Technology?
All I need is a phone that tells me where the nearest pint is on Friday..
Posts by The answer is 42
64 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Aug 2011
Apple: We never said Siri would actually work in the UK
Bromine bomb drops toxic mercury fallout
The BBC Micro turns 30
Thursday 1st December 2011 22:28 GMT 
Memory lane
The defence company I worked for ordered about 200 for staff at a reduced price. We paid for them over 12 months deduction from pre-tax salary. After delivery, there was a long queue in the stores corridor. After that, things went quiet as roms were copied to eproms, additional PCBs with eprom sockets designed to fit just above the keyboard. One could switch betwen Elite, the word processor and a clover bod wrote something like a spreadsheet. Another wrote a program that kept the BBC churning over all night generating a simple fractal image. Still got tapes, advanced users manual etc in the attic, but I daren't power it up in case the capacitors all go bang since it was last used 25 years ago.
When geeks turn Green: Performance tune your energy bills
Wednesday 23rd November 2011 12:51 GMT
Got a car?
You can cut your bills there too! Pump your tyres up to the "full of passengers" pressure, drive at maximum torque (efficiency) speed, don't use too much gas until the water is 88 degrees (most efficient for heat transfer), look ahead so you never brake and don't wear the tyres out driving over cats eyes. Before you ask, yes, my old man hailed from Scotland. In the home, after boiling the kettle, put the surplus in a Thermos flask and use that as a starter for the next cup.
Its all very well having a class A house, but you need class A occupants as well!
Gates: Novell are sore losers, Word trounced WordPerfect
Jim Westwood, home micro revolutionary
Wednesday 16th November 2011 16:48 GMT 
Sinclair's IC12 Audio amp started life as a Plessey low-wattage audio output chip. Seconds were sold off to Radiospares, who sold it as a 6 watt audio amp; their seconds were passed to Sinclair, who stuck the big finned heatsink on top and passed it off as 12 watts. Can't for the life of me remember whether it was RMS, peak or "music power", though. I had a Sinclair FM radio, which was also matchbox size; it ran on 2 mercury button cells. His calculators were RPN, just like the early HP calculators, I think. Can anyone confirm?
Lovely electric car breaks out of Oz
Argentina stakes online claim on Falklands
1-in-3,200 chance* that a fiery satellite chunk will hit someone on Friday
'Find My Car' iPhone app finds anyone’s car
AlertMe network power-meter kit: Suitable for techies?
Wednesday 24th August 2011 15:28 GMT
I'm out of phase now
So all we need is out-of-phase appliances and we'll be laughing all the way to the bank, as the utilities can't read what they really use. Don't get me going on CFLs, we either pollute the planet with mercury, or carbon if we don't switch to them. My Maplin plug-in wattmeter (about a tenner 5 years ago) is reading 25 as I type this on an HPG70 laptop, and wanders between 0.5 and 1 when nothing is plugged into it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
