Comments for Modern Mechanix

Comment on In Fatima the Difference is Quality (Sep, 1951) by Toronto

Toronto — Sat, 18 May 2013 01:49:31 +0000

PS: Grampa died in 1972, by the way. So he puffed his way to 78 or so. Granny made it to 96: drinking and smoking but eschewing pink meat.

Comment on In Fatima the Difference is Quality (Sep, 1951) by Toronto

Toronto — Sat, 18 May 2013 01:43:39 +0000

I think one of my grandfathers was 73 in 1967, and he smoked like crazy (he was a locomotive engineer, so probably inhaled a lot worse over the years.) Cigarettes never got a chance to kill him – not when they were up against whiskey and corned beef.

Not that I condone smoking. I’ve had one cigarette and maybe 2 cigars since 1987. Hey, wow! This very weekend must be my 26th anniversary of quitting for all intents and purposes (barring batchelor parties and funerals, I suppose.)

I’ve also given up corned beef, except when I find myself in the Maritimes.

Comment on Rubber-Balloon Globe Puts the World in Your Pocket (Jun, 1942) by Toronto

Toronto — Thu, 16 May 2013 01:29:05 +0000

@Stephen – I’ve had several of those inflatables. They used to be a popular “swag” at trade shows. The south pacific ocean apparently has a large black area with various slogans appearing in white, such as “UNIX International” or “Free BSD”. It’s odd that Commander Hadfield’s videos never picked up on it.

Comment on Octopus Wrestling Is My Hobby (Apr, 1949) by Octopus wrestling was once a documented hobby! | BestofWords

Octopus wrestling was once a documented hobby! | BestofWords — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:28:31 +0000

[...] (Source) [...]

Comment on Rubber-Balloon Globe Puts the World in Your Pocket (Jun, 1942) by experiment 626

experiment 626 — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:18:21 +0000

I thought The US stopped production of rubber consumer goods such as this by the time this was printed I thought.

Comment on Just how simple do word processors have to get before you begin using one? (Mar, 1988) by GeorgeT

GeorgeT — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:35:54 +0000

Does it have an Any Key?

Comment on In Fatima the Difference is Quality (Sep, 1951) by Stephen

Stephen — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:27:14 +0000

He lived to be 70, which is a good age for a smoker in those days. Buried in Arlington National Cemetery 1967.

Comment on Just how simple do word processors have to get before you begin using one? (Mar, 1988) by Stephen

Stephen — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:19:58 +0000

In Britain, Amstrad made a lot of money selling machines of a similar kind: cheap, low-specification computers for people who didn’t understand computers. My father wrote an entire book on one. It had an attached daisywheel printer which was loud enough to make conversation impossible in the room while printing was going.
http://en.wikipedia.org…
http://www.jstor.org/di… <- this is a review of the book he wrote on it. I did have to convert the proprietary files to Microsoft Word before publication, though.

Comment on Rubber-Balloon Globe Puts the World in Your Pocket (Jun, 1942) by Stephen

Stephen — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:14:48 +0000

Many “latest inventions” went down deservedly into obscurity; sometimes this page turns up something that would later become ubiquitous; but this is one of the few examples of a forgotten invention that I think should have become popular. There’s no real substitute for a globe, and this allows you to have one to hand without it cluttering up the place all the time. I have seen beach-ball type inflatable globes, made of several pieces of plastic welded together, but they aren’t as spherical when inflated.

Comment on Writing with your voice (Mar, 1947) by Anton

Anton — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:59:16 +0000

Charlie, you have provided us all with a most interesting blog for several years and have a great multitude of friends you have never met face to face. Many thanks.

Comment on BUYING A PASSWORD MODEM CAN SAVE YOU UP TO $250. (Jul, 1984) by cr0sh

cr0sh — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:06:38 +0000

Personally, out of all modems, I prefer a Multitech; I was first introduced to them at my first software development job (1992). Unfortunately, at that time a 9600 baud Multitech modem would eat up a significant part of my paycheck, but oh, how I wanted one! My work used them over leased lines to communicate with remote Unix servers (RS6000/AIX) of our clients. I still wish I could find a good Wyse 370 color terminal with a keyboard that didn’t cost as much as a PC (to this day, they are still outlandishly priced!)…

Comment on BUYING A PASSWORD MODEM CAN SAVE YOU UP TO $250. (Jul, 1984) by Toronto

Toronto — Wed, 15 May 2013 01:27:28 +0000

I sometimes ponder whether US Robotics had to pay any royalties to Isaac Asimov.

Comment on Just how simple do word processors have to get before you begin using one? (Mar, 1988) by dj_nme

dj_nme — Wed, 15 May 2013 00:11:07 +0000

My Mum had something like this in the mid-1990′s and it was horrible to use.
Basically a jumped-up electric typewriter (Select & replace or copy & paste? You’re kidding, right?) which uses a proprietary floppy disc format that is totally unreadable in a real computer’s disc drive.

@ Hirudinea – The other “urban legend” of IT support being asked how to remove Liquid Paper from a computer screen is actually true: I’ve had to help clean a computer monitor due to that 1D01T fault.

Comment on Just how simple do word processors have to get before you begin using one? (Mar, 1988) by Hirudinea

Hirudinea — Tue, 14 May 2013 23:57:43 +0000

@ wyogold – Still to complex for some, ever heard the “urban legend” of the call to tech support about the drink holder on the computer being broken? Turns out the user was using the CD-ROM to rest her drink on.

Comment on Just how simple do word processors have to get before you begin using one? (Mar, 1988) by wyogold

wyogold — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:56:38 +0000

As simple as a microwave. And with the same looks.

Comment on BUYING A PASSWORD MODEM CAN SAVE YOU UP TO $250. (Jul, 1984) by fluffy

fluffy — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:30:49 +0000

Also, Hayes weren’t just the dominant modem, they were RIDICULOUSLY expensive.

Comment on I’d like to see them make (Feb, 1947) by Zeppflyer

Zeppflyer — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:46:18 +0000

I love that the design of the Ketchup bottle hasn’t changed in 60+ years.

Comment on BUYING A PASSWORD MODEM CAN SAVE YOU UP TO $250. (Jul, 1984) by DrewE

DrewE — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:27:19 +0000

The pun was for the rather outmoded idiom “…and that ain’t hay,” which indeed meant that it was a decent sum of money. I don’t recall ever hearing the phrase being used in conversation, so it was probably unfamiliar to many people even in 1984.

Comment on BUYING A PASSWORD MODEM CAN SAVE YOU UP TO $250. (Jul, 1984) by dbennett

dbennett — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:32:28 +0000

Mad Men strike again! It’s a play on “that ain’t hay” — meaning, as you wrote, it’s not pocket change.

Comment on Writing with your voice (Mar, 1947) by Stephen

Stephen — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:14:56 +0000

This is an early spectrograph, a machine from which linguists learnt a lot about how speech is produced. Whether it was useful for the deaf I don’t know.

Comment on I’d like to see them make (Feb, 1947) by fluffy

fluffy — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:52:27 +0000

I definitely prefer what reality provided over the “throat saver.”

Comment on I’d like to see them make (Feb, 1947) by Hirudinea

Hirudinea — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:12:50 +0000

So who thinks the woman in the second panel is the same as the one in the third panel?

Comment on More Pleasure at the Seashore (Oct, 1937) by Hirudinea

Hirudinea — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:10:54 +0000

I just want to know who thought it would be a good idea to take a rifle to the beach, does the writer come from Amity?

Comment on how important are SEX POSITIONS? (Sep, 1965) by Hirudinea

Hirudinea — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:07:39 +0000

My position is sex is very important.

Comment on More Pleasure at the Seashore (Oct, 1937) by Rick Auricchio

Rick Auricchio — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:13:07 +0000

Beach ball jumping, AKA head, neck and spinal injuries. Jeez.

Comment on Writing with your voice (Mar, 1947) by Toronto

Toronto — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:03:50 +0000

We’ve gone from “si e ns unr a v uls sp ee t sh” to having machines that ‘wreck a nice beach” to Siri.

Comment on More Pleasure at the Seashore (Oct, 1937) by Toronto

Toronto — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:59:03 +0000

Never in all my years would I have thought that beach balls were ever made of leather.

Comment on Helium Once Worth $5,000 Costs under Two Cents (Dec, 1936) by experiment 626

experiment 626 — Mon, 13 May 2013 02:47:48 +0000

I just got a balloon filled yesterday and it was $6 only two less than the balloon itself but since I love sulley too much I gave in but I was thinking about this the entire time.

Comment on Filling in the Hudson to Rebuild New York (Mar, 1934) by In 1934 a New York City engineer proposed… | Crazy Facts

In 1934 a New York City engineer proposed… | Crazy Facts — Sun, 12 May 2013 14:45:07 +0000

[...] 22.7 square miles as it stands) at the cost of $1 billion ($17 billion in today’s dollars). The proposal never went past the idea [...]

Comment on First Spiral Notebook (Sep, 1934) by Become a God for 79 Cents » Wondergressive

Become a God for 79 Cents » Wondergressive — Sun, 12 May 2013 02:21:40 +0000

[...] In 1934, a product was created that has yet to be trumped in its incredible power, not by 3D printing, bionic hands, or even self slicing bread. One man had the revolutionary idea to take blank pieces of paper and bind them together with a spiral of twisting metal. Thanks to this pioneer of liberal thinking, today, if you have 79 cents, you can become a god. [...]