Rites of Spring #11 - eschewing crap made in capitalist China · Saturday May 1, 2010 by colin newell
On a sidewalk bordering Beacon Hill Park in Victoria B.C. Canada, Four men with radios and headphones circle the block in the vicinity of Quadra and Southgate. A gentle rain falls but some blue sky is poking through.
Photo at right – cheap CFL’s made in China can save you coins but cost you your life or your peace of mind. Two of mine melted down recently.
We are all walking in separate directions but occasionally meet up near a utility pole to compare notes and look over each others receiving equipment.
One of my mates is listening to CBC 690khz – one of the most reliable AM signals into the city. There are probably thousands of folks within a kilometer of where we are standing that regularly listen to this station – if they are not tuned in continuously that is.
We listen to the Saturday morning programming but note something somewhat unwelcome on the channel. It is the raw, buzz saw, humming and thrumming of some kind of unidentified digital appliance that is either malfunctioning or poorly designed.
In fact, the digital electronic buzz cuts a swath through the entire radio dial – and beyond. So for those folks, who live in Victoria, who enjoy listening to CKWX or CKNW in Vancouver or KARI in Blaine – if you lived within 100 yards of where we isolated, at least, the building in question – well, then you would be out of luck.
There was a time, in the old days (the 70’s and 80’s) when TV was largely analog that the reception was highly susceptible to interference like this. Now imagine your 72” Plasma TV getting reduced to a wall-hanging by some hard-to-find interference source.
It’s possible, plausible and highly likely I am afraid to say. This is the important part of this blog: The fact that your $3000 home entertainment system might be rendered useless by some mysterious appliance plugged in within 1/2 km of your swanky suburban home.
So. What’s the culprit in this case? Inconclusive at this point. We will probably bring in Industry Canada to sniff around. We tracked the source down to the utility poles serving an apartment building.
Suspects: Could be a broadband internet over powerline adapter (that we have seen being sold at CostCo). Maybe. Doesn’t sound right. Could be an alien craft buried, where it crash landed, under Beacon Hill Park – doubt that. Could also be a exercise treadmill made in mainland China. No, not the country of Taiwan. But Red China. As long as the device is plugged in, the computer processor on the poorly constructed and engineered appliance (made in China) and sold at Sears… as long as it’s on, it is transmitting a broad swatch of loud noise across an entire radio spectrum – rendering that entire neighborhood jammed.
Why is watching for this kind of radio interference important? When that expected Earthquake arrives, you are not going to be listening to emergency instructions on the internet radio. No, you will be on an AM – FM radio, provided that is, that your reception is not being jammed by some junk manufactured in China.
Check out the compact fluorescent lamp above – I used to buy these lamps without checking the country of origin – until 2 of them practically melted down and burst into flames in my bathroom. Nice. And made in China no less.
So. Do your family a favor and avoid manufactured goods from this country.
Because they simply do not care.
Colin Newell lives and writes in Victoria B.C. Canada – is an electronics technician and ham radio operator – if you see him in your neighborhood with a radio and headphones… just ignore him.
June 2011 Update – B.C. Hydro has since become involved in The search for mystery radio signal and has had no success pinning it down. To hear for yourself, drive within 1/2 km of Quadra and Soutgate (near Beacon Hill Park) any day of the week and tune your radio to 690Khz or anywhere on the AM dial for that matter – and listen to what sounds like a combination of alien technology and a Kraftwerk B-side. What do you think it is?
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Rites of Spring #9 - The most remarkably stupid thing I have ever seen · Wednesday April 21, 2010 by colin newell
I got my first bicycle when I was about 8 or 9 years old.
And learning how to ride it for the very first time – that moment where you are one with space and time – with no support from a sibling or parent – you are riding a bike – gliding along with complete freedom.
It is one of those truly innocent aha moments in life.
It is, next to the first few steps as a toddler, one of those steps in the cycle of life where you are slowly but surely moving from the nest…
into the real World.
My first bike was a Raleigh – at the time an English made set of wheels – a coaster bike – a little too large for me and ever so gently second hand. But I loved it.
And in one small stroke, one giant leap of faith, my World went from our immediate surroundings to a limitless vista of potentially kilometers of cycling in every direction.
One of the first accessories on my single speed bike were flappers. Ostensibly pieces of paper held in place by clothes pins that made a rat-a-snap sound as they slapped the spokes on the front and rear tires. Pretty amusing stuff for a 9 year old kid and again it represented, in small part, that inevitable step toward the ultimate freedom of having a set of wheels with an internal combustion engine attached.
By the time I was 10 years old, I had realized that these pieces of hard paper were slowing me down.
Fast forward some 4 decades and I found myself reading the London Drug flyer – a local Target style super-store and came across this in-car gadget… a thing that you plug into your cigarette lighter that sends an FM signal to your car stereo…
Your car stereo that you turn right up and roll down the windows… so you car can sound like a muscle car.
Picture above: The SoundRacer V8 Transmitter – Converts your modern, boring vehicle into a heart pounding 60’s muscle car…
Say it with me folks. F*ck me.
So. In effect… it is a noise pollution device… I am imaging that it was designed precisely for men in their 20’s to 50’s who never grew out of the phase that I did when I was 10.
Men that need to make noise with this stupid device
I have to tell you folks. This is simply the most ridiculous things I have seen in a long, long time – and I have seen a lot. Makes you wonder. What the heck is next?
Anyway. Piece of advice for some of you testosterone challenged dweebs in K-cars that need to draw attention to your pathetic selves… by blasting your stereo in my hood…
Grow up.
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Rites of Spring #6 - We interview Stephen O'Brien of MyPressi · Friday April 2, 2010 by colin newell
We interview Stephen of MyPressi!
Of the handful of coffee culture mountaineers that have scaled the Everest of caffeinated engineering ingenuity – among them Luigi Bezzera creator of the world’s first “espresso” machine… Dr. Ernest Illy inventor of the first automatic espresso machine in 1933 and Italy’s own Achilles Gaggia creator of the modern pump driven espresso machine in 1946… Very few of these folks live or have lived in the late 20th and early part of the 21st Century.
Among those imagination rich folks are Alan Adler, creator of the Aeropress, Craig Hiron, tenacious entrepreneur who put it all on the line for the OTTO Espresso maker and last (but not least) Stephen O’Brien of the not-yet-World-famous MyPressi Twist espresso maker.
The “just-turned-40” Stephen, who lives in California, is just the latest in the rare circle of coffee and espresso loving folks that have scaled this rarely climbed mountain of ingenuity – the addition of one more amazing espresso producing product in the history books.
And no stranger to doing things differently and with flourish, Stephen claims to jump from one thing to another – having authored 27 books on the subject of software development and software aided publishing.
Raised in Melbourne, Australia and having left home at the gentle age of 16, Stephen learned to conquer the obstacles of life with his own devices and a tireless and quirky sense of creativity. His brain wave in the Espresso world came after only truly embracing coffee culture for a few years. While on his honeymoon in Bora Bora, Tahiti and after several truly bad espresso at the Island resort, Stephen and his new wife conceptualized the idea of a completely portable espresso system using the tiny nitrous oxide cartridges most widely recognized for whipped cream dispensers.
He forgot about it for a while, was reminded about it again by his wife and after a period of about 18 months looking for the right engineering team (in this case from California) came up with a winning product.
Stephen and the MyPressi crew sent me a sample of the Twist to use and abuse. We review it over here on the Coffeecrew.com website.
We interviewed Stephen today via Skype – if you cannot see the audio thingie below, click here for the mp3.
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2010 series Life in the Byte Age chapter one · Sunday January 3, 2010 by colin newell
I have a couple of things in common with some of the big pop stars in the World. I have written an albums worth of music and a chunk of the lyrics to go along with it.
One of the biggest differences is – I have sold under 1000 CD’s (compared to millions and millions for some artists) and that is (in part) because I am decidedly, if not staggeringly, less talented than most.
The other thing I did is, having embraced modern technology, having made some, if not all, of the material free to hear online prior to purchasing – on CBC3
One thing I feel very strongly about is the ability to protect intellectual property – but in order to do that, one must live within a society that subscribes, at least on some level, to the theory that music (and the arts) are actually worth something.
U2’s front man, Bono is calling for better restrictions on the internet to protect artists and their work. In his regular column for the New York Times, which the pop singer began a year ago, Bono says downloading is becoming all-encompassing.
“The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files,” he wrote.
Bono predicts people are only a few years away from downloading movies in a few seconds.
And I think that Bono and I are seeing exactly the same philosophical and ethical phenomenon: That society as a whole sees music and art, movies and television as something to be picked off of a communal apple tree. With impunity. Without a twinge of guilt. Because it’s there.
Most of my creative friends (and an equal number of the non-creative ones) feel that it is OK to download (steal) music and movies and TV shows. Some insist that they will tend to buy more music if they have the opportunity to download some first. That is like saying, “I promise to buy more fruit as long as I can steal some of the vegetables…”.
I mean, if the same rules, that applied to the internet, applied on the streets of your town, we would be free to loot stores of their goods. What is the difference?
I can proudly say that I have yet to download a song, movie or a TV show. It is about worth. Having been through the exercise of actually taking out 10 months of my life to produce, what I thought, was some good music – I always felt that it was worth something.
Where Bono and I might diverge in opinion is this: We have opened the flood gates to a lifestyle – and a conscience free choice in behavior. I find it hard to believe that we can now close these doors after they have been opened.
This is Blog Number 602 since the Spring of 2005. Crikey!
