I agree with all the replies....electronics is part of my DNA.
I have begun putting together "kits" of parts for various projects in my home shop. Maybe someday I will regain motivation I once had, and rediscover these "care" packages.
After the divorce about a decade ago, and with retirement within sight, I am slowly getting excited about finishing a lot of the things I have started. In the meantime, I listen to my DIY stereo and ride motorcycles.
I have begun putting together "kits" of parts for various projects in my home shop. Maybe someday I will regain motivation I once had, and rediscover these "care" packages.
After the divorce about a decade ago, and with retirement within sight, I am slowly getting excited about finishing a lot of the things I have started. In the meantime, I listen to my DIY stereo and ride motorcycles.
My bike is an excellent detractor. But then its usually no harm no foul. Unless it involves a women and forgetting her somewhere. Don't laugh I have actually done that before 😛
That's the thing, cellphones do have many good qualities. I'm sure they've even saved many lives over the years.
This is what makes them so difficult to deal with: here is a powerfully addictive thing, which can ruin your mind and regress you until you have the attention span of a two year old child. But the same device is also useful and beneficial and a safety accessory.
It's exactly the same story with the Internet. There are so many wonderful, positive things about it. Unfortunately, it can also have a very dark side, as well as being very addictive for many of us.
Congratulations, you are one of a very small percentage of the population who is immune to the most popular addiction society has ever suffered from! 😀
...and yet, there is so much good in them, too.
I wonder how the researchers who created the drug Fentanyl feel? It was created to reduce the suffering of people with unbearable pain - and now it's killing unfortunate drug-addicts left and right.
-Gnobuddy
The getting started IS the hardest part. I logged about five hours tonight, may of been closer to six. Go figure.
Treatments aren't very difficult but some a little tedious and while hand sanding and all. I like manual sanding anyway, unless it involves hardwood floors 😱
I was miring one something like this having solid colour and somewhat smaller. Approaching *cough* a grand retail +tax. Aside from the savings mine could be nicer cause I made it, multi colour plus a last minute capped wire tunnel for TV runs. No more unsightly danglers or dreaded drywall excavation.
Treatments aren't very difficult but some a little tedious and while hand sanding and all. I like manual sanding anyway, unless it involves hardwood floors 😱
I was miring one something like this having solid colour and somewhat smaller. Approaching *cough* a grand retail +tax. Aside from the savings mine could be nicer cause I made it, multi colour plus a last minute capped wire tunnel for TV runs. No more unsightly danglers or dreaded drywall excavation.
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I have a theory about smart phones and texting. And the need to communicate the tiniest details of the most mundane things. It comes from the kids, they just never outgrow it now. My theory? it is hanging out at the mall without having to actually go to the mall. Simple as that.
In my day, we would all drive downtown and sit on the hoods of our cars to hang out. Nowdays they use phones.
In my day, we would all drive downtown and sit on the hoods of our cars to hang out. Nowdays they use phones.
I must have been a weird kid. I hung out at the two record stores or the Lafayette Radio Electronics store.
...and there is another whole discussion waiting to be started. For years now, I've felt that there is more and more evidence to suggest that a sizable fraction of the population is experiencing some form of arrested psychological development, with mental and emotional ages stuck somewhere far behind their actual chronological age. Presumably something about contemporary society is causing that to happen.
I remember when that idea first crystallised in my head. On my daily commute back in 2006 or 2007, I had started seeing billboards showing gigantic ads for some new product. It was a teaser ad, with no text at all, just a picture of a black rectangle with a scattering of very simple images in very bright primary colours scattered over its front face. The images looked like pictographs for small children, ancient Egyptian writing that had been simplified, brightened up, and modified for contemporary American children's sensibilities.
I had no idea what the object on the billboards was, or what it's actual size would be. But the logical conclusion was that, clearly, it was some sort of toy designed for very young children. Bright primary colours, simple shapes, little cutesy pictographs - these are things seen in nurseries and kindergarten classrooms all over the world, because babies and toddlers find them engaging and mentally stimulating. A little baby's brains and senses are not yet sophisticated enough to enjoy, say, the works of the great French Impressionists - but they can and do enjoy a circular, bright yellow, smiley-face.
Imagine my complete surprise when I eventually found out that the toy designed for infants was, in fact, the new Apple iPhone. And Apple's target customer was adults, not babies. And it was very expensive, so Apple expected actual adults to go out and pay huge sums of money for this shiny child's toy.
Well, as we all now know, Apple was a much better judge of what adults actually wanted than I was. As the iPhone turned into a huge success story, I was left to wonder how I could have been so wrong.
Not that contemporary smartphone user interface design is the only clue to the ongoing arrested development problem - it was just an early pointer I happened to notice. Teddy-bear shaped backpacks being worn by adult women was another. Orange sneakers with neon-green shoe-laces for adult men was one more. Pickup trucks styled to look like the little plastic Tonka Toys that small boys enjoy playing with was a third. Et cetera, et cetera.
All of these were things that little children would enjoy - but, if you went back fifty or a hundred years, adults would think you were joking if you suggested that they were not, in fact, toys for children, but actual consumer products intended for adults. They would probably be offended too, at the suggestion that they were so immature as to want teddy-bear backpacks and orange shoes and pickup trucks that looked as though they cam out of a toy-catalogue or a child's comic book.
Yeah, I know. I sometimes feel like Rip Van Winkle, a complete misfit in the brave new world that's grown up around me! ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_Van_Winkle ).
-Gnobuddy
Someone observed, and I think it has merit, that traditionally, kids learned from the adults. AS we grew up, our elders showed us how to drive a car, how to fish, how to shoot a gun, how to work the TV (gotta move the antenna just so and use the fine tuner, once you have the horizontal hold stable), they learned how to function in society from us, and so on. Now that has flipped, the kids are in tune with all the latest technology, and if we wonder about it, we have to ask them. Their society changes faster than ours did too, so they are used to constant change, where we tended to favor stability in our culture.
The thing is, all the complex new technology is disguised under stupid-simple user interfaces. Quite literally, little babies find things like the iPad easy to use - even a baby has the brains and muscle coordination needed to poke a finger at a shiny object (icon). There are plenty of reports of three-year-olds learning how to use an iPad.
Those of us who are older may not know which shiny icon to poke at to send a tweet (probably because we have no interest in joining the throng of twits, anyway). But the kids who do know, aren't getting any mental challenge out of it.
I have absolutely no doubt that learning how to fish (your example) uses a whole lot more of your brain than learning how to use an iPad. Even just one step in fishing - baiting the hook - is a far more complex task than poking at a touchscreen with a fingertip. How about learning to cast? Way, way more complex than anything required to use a smartphone - so many muscles to co-ordinate, balance to be maintained, events that have to be precisely timed.
That's my concern. Almost any normal traditional human activity is more challenging to our brains than using today's phones and tablets. Sawing a straight cut in a piece of wood, learning to stand up and walk, doing mental math, singing a song - heck, turning a page of a book - all of these are far more challenging than poking at an icon. All of them give your brain more of a workout. And our brains need workouts to keep them healthy.
-Gnobuddy
Those of us who are older may not know which shiny icon to poke at to send a tweet (probably because we have no interest in joining the throng of twits, anyway). But the kids who do know, aren't getting any mental challenge out of it.
I have absolutely no doubt that learning how to fish (your example) uses a whole lot more of your brain than learning how to use an iPad. Even just one step in fishing - baiting the hook - is a far more complex task than poking at a touchscreen with a fingertip. How about learning to cast? Way, way more complex than anything required to use a smartphone - so many muscles to co-ordinate, balance to be maintained, events that have to be precisely timed.
That's my concern. Almost any normal traditional human activity is more challenging to our brains than using today's phones and tablets. Sawing a straight cut in a piece of wood, learning to stand up and walk, doing mental math, singing a song - heck, turning a page of a book - all of these are far more challenging than poking at an icon. All of them give your brain more of a workout. And our brains need workouts to keep them healthy.
-Gnobuddy
I have for a long time thought that our ever increasing reliance on technology is pushing the human race on a retrograde path.
Our children are being brought up in an age where a simple push or click of a button can achieve the desired result no other input required mentally or manually .
Basic skills such as reading ,writing and mathematics seem to be harder for children to grasp and many skills and crafts once practised by many are now becoming " specialist " or simply abandoned .
A few months ago i went into my into my local town and found all the banks shut and many of the shops displayed " temporarily closed " signs. The reason for this ? turns out that there was a major problem with the internet that resulted in banks being unable to access anything and many shops unable to use cash registers as they were locked down.
The problem took over 9 hours before it was fixed in the meantime hundreds of businesses lost a days income and anyone who needed to make financial transactions had travel to the next town.
Technology brings many benefits but to become 100% reliant on it is a disaster waiting to happen .
Our children are being brought up in an age where a simple push or click of a button can achieve the desired result no other input required mentally or manually .
Basic skills such as reading ,writing and mathematics seem to be harder for children to grasp and many skills and crafts once practised by many are now becoming " specialist " or simply abandoned .
A few months ago i went into my into my local town and found all the banks shut and many of the shops displayed " temporarily closed " signs. The reason for this ? turns out that there was a major problem with the internet that resulted in banks being unable to access anything and many shops unable to use cash registers as they were locked down.
The problem took over 9 hours before it was fixed in the meantime hundreds of businesses lost a days income and anyone who needed to make financial transactions had travel to the next town.
Technology brings many benefits but to become 100% reliant on it is a disaster waiting to happen .
Ever watch a TV commercial and wonder what they are selling? I don't watch much TV but Sherri and I have seen the same commercial a few times and neither of us have any idea what the product or service being marketed is. I assume the whole point is to get you to Google it.
Even this 63 year old can figure out how to work an iPAD. We can't afford to give the grandkids iPads, but 3 out of 4 of them now have Kindles. The 3 1/2 year old can play the games and work the puzzles, that are attempting to teach him to count, the alphabet (he has mastered both) and basic arithmetic. Now the two year old want one.
"Technology brings many benefits but to become 100% reliant on it is a disaster waiting to happen"
More and more Law Enforcement/Public Safety Agencies are becoming involved in the use of the Internet for remote connections to life crucial equipment. This is scary to me, being I've already seen major failures with terrible results. In house isn't so bad but to points outside of the building where lives depend on the reliability of the Internet...
As for the delay in DIY projects..
Divorce! Speakers Won! I'll have more room to store stuff.. 😉
More and more Law Enforcement/Public Safety Agencies are becoming involved in the use of the Internet for remote connections to life crucial equipment. This is scary to me, being I've already seen major failures with terrible results. In house isn't so bad but to points outside of the building where lives depend on the reliability of the Internet...
As for the delay in DIY projects..
Divorce! Speakers Won! I'll have more room to store stuff.. 😉
< Divorce speakers won !>
My passion for Hi-Fi has already cost me one marriage , luckily my current partner shares my love of music and allows me free reign when it comes to speaker positioning having priority in the lounge.
Her eyes glaze over and she develops an automatic nod reflex when i start talking about the silence between notes though 🙂
My passion for Hi-Fi has already cost me one marriage , luckily my current partner shares my love of music and allows me free reign when it comes to speaker positioning having priority in the lounge.
Her eyes glaze over and she develops an automatic nod reflex when i start talking about the silence between notes though 🙂
I have the same concern. Technology can be, and often is, a wonderful thing. But it can also be the crutch that weakens us so much we can't stand without it.
A few years ago I read the book "Better Off", written by a fresh MIT graduate, who, with his new wife, spent 18 months living in a Mennonite community, with almost no modern technology. I thought it was a very interesting read, perhaps you might like it too: https://www.amazon.ca/Better-Off-Flipping-Switch-Technology/dp/0060570059
Incidentally, somewhere in that book, there is a story similar to yours. It features a fast-food restaurant with three employees that came to a halt for fifteen minutes because the cash-register was down.
There was one single customer, waiting for an order of French fries, cash in her hand. There were freshly made French fries in the kitchen. There was a store manager and two employees, all wanting to help the customer and send her on her way.
But it didn't even occur to them (until the customer suggested it, after a fifteen minute wait) that maybe, just maybe, they didn't actually need the cash-register problem to be fixed just to process one single order for French fries...
Some years ago I flipped through a new issue of maybe the last surviving electronics magazine in the USA. There was a project article - on how to wire a flashing LED to a battery and a switch. 😱
(To be clear, I'm talking about the type of LED that has built-in electronics that limits current and makes the LED flash all by itself, with no external circuitry required. Just hook it up to a DC voltage in the right ballpark, and it flashes.)
That was discouraging, but a couple of years later, something even more discouraging occurred. A co-worker cleaned out his attic, and found an old issue of the same magazine dating from, I think the late 1960s. (There were some title and ownership changes along the way, but there was a direct lineage between those magazines.)
Knowing I was interested in electronics, he gave me the old magazine. There was a DIY construction article in it, too: how build your own capacitive-discharge automotive ignition system.
This was the era of discrete transistors, remember. The CDI system used quite a few transistors, a PCB you were supposed to make yourself, and fairly complex mechanical construction (a waterproof metal enclosure to survive the abuse of an under-hood environment).
How, in fifty years, in the same supposedly first-world country, did popular-level electronics plummet from building your own CD ignition module to connecting three wires to an LED, switch, and battery holder? 😱
In the last decade or so, I've been very glad to see the Parallax Basic Stamp and Make magazine appear, and then the Arduino and Raspberry Pi. I hope these, and similar projects, manage to give a new generation of young people some interest in actual technology (not poking at shiny icons on a touch screen, but actually building and coding things.)
Speaking of accessible technology, and since this is an audio forum, there are very interesting things now possible using the new Web Audio API, and a decent browser (Firefox or Chrome). You can now do a surprising amount of audio processing with just Javascript, and a browser. For instance, an FFT music visualisation is now possible with a few calls to existing library functions, and a few lines of glue code.
Quite recently I ran across a few simple music-related examples aimed both at young children tinkering with music, and older children or adults wanting to learn how to program in Javascript: https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Experiments
-Gnobuddy
Possibly the Delta Mark Ten. I built one of those from a kit in about 1970. It was published in a magazine, possibly Popular Electronics. Put it in a 1949 Plymouth that originally ran from a 6 volt electrical system. I changed it all to 12 volts so that I could put a "modern" 8 track tape deck in it.
Your memory is better than mine - it was certainly Popular Electronics, but I don't remember the "Delta Mark Ten" name.
In the early 1990s I owned an old ('74) Plymouth with a mono AM radio and one elliptical speaker in the middle of the dash. I spent a few days upgrading the audio - running wires under the carpets, cutting oval holes in the rear parcel shelf for 6x9 speakers, installing separate tweeters, and mounting an new FM receiver in the dash.
The piece de resistance was a huge $100 portable CD player that sat on the vinyl front bench seat and fed audio to the receiver in the dash. Except that it would slide off and fall on the carpet if you braked too hard, and the CD would skip a dozen times on every drive. Those were the days before enormous solid-state audio buffers became commonplace in portable CD players!
(Those were also the days when CD players intended to actually mount in a car dash were prohibitively expensive. Hence the much cheaper portable CD player sitting on the bench seat. It ran on a whopping 9 volts, and I had to make my own 12V to 9V regulator board to power it from the car's wiring.)
Oh yeah, that '74 Plymouth came with factory electronic ignition, and a magnet and coil sensor in the distributor to tell it when to fire. I was surprised. It worked very well, too!
-Gnobuddy
In the early 1990s I owned an old ('74) Plymouth with a mono AM radio and one elliptical speaker in the middle of the dash. I spent a few days upgrading the audio - running wires under the carpets, cutting oval holes in the rear parcel shelf for 6x9 speakers, installing separate tweeters, and mounting an new FM receiver in the dash.
The piece de resistance was a huge $100 portable CD player that sat on the vinyl front bench seat and fed audio to the receiver in the dash. Except that it would slide off and fall on the carpet if you braked too hard, and the CD would skip a dozen times on every drive. Those were the days before enormous solid-state audio buffers became commonplace in portable CD players!
(Those were also the days when CD players intended to actually mount in a car dash were prohibitively expensive. Hence the much cheaper portable CD player sitting on the bench seat. It ran on a whopping 9 volts, and I had to make my own 12V to 9V regulator board to power it from the car's wiring.)
Oh yeah, that '74 Plymouth came with factory electronic ignition, and a magnet and coil sensor in the distributor to tell it when to fire. I was surprised. It worked very well, too!
-Gnobuddy
Notice how the lamp makes the speaker virtually disappear. Gone and away from the veering eyes of the wifey. Plastic plants work equally as well and stay creative thats key.
Exhibit a.
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