#sliderules — Public Fediverse posts

🚀 Ah, the good ol' days when engineers wielded slide rules like wizards with wands. Now, the only magic trick left is making a "403 Forbidden" message appear with the wave of a 🖱️. Maybe they should've used a slide rule to remember the access code! 🤦‍♂️🔒
https://unmitigatedrisk.com/?p=1227 #slideRules #nostalgia #engineering #humor #techHumor #403Forbidden #HackerNews #ngated

@inaction_figure @VintageProject @concretedog
I'm past midlife, but that doesn't mean I'm past the midlife attractions.

I've a predilection for the #Linux and #SlideRules myself, and an even bigger interest in #Telescopes . But there is something to be said for Italian motorcycles.

Hackaday: Sliderule Simulator Teaches You How To Do Calculations The Old Fashioned Way. “Ever wanted to know how engineers made their calculations before digital calculators were on every workbench? [Richard Carpenter] and [Robert Wolf] have just the thing—a sliderule simulator that can teach you how to do a whole bunch of complex calculations the old fashioned way!”

#Accounting, #SlideRules, #penmanship, #shorthand, #typing, #telegraphy, and #carpentry were taught to school children in Burma, well into the 1980s. I think it would be socially beneficial to teach these skills to young American kids, today.

Basic accounting and personal finance are useful skills for adults, and indispensable for college kids wielding credit cards.

The slide rule endows the student with a keener understanding of various functions and, more importantly, always to check one's results, mentally.

Being able to write in a beautiful, cursive script with a fountain pen may now be but a party trick, but it still is an important social skill.

Shorthand offers a massive advantage in note taking. Given that every child learns to type social media posts well before they first learn to speak, proper typing technique should be taught to children, for efficiency, for preventing repetitive stress injuries, etc.

Telegraphy is valuable in aviation: VOR and NDB navigation aids transmit their identifiers in Morse code. And Morse code is still a thing in the amateur radio scene.

Teaching kids basic carpentry, like making a rough table, is of limited utility, but they will never forget that experience of making something out of raw materials.

Above all, these old skills are cool, at least in some circles. And if nothing else, these activities will surely keep them off social media.

In our second session of the day, we heard from Jørn Hafver who trained an AI in audio recognition right in front of us - so it could tell how loud we were clapping at the end. Ben Ashforth spoke about a journey he went on, inspired by a talk from the last gathering, to visit roads named after every day of the year (details at http://benguin.co.uk/roads). @alisonkiddle talked about the maths behind the games Guess Who and Which One Doesn't Belong, and has a pleasing binary chop device made from card with pins and holes. Phil Ramsen followed up on his talk from three years ago and discussed slide rules and Kolmogorov. Daniel Johnson explored the possibly surprising link between Numberblocks and Polyominoes (https://youtu.be/htnZGHjX8p4?si=YzAXxPP7lT2-_Do5&t=522)- and @Tarim said what we've all been thinking and pointed out some illogical song lyrics - lions don't really live in the mighty jungle, and Kilimanjaro is nowhere near the Serengeti! #mathsjam #maths #ai #travelling #guesswho #wwdb #sliderules #means #averaging #kolmogorov #numberblocks #polyominoes #songs #logic #lyrics