Posts by Neil Bauers 27 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jul 2008
If this OS is really simple and interrupts can be turned off and on, it makes it easy to do accurate timing for digital signal processing. I achieved this with the old BBC micro but never since. We could record voice and play it back normally or backwards. Also the playback speed could be continuously altered with hilarious results. The kids loved it!
I wish Ham's would stop whining about interference on their precious analogue bands isn't about time the RSGB ditched analogue and get with the 21st century! Bang the Rocks Together ! QRX.
Much amateur radio traffic is digital these days. Modes like BPSK31 come to mind. These modes suffer from interference just as much as the analogue modes.
It's not just radio amateurs. What about the people trying to listen to short wave broadcast radio. The numbers of people listening may be small but that does not make it right for electromagnetic compatibility laws to be ignored.
"Also as any boy scout knows that by using an analog watch you find out which way north and south is - imagine what would happen, lost scouts wandering all over the country!"
These days, scouts know that domestic satellite dishes point more or less south. Forget analogue watches and moss on the north sides of trees.
There are many examples where peoples lives are made worse, often in quite small ways, because of poorly thought out technologies. City dwellers can no longer see the stars because lazy lamp shade designers and lack of regulation allows the light to shine upwards. A small number of astronomers get quite upset about this but who cares about them? Old and new technologies especially, should not make life worse for anyone, however small the number of people involved. I teach Electronics and this includes a module on Radio Communication. The pollution of the radio spectrum has become far worse in recent years. Of course this might all be academic because we are doing the same thing to the oceans and once they die, we'll all soon follow. There is a general principle here. Avoid polluting anything anywhere.
I've seen archive footage of this. It was awesome. Two giant cartwheels propelled by rockets attached in Catherine wheel configuration. The whole thing roared along the beach, completely out of control, careering from one wheel onto the other, steering an erratic course. The best bit was the military personnel running for their lives! As far as I know, no one was hurt. This might have taken place at Reculver, Kent where they also tested the bouncing bombs. I doubt if there will be a faithful re-creation. The H&S people would have kittens!
Yea! It's on youtube along with some other follies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFDf1_MCD9o
Flames because of the rocket propulsion.
Have you seen the prices of the Delphi products. No way will any student or teacher ever buy these so no new blood will be recruited into the Delphi family. Maybe they have a good education and student discount scheme but I saw no obvious evidence of this on visiting their site. Even Microsoft have free versions of their programmer's tools to lure in the newcomers.
Part of this was database was supposed to pass GCSE and similar results from schools to Further Education colleges. Later it would have passed A Level results and similar to the Universities. They haven't even managed to implement this non-controversial feature even though all the information is already in electronic format. Meanwhile we have to re-enter this data via OMR forms filled in by the students and checked by the teachers. What a waste of effort all over the country. <teacher-mode>By the way it's kids' not kids database! </teacher-mode>
We have had CCTV in some computer rooms and communal areas for several years. Everyone gets used to it very quickly. It proved most useful when non-students came on site to steal stuff. The police got some high quality images from the system and recognised the offenders straight away. I expect it moves bullying to areas not on-camera. That is why out-of-sight bike sheds have been tradidtional bullying areas. In a previous college, the students stopped setting fire to the toilet rolls when a fake camera was installed. The students already video each other and their teachers with mobile phones. It's not that big a deal.
Here is a nice picture of some bits from an old Phone.
http://www.porticus.org/bell/images/6ta_or_6ua_dial_and_associated_parts.gif
Modern STD dialling codes often match the letter codes on these old phones.
You have to ignore the 01 in the dialling code because this was added fairly recently. Also smaller towns use the dialling code of the nearest larger town.
Here is a big list of dialling codes if you are sad enough to see if this is really true.
http://www.ukphoneinfo.com/section/tci/old_std_list.shtml
So in the olden days, if you wanted to phone someone in Great Yarmouth, you would dial GY xxx. The GY translates into 49. Add the modern 01 prefix to get 0149. There is now a 3 on the end. I assume this last digit is to identify other places with GY/49 codes.
This does not work for all modern codes but most small and medium sized towns have kept their historical dialling codes.
This all goes to prove that there is nothing new under the sun.
Even mobile phone style abbreviations were used by Morse code operators over 100 years ago.
TTFN - Neil.
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