Making stuff the old-fashioned way

Dave Farquhar General

There are people on eBay who buy up old DIY magazines and books, cut out the individual articles that tell you how to make stuff, and flog them for $3 or $4 apiece. It seems like those magazine articles told you how to make just about anything.

But what if you get outbid? What if you don’t want to pay $4 to read a 4-page article? And what if you can’t find the article at the library? (Conveniently they don’t tell you where the article came from.)

I’ve got a web site for you.Visit vintageprojects.com. You’ll find a little bit of everything there. Woodworking projects. How to build go-carts and scooters. Even how to build tools so you can build ever more sophisticated stuff.

Give it a look.

And in the meantime, if you ever run across a stash of old ’50s DIY mags, you’ll recognize it as a business opportunity.

Incidentally, I found that link on retrothing.com, which is a really cool blog about old stuff in general.

Taking one for the team

Dave Farquhar Baseball , , , ,

The press is divided: Alfonso Soriano is Terrell Owens. Alfonso Soriano isn’t Terrell Owens. No matter. There is one thing that matters.

Alfonso Soriano is an employee of the Washington Nationals Baseball Club and is under contract until the end of next year. Alfonso Soriano wants to play second base. His employer wants him to play left field.

If you aren’t a professional athlete, the case is clear: You do what your employer tells you. Period. Why is it different if you make $10 million a year?The argument against the move goes like this: Once a player reaches a certain level of accomplishment, there’s an unwritten rule that you don’t ask him to change positions. The argument is that Soriano has reached that level of accomplishment.

It’s true that Soriano is a very accomplished hitter. In five full seasons, he’s hit 30 homers and stolen 30 bases three times. Only Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonds have done it more times. It’s rare for someone to do it once. In his second full season in the majors, he fell one home run short of 40/40, which is something only men have done: Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez. Looking at that list, it’s hard to do without steroids. For that matter, it’s hard to do with steroids.

But those are Soriano’s offensive accomplishments. On the field, he’s anything but an accomplished gloveman. His career fielding percentage at second base is .971. Soriano is no Ryne Sandberg. Since the Nationals have a capable gloveman at second base in Jose Vidro, they want to hide Soriano’s glove in left field to get his bat into the lineup.

Soriano’s objection is that next year is his free agent year, and there’s a better market for second basemen with 30-homer power than there is for left fielders with 30-homer power.

So let’s get this straight: He wants the Nationals to play him at second base this year so another team will potentially pay him more money next year.

I’m not surprised the Nationals aren’t sympathetic.

Besides, there’s a predecent for moving back to second base if another team wants him there. Craig Biggio moved from catcher to second base when the Astros needed a second baseman. A decade later, he moved to center field so the Astros could sign Jeff Kent, a power hitter who can’t play any other position well. A few months later, Biggio moved from center field to left so his team could trade for Carlos Beltran, arguably the best center fielder in the game. The next season, Biggio moved back to second base.

Nomar Garciaparra signed with the Dodgers as a first baseman despite never having played the position in his life. But the Dodgers already had two shortstops so Garciaparra signed as a first baseman. He wanted to be in LA, and the Dodgers wanted his bat. Problem solved. In theory at least.

So if any team is interested in Soriano’s oven mitt-like glovework at second base–and there are a few teams who have the money to pay him, and no better options at the position–nothing stops them from asking Soriano to move back there. And there’s little question that there’ll be teams interested in Soriano as a designated hitter too.

There would have been, anyway. Certainly there’s still a market for Soriano, since anybody can use someone who can hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases. But you want someone who’s interested in winning ballgames, not just in collecting a paycheck.

Some years ago, the New York Yankees were looking for a left fielder with a lot of power. They set their sights on Jim Edmonds, who was the center fielder for the Anaheim Angels at the time. There was some question whether Edmonds would be willing to play left field, since most people considered him a better center fielder than the Yankees’ Bernie Williams.

Edmonds said he’d rather play center. But he said what was most important to him was winning a World Series. "I’ll play third base for them if that’s what it takes to win a Series," he said.

Well, the Yankees and Angels couldn’t work out a deal, and Edmonds ended up playing center field in St. Louis instead. But that’s the attitude you want to see.

Some people argue that the Nationals should have discussed all this with Soriano before they traded for him. The Texas Rangers wouldn’t allow the Nationals to talk to him. For good reason–the Rangers wanted to move him to the outfield, and he wouldn’t move. The Yankees had wanted to move him to the outfield too, and his refusal to move was part of the reason the Yankees traded him to Texas. The only worse-kept secret in baseball was Barry Bonds and his steroids.

So the Nationals made a bad trade. Shame on them.

But shame on Soriano even more.

Frequent your local produce market

Dave Farquhar Saving money

There’s a tiny produce market in a former Amoco gas station about a mile from where I live. I’ve driven past it for years without ever so much as stopping in to see what they had.

I wasted a lot of money that way.I read in the excellent book Eat Healthy For $50 a Week that produce markets sell fruits and vegetables for less than grocery stores. Finally last weekend, my wife and I checked out that assertion.

What we found was that the selection wasn’t nearly as great as the produce section of a large grocery store–at least not in March–but the prices were good. They were never any higher than the grocery store, and often the prices were much lower. We got a head of lettuce for 25 cents, for instance. Prices vary. Lettuce was 25 cents on Sunday, and it was 98 cents today. I’m guessing on Sunday he was trying to sell down his inventory, so he cut the price. A bag of apples that usually costs a couple of dollars at the grocery store was a dollar.

It’s probably best to stop at a produce market a few times a week to get a feel for the best day to buy different things. But since I eat a couple of pounds of apples a week, that stand could easily save us a dollar or two a week. That’s $50 or $100 a year. Not exactly chump change. And that’s on a single item.

The other good thing about produce markets is they’re generally locally owned, so you’re supporting your neighbor, and while not everything sold there is going to be locally grown, you can bet anything that’s in season locally will be. Supporting your local economy is always a good thing.

Incidentally, that book has lots of other good ideas in it. My wife and I probably spend more than $50 a week on food, but the ideas in the book probably have saved us $10 a week, minimum, since we read it. That’s $500 a year. That’s half a house payment.

How to get my job (2006 edition)

Dave Farquhar Personal , , , , , , , , , ,

It seems like every year or two, somebody asks me how to get my job. Given the way the last year or so has gone, I can’t believe anyone’s asking me that question, but it’s been coming back up again. I’ve made some mistakes in my career–obviously–but since I’m still in the field, I must have done a few things right too.

I guess it makes sense to trace my career and see what I would do differently.1984: Yes, it all started when I was 10. I’d wanted a computer for as long as I could remember, and that year, Mom and Dad finally bought one. I spent as much time messing with that old Commodore as I could. And when I wasn’t messing with that Commodore, I was reading about it. It was an obsession. It bordered on unhealthy. Or maybe it was unhealthy.

In high school, if you’d offered me a choice between a date with the best-looking girl in the school or a new Amiga 1200 or 3000, I might very well have taken the computer. Sure, I was interested in girls, but the computer wouldn’t break up with me, right?

I bring this up for one reason: If you’re wanting to get into the field for money, find something else to do. Go into sales or something. If you don’t absolutely love this stuff, you won’t last, so there’s no point in wasting your time.

1994: I started my career in sales. When polite company isn’t around, I say I whored myself out for a large consumer electronics chain. That might be a bit more accurate. In a way it was a good move. A lot of IT people my age started their careers the way I did. It’s better than fast food, at least in regards that IT recruiters use it as a scouting ground. Work there and do well, and it’s just a matter of time before recruiters will want to talk to you.

What I did right: I started filling in for the store’s technician, who frequently had problems showing up for work.

What I’d do differently: First, I’d find out who the best salesperson was, and really learn how to sell. I’ve worked with IT management people who couldn’t figure out how to make their computer play solitaire, but they know a little bit about selling, so their jobs are safe, even though they had no qualifications.

The other thing I’d do differently is to get A+ certification. It’s not strictly necessary to get a better job, but it opens more doors. A lot of jobs require A+ certification just because some idiot in HR (and yes, most of them are idiots) decided it’s a good idea.

1995: I caught a break because I knew both Macintosh and IBM hardware, I knew OS/2, and I had connections at the journalism school at the University of Missouri. A professor mentioned the job opening to me and handed me a phone number. After class I called the number. The guy on the other end asked me what I knew how to do. I told him, he told me he’d pay me $7 an hour, and asked when I could start.

It was supposed to be a temporary gig. But it turned out I knew how to do a lot more than just the grunt work that needed to be done, so they found money to keep me. And when I was about to graduate, they offered me a full-time job.

What I did right: I showed up for work, I did everything they asked me to do, and whenever somebody else was sick and they asked me to try to fill in, I filled in and actually managed to do a decent job.

What I’d do differently: It wasn’t a bad gig, until Yoko Ono came along. Actually she was from Pittsburgh and she was Scottish-American. But the relationship interfered with the job and the job interfered with the relationship. And when something went wrong with one, it messed up the other too. I’d have done well to learn how to separate the two. That’s a lot to ask of someone who’s 23. Now I’m 31 and don’t know how now either. Neither does my 40-year-old boss.

1998: I moved to St. Louis to take another job in IT. This was also the year I re-discovered God and religion. This was a dream job, working for my church. I took a demotion and a pay cut to do it. Of course I didn’t know until I’d already quit my other job that it was a demotion.

I’ll get off track if I talk about it much more than that, so let’s just talk about what went right and wrong.

What I did right: I racked up a lot of impressive statistics and I learned how to do everything they asked me to do. I usually wasn’t happy about it, but I always did as well or better than the person who replaced me. The guy I replaced was a legend and I don’t think anyone would have been able to replace him adequately.

What I did wrong: I shouldn’t have taken the demotion. Not at 23. If you’re married and have kids, I can see taking a demotion so you can work better hours to spend more time with your family. When you’re 23 and single, you can’t waste time climbing a ladder you already climbed once. A banker in Columbia offered me a job as a systems administrator when he found out I knew OS/2. I should have taken it and called St. Louis and told them I wasn’t coming.

This job really went downhill as another relationship was coming to an end too. No need to re-hash that.

I made one other mistake. I won’t elaborate on it. But if you see upper management doing something unethical, LEAVE.

2005: Mercenary time. My first contract was with a very large and very nearly bankrupt cable company. The work wasn’t nearly as interesting or challenging as my previous job, and my coworkers were at either extreme: Some were among the very best people I’d ever worked with, and some of them were just overgrown high school bullies. But it was work, and the pay was fair, which was nice after working for seven years at anywhere from $15,000-$20,000 less than I was worth. Making a double mortgage payment and still having more money left over at the end of the month than I’d had a year before was very nice.

What I did right: I came in, learned quickly, took things seriously, was very professional and very effective.

What I did wrong: I didn’t press in. I did what I was asked, and that was it. That’s what a hired gun does. And the result was I was treated like a hired gun. As soon as the money got tough, I was the first one out the door.

I had coworkers who didn’t want me to learn more about the system. Since they didn’t want to show me, I should have found another way to learn it. And I should have loosened up.

2006: I won’t tell you who I’m working for now, other than to say it’s someone you’ve definitely heard of.

This time, I made an effort to go to lunch with my coworkers. I didn’t do that at the cable company because I was trying to save money. I’d gone without enough money for a couple of months and was deathly afraid of having to do it again. I’m still a tightwad and everyone knows it, but I’m willing to spend $7 to bond with my coworkers once a week. The theory is it’s a lot harder to show the door to someone you like than to someone you barely know.

The other thing I did this time was to steal some responsibility. I volunteer for everything. Sometimes they end up giving it to someone else anyway. But I’m always willing. When people give me some of their old responsibilities, I take them, and I figure out how to do them faster and smarter. After about two months, now my boss is surprised when I do something his way.

My path isn’t the only path. There are two previous bosses I wouldn’t hesitate to work for again. One is a retired U.S. Marine. He went into the Marine Corps as a technician, fixing teletype machines. When teletypes became less important, he moved on to computers. When he retired, he kept on working for the military as a contractor.

Most of my coworkers today took a similar path. Some enjoyed very long careers as defense contractors after their military days came to an end.

That seems to me to be a good route to take if you don’t have a lot of connections. And the upside to the military approach is that you know your job won’t be outsourced to India. That’s a real danger and that danger is going to get a lot bigger before it gets any smaller.

The other previous boss has a degree in psychology. He started working with computers because he found them interesting. I don’t know how he got started in the field, but during the time I worked for him, he was the epitome of connections. He knew everybody, and whenever something goofy came up, he knew how to get in touch with them to get the answer. The result? He’s every bit as entrenched as a tenured professor would be. The difference is there’s no question as to whether that’s a good thing.

Barry Bonds is no Kirby Puckett

Dave Farquhar Baseball ,

In case you’ve been on another planet this week, two things rocked the Baseball world. Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett died of a massive stroke at age 45. He was younger than Julio Franco, who is still playing in the major leagues, and Puckett is only the second youngest Hall of Famer to die. Lou Gehrig died of ALS at age 37.

The other news is the publication of a book detailing Barry Bonds’ use of performance-enhancing substances such as steroids since 1998.Both men had a dark side. According to the book, Bonds’ jealousy of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa caused him to start using steroids and a bizarre mix of other substances to bulk up. It’s clear to anyone who remembers the skinny kid in the Pittsburgh Pirates uniform from 1988 that Bonds has been doing something to transform himself. Bonds said it was Flaxseed Oil. Guess what? I take Flaxseed Oil. I take a lot of it. I’m 5’9" and on a good day I weigh 145 pounds. Barry Bonds used to be built like me. Now he’s built like a professional wrestler, and he got that way practically overnight. I don’t think it was the Flaxseed Oil…

Puckett had something else going on beneath his always-smiling exterior. Kirby Puckett was the kind of guy who would go out of his way to help anyone, and the kind of guy who could keep a positive attitude throughout absolutely anything. If Kirby Puckett said the team was going to win, everyone believed it, and Kirby Puckett always found some way to win. But the home life wasn’t as good. Puckett’s first wife divorced him because of domestic abuse.

But it should be noted that even after the divorce, the abuse, and the other things that came out afterward, Puckett’s ex-wife thought highly of him. It takes a lot of good to cover domestic abuse. But Puckett had it.

Puckett was born and grew up in the projects in Chicago and dreamed of one day being the next Ernie Banks. Well, he played a different position (Banks was a shortstop, Puckett played mostly center field) and he didn’t play for the Cubs, but other than that, he did a pretty good job of emulating his hero’s attitude and his statistics. I haven’t seen a public statement yet, but I suspect Ernie Banks has told more than one person he was flattered to be Kirby Puckett’s hero.

It all ended tragically. Puckett’s career, that is. In 1996, Puckett woke up one morning and couldn’t see out of one eye. Glaucoma. Without depth perception, you can’t play baseball, so Puckett just walked away. Well, that and he told us not to feel sorry for him. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001. His career was very short, but so spectacular that he made it on his first ballot.

In his later years, Puckett secluded himself, and his friends started worrying about him. One account said Puckett nearly weighed 400 pounds at one point. I’m not sure if that was a typo. But Puckett was trying to straighten himself out. He’d started training again, trying to get his weight down, and was engaged to be married. He hoped to start coaching baseball, maybe as soon as next year.

It’s sad. We’ll miss Kirby Puckett. And we can’t wait for Barry Bonds to just go away.

Get your valuable Windows licensing information from Microsoft!

Dave Farquhar Saving money

Do you know what the least expensive way to buy legitimate copies of Windows is? Do you know what the Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement covers?

Of course you don’t. Nobody can figure out Microsoft licensing. But Microsoft wants to send you a FREE! USB flash drive filled with this ultra-valuable information!

And oh, yeah, nothing stops you from erasing this information when you’re done and replacing it with your own, even more priceless data.To get your free drive, visit the Microsoft Mystery Solved page. If you don’t have a Passport account, sign up for a Hotmail account while you’re at it, and when this offer asks for your e-mail address, feed it the Hotmail address.

The drive probably isn’t all that big (I’d be shocked if it’s any bigger than 32 megs) but a free drive is better than no drive, and 32 megs is still useful. I also don’t know if it’s bootable, USB 2.0 capable, or anything else about it. But mine should be here 6-8 weeks from last Friday.

And if supplies run out before you sign up? I predict a glut of Microsoft-branded USB flash drives on Ebay in about two months. It’s just a hunch I have.

Myspace and blogging isn’t inherently bad

Dave Farquhar net.culture , , , , , , ,

I see some schools are blocking access to Myspace and other blogging tools. The blogosphere, some people seem to believe, is just a bunch of people looking to exploit teenaged girls.

Sure, blogs can be dangerous. So can cars and jobs. I think the Myspace phenomenon exposes weaknesses in upbringing more than anything else.Blogs have only been around for about 9 years so there haven’t been a lot of sociological studies of them–especially since blogging has only been hot for the last couple of years. But there are precedents.

I was very active in a lot of online communities as a teenager. Teens like me were a minority, but there were enough of us. I’m still friends with a couple of people I met online back in those days.

And I’ll tell you something straight up: I ran into a lot of women who were older than me. A lot of, um, lonely women who were older than me. A lot of them had the wrong idea about my age. One asked me where I went to college. But you see, I hadn’t gone yet, because I was only 14.

And in case you’re wondering, it didn’t go any further than that. I’d been taught right from wrong, and I carried myself that way, both online and in person, so the topic never came up.

There were other dark sides of this online world. Software piracy was usually the gateway. And yeah, I’ll admit I downloaded some software that I didn’t pay for. Mostly I stuck to things that were no longer commercially available. And without Amazon.com and Ebay, it was difficult to buy out-of-print stuff. So I wouldn’t have been able to buy the majority of it even if I’d wanted to. That didn’t make it legal, but to my teenaged mind, it sounded moral enough.

Of course most people were interested in the new stuff. And that could lead down a slippery slope. St. Louis wasn’t exactly a hotbed for the latest new releases, so to get the zero-day warez, you had to call long distance. But remember, most of us weren’t 16 yet, so we didn’t have jobs and we didn’t have a lot of money. So I knew an awful lot of people who got into phone fraud. And it often got worse from there. Phone fraud led to credit card fraud, and I heard stories of people who got caught, slapped with the huge bills they’d run up, and turned to dealing drugs to make the money to pay it back.

All so they could be the first one in St. Louis to have the Commodore 64 version of Grover’s Magic Numbers. Yes, there were people who risked all of that to have something that lame-sounding. And no, it didn’t sound any cooler then, but people did it.

I talked with a number of people who were caught up in that. There was a guy in Chicago who called me on a pretty regular basis for a little while. No, he didn’t dial 1-314, if you know what I mean. One day he quit calling, and not long after that, I heard the Feds caught up with him. There was a rumor that he ran away to Colorado after he got out of juvenile detention. Whatever the case, I never heard from him again.

But I never made any fraudulent long-distance calls. I had a 3.6 grade-point average, was in National Honors Society, and I was in Who’s Who Among American High School Students all four years. And I sold my first magazine article before I got my driver’s license. I wasn’t going to throw all that away just so I could make long-distance phone calls on someone else’s dime.

So why was I having anything to do with those people? Simple. We talked programming. Nothing I learned from those guys is remotely useful to me today, but it was interesting then. Sure, those guys made a lot of mistakes, and yeah, they sure did break a lot of laws, but they weren’t entirely bad.

I’m sure if my parents had known everything that was going on, they’d have gotten rid of the modem or at least severely limited what I could do with it. But they couldn’t stand over my shoulder all the time.

And besides, there wasn’t any need to worry. They’d taught me right from wrong, and what I had to lose if I stepped too far out of bounds. Sure I pushed the limits, but that’s being a teenager for you. Come to think of it, I still push the limits sometimes now, even at 31.

The primitive online communities that existed in the late 1980s and early 1990s were social communities. The only difference between that and the mall was distance. The computer took away the geographical boundaries. In that regard they’re the same as Myspace and other online communities today.

There’s potential for problems today, just like there was 17 years ago. But looking back now, there’s no question why I went online back then. It helped me deal with being a teenager. I could talk with other teenagers who were like me–there were only one or two others like me at my school, and one of them was a major-league jerk. And I could get advice from adults who were further removed from the situation and could give me advice without conflicts of interest. Whether the struggle of the day involved a soldering iron or a girl, I knew at least one person who knew the answer.

I can think of lots of things I’d change if I could go back, but that isn’t among them. So I don’t believe isolating kids today from online communities solves anything. Kids will be kids. Hopefully they know right from wrong and what they can lose if they choose wrong.

Blocking those who would choose wrong doesn’t solve a lot. They’ll find another way to choose wrong.

Denying an important resource to those who would choose right is a greater loss. It’s much easier to find another way to choose wrong than it is to find another way to get wise counsel.

Reviving a laptop

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , ,

My Micron Transport LT (a rebranded Samsung Sens Pro 680) died on Friday. I wasn’t a happy camper. Just ask my wife.

But it’s working again today, and I learned something along the way.We’d gone out for a while, and when we got back, I sat down at the laptop and noticed Windows was complaining about low battery power. I didn’t think much of it–I just unplugged the AC adapter and plugged it back in, like I usually do when that happens.

Well, about five minutes into my session it died hard. And it wouldn’t power back up, no matter what I tried. Eventually I got the idea to test the AC adapter. I took the adapter to a known-good plug, switched my voltmeter over to DC, touched one lead to the barrel of the plug and one to the tip, and got a whole lot of nothing. I tried it with an AC adapter that I knew worked, and got a reading. Then I noticed the power cord going into the adapter looked just like the adapter for most portable radios. Hoping against hope, I switched the voltmeter to AC, touched it to the leads, and got disappointment.

110 volts.

Google to the rescue. I did a couple of searches and found places selling AC adapters for a Micron LT, but the prices were outrageous. The best price I found was $55, and most places wanted $70 or $75. I didn’t want to sink that much money into a six-year-old laptop–especially when I didn’t know if the AC adapter might have taken something else down with it. Since the laptop had run fine on battery power, I had a pretty good indication it hadn’t, but I didn’t know.

I found one place advertising original Samsung AC adapters for $20. But they were sold out, of course.

A search on the specifications printed on the AC adapter itself–19 volts, 3.15 amps–yielded devices that would work, but again at prices higher than I was willing to pay.

Finally I decided to search Ebay. Searching on "Micron Transport LT" didn’t yield much except some parts laptops, and substituting "MicronPC" and "MPC" didn’t help. All I learned was that a stripped 650 MHz LT with no drives, AC adapter, battery, or extra memory sold for about 50 bucks. That was encouraging. I could Frankenstein an LT back together if I had to.

So I searched on "Samsung Sens Pro 680" instead, and found some joy. Some prices were outrageous. But I found a seller in Hong Kong with original Samsung OEM units. I also found someone in Brooklyn, Laptopspower, with an aftermarket unit. The prices were comparable–around $35. Did I want to buy an identical replacement? Part of me said no–why buy something identical to something that broke? But the little guy on the other shoulder reminded me that the one that broke lasted six years.

Basically the decision came down to Hong Kong vs. Brooklyn. No question a shipment from Brooklyn would arrive faster, all other things being equal. So I took a chance on the aftermarket unit and placed my order on Sunday night.

It arrived today. I’m happy to say it’s bigger and heavier than the original. Remembering previous jobs, I know some sissy-boy executives would complain about that, but if you’re a dumb PC tech like me, you know that the weight of a transformer is a crude measure of its quality. Cheap electronics components weigh less than higher quality components, all else being equal. Besides, I’m burly enough to manage to carry a couple more ounces without grimacing.

Some other things going for the aftermarket unit: It has an indicator light, so you know when it’s getting power. This way I’ll have some warning if and when this one dies, and I’ll know to save my work. That would be worth 30 bucks right there, if I happened to be working on the right thing. And the amperage of this unit is 3.2 amps, not 3.15. That’s not a lot of difference, but more amps is better. The laptop will only draw what it needs, but higher capacity means a cooler-running, longer-lasting unit.

And, as a bonus, I learned that the LT’s CPU is removable and upgradable. Just look for an MPGA Pentium III. The catch is that the fastest chip the LT will take is 800 MHz, and it wasn’t produced in large quantities. An 800 MHz MPGA P3 runs about $80. My 700 MHz chip costs about $30. That’s an expensive 100 MHz upgrade. But it’s nice to know I can get more speed, if I’m willing to throw money at it. It used to be that the only way to get a faster laptop was to buy a new one, after all.

So my LT is back in business again, and I’ve learned something. That can’t be bad.

Should you edit your boss’ Wikipedia article?

Dave Farquhar net.culture , ,

The IP block associated with congressional offices has been banned off and on from editing Wikipedia, due to a large percentage of dubious edits that attempt to clean up a Congressperson’s image, or smear political opponents.

This has raised a question: Should people with vested interests edit articles?

Absolutely not. And lack of a foolproof way to keep them from doing that is one reason it’s not a reliable source.

Read more

European O gauge train layouts

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , ,

O gauge is the size of train that most Americans associate with Lionel. It was actually invented around the turn of the century in Germany, although whether it was invented by Marklin or one of the many johnny-come-latelies is open to debate.

After World War II, O gauge faded very quickly in Europe, although in the United States it experienced a resurgence that helped make Marx and Lionel two of the biggest, most profitable toy companies in the world.

I’ve seen some pictures of European O gauge. You’ve got to see this stuff.The second picture on this Dutch page is extremely impressive. Bayko was an architectural toy made of Bakelite (an early plastic), available both before and after World War II. While the scale didn’t necessarily match O gauge precisely, it was more than close enough to the 1:43 scale used in the United Kingdom and 1:45 in Continental Europe, and it allowed the construction of a wide variety of very colorful and attractive buildings. It makes American Plasticville look downright monotonous.

Between the various construction kits available, buildings made by the train manufacturers themselves, the huge variety of 1:43 vehicles and figures, it was possible to build a miniature world that the American product lines just couldn’t match. And yet it died. I guess it fell victim to the smaller houses in Europe, which were much friendlier to HO and TT scales.

If I ever go to Europe and run across any of this stuff, I’m going to be in trouble.