence with a yellow cartoon splodge at the bottom of your ‘window', what possessed them to employ an American woman to proclaim ‘Avast...!' (the second ‘a' as in the southern English ‘cat'). What were they thinking? Hollywood-style pirates? Could you take anyone or anything seriously that prefixes an electronic warning thus? Would the French version open with ‘Sacre bleu'? Or the Egyptian with ‘Yaa 5araabi'? Gadzooks, zounds and ‘sblood! We should stand for this kind of nonsense no more. Nay, sirrah, a thousand times nay! Now, for a real fun item: Google Earth. This programme is dead easy to download and asks little of you except to wait a few minutes before you can waste hours until your heart is content. After a black rectangle zooms in on the globe, you type in ‘Egypt'. The globe turns promptly to the top right-hand corner of Africa and, as if you are taken by a spacecraft from sub-orbital space to 1,319.30 miles above the surface of the earth – according to the figure on the right of the information band at the bottom of the screen. The image of Egypt looks like any map in an atlas, travel guide or school classroom, but I had no idea that there was a triangular area outlined in red lines on Egypt's south-east border. Otherwise, the borders are in thin yellow lines. Egypt must be a boon for teachers of social studies and their students because it is so easy to draw, unlike the British Isles, which, when drawn freehand by English schoolchildren, Scotland was about one-eighth of the whole and Wales was reduced to two tiny peninsulas jutting tentatively out into the Irish Sea. Such distortions cannot be made with the territory covered by the Arab Republic of Egypt. But that little red-lined triangle is intriguing. Zooming in further to the ‘eye altitude' of 244.92 miles, we are informed that this is the Hala'ib Triangle. Click on the four tiny blue and brown rectangles and you will be treated to views of Elba - not to be confused with the place where Napoleon spent exile mark one. (Exile mark two was later, on the Island of Saint Helena.) Having cicked on ‘Elba', the eye altitude was reduced in seconds to 5,224 feet (goodness knows how many metres, just divide by three and a bit. Trust Napoleon's committees to invent the metre, a little short of 40 inches) Well, apart from the breath-taking scenery and intimidating mountains on the horizon, we are treated to a few rocks on a flat space, which would not find themselves out of place in a gallery of modern posy art. The image from a kilometre up looks like a dried up river bed. There is Elba National Park that seems to consist only of mountains, sunsets and clear skies. At 3,592 feet up, you see a large grey rectangle. Let's look at something exciting. Let's go to Cairo. Now, the eye altitude is 28,335 feet and the image includes Masr el-Jadida, El-Zaytoun, Al-Wayli and Al-Qubbaah Palace, which goes to show that not everyone agrees on a transliteration for the definite article ‘Al/El' and the feminine ending (Is it -a or -aah? Ah, we shall never know. Zounds, sir!) Now zoom into Masr el-Jadida, otherwise known as Heliopolis. No, I dod not recognise that green circle that is traversed by what could be a tram line. As for the tiny blue and brown rectangles, put the arrow on them and you see the legend ‘untitled', leaving you none the wiser. I clicked on one of these ‘untitled' thingies and was shown a photo of a white building that could be a school. On the wall outside the building is a protestation of someone's love for an unidentified recipient. It reads ‘XXX ba7ibbik'. So much for popular literature. Follow the street north east from the circle and you come across what resembles a race course. No labels. Nothing. No idea where there that is. A random movement of the mouse brings you to the Shams Club Stadium. Now, we are getting somewhere. Follow the route to where you think Hegaz Square is, and...lo and behold!...There it is! However, the walkway in the middle of Hegaz Street from the square of the same name to Heliopolis Square is not in this image, even though the “imagery date" is May 17, 2012. This is strange, because the apartment block next to ours was demolished in 2011 and, by some miracle, is back in the picture. When the eye altitude is at 186, you are given a horizontal projection, which looks as if you are viewing a flat photograph at 180 degrees. Now to ‘Exit ground-level view' and...Wait a moment, what about clicking on that little blue mannequin? Nothing. Now...Don't stay looking over my shoulder. Download your own version, because I am off to Gosport, my home town in England, courtesy of Google Earth, and that, I fear, will be of little interest to you. In the meantime, season's greetings on both sides of January 1 and best wishes to you all for 2013.
