» DIY Techno-hacks

String is the answer.
Anyone remember that TV sketch (made by the Goodies, I think) which used the actual presenters off Tomorrow's World to show how string is the future?

It certainly was for me. Like many here, I too strung up the rotary on/off switch of an old telly in my bedroom so that I could switch it off without the sleepiness-breaking routine of actually having to get up to do it.

But my tour-de-force was its application in my Mini (named the Bruise for it was black and blue - the blue being Crown Gloss). The windscreen wipers would stick and the motor didn't have enough ergs to get past a certain point and so string was attached and brought in via the drain hole in the roof gutter and through the door. Should rain commence, a flick of the switch and a tug on the string to get past the lump was all that was needed to get them going. They'd run OK after that initial stall. Didn't pass it's MOT. Apparently pop-rivets are insufficient security for the structural floor pan (better than seeing the road rush by, though).

There are that many lash-ups in this house that I think I should write an owner's workshop manual for it before I sell it. The light switch in the bathroom looks like it shouldn't be there but it is actually only 12v - hooked up to a relay in the loft that then connects real mains to a hunking great big transformer that they were chucking from work. This sucker hums like sub-station so badly that I have had mount it on rubber washers.

Though not a very technical kludge, my brother did once fix a dent in a car he was about to sell, with mud. Painted over it looked sorta OK. He got a call a couple of weeks later from the bloke he'd sold it to. Apparently there had been some rain and the damm thing had sprouted a dandelion.
(Fri 21st Aug 2009, 9:31, More)

» My most gullible moment

Chop!
Sitting at my desk, minding my own business (= mind wandering, as usual) I cannot help but overhear Admin Assistant A explaining to Admin Assistant J how to use the guillotine to make up something or other (its not important to the story OK). As she sliced the blade down she said " blah blah blah and here you go - - Chop!" There was something about the way that she said Chop so emphatically that I couldn't resist.

Being the Health and Safety rep I chipped in "Don't forget to say Chop either because it is a requirement from Health and Safety as a warning to those around you so they don't accidentally lose any appendages from what you're doing."

Dubious at first, I was backed up by Admin Assistant A and reluctantly J was convinced.

For the rest of the afternoon she merrily Chopped away. News spread and folk from down the corridor came to see me on various spurious errands just so they could admire my poor friend (we are still friends) and her safety conscious guillotinage.
(Fri 22nd Aug 2008, 15:07, More)

» Toilets

Working with Lasers
You have to have your eyes tested. This involved going up to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London where they inject you with a dye and then take photos of your retinas. (not much fun because they dilate your pupils and then take a flash photo). On the way home felt the need for a jimmy at Waterloo station.
Back in those days the gents consisted of a shiny stainless steel trough and the illumination was (the then new-fangled) flourescent tubes.
Cue much astonishment and admiration from my fellow pee'ees at the bright green glowing river that I sent coursing down the incline.
(Sat 3rd Sep 2005, 9:05, More)

» Desperate Times

Which is it? Pee or Porn?
Pee obviously. Taking my baby son swimming (no, its not a pee in the pool story) we had finished and were in the extra-large baby change cubicle getting dry when I desparaely needed to go. I couldn't leave the boy alone in the cubicle (someone was bound to complain about child abandonment - it's Health and Safety gone MAD I tell ye) I don't know where the lady who went in the car got her baby nappies from but boy pampers can hold an amazing amount of wee - I was, by definition, quite full. Blessed relief.
(Fri 16th Nov 2007, 21:29, More)

» Nightclubs

All you cool dudes arrive at the nightclub when it is already throbbing
But have you ever thought that they don't start out the evening packed out with sweaty bodies. Somewhere in between the opening time and when you arrive there is a moment when there is only one guest in the club.

Once (only once) I WAS that nerd.
Crystals, Bury, 1979.
(Wed 8th Apr 2009, 20:03, More)