Dit dah dah... dah... dit dit dah dit.
Light in the darkness
Somebody said I should talk about politics. Very well. Everything surrounding the fall of Tom Daschle is quite distasteful. Although, I have it on good authority that he fully intended to take the position until he realised he had no idea what tax loophole the gift of "Department of Health and Human Services" could be itemised under.
Politics depresses me, so I'm going to turn to a matter of considerably more import: flashlights. I am a flashlight afficionado, because there is something about torches that is inherently ennobling. Darkness is one of the greatest, most terrifying ills mother nature can visit upon us, and we can banish it with a couple of D-cells--how cool is that?
Flashlights used to be rigged so that their intermittent switches turned them on, allowing them to be used as a signal light. It is self-evidently much easier to transmit messages to people when you can just put your thumb on the button (as opposed to flipping a switch, say). This was true of both high-quality flashlights and the kind you buy four for a dollar at Walgreens, I know because I used to lose a lot of flashlights and--so that I could communicate with my friend down the block--I therefore used to buy a lot of flashlights.
As I grew up, and thus switched to more mature signaling mechanisms like ICQ, I forgot about flashlights, by and large, until I was doing some late-night repairs on my car a few days ago and noticed something curious: rather than having an intermittent switch that turned the bulb on as long as it was held down, it had an intermittent switch that turned the bulb off as long as it was held down. This is much less useful for signalling.
Anyway, I gathered up the flashlights I had on hand, with the following results:
One had an intermittent switch that, when fully depressed, locked the flashlight on. This is my Maglite and it is ten years old now.
Three only had an on-off switch, with no intermittent button.
Two had an intermittent switch that turned the bulb off when it would otherwise be lit.
I wonder if I am imagining things, or if the decline and fall of Morse code has left people bereft of the need for signalling people (for those of you unfamiliar with why it is a problem to lift your thumb off the button to space out the signal, imagine a keyboard that you typed on by lifting your fingers off the keys, instead of depressing them). In the abstract, I can see why you would want to intermittently switch a light off instead of on. But the fact that none of my recent flashlight acquisitions--this includes both cheap plastic ones of such poor quality the Chinese didn't want them and dumped them on us, and flashlights with a nice rubberised grip and a solid metal feel--permit me to effectively signal others of my plight does give me pause.
Of course, I could be imagining all of this. I do that sometimes. What do your flashlights do?
/a
Politics depresses me, so I'm going to turn to a matter of considerably more import: flashlights. I am a flashlight afficionado, because there is something about torches that is inherently ennobling. Darkness is one of the greatest, most terrifying ills mother nature can visit upon us, and we can banish it with a couple of D-cells--how cool is that?
Flashlights used to be rigged so that their intermittent switches turned them on, allowing them to be used as a signal light. It is self-evidently much easier to transmit messages to people when you can just put your thumb on the button (as opposed to flipping a switch, say). This was true of both high-quality flashlights and the kind you buy four for a dollar at Walgreens, I know because I used to lose a lot of flashlights and--so that I could communicate with my friend down the block--I therefore used to buy a lot of flashlights.
As I grew up, and thus switched to more mature signaling mechanisms like ICQ, I forgot about flashlights, by and large, until I was doing some late-night repairs on my car a few days ago and noticed something curious: rather than having an intermittent switch that turned the bulb on as long as it was held down, it had an intermittent switch that turned the bulb off as long as it was held down. This is much less useful for signalling.
Anyway, I gathered up the flashlights I had on hand, with the following results:
One had an intermittent switch that, when fully depressed, locked the flashlight on. This is my Maglite and it is ten years old now.
Three only had an on-off switch, with no intermittent button.
Two had an intermittent switch that turned the bulb off when it would otherwise be lit.
I wonder if I am imagining things, or if the decline and fall of Morse code has left people bereft of the need for signalling people (for those of you unfamiliar with why it is a problem to lift your thumb off the button to space out the signal, imagine a keyboard that you typed on by lifting your fingers off the keys, instead of depressing them). In the abstract, I can see why you would want to intermittently switch a light off instead of on. But the fact that none of my recent flashlight acquisitions--this includes both cheap plastic ones of such poor quality the Chinese didn't want them and dumped them on us, and flashlights with a nice rubberised grip and a solid metal feel--permit me to effectively signal others of my plight does give me pause.
Of course, I could be imagining all of this. I do that sometimes. What do your flashlights do?
/a
| Galluskek 6.02.2009 - 3h44 |
That's alot of flashlights. I still probably have more. My favorite past-time is making custom flashlights. A few LEDs and some switches, circuits and imagination makes a variety of different things possible. I've mostly made complex flashlights, either completely automatic lights or ones controlled by remote control for spot illumination for remote imaging and robotics applications. An infrared LED and a photo-sensitive resistor can make a flashlight respond to changes in it's environment and make one's life more convenient. Of course, there is something to be said for having direct control over a light, I usually use two switches, a toggle and an intermittent button. The latter is used in order to save energy on the more involved hand held designs. In spite of my experience with portable light sources, you got me thinking. I've never used lights to signal a condition, nor to transmit information. There is nothing faster than a beam of light to relay information and there is no equipment required to read the message except for knowledge. My flashlights, soon they'll do everything. On an unrelated note: Hey, did you hear? They are releasing all the potential terrorists from the evil-people reactor we built in Cuba. Any thoughts on the craziness? Also, it seems like I'm going to be reading this regularly. Bah. |
| Comrade Alex 6.02.2009 - 6h11 |
I have never made a flashlight. The closest I came was rigging a stapler to serve as a Morse transmitting key, although in the interests of 1) not breaking the law and 2) not causing receivers to hate me, I never used it to broadcast radio signals and connected it to a lamp instead. The infrared setup does, however, seem far niftier. I learned Morse Code when I was a Boy Scout, back when Boy's Life made it seem very cool to be able to do so, so I used to communicate thusly with my like-minded friend down the street (we were too far apart for tin cans to work well). It was probably not the most efficient means of communication... but it did make us feel sort of like spies, so that's something. We also used to make up our own secret codes :D -- It's my suspicion that, on balance, closing down the Guantanamo detention centre is probably a good thing. On the other hand--since I am not privy to the information that the president receives--I do sincerely hope that the decision was based on a careful calculus done in analysis of all the possible information, and not just out of some sense that it was expected of the public and the world community, since I also have the suspicion that few of the people housed at Guantanamo were candidates for hosting the next "Mister Rogers". -CA |
| Galluskek 7.02.2009 - 6h02 |
I'm envious, you know people who know Morse Code! Though, on the balance, the loss of that knowledge in the public mind is more than compensated for by modern communications technology. Imagine receiving a telegram via Western Union in this day and age. Or having one hundred thousand million wires criss-crossing the Nation in order to relay data at human readable speeds. It is unfortunate that we have lost the ability to read such messages, but at the same time, I'm grateful that we have lost the need to do so. I've had another brain-wave: keyboard input for portable computers using Morse Code instead of that clumsy touchscreen input. I'm not sure how to get a machine to accept it, perhaps buffer the presses and use comparison methods to discern short from long, then run it through a logical conversion apparatus to yield a byte expression that can be converted to a character? I doubt it will find a mass audience, but I'd certainly like to try to build it and attach it to an old Palm device. Graffiti my ass. On the less pleasant subject of terror and politics (one and the same these days): Mr. Rogers would probably be more effective at spreading Islam... If they are commited to the whole "terror" thing though, they should not do anything to us. They ought to wait until the current administration finishes gutting the mechanisms that are in place to stop them, and then begin their operations. Lull us into a false sense of security, and when we've eased the pressure, blow something up. Or they could do something to help their goals of global conversion and e-mail me their "Good Book." It's free and I might actually "see the light." |