New Old Radio

Yes, I got another one cheap off of eBay. This one had no back or power cord and was a little filthy from being in an attic. It can all be cleaned, though, and the circuit "re-capping" is already in progress by myself, the wood restoration is being handled by another dept (my wife). This one has an attractive roll-top to cover the dial when not in use, and apparently was portable - if you had a 90v battery! Some people say you could make one out of ten 9v, but I am not sure it is worth it. Will report again when I apply normal mains voltage.

Galactic

Because I participated in their first experiment, I just got an email announcing Galaxy Zoo 2. A while back, some astronomers set up a robot camera that surveyed the sky for galaxies, creating a huge picture database. They need them all to be classified; elliptical, spiral, mergers etc. It turns out that humans are still better than machines for this, so that is where the random People of the Web come in - yes, you too can be a scientist for half an hour. So I hereby encourage you to sign up and get classifying. No expertise req'd; just read the help, and don't worry about making mistakes as the same pic is shown to multiple people and some magical maths corrects all the errors.

Radio Update

After a bit of fiddling around, I'm getting a few faint stations from the poor old thing. There's still a fair amount of background noise, but at least this means that the tubes are still working. I cleaned the carbon tracks on the volume/tone variable resistors to reduce some of the crackling, and replaced some of the wires that connect the various in-cabinet aerials. I even made a makeshift secondary AM antenna using a spool of wire and a small square cardboard box, but the hissing remains. A bit of web-wandering revealed that there is a calibration procedure that can be done (someone had actually scanned-in some old Philco repair manuals). However, this is a fairly involved process and needs things like a signal generator, which I don't think I can lay my hands on at the mo. All-in-all I'm pleased with the result, and shall probably document my experiences and put them online in the near future.

Radio Times

Over the past few days I have been tinkering with an old 40s radio. I was mostly soldering in new wires where the old rubber ones had crumbled, and replacing the foil-and-paper capacitors (which are susceptible to moisture). Tonight I finally got to a stage where I could plug it in and try it:



The controls light up, which looks cool, but I'm only getting faint static at the moment. I'm very pleased that it actually turns on - that means the transformer is ok. Tomorrow I shall rig up an improvised aerial.

Ideas

Here is an interesting list of things to do with the "economic stimulus" money. My favorite is of course the Open Source software grants; and, as one of the comments says, this should be combined with a policy of a full adoption of open software for anything that is publicly funded - it's cheaper and historically more accessible. Plus more paid holiday time can't be bad.

Mmmmm

Today we tried out the Raj Mahal Indian Restaurant, which is apparently the only curry house in town at the moment. It was lunchtime so the buffet was in operation; an unusual (to me) "all-you-can-eat" arrangement. The food was lovely - a fair choice of beef, chicken and veg curries with rice and naan. For afters we had some aromatic Indian rice pudding and some of those sugar-coated fennel seeds. The guy we went with said it was unusually busy, but we didn't mind as that means business is good, and they will certainly get more business from us.

NaN

While decorating the tree the other day, I was reminded of a 60s tv program, The Prisoner. I was hanging a bauble with a penny-farthing on it, one of the many icons used in the show's distinctive style. The main character is a spy who resigns, but is drugged and abducted before he can put his feet up. He wakes up in a strange village; he has been provided with a cottage, and the villagers are friendly enough, but there is a sinister undertone. There is constant surveillance, the "villagers" are only referred to by numbers and there is an impenetrable perimeter – it is in fact a prison. Some of the older inmates have accepted their fate, but not our man – he causes trouble every week by trying to escape or embarrassing the "governor", who is using increasingly bizarre methods of interrogation. Now this situation could be in any prison drama except there is an extra dimension this time; his captors may not be "the Enemy" but could actually be his former employers who have decided he knows too many of their secrets. This is one of those tv programs that makes you think – how much privacy should be sacrificed for security? Can information be extracted humanely? How can we guarantee lives that are free? And most importantly it teaches us to question the motives of the people who tell us to do things... even if they appear to be on our side.