Homebrew Timed Taping

In about 1991, I bought a dictaphone from Argos. Before that, I bought a 'clock radio' which is a clock combined with a radio, so you could set a timer and wake up to Radio 2.

I had a bit of an inventive spirit. I was visiting a relative at about 6PM and going home about 10PM. But Dragnet was on Radio 2 at about 8PM.

My solution, though slightly heavy-handed, was to take apart the clock radio.

Now, I noticed that the radio had a power wire, so when the clock hit a certain time, the power went to it and it played out of the speaker.

So, given all that, there was only one thing I needed to do...

Well, I hit the record button on the dictaphone, then I connected the radio's power wires to that dictaphone, and connected the speaker output to the dictaphone's line input.

The idea was simple: The clock part of the machine would trigger the dictaphone to come on, and tape all that came out of the radio's speaker output. When done, it would cut off the power and the dictaphone would cease recording!

It worked! I could now record Dragnet while being away from the dictaphone.

The Best Biscuit Tin in the World

A good biscuit tin today, is hard to find.

My parents have 2 rather nice biscuit tins, and no biscuit has ever been known to have gone soft in one.

So I wanted to buy one for my new dwelling.

I found a Brabantia tin while shopping for curtains in a big mill out of town, but the problem was it was RUBBISH! The biscuits got soft real quick and stayed that way.

So I decided to get serious... I studied the 2 parents' biscuit tins and read the patent number, amongst other things, and the phrase 'moisture absorbent lid'.

I Googled the patent number but found nothing.

However, when I went to Froogle.co.uk (Google Products UK), and put in 'moisture absorbent lid', I found a matching biscuit tin!

It was here: http://www.janetpidoux.co.uk/products-page/tins/cat-design-biscuit-barrel-cookie-tin/

So I bought it. Now I have used it for 1 week, and the biscuits are still crisp. This is a great biscuit tin!

The important thing, I think, is the sides of the tin are metal, whereas the Brabantia tin is plastic-sided.

I hope to treasure this biscuit tin for as long as I live.

Wherefore Art Thou, Superglue?

As my old Superglue bottle had gone dry, it was time to buy another.

Problem. I went to 3 shops in my local village and all they had was a 'tube', not a bottle. But I knew there must be hope!

So I went all the way to town and went in a large store which sells everything. Luckily, I found it - a Loctite bottle with a brush.

The brush turned out to be a bit small, so it's harder to apply the glue to your 'broken thing'.

However, I went with my instincts and got what I wanted by going afar.

The zPad

Clive Sinclair released a portable computer in 1987, the 'Z88'. With a silent rubbery keyboard and a long battery life, journalists loved it for making notes on at meetings.

The funny thing is that Apple executives were reported to use them in board meetings.

So forget the iPad, let's hail the zPad!

Robert E.Howard / Conan drinking game

First get a copy of 'the Conan Chronicles' which is a leather-bound collection of all REH's Conan stories.

Start reading from the first story. When you come across a 'giant ape man', take a sip of whisky and move on to the next story.

Soon you'll be very drunk! ;-)

Beverly Hills Cop 2: Whodunnit?

At the end of the bank robbery scene in BHC 2, we see a limo pull away; the license plate says "DENT". Later, a Mr. Dent is revealed as a main character. So now you have no reason to watch the last 98 minutes of the film!

Escaping control characters (programming)

Basically, in C, there is a control character "\" which is a slash. \n is one character, \r is another, \t is a tab, etc. Now, what do you think the control character itself should be? Well typically it is "\\". But this involves some silly search-and-replacing to change "\\" to "\".

My solution is to escape the control character itself. So you say "\e" which is replaced with a "\". Now you can process the string without first replacing all the slashes. Much better - and it doesn't even take up any more space.