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Showing posts from November, 2020

8 mm home movies

Most are too young to remember the popularity of home made movies using 8mm film.  Kodak, Bell & Howell, and others made cameras that created movies on either black and white film or color film (later) that was 8mm wide.  These cameras shot scenes at about 17 frames per second, which is fast enough so that when shown with a projector on a screen, the motion was reasonably smooth and not jerky.   This era lasted until the video camera completely displaced the film movie camera. Now, even digital cameras can take either still pictures or videos, so even the video camera is on the way to history.  From all this movie making during the last half of the last century, there remain many reels of film of family gatherings, young children taking their first steps, graduation day, etc and these reels now sit in back closets----too valuable to throw away but too costly to see on the screen.  What a dilemma.  I have such a collection, perhaps 40 reels of film dating back to 1956.  Most are lab

The Internet and Problem Solving

Back in the "early days" if someone needed information, they went to the library.  Then the internet arrived and that put the library in second position regarding problem solving information.  True, some of the information on the internet is outdated, but that can be filtered.  The problem with printed information is that small bits of information are not easily added to print versions; they must wait for the "next edition". Here are some recent experiences with the internet on problem solving. After having my amateur radio transceiver sit idle for almost two years, I reassembled all the antenna connections to the transmitter and turned on the transceiver and, surprise, all the digital display modules on the frequency screen showed sixes and they were all jumping wildly.  So, I went to the internet and searched for problems with the Kenwood 440S, describing the problem with my set and discovered that a common problem with this older generation of transceiver was gun