Screwing around (Was: Multimeter recomendations

[Jules Richardson]

Tony Duell wrote:
>> re. toys like that though, I'm not sure if the problem is that kids today 
>> don't like them - or that they don't get the chance to find out because 
>> parents don't buy them and companies don't make/market them.
> 
> I think I've mentioend before that these days my parents would probably 
> be guilty of child cruelty or something. My 8th (I think) birthday 
> prsennt consisted of things like a woodworking tenon saw, a junior 
> hacksaw, a set of twist drills, a wheelbrace (hand drill) to use them in, 
> a small vice, and so on. 

Now I'm jealous ;-)

I was really interested in that Technic Lego that used to be around - I spent 
many an hour designing gearboxes and the like. I'm not sure if you can even 
get the stuff these days (or if it's anything like it used to be - gradually 
there were more and more custom parts creeping into the model kits, and of 
course anyone with a real interest in that stuff built the kit model once and 
then used the parts to create their own things)

> I certianly think there are fewer constructional toys around now than 
> there were perhaps 30 or 40 eyars ago. I must have over a dozen 
> different educational electronics systems, and none of them are Heathkit 
> :-).  As I've said before, I think the Philips EE kits were the most fun, 
> but teher were others.

I was probably around 7 when I got one of those ones with the bendy springs 
and a bunch of wires for making connections to components that were mounted on 
the board - it was a good introduction to electronics. I don't remember how 
old I was when I first tried soldering my own stuff together, though.


> Be careful!. LH threads are always ued for a reason, not becuase the 
> manufacturer is awkward.
> 
> I don;t know aobut compressors, but I rememebr there is some convention 
> with gas cylinders and the regulators for those.

Yeah, I asked around a while back, and it seems that general-purpose 
compressors exist with both RH and LH threads for the regulators - there 
doesn't seem to be any kind of standard. I don't care which way I have to turn 
it to do what - it's a tool that has to be learnt, like any other - so I'd 
much rather they used standard parts (although to be fair I suppose they never 
thought that someone would be taking the regulator apart!)

cheers

Jules