Hobbies.?
I am, what I suppose is referred to as a silver surfer, although perhaps a balding silver surfer would be more of a correct description.
During my hobby lifetime I have been interested in all things electronic and although a mechanical engineer by trade I have tended to dabble with the soldering iron in my spare moments. As I had piano lessons as a youngster and can read the dots on a music score , my first big project was an electronic organ. None of your single keyboard things for me, oh no, I had to go for a two keyboard device with home made printed circuit boards (a total of 12) Each board carried an oscillator to provide the twelve basic frequencies which were then halved and halved again with dividers all wired up to the keyboard contacts. I finished up with a regular bird's nest of wiring that tended to induce cross over signals which, in general, gave me a real headache trying to sort out. This project died a natural death when some idiot invented an integrated circuit that carried it's own oscillator and dividers in a 14 pin black beastie that took up about 1% of the space that one of my oscillator/ divider boards occupied.
This sudden loss of enthusiasm for what was about a four year hobby was then replaced with Mr Sinclair's ZX80 on which I spent many happy hours trying to understand programming in basic. I must say at this stage that none of my hobbies were very successful as I never really mastered the arts of them, going from the basic black ZX80 keyboard with those non tactile keys via the Oric with the little rubber buttons and the Commodore with it's more normal keys and the Amstrad portable with the two floppie drives (which I still have if any one wishes to offer a couple of coppers for it) up to this magnificent Dell machine that I use at present. All of these had one thing in common as far as I was concerned :- I didn't understand what was happening and I still have the same problem nowadays, except that the modern computers have a feature that the older basic one's did not possess which I am for ever grateful for:- I call it the "OhSOdit" Button which is situated on the front of the box and when pressed, starts everything up again allbeit after Mr Gate's programme has done it's scan and told me I have some lost clusters, or better still, the inevitable triumvirate of alt-ctrl-del which I have been known to use from time to time.
I suppose the one small success in my hobby life was attending an evening course and passing the 'B' licence as a Radio Amateur. Again I never went on to obtain an 'A' licence by passing the cw (morse) test because I could never get my head around all those dits and dahs. I suppose that sums me up completely, (lack of application) still what the'eck it keeps me off the streets, and although because of this computer lark, I dont get on the 2 metre band much, I keep my licence going just in case I get the urge (Which ain't often at my age).
I have, over the past year, designed and maintained a web site for my local watering hole, "The Old Windsor Club " and I would be delighted if visitors from here followed the link above and made some comments in the Visitors book regarding what your impression of the site was (don't be too harsh I am only a learner)
I have made a lot of friends through the electronic media and it has given me many interests and great satisfaction especially when I have one of those rare moments when a programme I am trying
ACTUALLY WORKS.
updated 03/01/2004 |
