Comments by "Helium Road" (@RCAvhstape) on "Technology Connections" channel.

  1. "Edison kept locking himself down into proprietary formats..." So he was the Apple Computer of his day.
    771
  2. The accidental triggers are happy little accidents, though, so it's fine.
    163
  3. The funny thing is that we used to have actual typing classes in school until at least the early 90s. In the military in the 1980s and early 90s, if you knew how to type you kept it to yourself because you'd get stuck filling out paperwork instead of doing whatever your job was supposed to be. The average person did not know how to type until suddenly everyone had a computer in their house.
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  4. They weren't Millennials, they were Centennials...or...something
    74
  5. I want to see a Technology Connections / LGR Tech Tales collab!
    65
  6. My theory about Groundhog Day is that they did it that way just to piss you off. I mean you, personally.
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  7.  @rev_dude  Staggered QWERTY is bad for who? Once you get used to it you can type redonkulously fast. Change it and suddenly NOBODY knows how to type anymore. This is example of when standards are good.
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  8. Nah, they used Super 8 film.
    55
  9. You had SIX phones in your house? When I was little having more than one was a luxury. Kids who got their own phones were the cool rich kids.
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  10. "Dusting your computer junk" Archer: phrasing!
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  11. You know, that cassette bluetooth adaptor actually makes having a car with a cassette player more useful than a more recent car with a CD player. If your car has a CD player you have to buy one of those bluetooth FM transmitter things, which kinda work but are also a pain in the rear, especially when you drive to a new city and have to find a new blank frequency.
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  12. Who here does not subscribe to 8-bit and Techmoan? The internet is a big place, but sometimes it feels so small.
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  13. You just put a ceiling fan under the table and use its thrust to hold the table up.
    36
  14. A while back I saw an absolutely beautiful Victrola machine in an antique shop. I spent some time dithering about whether it would be worth the money and where I would put it in my living room, but before I could act the shop burned to the ground. :-(
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  15. I got a burned a few times by processing labs making assumptions like that, and one even screwed up my negatives by letting an idiot with scissors get a little too excited. When I take film to a lab now, I ask them not to cut the rolls and just do it myself on a light table later. Most of the time if it's black and white I just process it all myself, so I don't have to worry about some pothead screwing up a roll of film I shot on an expensive trip across the country.
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  16. Whoa! That's heavy, Doc.
    26
  17. "Ya ever wonder why?"
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  18. Somewhere I have a photo book written by a guy who turned his VW Microbus van into a giant camera obscura by lightproofing the interior and putting a pinhole on one side of the van. Basically a giant camera on wheels. He'd drive it to a location and park it with the pinhole side facing the subject, pin a large sheet of photo paper on the back wall, and open the pinhole to expose it.
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  19. In reality heating and air conditioning both heat the whole neighborhood by burning energy. Whether your energy source is coal, gas, nuclear fission, or even someday nuclear fusion, there is waste heat generated all along the circuit starting at the generating plant. It's a problem for the future if fusion becomes cheap and easy someday, because while pollution, carbon output, and cost will drop immensely, civilization demand will go up and our main problem becomes dealing with waste heat. Arthur C. Clarke mentions this in 3001: Final Odyssey novel, but he doesn't say how the problem was overcome, presumably because he had no idea.
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  20. Don't sweat it, you're doing fine. I briefly studied this stuff in college and built a DAC as part of a project (the details of which are now very hazy), and what you're saying rings a bell, if simplified.
    17
  21. If some talented rando can make the despecialized edition in his spare time surely Disney could do it. They'd make a mint selling those.
    17
  22. I did the opposite. Got into photography in the early days of digital, took a class on dark room printing and B/W film, and pretty much gave up digital after that, aside from my smart phone. I spend my day in front of a computer. Doing my hobby on a computer is not cool. Plus, the older antique film cameras will always be cooler than any digital stuff, and don't go obsolete with the next firmware drop.
    17
  23. As an amateur chemical photographer and printmaker I luurrv these photography vids, and this one might be the coolest yet. Not only is it a process I knew nothing about but those photos are achingly beautiful! Please do more of these kinds retro tech videos.
    16
  24. Innovation in a microwave oven? I'd just be happy if they would give the clock a memory of some sort so that I don't have to reset it when the power goes out for 2 minutes.
    16
  25. That's because outside of America you are all using metric fan switches.
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  26. Everything is racist to these overly sensitive brainwashed dumbasses these days. Fun is racist. Be moar serious!
    15
  27. Can't you fix that by drinking more beer, resulting in more flushes?
    14
  28. The leprechaun tells me to burn things!
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  29. I have a friend who got a ticket for not using a signal even when nobody else was around. So depending on the state, your instructor was totally wrong.
    13
  30. Let's see your well-researched and well-made video response.
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  31. Audiofools. I talked to a guy once who bought a super expensive snake oil power cable for his stereo system and swore he could tell the difference. SMDH
    12
  32.  @OfficialFedHater  It's a perfectly cromulent word.
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  33. Tektronix scopes are great. I was a tech years ago and the rule was generally, "Tektronix for o-scopes, Simpson for meters, and Hewlett Packard for all other test equipment." Sadly, I don't think HP makes test equipment anymore; they are known for consumer computers now but until the 90s HP made really high end test gear. At least Tektronix is still around, last I heard.
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  34. Google literally censors things based on politics now. And sooner or later, everything relates to politics.
    11
  35.  @seneca983  Eye of the beholder. Personally I much prefer old industrial buildings to a bunch of fugly modern apartment buildings or subdivisions of McMansions.
    11
  36. Great post.
    11
  37. If it were China it would say, "adds heavy metal waste to product"
    10
  38. Solution: change the name of the SI unit of time from the "second" to the "third". Rewrite and republish all textbooks and software references. Start calling it the third hand. Problem solved.
    10
  39.  @tjampman  So you're saying you got it on the third second?
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  40.  @jaredliv  Somehow a bunch of engineers once figured out how to fly to the moon without googling "how to build a Saturn V". Stinking amazing, huh.
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  41.  @DavidChipman  They're smart, they'd figure it out.
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  42.  @GeneralBolas  Since the sequels suck even worse than the prequels, it'll be a breath of fresh air. Who'd have thunk Disney could fuck up Star Wars even worse than Lucas already did.
    9
  43. I thought real hipsters rip all their records to mp3 and then brag about they are listening to "vinyl"?
    9
  44.  @jackwilson5542  Firmware wasn't even the real reason, anyway, it was the hardware itself going obsolete so fast in the mid-2000's. It's more stable now but it doesn't matter. At this point I no longer care. Digital photography holds zero interest for me. If chemical photography went away, I would just stop doing photography. You're trying to be clever when you know exactly what I meant all along.
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  45.  @JohnDlugosz  Okay, now I want to see one in a microwave oven...
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  46. It's as bad as Dr. Who's timey wimey stuff.
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  47.  @jaredliv  I don't know, why don't you google that?
    7
  48. The mechanical devices are complicated, but they can be repaired by a competent man, which means they can last almost forever, while most aging electronics will have parts that can't be replaced or repaired due to being out of production. This is especially true with digital cameras, which are by nature packed with unrepairable chips; digital cameras become obsolete in a fairly short period of time, while a well-cared for mechanical film camera can last virtually forever. My oldest camera is from the 1930s and still functions perfectly well.
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  49. I've been doing dark room printing for about 15 years or so, and this video is as good a primer as one could ask for. Your simple explanations of the chemistry, safe lamp, and so on, are very much appreciated. I will recommend this to my friends, especially the n00bs in the dark room for whom this stuff isn't intuitive yet. Excellent work!
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  50.  @sleeptyper  "Ford" is an acronym for "F'd over rebuilt Dodge". MOPAR means "my old Plymouth ain't running". Why do the British drink warm beer? Because their auto makers also make refrigerators. I'll be here all week!
    6