What every discerning newt desires: a pond probe to illuminate the deepest reaches of the wild with:
sample bottle, spikes, absorbent foam, Velcro and a magnet to collect deep water samples and:
a {on-borrowed-time} bulb, lump of fool’s gold and a cat’s eye to shine / reflect so that location can be determined.
sorry newts!
What to do with a calculator that has sustained damage resulting in some missing buttons?
Remove most of the remaining buttons then create a game with a complex dossier of rules that seek (not entirely successfully) to put the ‘fun’ into ‘functionality’!
It doesn’t get much earlier than Pong – my thanks to my sisters who, on occasion, let me loose the family gaming system. This required:
a/ nobody being able to watch tv for the next hour
b/ a hunt around for new C size batteries
c/ twiddling the tuning button with extraordinary patience until the flickering on the tv resolved into white lines on a black background
PS there is an Apple Watch pong now!
Honorable mentions must go to Tomy and Nintendo for these gems too (albeit 10 years later):
here’s one from the archives: my first PC, a 286 running at 16mhz
(Turbo, 8mhz otherwise) a full 1 MB of RAM and a whopping 10MB RLL hard disk! In 1992 the KB was still a thing.
Once the hdd got too full it was time to run ‘Stacker’ which compressed that precious space to squeeze more on.
After some upgrading fun, this hulking machine became a 486 (sx) with 4 MB of ram and 420 MB IDE of storage. Not much by today’s standards but quite a transformation, resulting in the ability to run Windows 3.1 and, eventually even Encarta ’96 !
Take on Pi 3B+ and add an Adafruit GPIO header then solder wires for plugging into newly attached breadboard..
For great value electronic kit (broken toys for the most part) Scrap Store is hard to beat.
Now for some dismantling and corroded battery removal.
I had some help making an initial assessment of the loot..
Note a startled expression when the dog sat up and barked.!
farewell to Delicious (now read-only) and hello to Tagpacker – I will keep the links coming..
*thanks to everyone who has made site recommendations to me over the years – a veritable plethora awaiting!
Left for the start of my Secondary adventure this morning having watched my son bond with Big Trak – tis time for his father to ensure that he can stay one step ahead!
My thanks to Lydiard Park Academy Trust who gave me a perfect welcome today. The IT / Computing team are brilliant – seamless in their vision for excellence in delivery of this fabulous subject. Looking forward to teaching tomorrow – feeling a welling up of excitement that the time has come to focus on one subject – and to be able to explore that subject alongside a truly great team.
