So I’m at the next stage – actually installing Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, all those indispensable tools of the 21st century artist. This progress bar is open and honest, it just told me I had 76 minutes remaining which worried me slightly as my tea will be done before that, so there’s no way I can write for the full 100% as has been my plan up to now. But weirdly, in the time it took me to write that, it has gone down to 22 minutes. So it’s not as open and honest as I thought. It’s shaved 54 minutes off the install time, which is pretty good. It leads me to wonder what metric it is using to calculate how long it has left, something massively complex and mathematical I suspect. If it’s going to shift about, go from 76 minutes remaining to 22 minutes, in less than a minute, then what’s the point in having it? It’s going down, as I would expect. Might it not be better if it were a little more honest. It could say:
“Hey, at the moment I think it’s going to take about 76 minutes to install this software, but that depends on your processor amongst other things, like say, if you open a programme that takes up memory then it’ll go up, so like, don’t take my word for it. All is can say is that it will be done some time in the future, definitely today.”
The time that it is displaying definitely does not bear any resemblance to actual time. It’s only down to 17 minutes. I’m not actually timing it, maybe I should, but more than five minutes have elapsed since it jumped down to 22 mins. Wow, now it’s going for it, it’s down to 15 minutes! Time for this progress bar is elastic. I’m guessing that it is calculating how long, at the current rate of processing (or whatever), it will take to install the software. It’s worth mentioning that I am not touching the machine, so why it is fluctuating so much I’m not sure. Why would it jump from 76 mins to 22, hang on there for a bit, drop slowly to 17 mins then leap down to 15 mins, as I say I am not touching it. It’ll be something technical, obviously. Or the wind.
It’s jammed at 14 mins. I have music playing. It feels as if I am polluting the purity of this moment of technical progress (not on the pc that is installing the software btw). I am turning it off.
Better, now it is just me and the progress bar, and this window I am typing into. It’s jumped down to About 9 minutes remaining! 8, I’ve noticed these things sometime have a last minute flurry as they maybe install little bits and pieces that are not so much of a memory hog. Is that a thing? I don’t know.
So this particular install is moving into it’s end game. We’re over 80%. Happy days.
There will be a technical explanation for why it speeds up and slows down, why the time remaining has it’s own logic. What’s noticeable is how different it is to my own subjective time. There is nothing more boring that watching a progress bar count up to 100% and the minutes count down in their spastic way. But writing this the time has gone quite quickly, it definitely has not been 76 minutes though.