Posts by The answer is 42 66 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Aug 2011
Many decades ago (when we had PROPER winters) our family returned to the UK after many years living in West Germany. THe last (and only) proper winter was 1962/63. My father was driving from Portsmouth to somewhere in the Midlands in a white-out and the conversation went something like-
Son, which way round the last roundabout did I go?
Son- The right, as usual-
Father looks at son and says "we will have to watch out for those"
Yes, Dad...
One more problem with EVs- they are too quiet. The hard of hearing don’t look before leaping, so all EVs must make a noise. Buyers choice- Formula 1 on the start line. Concorde on full reheat. Any nitro dragster. To keep the vehicle quiet, try the Lotus trick that listened to the sound and out-putted the same signal but inverted. I don’t think it got into any road cars.
Once upon a time, my college lecturer gave me an old Cossor 1032 scope. A panel on the side gave access to all the plates and the top scale went up to 500 volts per divison. Lets build an engine analyser first, perhaps I could get an ignition display of some sort on the screen. I wasn't going to be caught out by an electric shock- line a wooden peg with a bit of aluminium foil then clip it over the plug lead then connect that to the scope , that should give enough insulation. it didn't... The scope survived.
What was the year and copier? My first job was translating a quarterly Russian journal into English. Like all languages, what is a word in one becomes a sentence in another,so there was a lot of cut/paste. Off it went to the translators, coming back with a load of instructions like "picture 3 should be on the top left of page 7". Text and pictures went on the first grill tray and the machine dropped black xerox dust on it (no, I thought it was magic as well). the tray, paper and dust on grill then carefully had to be taken out of the machine and put into the next copier slot. If that was done without any trembling hands, a zapper fused the dust onto the paper. There were many trembles, synchronised to the number of girls in the office and the number of open windows. That process had to be done for each sheet. I doubt if the pages had numbers. Back to my question- The year was probably 1965, but what was the copier/fuser?
I attended a Faraday lecture some decades ago on electric cars (when the only electric vehicle was a milk float) and the sodium/ sulphur battery was discussed. When 300 degrees was mentioned, the lecturer responded with the calculation of the potential energy in petrol, expressed as how many miles up the road a gallon of petrol would propel the average car. Silence from heckler.
A relative worked at Fylingdales early warning system in the 70s. He had a steady job replacing American transformers, as our US friends tested by plugging in and switching on. Some amazing kit passed through his hands. I remember a record deck with a motorised threaded shaft which carried the arm and needle from right to left so there was no distortion. Usless fact of the day- because of the Yorkshire winters they couldn't get out often so they built the biggest Scalextric track in the county/ country / world to keep themselves occupied.
As one who was in the business, there is a well- trodden path to go down. FATS for factory acceptance tests, i.e. is it painted the right colour, is the red light on the left, etc. Then we move onto HATS, harbour acceptance trials i.e. does it float the right way up, does the radar work, DOES IT LEAK, are there sufficient sockets for kettles. Finally, SATS ( as above but at sea). Does it roll over, can it go back and forward, does it make a good "thrum" at full speed ahead. Who signed off Harbour Acceptance?
When I was an apprentice a mate rebuilt a Land Rover using the facilities of the material stores and replaced every bit of aluminium. His conversion to run it on Calor gas needed my assistance, as he was drawing off the gas so fast that the gas bottle was freezing. My solution- get a reel of 23/0076 wire, wind the cable round the gas cylinder and slap it across the battery. Eventually we worked out a control system (a switch) to stop the battery going flat.
I worked at a big Marconi site and every Monday morning, the main breaker had tripped out. It was traced back to my desk and an explanation was required. Me? Innocent! It turned out my kettle had a very slow leak to earth, when the kettle was unused over the weekend. It was enough current to trip out the main breaker. I had to buy another kettle myself.
Not the biggest by a long way; in the 70s Fylingdales in Yorkshire was isolated by snow in winter so to amuse the UK and US staff had the biggest Scalextric layout. (Well they would, wouldnt they). A friend of a friend made a fortune fixing US kit that had been plugged into our mains.
It continuously evolves, improving every time. One long-awaited change I want, though is the change from 4/3 to 16/9 aspect ratio to get rid of the wasted space down each side of the screen. Perhaps its still 4/3 for ancient monitors but couldn't a bit of script read the aspect and squeeze to 4/3 if required?
Make it clear who the review is aimed for; Blackberrys have good security (rumor 1) but are a fashion item down the local pub. NAS boxes are creeping further from business users down to domestic (rumor 2), so make it clear whether your review is aimed at the dolly-bird on the street corner or the sys admin stuck in the basement. Your "Best 10" are good, though.
In the 70s HP computers came with a 5 1/4 demo disk that had Pac-Man and a op-amp circuit on it. One could vary the components round the op-amp and see the frequency response on a split-screen (wow!) underneath in real time. That was used once then it was Pac-Man all the way. The designers at HP had put some cunning anti-piracy on the floppy; it had 42 tracks instead of the regular 40, and if tracks 41 and 42 weren't there it wouldn't play. Sods!
You youngsters got it easy- O level geography maps had to learnt twice, in case we got a map in inches per mile or centimetres per kilometre. When I got to college for HNC, we had to learn valves/transistors and thyratrons/thyristors because we were in another changeover.
At least electricity goes at a sensible speed; 1 nanosecond per foot, which was fine for a starting point for signal delays across pcbs.
Don't forget the bloody Euro lot do fuel consumption upside down as well as metric, its litres per 100km over there.
Coat, fold-out walking stick, stomps off stage left.
In West Germany in the v early 60's they had it solved; in many towns, inductive sensors measured traffic flow, a box with transistors (or valves?) did the maths and a speed indicator on each lamp post told you the speed to do to hit the next light at green. Ok, it might have been only 20, but it was green all the way. Peace, calm, with no smoking tyres or brakes.
When I worked at the British United Shoe Machinery Company (yes, it was a mouthful) we hired computer time down a phone line in London and fed punched tape in at night; the result came back the next day. I still have my BBC Advanced User Guide in the attic, but dare not switch the BBC on in case capacitors have leaked and it goes bang! My clock is a few cycles out by now, it must be beer time.
Crystal Palace is the one I can't get .. My aerial (in Leicestershire) points at the local East Midlands aerial at Waltham, about 25 miles away, but I get South Yorkshire / Lincs and Granada as well. Central Tonight, Calendar News or Granada Reports (in HD) are my choices. The auto-tune defaults to South Yorkshire!
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