childhood inventions
 

Most of the messy programs will uninstall far cleaner if you use revo
uninstaller instead of add remove.

Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Stephen Wolstenholme" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:09:01 -0000, "Max Demian"
wrote:

"the dog from that film you saw" wrote in
message ...

i invented flash before adobe - in my head.
it simply occured to me one day that websites could be far more animated
and exciting than they were (this was in dialup days) if they generated
their own graphics with polygons,with maths, instead of having to
download
them at a great cost of time.
and then adobe programmed it and people hated them for it ever since.

I hate the way Adobe Flash keep trying to con you into installing Google
Chrome with their unnecessary upgrades. Once installed Chrome is
impossible
to get rid of without screwing other things up.

Chrome does not need to have the automatic upgrades option set and the
uninstaller at
http://support.google.com/chrome/bin...n&answer=95319
works perfectly.

Steve

--
EasyNN-plus. Neural Networks plus. http://www.easynn.com
SwingNN. Forecast with Neural Networks. http://www.swingnn.com
JustNN. Just Neural Networks. http://www.justnn.com

childhood inventions
 

Hmm well yes, and coming full circle was it not this very week that Gadget
show demonstrated a bulb that included a poweline net adaptor, a light
source and receiver of some sort to use laptops using light comms. Not sure
how the return link worked as always a bit low on detail.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Owain" wrote in message
...
On Jan 11, 1:17 pm, wrote:
I don't know why this came to mind, but I just wondered if anyone else had
mad inventions when they were a kid...

Not mad nor as a kid, but when I was a bit younger, I had this idea
for 24-hour telephone banking in c. 1986 but was told it would never
work. Firstdirect did it a couple of years later.

Also had this idea that if a computer now had enough power to play a
DVD, then a portable DVD player would have enough power to be a simple
computer with web browser. Someone else invented the 7" netbook ...

Owain

childhood inventions
 

wrote in message
...
secondary. Twelve or thirteen I suppose.

I don't know why this came to mind, but I just wondered if anyone else had
mad inventions when they were a kid...



Why didn't you write to Jim with your idea, maybe he could have fixed it for
you?

childhood inventions
 

"Martin" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:21:58 +0000, Stephen Wolstenholme
wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:09:01 -0000, "Max Demian"
wrote:
I hate the way Adobe Flash keep trying to con you into installing Google
Chrome with their unnecessary upgrades. Once installed Chrome is
impossible
to get rid of without screwing other things up.

Chrome does not need to have the automatic upgrades option set and the
uninstaller at
http://support.google.com/chrome/bin...n&answer=95319
works perfectly.

Don't ruin a good whine with facts

I've just done it now successfully. It might be the problem is associated
with a partial install. It definitely caused problems before - I googled for
the error message and found a reference.

--
Max Demian

childhood inventions
 

In article , Graham.
scribeth thus
On Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:53:32 +0000, Ian Jackson
wrote:

In message ,
writes
I was brought up in a house that was a few hundred yards from the edge
of a vast estate of council and NCB houses. If anyone's interested it
was on Middlegate, Scawthorpe, Doncaster. We often used to walk up the
hill to the field at the side of the quarry, from where there was a
view across the estate and also across parts of Bentley. I used to
fantasise about broadcasting to the estate from there, by light. I
would set up a powerful lamp that would be modulated by audio. I knew a
filament wouldn't respond quickly enough, but I didn't know anything
else that would, so I just hoped that sopmething would turn up. Each
receiver would have a large parabolic mirror mounted somewhere high up
enough to see my lantern, with a photocell at the focal point. I
remember talking to my science-inclined form master about this, so that
means I must have been first year secondary. Twelve or thirteen I suppose.

I don't know why this came to mind, but I just wondered if anyone else
had mad inventions when they were a kid...

ISTR that when I was also a lad (or, at least, a teenager) there were
several projects (probably Practical Wireless and similar) using an
OCP44 (or an OC44 with the paint scraped off) as the light-sensitive
diode detector, and a torch bulb as the transmitter. Obviously, the
frequency response was rather limited, but maybe they compensated by
applying lots of pre-emphasis to the audio.

OC44 was an rf transister, unlikley ro me a photo version (BICBW)
Are you sure you don't mean OCP71?
I used to mainly use the ORP12 LDR for my optical experiments.



ISTR scraping the paint of the OC71 series to exploit that effect;!)...

--
Tony Sayer

childhood inventions
 

In article , John
Legon scribeth thus
wrote:
I was brought up in a house that was a few hundred yards from the edge of a
vast estate of council and NCB houses. If anyone's interested it was on
Middlegate, Scawthorpe, Doncaster. We often used to walk up the hill to the
field at the side of the quarry, from where there was a view across the estate
and also across parts of Bentley. I used to fantasise about broadcasting to the
estate from there, by light. I would set up a powerful lamp that would be
modulated by audio. I knew a filament wouldn't respond quickly enough, but I
didn't know anything else that would, so I just hoped that sopmething would turn
up. Each receiver would have a large parabolic mirror mounted somewhere high up
enough to see my lantern, with a photocell at the focal point. I remember
talking to my science-inclined form master about this, so that means I must have
been first year secondary. Twelve or thirteen I suppose.

I did something similar when I was a couple of years older with a neon
panel lamp mounted in a bicycle lamp as transmitter, and a photocell in
a toilet roll with a magnifying glass at one end as receiver. I had no
ambitions to broadcast to the estate, but was happy with a modulated
light beam that transmitted music across my bedroom...

Not exactly hi-fi, but it worked.

We used to stick stakes in the ground a bit apart and apply high voltage
audio and a receiving pair of stakes in my mates house across the other
side of the estate, he'd be able to receive on a step up transformer
connected to them.

Worked surprisingly well:)...

--
Tony Sayer

childhood inventions
 

In article , Brian Gaff
scribeth thus
I recall the problems actually attempting to make a radio transmitter from
early transistors. Of course you could just build an oscillator and modulate
its amplitude, but that was not very successful as no matter what you did,
it had some FM tendencies resulting in the middle of the carrier having an
almost dead spot.
The only successful one was three transistors, a buffer and an output stage
which was tuned and then it worked quite well.

Brian


Never bothered with transistors, much too flimsy. Once after I got a
ECC88 going there was no stopping thru 807's and 813's then QQV03-20A
VHF valves;)...
--
Tony Sayer

childhood inventions
 

On Sat, 12 Jan 2013 12:23:33 +0000, tony sayer
wrote:

We used to stick stakes in the ground a bit apart and apply high voltage
audio and a receiving pair of stakes in my mates house across the other
side of the estate, he'd be able to receive on a step up transformer
connected to them.

Worked surprisingly well:)...

When I was about 10 I did a similar sort of thing but just by the
house and the shed. It didn't work very well at all. I replaced the
whole lot with a length of wire that went directly to the shed. No
tx/rx or transformers needed. That did work well, but that was no
surprise!

Steve

--
EasyNN-plus. Neural Networks plus. http://www.easynn.com
SwingNN. Forecast with Neural Networks. http://www.swingnn.com
JustNN. Just Neural Networks. http://www.justnn.com

childhood inventions
 

On Sat, 12 Jan 2013 10:11:14 -0000, "Brian Gaff"
wrote:

Actually, I think it was done to make testing them less prone to issues
when light fell on them.
Later of course they put their transistors inside metal cases, but many of
these now suffer from a degeneration of the filler that shorts them out so
they need to be replaced.

Brian

Yes, I have a classic Bush TR82C in the bedroom, and one of the AF117
started playing up. The fault practically put a short on the 9v rail.

Giving the transistor a sharp tap cleared the short temporarily. The
solution was just to snip the 4th screen wire, it really doesn't seem
to be necessary.


--
Graham.
%Profound_observation%

childhood inventions
 

On Sat, 12 Jan 2013 10:06:52 -0000, "Brian Gaff"
wrote:

You could only do that paint job on some of the Mullard devices, shortly
afterwards they made the bodies opaque.

My great inventions?
Pedal powered wire twister.. OK not of much use really, but fun.
It is interesting to note that my device for flashing festive lights in
weird sequences using OC72 transistors as bistables running from an astable
circuit took up half the room under the sofa, whereas nowadays its all done
in a chip you need a magnifying glass to see.. sigh...

Brian


I'll see your flashing festive lights, and raise you my push button
telephone dialler.

This I made in 1970 and was a complete lash up assembled on a piece of
plywood. It was totally electromechanical, and at it's heart was a
step selector switch that did the counting.

Ten push switches were mounted on a second piece of hardboard that was
the keypad.

The only problem in operation was you needed to keep the button
pressed until all the pulses for that digit were sent, a full second
for the 0 half a second for the 5 & pro rata.

The other slight issue with this device was the magnet winding on the
selector was 240v, but at least the final interface into the telephone
line were the isolated contacts of a relay.

It didn't need quite need half a room, but it lived in the cupboard
under my bedroom vanity sink unit to keep the noise down.



--
Graham.
%Profound_observation%