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Merry Christmas - Be an Erector Engineer!
theodp writes: More than 50 years ago, lucky kids found an Automatic Conveyor Erector Set under the Xmas tree. And while President Obama lamented last year that kids — including his own — were done a disservice by an educational system that failed to introduce computer science concepts 'with the ABCs and the colors', Radio Shack advised 'Parents Who Care' to put a TRS-80 under the tree for their kids to program way back in 1978. So, to bring things up-to-date, what are the hot tech/science gifts that Santa brought children today?
Snap Circuits. Yeah, baby.
Considering buying this for my child in the near future.
http://littlebits.cc/
When I was younger, I read the RadioShack catalogs from front to end. At one time, I lusted after the SSB CB Base station and 5/8 base antenna. I bought and assembled a couple of the kits with plastic bases, and even a couple of "surprise boxes". When they put a TRS80 in every store, I was even more surprised. I played with it and even got the moon landing to work out.
I bought a different computer, but what exactly is the problem here?
A dingo ate my sig...
Can you still get those 501-in-1 electronic kits they used to have? With door bells, radios, and whatnot. Haven't seen ads for anything like that in ages - mail-order catalogs used to carry those, but I guess kids aren't trusted to be thinking for themselves today...
Kids want only tablets and phones. Finding a way to program in these electronic devices is almost futile: Lame IDE kits, obsolete and broke ports of languages, webserves that cannot read local files... When I was kid I did carve for a C64 or Apple II, now I my tablets only drops birds and wait to hearts for recharge. Meh.
And if you didn't got it: WANT KIDS TO BECOME CODERS AND ENGINEERS? PORT THE TOOLS TO ANDROID AND IOS!
Well duh, an iPad of course, because downloading and "installing" apps is all that any kid needs to learn these days.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
By the time I was five or six I had an electric train set that my Father taught me how to put together and wire up each time I would use it. I wasn't much, if any, older when I had a chemistry set with chemicals in it that would get you on a terrorist watch list if you bought them today. Before I was ten my Father had taught me how to solder and I got a very nice soldering iron when I was ten and used it to assemble my first radio receiver kit. It used vacuum tubes, which took hundreds of volts to work. What would the parent police think or do today to the parents of a ten year old who was given a 300 degree C soldering tool and left alone to use it to build a radio with high voltages. Yes, I also had an Erector set, and toy guns and latter a BB gun and all of the other things that made kids from the 1940's and 1950's into the engineers and scientists that got us to the moon in 1969.
To learn you have to do and try and sometimes you fail and sometimes things might have some risk but not to try and not to do is a complete dead end for society.
The most hopeful thing I see on the horizon is the Maker Movement, although I think that sometimes it tends to candy coat real learning. Learning is not always easy or fun but LEARNING that is is almost always worthwhile and enriching is one of the most important lessons anyone can have and the earlier the better.
The TRS-80 and similar system have something no other system has:
* A simple DOS like system (Linux is just a steep learning curve)
* A solid Basic / JavaScript system at boot up
* Simple IO communications
* Easy hardware maintenance
* Self-contained system
Raspberry Pi is a step in the right direction but if something goes wrong I can't soldier in a new RAM chip or pull the processor. People really like a simple all-in-one unit. The wide range of choices and lack of uniformity makes it hard design a solid education program.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I'm an Irate Erection Engineer!
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
2 sons (8 and 9) received usb gamepads. They have no console, but they like video gaming with friends. Now they have the means. But first they must learn:
How to load an OS onto their SD card.
How to boot my Raspberry Pi.
How to download, compile, install, and run a SNES emulator.
So we're a linux family.
I'm also one of us that remember dicking about with electronics and designing/building/programming early computers at home...
That culture of exploration seems to have died with us.
I have a 10 year old son. Neither him or any of his friends or school mates are interested in anything that isn't completely pre-packaged, comes with full instructions, and is 100% convenient. If anything requires any creative thinking or even any slight effort on his part, it just gets left unfinished in a drawer.
Sadly I think thanks to the sick liberal values in society and promoted by mass media, this level of laziness and total absence of scientific curiosity is completely typical of the current generation of at least middle class US kids now, and simple market demand explains the complete lack of electronic sets, chemistry sets etc in toy stores these days.
I'd up mod you if I had points. I have been an EE for 20 years, and don't think I will steer my kids into it. Same for my wife who is also an engineer. We like our work (the technology), the people we work with, but hate our employer. The keep hammering for more billable hours, cutting benefits, etc. I have about had it. If I didn't have young kids I'd quit tomorrow and try working for myself. Those who clamor for more STEM are not STEM workers.
As a child I wanted an Erector Set. My parents gave me Lincoln Logs instead. My childhood was ruined.
I dislike snap circuits because the block units tend to roll up too much of the complexity making them more magical and less electrical. I liked my ancient electronics kit that had discrete components with springs that clamped the wires you used to make connections. What was good about that was you could make errors or try shorting things out or removing things and see what changed. Plus they included some fun stuff like high voltage shock circuits you could build.
Now the thing is I could be wrong about preferring discrete components. These days no one at all builds analoc circuits from scratch. You want a thermometer, well no worries, no need to bias a themistor or measure the voltage on a reversed biased junction. No just buy a thermometer chip with an SPI data bus and connect 3 wires to your arduino. Simple! And absurdly that hideously complex way of making a thermometer turns out to be cheaper and easier than the discrete component approach. No need ot learn any analog electronics.
SO maybe I'm just old fashioned in liking discrete components. kids won't ever use that stuff, the magic bits will all be rolled up for them into block elements they can snap together on their SPI bus.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Same here, I've worked in EE for 25 years, as a technician at first. I don't see much of a future for it here in Montreal, I'm lucky I found a job here, it's off the island but at least I'm working in my field. At the same numerical wage as 15 years ago, minus the benefits, and with no vacation time except for the legal minimum. I worked the 24th. All day. I slept the 25th because I also work evenings doing contract work.. so I can make enough money to pay the immoral taxes in Quebec. (I made the mistake of going on unemployment last year, oops, the province considers this a revenue so it wants even more taxes from me.)
I wonder how the kids at Bombardier feel these days, with their bosses getting welfare to the tune of a billion dollars US yet shipping the jobs to Mexico.
Sure, just study more... What kind of life is this?
All I'm doing is running in place to pay taxes with the same salary as 15 years ago.
Mostly random stuff.
...a progression of professions. Start with an erector set, but mechanical engineers are the lowest paid engineers. Progress to simple electronic kits, but electrical engineering is a dying profession. Get a Raspberry Pi, but all software is now offshored. Sell all those used kits; now, sales is a lasting profession.
Erector, perhaps; what about Meccano?
Last time I checked (two minutes ago), Erector products were made by Meccano.
It was, you can buy it: http://hms-beagle.com/heirloom...
I read that as Erection Engineer but I'm mildly buzzed from a couple of drinks. That's an unusual state for me. I have an excuse. They are all being a bit loud, getting to know each other, and getting drunk so I have a minute. So, today's novella...
I had an Erector set, several, as a child. My kids had one too but it was not nearly as much fun to play with but they both have fond memories of it. It's kind of sad for kids these days. I didn't have one but my older brother had a chemistry set that had all sorts of things they'd never even dream of letting a kid have in today's litigious society. It had a variety of acids, all sorts of stuff. I'm pretty sure there was radioactive stuff in there as well but that might have been a different science kit? Maybe Little Joey's First Bomb Making Kit or something? I dunno. It's been a minute since I was that age.
At any rate... Yeah, some of the toys are kind of cool. We used to buy black powder and use our empty BB gun's CO2 cartridges. We'd fill them up, tamp 'em down, throw in a waterproof fuse, and then cause hate and discontent with various inanimate things. We stomped through the woods with rifles and spent hours shooting cans and other targets. We had chemistry sets and Ka-Bar knives. We had Lincoln Logs. Okay, those were pretty dumb. We had potato guns, paint can dust bombs, machetes, hatchets, saws, gasoline and a book of matches...
Meh, none of us died or anything and we learned lots of things. Sure, we sometimes got hurt and broke bones skateboarding, fighting, jumping off stuff onto other stuff, etc... But no, we all managed to make it to adults.
Somewhere, between what I was allowed to do and what kids are allowed to do now - there's gotta be a more interesting and educational way. We learned a lot by having fun. Yes, we got hurt sometimes. Shit happens, you know? I had rifles and pistols at my school - like my own. They stayed in an unlocked cabinet in the office. We had a ski slope too. Hell, we had an ice arena. But we also had an observatory and a lab with things like chemicals with a MSDS and Bunsen burners. We had evaporation hoods and PPE. Nobody died. If someone got hurt, we cleaned up the mess and they went to the hospital - and we didn't get hurt at all in the lab. For few days we all went and got glass blowing lessons in case we were eventually going to need to blow our own glass. (No, I didn't do very well but we all got to blow a beaker and some tubing and some other crap, fucked if I know, I'm not a chemist.)
We played rugby and basically beat the hell out of each other - it was a good way to get over being pissed at your roommate. We sneaked off into the woods at night and smoked and drank out behind the Away team goal on the soccer field. I should also add that I ended up at this school because a friend of mine and I (we were pretty young) set his dad's garage on fire. So... That turned out better than I expected but that's besides the point. Where was I?
Oh yeah, it has to suck to not be allowed to do stuff like that now. If you could put it in your mouth, we did. If you could roll in it, we did. If you could take it apart, we did. If it was broken and you wanted it to work, you figured out how to fix it. (That applies to bones, feelings, hearts. and bargains.) We learned stuff, whatever we needed. There was a drive, a need. We don't need to let them learn those things any more. It's like we're afraid to let them learn by making mistakes until they get it right, I guess.
I dunno if I'm being a crotchety old man or if there's really that much difference. My kids were pretty driven to learn. I hold high standards. They don't have to meet them but I appreciate them trying and will love 'em even when they fuck up. 'Cause ya gotta. You have to fix broken things and if you don't know how then you have to learn.
And that's kind of where I was going with that. I think. It really must be sad to have a young kid these days unless you can still get away with allowing them to get an education. How do they learn t
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Yeah, and no seatbelts in the back seat. And leaded fuel. Bring back the good ole days !
My Xmas wish-list this year was basically an Arduino starter's set (Arduino, breadboard, various LEDs and other components), in the hope that kids and I could have fun together trying to build stuff.
Yeah, that seems to be the message. I just wonder what the outcome of this grand social experiment is going to be and if maybe we shouldn't have made as many changes as we did. :/
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
For kids who are into robotics (or parents who want to get their kids interested in robotics) LEGO Mindstorms is a good place to start.
Its easy to assemble, usable with all the other LEGO bricks out there and easy to program with the LEGO supplied development environment.
Plus the programmable brick runs Linux under the hood and every single thing running on the brick itself is open source (as far as I know anyway). The brick even has bluetooth for talking to the outside world.
Responsible adulthood? Look at the average adult these days, whiny and complaining about the slightest wrong. "I want" or "I am entitled to" rather than "I can". Helpless when it comes even to simple tasks like changing a flat tyre. And above all looking towards others, or the government, when something goes wrong or something needs to be done. That's what you get if you shelter children when they grow up: what is called the "rubber tile society" over here.
Exploring in freedom (i.e. without adult supervision), making your own mistakes and learning from them. Those things teach self-reliance, healthy curiosity and teamwork, and they are an important part of growing up. Perhaps there are better or safer ways to teach those things to children, but my sad observation is that we haven't even tried to find them. Curiosity and self-reliance are certainly not things that seem to be valued in today's schools and today's society. But without these, how on earth can we expect our children to become adults? "Trying to child-proof the world makes us neglect the more important task of world-proofing the child"
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Let's see...
First electric train (Lionel) at age 6; played with trains almost daily for years. First Estes rocket at age 13 (I think); with Erector sets in between (temporally). I enjoyed the pace and care required to build balsa& tissue paper model aircraft -- which I then flew with the usual semidestructive results.
My latest (gift from child this Xmas) is the ThinkGeek solar-powered marble kinetic sculpture kit. I hope I never lose the enjoyment of building stuff.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I had a Meccano set, which was the Euro equivalent. I seldom built anything from the instruction book, but designed my own battleships with elaborate armament and had them annihilate each other. That, and playing Monopoly with my innumerable siblings, got me started on being a Repjblican at an early age.
-1, Green activist.
Why is everyone trying to force kids into a certain path? I know this article doesn't do that but does talk about wanting to introduce programming in the education system.
How about introducing children to a wide range of activities and then encourage the ones that they like? Not everything has to lead into a career. Let children have some fun. Maybe what they discover will turn into a hobby. Maybe it will just be some fun. It could make them some friends. Or they could possibly find their calling.
There is an apocryphal story that Winston Churchill enjoyed playing with Erector set as a boy. While he did not become an engineer, he was technically astute enough to push for the development of the tank during World War I, and later the development of code breaking and radar during World War II.
OP speaks the truth. Electrical Engineering is dead
If only there was some way of getting new people into the industry by teaching them how to do the job.
Both. Because (s)he is Anonymous Coward.
I read that as Erection Engineer but I'm mildly buzzed from a couple of drinks. That's an unusual state for me. I have an excuse. They are all being a bit loud, getting to know each other, and getting drunk so I have a minute.
Drunk people are incredibly annoying until I have a couple drinks myself. Why I loathe coming in late to a party.
I didn't have one but my older brother had a chemistry set that had all sorts of things they'd never even dream of letting a kid have in today's litigious society. It had a variety of acids, all sorts of stuff.
BAM! memory time kicks in. I had one of hose old school chemistry kits, and it had real actual chemicals, and real actual experiments. I hate to go into old guy mode, but as safety culture takes a tighter and tighter grip over the country, Chemistry kits have become lame, almost useless.
I'm expecting vinegar and baking soda reactions to be made illegal soon, and some brown skin kid arrested for doing one in a school science fair experiment as a teacher thinks it might be some terst explodey thing "Well, there were all these bubbles and stuff - and we just ca't be too careful these days!"
We used to buy black powder and use our empty BB gun's CO2 cartridges. We'd fill them up, tamp 'em down, throw in a waterproof fuse, and then cause hate and discontent with various inanimate things.
When we couldn't get into town to get black powder, a friend an I used to pry the tops off of bullets, and empty out the contents. Hope I didn't just make some safety culturists faint!
We had potato guns, paint can dust bombs, machetes, hatchets, saws, gasoline and a book of matches...
And we were learning things as well. Today's kids are in this weird world where safety culture is trying to insulate them from every possible source of injury. So they hit the teenage years with a weird sense of immortality mixed in with normal teenage rebellion, and no idea about this kinda stuff. So we get YouTube videos of teenagers sticking bottle rockets up their asses and lighting them https://www.youtube.com/watch?... , or taping firecrackers to their lips https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
and on and on. Not one of us stupid old time kids would ever do that, even if we stole some of Grandpa's beer and Wild Turkey, and took off to the woods with a box of M81's. We were hell on mailboxes, which was kinda bad. But the point is, we did happen to grow up without doing serious harm to ourselves.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They don't know how to mend broken bones, computers, bikes, cars, radios, friendships, feelings, or hearts. I presume the AC was trying to troll or they really don't get it. I also imagine they don't know how to fix a damned thing.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I suppose neither of you clowns has ever heard of sarcasm, and your parents disabled your sarcasm meters.
Infuriate left and right
Ah good. I'm not just a crotchety old man. I was kind of curious if I was just being biased or suffering from confirmation biases??? Ah well...
So, my kids got my g/f drunk last night and teased me 'cause she's younger than they are. We had a good time. They get along well. This was the first time they've met. I figured it would be a bit more awkward but it was just fine. My kids are kind of cool like that. They had good parenting...*cough*lies*cough*
Yeah, I got my older brothers by default. It wasn't really mine but he was more into electronics not long after. I used to have some 20-in-1 thing and then a 50-in-1 thing and then I started doing my own stuff with whatever looked like it might be fun.
Yup, you can get powder out of the bullets just fine. It actually burns a bit slower and, while this might not make sense, it means it has a bit more punch to it. Do NOT try this at home but if it is a center-fire then you can heat the casing (after removing the powder) and get the primer out as it's held in with some substance that melts faster than the temperature that they detonate. That is *not* recommended but do-able. Somewhere, back home, I have a stack of unopened reloading supplies and I've never had the time to learn how to do it. I'm sure the information is in there. I bet Google will help.
As kids? Well, we did stuff like leave our hand open and THEN put a firecracker on top of it and light it. It's just like someone gave you a hard high five as you're not containing the gases so you're not going to get hurt. We did some stupid shit. We had bottle rocket fights and Roman Candle fights. And it was awesome. And we would have been in trouble had we been caught.
Anyhow, one of the worst things I learned was that I could flip a bottle out the window, at speed, and had remarkable accuracy hitting signs and mailboxes. You'll know when you hit it. I can hit a sign on the highway on a good day. Well, I could - I'm horribly out of practice now. I used to be able to do it while driving and get a bunch of hits.
During the summer, one year - near graduation I think, we'd gone and looked at the road we'd traveled down. I then drove to K-Mart and bought every mailbox they had in stock and left them quietly at the end of each driveway. Considering that's a federal offense (the statute of limitations has long since passed) we were kind of lucky but we never heard a thing. (I'm not sure if it is still a federal offense...)
Mailboxes are protected by federal law, and crimes against them and the mail they contain are considered a federal offense. Violators can be fined up to $250,000 or imprisoned for up to three years for each act of vandalism.
That's from the USPS site - I figure some folks may not know this is a federal offense.
As I recall, I dropped off 23 brand new mailboxes and gave the last two away to some folks who had a mailbox that I missed. Hmm... I'm thinking this was 1973 or so. Yeah, I'd just gotten my license and had driven my car up to school. I had to have been 16. Oddly, I seem to recall disclosing it before enlisting and I know that it was on both of my clearance applications. They never said a thing about it.
Ah well... The kids are awake and ate. I made scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, and toast for 'em. Well no, they made their own toast and my daughter finished cooking the bacon. Next up, get some of this mess picked up and head out and go to a car dealership. *sighs* The Girl Child wants a Honda Accord. It's a fine car for her and her needs and she has this look, this way of asking, it's not really something I could say no to. They'll all be heading home after one more small holiday and then the New Year's festivities.
I have acquired a bunch of things that go boom. If anyone's in the PCB, FL region on New Year's Eve they should come out and join in the festivities with us. There'll be booze, explosions, music, and a safe place to crash out or a safe ride home. It's a private beach so there won't be any cops. The neighbors are planning on attending so there won't be any complaints. I spent a goodly sum on things that go boom. I wonder if it's possible to take good pictures of 'em.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
This story is based on real life events. A small company I was working for was bought-out by another small, but out-of-state electronics company. The new owners were well versed in bit-banging and CPU. My former company was 99% analog. We used op amps and R/C circuits for timing/filtering. They used code on CPU's. The new owners flew me out to their facility on three different weeks, to help their staff incorporate this whole new product line into theirs.
One interesting discussion I had with them involved creating a 0.5 second power-on reset signal for a USB interface chip, to allow the rest of the unit to "settle" before bringing up the USB interface. One guy said he'd just use a little 8-pin CPU and some code. I suggested an op-amp, some resistors, and a cap. They looked at me like I had two heads.
I reminded them that because these devices were intended to be used in environments with high levels of radio frequency energy, and high sensitivity receivers, (transceivers) RFI ingress and egress were important! The op amp and R/C circuits were virtually RF immune, and generated NONE. A CPU generates some, and is sensitive to RF.
Case-in-point: They had a high-current, DC switching system (multiple DC power ports that could be controlled remotely) that was driving them completely bonkers, because of random resets or other unpredictable behavior when they switched loads on and off. When I tried to explain current loops and grounding, they again looked at me like I had two heads. One even said, "But isn't ground, just GROUND??" (Insert FACEPALM here!)
I had to briefly explain OHM'S LAW to them! Ground planes have a measurable (albeit small) resistance, and when you are passing a dozen amps or more, you start to see dozens of millivolts from the E=IR drops... sometimes, switching spikes were high enough to false-trigger CPU inputs or other circuits, because the CPU was "riding" up and down on those voltages! When I showed them one of our old ANALOG designs, with separated ground paths... and explained WHY those paths were separate... I think they finally "got it". Their next complete redesign didn't have the issues of the first.
I summed it up by saying, "It is an ANALOG WORLD, guys!" ;)
Willie...
Or just an asshole.
I've four sons, aged 8 to 28. They each got an Arduino powered kit from Sparkfun.com. After gifts where opened, and appetites satiated, we all spent several hours in my home lab learning how to solder, troubleshoot and eventually change the software running to power their boards ( a mix of a Simon Says game and digital alarm clocks).
I remembered building miniature bulldozers and tanks with my dad out of our Erector Sets and then having "pulling" contest to see who had the best design. I enjoyed my boys jesting about who could make the most useful mod to their kit.
Over the years, Erector Sets gave way to Kinnex, and Kinnex gave way to video games, But our ability as parents to ignite creativity has never changed, only our commitment to do so.
Nothing evolves faster than the word of god in the minds of men who think themselves divinely inspired.
Exactly why I generally avoid sarcasm. It misfires so easily, and people who don't know you well can't tell if you are serious or not. Say what you mean and mean what you say. It is better to be clear than to be clever.
Because the CEO of Apple says that Americans are to stupid. I've done what Apple did. I've just hired an H1B engineer that only knows about Erector Sets. Once it finishes the project for my child, it will be returned back.
One of my brothers was bemused by the fact that his iPad/gaming obsessed kids spent most of the day playing with low tech toys I got them (Spirograph, gyroscopes, mecanno set, football etc) and not with the various electronic games etc they had got them. It was more to help them do something different than stare at screens all day, use their imaginations and have fun in a different way.
Ditto here. The wife got the grandparent to get it for the kids. It is a bit of a disappointment. I wish it at least had a couple of different resistor values, a few caps, and maybe a discrete transistor or two. In terms of documentation for the "IC" blocks, the manual did contain some description, and the PDF on their web site contains the internal circuit diagram (well, sort of. The inside of their custom ICs are still "black box".) I had one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... as a kid. It was wonderful. I wish my folks didn't get rid of it after I moved out. My brother had one o these http://cba.sakura.ne.jp/ex/mx1..., which I inherited after he moved on to bigger and better things. Both of those beat the pants off of snap circuits.
-- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
Meh, none of us died or anything and we learned lots of things. Sure, we sometimes got hurt and broke bones skateboarding, fighting, jumping off stuff onto other stuff, etc... But no, we all managed to make it to adults.
Everyone I knew as a kid had some broken bones and trips to the emergency room. It was just a thing you did. Today, it costs between $10-30,000 to break a leg, so I have no wonder that everyone is much more worried about potential injury to little Johnny. Seriously, if you're talking about trading a new car for a little reckless fire-play, I'm pretty sure Johny doesn't get to play with fire.
They already make 'em buy insurance. I think my kids either at least broke a bone or broke someone else's. My daughter quit cheering after breaking another girl's nose so she's at least broken that one. With my son, trips to the ER were fairly common. He had an ankle air cast thing and a cast on his wrist at one point so I'm thinking that was broken but that was a lot of years ago and my memory has faulty sectors.
Usually, the larger the scar - the more interesting the story. With that, of course, the more prominent the lesson. To this day, I wake up sometimes with a sore knee, back, ankle, wrist, etc... First thing, "Oh yeah! I remember that. Heh." You can laugh more when you've cried your hardest. You can sing louder when you remember having been silenced. You can jump higher when you've been held down.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Kudos for "Repjblican". One character closer to "Replebejan". Or to "Re-publican".
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I discovered one day that it is quite easy to get the black powder out of firecrackers. And that eggs are sold in two varieties: calibrated, and uncalibrated. And that medium-calibrated eggs fit perfectly inside of a piece of metal tubing klepto-ed from a construction site. So I froze a couple of dozen calibrated eggs at -30 degrees Celsius in my parents' freezer, and made a back-loader out of my metal tube, using tooling from my dad's workbench. The thing had a plug at the bottom made out of rolled-up gutter zinc, and a hole for the fuse (I re-used firecracker fuses.) I quickly realized that firing it at an angle could lob a frozen egg about 300 meters away. (And I also quickly discovered it was advisable to handle the thing with oven mitts, after the first shot.) I was the terror of the neigbourhood. Oh, and I was 12 years old. Somehow strange that I didn't end up as an artillery officer.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
That sounds awesome! That is also something that I've never thought of launching. As an adult, I have a few dollars. I have a neighbor that raises chickens and even some that migrated to my house (I assume they're revolutionary Communist chickens - it's a long story) but, as near as I can tell, the ones that migrated to The New Land (my lawn) haven't left me anything that resembles an egg. But, I can get some.
I can even get thick black piping and make egg sabots. Hmm... I won't be home until spring, probably, and I don't think my current location is a good area. I am in Florida, I can get away with it, but I'm in a rather ritzy community, on the beach, and don't have a whole lot of property here. I do have several video cameras, a work shop, and a pile of tools - including a MIG welder. I am picturing something with a classic WWI-style AA weapon targeting system and, of course, all in black.
Also, per your other remark. I am glad it amused someone besides me. I actually find it more amusing that someone else failed to get the humor. It says a lot about some people. Of course, you can say most anything about "some people" and be correct. "Some people like sticking mashed peas in their ass." I'm not gonna Google, my kids are wandering around the house and that'd be an awkward conversation, but I presume that there are even pictures of people doing this. And liking it... So, when things like that happen - I get to say, "Some people ____." I'm easily amused.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Wow yes - with a sabot you would get even better egg-to-barrel fitting (some of mine didn't go that far away because they wire slightly, like 1/2 mm, under caliber). You just need piping with a very thick wall, I'd say 5 mm at least. I am still amazed the thing didn't blow up in my face - I still have 2 eyes and 10 fingers, strangely enough. Moreover, my supply of firecrackers was limited to the buying power of my pocket and newspaper money. You could do a lot better :-P
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
If I've forgotten then remind me in the spring and I'll take pics and video. You can live vicariously through me. If the absolute worst case happens then I have a friend who's a licensed pyrotechnical engineer. He's even done a few famous shows in NYC and D.C. and the set up at one of the Disney theme parks. I will have options.
This might actually give me an excuse to build or buy a 3-D printer. I suspect, with some work, I can get the foam insulation with the right external diameter to match the internal diameter of some black pipe, used in industrial, high pressure, steam environments. Then, I can print a cup sort of thing that has a base (again matching the internal diameter of the pipe - or slightly smaller), a bit like a wine cup, which will go in through the foam and hold the egg steady. I can then simply mill out some 1/4" plywood to match the internal diameter as well and be pretty accurate at matching the internal diameter with that.
I can then securely glue my egg cup to the wood. I'd then place the egg in the cup, wrap the cup with the appropriate sized foam insulation, and then slice along the opposite side (foam insulation is already slit on one side) and do the rest via breach loading. I can use fine threaded caps and have access to a threading machine and own a drill press.
All-in-all, I'd probably not just be limited to frozen eggs as ammunition. I could even make up a pre-loaded breech and seal it with a thin layer of wax and then just thread that entire piece on. So, I'd load the sabot and then thread on pre-loaded breeches (call 'em cartridges if you wish), and be able to make a whole bunch of them up with varied sizes. Once I figure out the firing characteristics, I can do firing tables. I've got a welding machine (I'm not the greatest at it - but I can make stuff stick together) and I can make a stand. Heck, I can make a remote firing system so I might not even lose an arm or an eyeball.
I think this needs to be done. I think the various ammunitions need to be studied. I'd like to see the effects from a frozen rotten egg. I should also find some prescription bottles and fill them with shot, concrete, or maybe a percussion cap and powder. With some help, I could rifle the inside of the tube but that seems like excess and like it might otherwise ruin a bad idea and make it more accurate. I own an obscene amount of property so it's not like I'll be risking the general public's health or property.
I've copied this to a text file and placed it in my /home directory on my computer that is back home and made a local copy. This must be done.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
IMDb entry germane.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I know that concepts that are longer than what fits on a bumper sticker are difficult for some people and that individual thought is considered an anomaly but I strongly encourage you to take a remedial course in reading comprehension. Allow me, if you will, to quote the most applicable part from my original missive:
That does not mean I want it to be entirely like everything was back then. Not at all. I just wish we would be somewhere different by now.
And, in case you think that I'm selectively quoting, allow me to cite yet another comment, from that same post, that leads into that statement - there more than 140 characters separating them, so I'm not surprised that you had difficulty with the comprehension aspect:
Somewhere, between what I was allowed to do and what kids are allowed to do now - there's gotta be a more interesting and educational way.
Now, I'll refrain from making comments about your mother but I will speculate that you've not actually been afforded the opportunity to get an education. This is something that I'm bothered by and something that I wish I had the opportunity to change at greater values than I am able to.
Finally, allow me to posit that you're a fine example of the subject of my message. Note, if you will, this quote:
How do they learn to fix things?
Rather than attempt to fix things, you asked a question based on your inability to comprehend the message and then make further judgments based on the erroneous conclusions. You're not interested in fixing things. You're interested in being "right." I would further speculate that you are neither able to fix things nor habitually "right" and that it's because the educational system has failed you and because you lacked sufficient motivation to get the applicable education on your own.
Do you have any further questions or comments, or was that enough?
Allow me to close with yet another quote from my initial commentary and, if you will, please give this some thought:
Hell, where do they go to learn to fix their wetware?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
That sounds like a blast. I'm going to *try* to record it on video and see if I can get some good snaps. I think I've finally got the order figured out and I even plan on a finale with the aid of a neighbor, my son, and my daughter's affianced. I... Umm... Err... I probably could have bought a small, cheap, new car with what I spent on things that go boom. I don't often have both my kids with me at the same time any more. I figure that we might as well make it memorable. Even the neighbor has thrown in some extras and has some extra mortar tubes.
We'll be using flares. If I'd planned on doing this a little better, I'd have looked into an electronic ignition system. A rough estimate says, with finale, we should be good for about 30 minutes - which should also give an indication about the expense. There's going to be a good time had by all. Lots of kids will be visiting and the house is up quite a ways so we'll be doing it out on the beach (go past the gated communities and the golf course and then stay straight instead of going over towards the State Park - so you have a good idea of where it is) and it should be pretty safe.
I've *paid* for shows done before but I've never done quite this many on my own. (I have a buddy who is a pyrotechnic engineer and he gives me good rates and I do a yearly party back home in Maine.) Hmm... LOL You can come down if you want. You're not *that* far away. There are probably better and bigger shows that are much closer. There are two more spare bedrooms and then the rest of the house. There are still vacancies in town (it doesn't really start to get busy until mid-February but I suspect you know that).
We'll run a small test show on the 30th to ensure that everything goes as planned but that's going to be right around dusk. We're thinking about going to get some more and doing a show at 8:00 and then again at 11:45 - and just setting a bunch off. I'll be sober but I don't know about them so I'm still debating that. This would be a good time to have purchased a drone - I could put it up there and let it record parts of the show. Unfortunately, that has never happened and I've never really learned to fly one. It would be fun, however.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
There's a construction company here (StL) that goes by the name Big Boy's Steel Erection.
They erect steel, apparently.
http://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/big-boys-steel-erection/Location?oid=2692539
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=big.boy's.steel.erection
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
there's still lots of science kits available at places like michael's which have lots of hands on: rock tumbling, astronomy, whatever. astronomy is particularly good, because a talented and ambitious and diligent (and/or just lucky) kid can still make actual discoveries just like a tenured prof.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Yeah, that seems to be the message. I just wonder what the outcome of this grand social experiment is going to be and if maybe we shouldn't have made as many changes as we did. :/
we live in a capitalist society. sit tight and accept that your purpose in life is to be a conduit to funnel money from whoever you "work" for to those few whose role in society is to accumulate it, as efficiently as possible and with minimal fuss.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
They don't know how to mend broken bones, computers, bikes, cars, radios, friendships, feelings, or hearts. I presume the AC was trying to troll or they really don't get it. I also imagine they don't know how to fix a damned thing.
the only way to fix a damned thing is to let Jesus into its heart.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Both. Because (s)he is Anonymous Coward.
that guy posts everywhere! he must spend all his time online.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Exactly why I generally avoid sarcasm. It misfires so easily, and people who don't know you well can't tell if you are serious or not. Say what you mean and mean what you say. It is better to be clear than to be clever.
are you being sarcastic?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
When I was a kid, we had stores, not online marketplaces...
when i was a kid my major metropolitan area was still a one horse town so i bought all this stuff via mail order, which is just like amazon but slower.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
It was, you can buy it: http://hms-beagle.com/heirloom...
geez; do they offer financial aid? "i'd like to take out a mortgage to buy my kid a chemistry set, please"
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
This is fucking awesome - to see a bad youth idea of 12-year old me (a boy in a village along the Rhine) turning into a piece of private artillery in the US. I actually got the idea, initially, from Scrooge McDuck, who once built a jay-cannon. It fired diamond jays to pierce the hull of his main opponent's submarine. I then thought "What could I fire?!?" As it was close to year's end, the only period of the year in which fireworks are legally sold in the Netherlands, and as this was 36 years back, I had access to amounts of black powder that, nowadays, would be considered insane (for a 12-year old, that is). I saw you in a discussion about security crazes, education and nanny-state, and won't go into that now. I will definitely remind you in spring ! BTW, ideas for other types of ammo: 1) balls of frozen applesauce, by using a calibrated mold (heck, you could even use a grenade-shaped mold) 2) Something we did in the Foreign Legion with exercise hand grenades, which were hollow and filled with talcum powder: we removed the talcum & filled them up with mayonnaise, mustard or ketchup. [ Favorite target: an open hatch on an armoured vehicle of the regular French cavalry. Jump, dump, duck, enjoy the cursing. ] Why not make a projectile that has a very thin scale at the front side, and fill it with whatever innocent impact-marker the food industry provides you with ?
Anyway, yes you're right: this needs to be done. Can't wait for the pics / vid / specs !
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
AC troll... Loser.