A dinosaur in a modern world
What the hell am I doing here?
The laws of nature dictate that you learn when you are young and you stick with what you have learned. You keep up to date with that, but any brand new technologies, you ignore and leave ’em to the youngsters.
I did electronics at third level. I studied valves. Transistors were a new thing and were barely mentioned.
How many of you can tell me what an Anode, a Cathode and a Grid are [and what they do]? Not many!
So what the fuck am I doing messing around with laptops and Interwebby things and blogs and servers? They are not of my era. I’m not supposed to know anything about them.
I’m supposed to be retired now. I’m supposed to be out playing bowls or golf. I’m supposed to be going to night classes to learn how to play bridge.
This Interweb thingy is fifteen years old. Fifteen years ago, I was in my forties – much too old to learn all this newfangled crap.
Why didn’t I stick with my pen and paper? Why did I get involved? Why can’t I live my life in peace on the bowling green?
I’m too old for all this shite.
There is archaeological evidence that Neanderthal overlapped with Homo Sapiens! 😉
Ian – Yup. And I am it……
You’re not leaving us are you ???
Paul – If you mean, am I about to shuffle off this mortal coil, then I can’t answer that. Only Himself knows that. If you are asking if I intend to stop blogging, then the answer is no. I’m just wondering what I’m doing here. That’s all.
“I’m just wondering what I’m doing here”
i think that every morning in work
Bowls, golf, or blog – I see a pattern there – brought to you by the letter o and the letter l. Which are also in old. But not in young, so my conclusion and deduction is not that you are too old, but that others are too young. Not me though, for I too am older than others (the young ones). Of course, I dismissed bridge immediately. The letter i, you see. Not a nice letter, i. It is in ice and rain, and also in inanity. Which this comment illustrates.
I am with you old man. I still call a capacitor a condenser. I look for a dynamo under the hood and see one of those new fangled alternators. I look at an I Pod and call it a tranny. A mouse is a small animal you chase with a brush. My time is past.
Cathy – Nice philosophy. I’m the right age – it’s everyone else who is too young. I could never fathom bridge anyway. It always struck me as being a very boring game?
TT – Ah yes! A variable condenser had those little slits in the fins. And spam was something you ate!
Do you mean a variable resistor, rheostat?
TT – Ah no! They looked like doughnuts with wire wrapped around ’em and a scraper that was moved with a knob. A variable capacitor was one of those yokes with all the fins that slid in and out.
How many of you can tell me what an Anode, a Cathode and a Grid are [and what they do]?
So look as they can be treated with a cream, does it matter? 😉
I didn’t realise you were so young. Perhaps I ought to find someone my own age to play with……… although you are quite fun. If only you had mentioned Cats Whiskers…..or communicating using ley lines.
An ode to what ?
And I would mock up the circuit on a bread board before building it.
Heck I still a set of those long plastic screwdrivers used to adjust the aiming of the Red, Green and Blue as well as the vert. and hort. on the back of a TV.
BTW the Anodes and Cathodes are either the in-door or the out-door depending on the voltage at the Base (grid).
Hey listen, you “dinosaur” – you are one of my favourite case studies when poking holes in Marc Prensky’s “digital natives/digital immigrants” theory.
And I learned about diodes, anodes, cathodes, anions, cations and such like at school. Sadly, although physics was my top subject, the section of it that dealt with electricity was my weakest bit. Give me mechanics any day. I’m a bear of little brain and practical, concrete things make sense to me.
Daddy P – Cat’s Whiskers? I used to be a dab hand at whipping up the old crystal sets!!
Brianf – You fail. The anode is positive and is therefore always the outdoor. The voltage on the grid determines the flow. [Three years of lectures reduced to two sentences!]
Karyn – Waddya mean, I’m a ‘case study’? Do you mean you stick me up in front of a class and lecture about me?
Electron flow or hole flow?
I was taught that negative is the out-door.
Maybe you were referring to Lucas electrics.
Did you know Lucas invented the headlamp dimmer and the intermittant windshield wiper? 🙂
Brianf – How can a hole flow? I refer to electron flow. And how can someone invent a second bulb in a lens?
No, Grandad, I mean I do this.
Watt we have here is a potential difference about current affairs which should be resisted.
We did valves. Very briefly. Jim Lacey liked to describe how he helped build the first commercial computer for Lyons (to count cakes or something) out of valves. He then explained grids,anodes, cathodes etc. and how he initially thought the transistor was a passing fad. Ha. Triac?
Yeah,I’m with Karyn, that digital native/immigrants idea has too many exceptions. Being neither native nor immigrant I’m not sure whether i’m young or old. Maybe I’ll get me one of these bloggy things……….watch this space
Would you be talking about triodes, tertaodes, or pentodes? Of course for tubes we can also refer to Traveling Wave Tubes or TWT, magnatrons, klystrons, CRTs, and my own favorite Nixie tubes. Computing goes back almost as far with multivacs, and univacs. I even had a brief experience working with the Intel 4004, the predecessor to the 8008 that started the small computer revolution. The internet is just a more robust version of the bulletin boards systems of day gone by though I do far prefer by board band connection to 300 baud modem. DRAM is also much less expensive the magnetic core memory.
The only constant is change.
Karyn – Ah! Interesting!! I have my opinions, as you will see 😉
TT – You’re barred again for bad punning.
Thrifty – In three years, we spent about two weeks on the subject of transistors. I have a sneaking suspicion I once gave Jim Lacey a lecture on hysteresis loops!!
Charmed – With a name like that you have to start blogging. It’s never too early/late to start.
Jim C – “triodes, tertaodes, or pentodes?” – aren’t they all the same bar the number of grids? And one of the damned pins always bent when you inserted them. My favourite was the VHT Diode in a TV set – 32,000 Volts of raw lightening. It would wake anybody up!
I remember the awe at the sight of a half inch long bit of plastic with three wires that could do the job of a triode without any heat. Those transistors were so small!
Anodes and cathodes?
Jesus, I could tell you about Wheatstone bridges, Van der Graaf generators and cloud chambers.
But I won’t.
Bock – You needn’t. Thanks very much. It’s a past life now….
Thanks so much for stopping by! I had created a response of my own which I had been unable to post due to some or the other technical glitch. Perhaps if I were a digital native, I could have sorted it out in a jiffy. I doubt it though, because I asked one of my native offspring and he shrugged and said uh-uh-uh, which is teenager for “I don’t know (and I don’t much care)”.
I’m glad, though, because you made the point so much better than I had.
Karyn – I think I confused the issue! He has given such a long reply, that it will take me a while to respond! [and today is my day off].
Don’t forget – I’m a Digital Immigrant too, by virtue of age.
i turn 30 in August and i’m wondering what the hell i’m doing messing around with computers, blogs and the like. I started about 25 years ago with an amstrad cpc 464 and wish I’d stayed there. I’m neither interested or interesting enough to maintain the constant creativity of those whose blogs I read daily.
I don’t enjoy the frustration of a system or software not responding to commands, doing what I ask or taking ages to do something that it took a few seconds to do yesterday. Getting someone’s address to write to involves an @ symbol, before a number I’m asked for a bebo and the book people recommend is the facebook one where I can be poked, bitten by zombie vampires and tagged in photos I’d not show my own mother.
Ultimately I find I’m bored by it all. There’s more to life.
Daragh – 30? You’re only a child! I preferred the Spectrum myself. And of course there is more to life – iPods? Mobile phones?