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With a roll of duct tape, a swiss army knife, and a brain, no technical challenge is insurmountable. At least, according to MacGyver. Still, the show pays tribute, in part, to the archetypal twentieth century tinker. The kind of guy who uses paper clips for resistors in household wiring and a jury rigged lawn mower for an outboard boat engine.
Currently, I'm driving the result of one such individual ( Frankenheap ), as my car gave up yesterday. In my own make shift moment, I used a handful of tums shaken up in a water bottle to clean the contacts on the battery. While the problem went deeper, my unofficial substitute for the more commonly used baking soda was alkali enough to squeeze out a enough trapped potential to get the window up.
When I explained my antacid trick to a mechanic, he looked at me like I'd grown two heads. Mechanics usually love stuff like that; or they used to. The art of the jury rig seems to be held in less esteem than it once was. Now, when you explain a fix you're happy with to someone, more often than not they ask why you didn't call a professional.
As technology gets more complex, it seems as if most people have simply given up understanding it. A friend believes that the minds that once made the best engineers now play with computers instead. The virtual world does seem to give a better tinker bang for the effort; less scrap to clean up, quicker turnaround. It's a bothersome thought.
So, today, Ken Jones of New Zealand gets his name in the paper for using a kitchen wok in place of a $20,000 piece of communication equipment. Cheers Ken, you made my day.
Currently, I'm driving the result of one such individual ( Frankenheap ), as my car gave up yesterday. In my own make shift moment, I used a handful of tums shaken up in a water bottle to clean the contacts on the battery. While the problem went deeper, my unofficial substitute for the more commonly used baking soda was alkali enough to squeeze out a enough trapped potential to get the window up.
When I explained my antacid trick to a mechanic, he looked at me like I'd grown two heads. Mechanics usually love stuff like that; or they used to. The art of the jury rig seems to be held in less esteem than it once was. Now, when you explain a fix you're happy with to someone, more often than not they ask why you didn't call a professional.
As technology gets more complex, it seems as if most people have simply given up understanding it. A friend believes that the minds that once made the best engineers now play with computers instead. The virtual world does seem to give a better tinker bang for the effort; less scrap to clean up, quicker turnaround. It's a bothersome thought.
So, today, Ken Jones of New Zealand gets his name in the paper for using a kitchen wok in place of a $20,000 piece of communication equipment. Cheers Ken, you made my day.
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