RE: Should Everything Be A Black Box Though? And WHY Can't You Fix My IPAQ? (post 11040)
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Mar5
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I do, all my skills are in software, if the power went off tomorrow I'd be SUNK! I wish I had more hardware skills, not just computer hardware, but general mechanics and making and fixing things. Here's an interesting article along those lines from www.wired.com:
If you can't get under the hood of the gadgets you buy, you're far more liable to believe the marketing hype of the corporations that sell them. When things break, you toss them and buy new ones; you accept your role as a mere consumer
I resolve to start improving my makingness, think I might start by buying some lego...
Hey, something I like about this funky text box, I can tab inside it, you can't tab inside a normal textarea, you tab out of it instead. Just a bit of javascript that I didn't even notice was there at first.
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That's crazy talk, and quite an arrogant viewpoint for Wired - screw building a clock out of voltmeters. I've got a degree in electronics but there is no way I'd open up your iPaq to see why it wasn't working. Gadgets are sold as black boxes, and are pretty much unfixable without the kind of equipment that my Black and Decker toolbox doesn't contain. Cars are the same, open up your hood these days and you'll not be able to do much without a computer supplied by the manufacturer. As for the believing the hype, if a gadget doesn't do what it says on the tin then people would ditch it pretty quickly.
Thankfully my Lego skills are awesome!
Oh, and your replay tags don't seem to work in my Firefox - I'll give them a go in IE - nope, not there either.
Muddyfunkster :: 5 Mar :: Comment / reply
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It's just the battery I think, it won't keep a charge now...
OK not everyone is building a clock out of voltmeters but the people who are trying to do this sort of thing have got to feel happy about it, I know I would if I could get more stuff for free. Modern cars are almost impossible to do anything to, but if you had a VW Beetle or a Landrover or something you could learn to fix it yourself.
There are a lot more bits of kit out there now that you can open up and do things to, and even if they're not officially "open" then on sites like makezine.com and hackaday.com you can find out how to hack stuff that you already have, or can get for free. It doesn't have to be just electronic / electrical stuff either, did you see IKEA hacks that I posted recently?
Not sure my reply tags work at all anyway, but in that case it was because I put [replay] instead of reply...
My lego skills are a bit behind, but I'm going to build on them, then do some diy electronics and things. Definitely. Not just daydream about it, oh no.
5 Mar :: Comment / reply
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"but if you had a VW Beetle or a Landrover or something you could learn to fix it yourself." I must be missing something
is that so!
POPS
6 Mar :: Comment / reply
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I fixed it a bit! When the fan belt broke, I fixed that (with shoelaces). You never have to take the VW in for a service or to have it tuned or chipped or reprogrammed or anything, you just turn the key and it goes. It's only if you try and tow a van with it, say, and pull the back end off it that you'll have a problem...
6 Mar :: Comment / reply
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Ha, great stuff :)
Just after my rant I remembered I fixed some portable speakers the other day by removing the 3.5mm plug (which had a worn connection) and soldering on the plug from some headphones that had stopped working. Maybe I should make a clock out of voltmeters next...
Muddyfunkster :: 7 Mar :: Comment / reply
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It's probably clear, but that other poster is my dad, he has the VW Beetle that I once owned, he tried to tow my bro-in-law's van with it recently, and it didn't go entirely according to plan...
I know I've never done much mechanically, but I like to think that in theory, I could. I hoovered out the inside of my PC recently, it runs silently now, that's probably the upper limit of my hardware skills. I might do a plumbing course or something, learn some proper skills.
