Lightbulbs!

Gosh...and I thought choosing an Android mobile phone was difficult...what about choosing a lightbulb?

I remember the time when you went to the local ironmongers to buy a lightbulb and had a very simple decision.... Pearl or Clear? 60watt or 100watt? ....simple eh?

OMG...what happens now if you need a lightbulb....a nightmare! Have you been to B&Q or Homebase and seen the number of lightbulbs now? Oh....and they are now withdrawing the 'normal' lightbulbs because they are destroying the planet! So now you have to decide whether to go green and buy 'energy saving' bulbs which vary from 10p each to £10 each. Why there is such a difference in price is beyond my comprehension. Halogen spot lamps don't last 5 minutes let alone 5 years regardless of the price and buy a super light array from NEXT will leave you changing bulbs everyday for a living! I am now considereing replacing my multi halogen spotlight arrays with a simple one bulb energy efficient light bulb....simple? Not really...what about the base? Bayonet, large Eddison screw, small Eddison screw, push-in...the choices are without limits!

Did I mention LED lightbulbs? ....the future?

Did you know that CFL's (Compact Fluorecent Lamps) contain Mercury Vapour...not good for the environment eh!

What was wrong with the simple lightbulb? Lights your house and warms the room as well!

Mr Eddison you would turn in your grave if you could see what you have done!

Android

Last week I decided to buy a new mobile phone...a Smart Phone!

For years I have struggled to send text messages with the silly numeric keyboard on my present phones...too many menus...to many button presses! I can send morse code quicker, why have analogue technology on a mobile phone!

then...along comes ANDROID!

OMG...this technology is amazing!

Soooo simple to use, touch screen, internet, e-mail thousands of apps!! Suddenly I feel like I am in the 21st century! I can text, e mail, facebook, twitter, blog...like having a PC in my pocket.

Well done Samsung, a quality smart phone at a super price...I could even update this blog on my phone if I wanted to...cool!

So what is ANDROID?

The Android open-source software stack consists of Java applications running on a Java-based, object-oriented application framework on top of Java core libraries running on a Dalvik virtual machine featuring JIT compilation. Libraries written in C include the surface manager, OpenCore[21] media framework, SQLite relational database management system, OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics API, WebKit layout engine, SGL graphics engine, SSL, and Bionic libc. The Android operating system consists of 12 million lines of code including 3 million lines of XML, 2.8 million lines of C, 2.1 million lines of Java, and 1.75 million lines of C++.[22]

If you can make sense of this you are definately a Digital Native! I understand most of this ...but... what happens if you type in 12 million lines of code and you make a typing error?

Digital Car Park

Digital technology gone mad!!

On the main road where I live is a community of shops, stores, library and health centre. There has always been a large car park at the front of the stores of Netto and Home Bargains. The car park is never full and is used by many to park while they go to the post office or health centre. For years there has never been any problems...
Then Netto that owns the car park, but managed by a parking company decides that they can make a bit of money here by using the digital technology.
They mount high resolution, number plate recongnition camera's and put up new signs with small print that you need a microscope to read. Oh...and they don't tell the customers!!

Result: Many people recieving fines of £80 because they have stayed longer than 1 hour...all caught, timed and photographed and automated fine sent out through number plate recognition. So people stop going to the stores and are VERY upset!

So how does it work?
Two cameras working together, one points at the entrance, the other at the exit to the car park! Oh and another thing...you can't return within 2 hours or it will get you again!

Well done Netto and the parking management company!! What good community spirit you have!
It is sooo pleasing to hear that Netto will soon shut down and be replaced by Morrisons, lets hope Morrisons have a bit more common sense and community spirit!

What's a Soldering Iron?

"Another Radio man who knows the right end of a soldering iron, what a valve is and was around to see Neil Armstrong take 'one small step"

Thank you John...another Analogue Native!

This made me think... How many people now know what a soldering iron is and what it is used for? I still have a soldering iron, but don't use it as much as I would like to. I still have my skills with the soldering iron and can easily solder wires and PC boards without thinking about it even though I have never done it for years! It's like riding a bike...you never forget how to do it!

My favourite soldering iron is the Antex...light and coloured yellow...my favourite colour!

I remember in 1968 when my Dad bought me a soldering iron for the first time from 'Modern Radio' in Bolton. I was only 14 years old, but I learned at an early age!

Yes..I certainly know the right end of of a soldering iron and using it is a valuable skill, sadly, this has been lost now to the young!

Such a shame that young people today don't know how to use a screwdriver, drill a hole, strip a piece of wire or even solder!

Cobden Mill

Cobden Mill was one of many cotton spinning and weaving mills in Bolton, the inside is traditional and easy to imagine the hundreds of looms that must have been running there in the past.

Since the days Telefusion (we used to nickname it 'Teleconfusion') Cobden Mill in Farnworth has been used for other purposes. Now it has a large furniture and bed store, but the inside of the building is still the same. I went back to take some photos.

The old cotton mill is very large with 5 floors, most of it empty now. The roof of the building used to have lots of TV aerials and sometimes I had to go onto the roof and check the aerials. I was an apprentice don't forget...I got all the s**t jobs! There is a lift in there, but it scared me to death, so I never used it.

Telefusion owned three floors of the mill. The ground floor was the stores and loading bays. Stuff was sent out to shops in wagons all over the country including the shops in Northern Ireland. On the first floor was the service department, this was where I worked most of the time. Then on the third floor was a warehouse which housed hundreds of televisions waiting to be refurbished.

At the front of the building there is a small lodge, this provided water to the sprinkler system in the building. Now it is owned by Deane Fishing Club and it is currently airating the water with a huge pump in the middle.

I enjoyed working here, even though the building was horrible...I will never forget my toast and cheese in the canteen at break time...mmm!

Telefusion

Telefusion Head Office in Blackpool.

Gosh! I found a booklet that was given to me back in 1970 when I started working as an apprentice electronic engineer with Telefusion Ltd. I worked at Cobden Mill in Farnworth, this was the main service centre for refurbishing televisions. In my first year I was responsible for repairing and aligning UHF Tuner units. This involved using some quite suffisticated analogue equipment such as the UHF Sweep Generator and oscilloscopes to display the response curves of the tuner units. (Analogue Heaven!)



I worked for Telefusion for almost twenty years. I moved to the Heywood base and then to Whitefield working at the TAM (Television Audio Maintenance) service centre.



Telefusion's demise came around 1987 when Visionhire took over the company and asset stripped everything, closing down most of the Telefusion stores.

An end of an era!

Had some real good times at Telefusion, lots of friends and a nice working atmosphere!

Alan Sugar

I bought a copy of 'What you see is what you get' Alan Sugar's autobiography...

This is a fascinating read, especially if you worked as an electronic engineer with televisions, hi-fi and computers...like me!

He talks about shops like 'Lasky's' and other shops on the Edgeware Rd in London. Places that I ordered stuff from in the 1970's. His mate the TV engineer that mended and modified old TV's and sold them on as a business. (sound familiar!) The 'valve pusher' and later the 'panel pusher'...I never got into this routine...fault find down to the component was my way! (Alan would have been proud of me!) Later, the famous Amstrad hi-fi (pretend) stack unit that took over our workshop like faulty daleks! The Amstrad TV...OMG...I hated them...when they went faulty, they took most of the switched mode power supply and line output altogether...I wouldn't touch one of these with a bargepole unless I had to!

Now the Amstrad 464 computer was ahead of it's time, but also had to compete with Sinclair...the Amstrad was quite reliable, I don't remember having to fix one (apart from cleaning the audio heads in the tape player) It had a wonderful proper keyboard and colourful as well! Then came the dedicated office word processor machine, which I didn't understand...tooo complicated, had a dedicated operating system and not flexible at all.

Now this one was good...PC arcitecture, full colour and software. I remember playing with this in the late 80's drawing colour pictures on screen. Twin disc drives and software to go with it...but expensive. I fixed a few of these at the time, mainly hard drives that were not yet reliable!

It's fantastic thinking back at the growth of technology in the 80's with Alan Sugar, Clive Sinclair and a few other guys (aka Acorn)

Alan Sugar - a shrewd business man, not a technical genious, but insiring!

Clive Sinclair - a technical genious, but not a shrewd business man and a bit ahead of his time!

I wonder who would be The Apprentice... Alan or Clive?

What you see is what get!