The Nerd Pride Thread....

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I can't be the only Star Trek Fan here... and Yes, I know... It's due to be installed on Tuesday.


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OK, in that vein (and even though I've mentioned this in the SNW thread) — I've been married (for over 44 years) to a girl who could identify the TOS episode by hearing a few lines of dialog over the phone. And the movie we saw for our first date was "Logan's Run."

(We're both loving Strange New Worlds by the way.)
 
I go by the assumption that labelling people causes more problems than it solves and consider nerds and geeks to be artificial constructs much like santa claus and unicorns. Evidence suggests that in reality, we're little more than highly elaborate, adaptable aggregates of macromolecules.
 
Funkworks said:
I go by the assumption that labelling people causes more problems than it solves and consider nerds and geeks to be artificial constructs much like santa claus and unicorns. Evidence suggests that in reality, we're little more than highly elaborate, adaptable aggregates of macromolecules.
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+20 points, easy.
 
Do I get credit for this?
jqavins said:
I'll take that to mean "A penny and..." but FYI a penny weighs 2.5 grams. Prior to September, 1882 they weighted 3.11 grams, but most of those have enough wear by now to weigh closer to 3 even.

Since you've been successful with 2.5 gram pennies, you obviously can leave well enough alone (and don't need me to tell you that). But if you want 4.67 grams, go with a nickel (5 grams even) or a better yet penny plus a dime (2.500 + 2.268 grams). Do I get credit in the nerd pride thread for this?

As a handy mental reference for small gram weights, I like to think of how many nickels they would be.
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I just remembered my nerd among nerds one...

I built an Eggfinder...
Rx & Tx (early 2015 version?)...
then I crammed the Rx into a toy Star Trek Tri-corder...
and kept the electronic sounds and lights...
I dunno, but that's pretty nerdy I have to admit 🤓 lol
View attachment VID_20220628_194536530.mp4
 
OK, here's my cred:
Calculator: TI-83, bought a decade ago to replace the TI-81 I'd had since high school but had dropped in a boat's bilge. I use it mostly to do linear regression in the field because I don't like firing up the laptop. (r^2 = 0.999 (three nines) is barely acceptable, 0.9999 (four nines) is good, and five nines is great. I've managed six nines once.) (My mom remembered when the first calculators that did square roots came out)
Computers: I built our home computer out of parts ordered off the internet
Archaic technology: I've used a blueline machine enough to be nostalgic about the ammonia fumes
Rockets: Scratch built all but one of my current fleet, including two non-round rockets, plus made all of my own chutes
Use of technology in ways it was never intended: Used AutoCAD to make blocks (and quilting patterns) for several quilts, including a Hubble theme and an Apollo 11 theme.
Professionally: I know far too much of 46 CFR and international regulations (SOLAS, MARPOL, etc.) than is healthy for a person.

And perhaps most important, the selective memory: I can remember project numbers from 25 years ago (97048, my first project), but not the name of someone I met 5 minutes ago.
 
Overall quite acceptable. But...
boatgeek said:
And perhaps most important, the selective memory: I can remember project numbers from 25 years ago (97048, my first project), but not the name of someone I met 5 minutes ago.
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No credit there. Nerds and non-nerds alike get old.

(I can't remember the last time my memory worked correctly.)
 
jqavins said:
Overall quite acceptable. But...No credit there. Nerds and non-nerds alike get old.

(I can't remember the last time my memory worked correctly.)
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It would be less remarkable if it wasn't consistent over time. I've never been able to remember names, while numbers nearly always stuck.
 

boatgeek said:
It would be less remarkable if it wasn't consistent over time. I've never been able to remember names, while numbers nearly always stuck.
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I also have trouble remembering names, but worse for me is streets (especially the cross streets despite trying to remember), music bands, sports names, restaurant names etc.
However my memory for many things is extremely good including childhood (stuff my older siblings can't recall yet usually one will confirm).
I'm also a hoarder (least hoardy out of a family of bad hoarders lol) who usually knows where something is buried even after many years lol.
 
KenECoyote said:
I also have trouble remembering names, but worse for me is streets (especially the cross streets despite trying to remember), music bands, sports names, restaurant names etc.
However my memory for many things is extremely good including childhood (stuff my older siblings can't recall yet usually one will confirm).
I'm also a hoarder (least hoardy out of a family of bad hoarders lol) who usually knows where something is buried even after many years lol.
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I had a terrible time in Hawaii with street names because I often remember streets by approximate length and a few common letters. That doesn't work nearly as well in a language with about half as many letters as English coupled with long names.

My wife remembers things by vowel-consonant patterns and letter shape. There was an incident that the rest of the family won't let her forget where she was trying to remember the street name that a friend lives on. She noted that the street started with a letter that looks like M but isn't and it had a double vowel. We were looking for Woodlawn Ave.
 
boatgeek said:
I had a terrible time in Hawaii with street names because I often remember streets by approximate length and a few common letters. That doesn't work nearly as well in a language with about half as many letters as English coupled with long names.

My wife remembers things by vowel-consonant patterns and letter shape. There was an incident that the rest of the family won't let her forget where she was trying to remember the street name that a friend lives on. She noted that the street started with a letter that looks like M but isn't and it had a double vowel. We were looking for Woodlawn Ave.
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I grew up with my family going to a particular restaurant every weekend for lunch. I later realized the memory defect was genetic when none of us could remember the name of the restaurant as adults... including my mother 🤣
 
How about writing a program, in basic, integer basic, to calculate pi to 10000 decimal places, just for fun?

I still have all my old drawing templates, erasing shield, t-square, rotring pens, compasses etc. I even have a template for circuit and logic symbols.

Getting the first set of speech recognition integrated circuits by NEC into Australia and making a working system. This was early '80s. The chip set cost $180.

I still have a manual card punch for doing punchcards. Works like the old Dymo labelers. Turn the knob to select the letter, push the punch button. Repeat.

DXing from Oz to NZ at lunchtimes in secondary school, on a CB with a modified PLL to get the needed (illegal) channels.

Built a seismograph and chart recorder for electrical in year 10 when the others in the class were learning ohms law and basic circuits.

Built my own computer for year 11.

Built my entire stereo HiFi system (except turntable).

Designed and built a geiger counter. I still have that, along with some radium, americium 241 and strontium 90 sources.

I designed a drip watering system back in primary school in the early '70s. I wish I had patented that.

I have two worldwide patents for designs in spectrometers.


Incidentally, the B in the pencil grading is Black, and the H in the grading is Hard. My favourite is still the 2B and I have one of those crank handle sharpeners in the workshop that gets used all the time.
 
OverTheTop said:
[snip]

Incidentally, the B in the pencil grading is Black, and the H in the grading is Hard. My favourite is still the 2B and I have one of those crank handle sharpeners in the workshop that gets used all the time.
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Similar to this kind?

I switched to mechanical pencils as soon as the school allowed it. They clicked and things happened. There was chrome. WAAAAAYYYYY better than yellow pencils.

Fast forward 30-ish years and when I was visiting my parents house and didn't have my shop, but had their tools to fix this or that and needed a pencil, mom showed me where they added an Xacto KS and where she kept the sharp pencils and the need to be sharpened pencils. Inside, I got a chuckle (she was an elementary school teacher and it was mounted at an appropriate height for young kids) and thought how funny it was she and dad were still this 'old fashioned.' I grabbed a pencil from the blunt cup and sharpened it and happy memories flooded back. I sharpened the rest of the cup and emptied the sharpener and then went back to what I was working on.

I got home and bought one immediately. I don't have a sharp and dull cup (but should) and its all I use for shop work, when a pencil of some sort is the right answer. Obviously, I still use Sharpies, scribes etc., but I ditched most of the pens and all of the mechanical pencils in the shop. I need to find some of those big diameter green pencils they made lefties use to replace the rectangle construction pencils. Sure, they'll roll off everything, but I'll get to use my sharpener more often. I actually find joy in sharpening pencils in the sharpener.

On a similar path, I am a zip-tie gun pimp. Most people have used zip-ties, most have also gotten cut by zip-ties that weren't cut correctly. Most have had zip-ties that were too loose. I used a zip-tie gun borrowed from work for a wiring project and when my wife asked what I wanted to get for Christmas, I said a USED Panduit manual zip-tie gun - can't remember the model. I have converted quite a few people to using these by finding a deal on a used one (new are crazy expensive for US made) and letting them borrow it for a project.

How are these two things related? I look forward to sharpening pencils and I look forward to using my zip-tie gun. They are so much better than the other methods that using them is a positive thing. Similar for using a well sharpened wood chisel to solve a problem in 2 minutes vs getting the router, finding the bit, setting it up, running power and jacking around for an hour to solve the same problem. Regretfully, I don't enjoy sharpening chisels yet. . .

So, while I feel like I'm a nerd in the electronic side of the thread too, I think the joy of the pencil sharpener, zip-tie gun and wood chisel are nerdly in their own way. And I'm happy with that too!

Sandy.
 

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Mine doesn't compare with some of the others here, but one that I look back on fondly is when, back in the early 80's, I was playing Ultima III on my Atari 800. The game ran from a disc drive, and was a lot of fun. But, grinding through dungeons (rendered in 3D!) was boring. While I had file hacking tools available, the data disc wasn't file-based. It was just a raw dump on a disc and the languages I knew back then couldn't access the raw data on the disc, only files. So, I found that the language called Forth would give me read/write access to sector/block/character so I decided to learn a new language just to cheat on the game. After learning enough of the coding basics and disc protocols I wound up dumping parts of the disc to a printout, then studied it for a weekend to learn the patterns. Eventually I was able to figure out the dungeon maps and other data storage elements so that I could collect treasures quickly. That soon turned into upping my gold level or whatever directly, avoiding the need to bother with the dungeons.

Learning a new computer language specifically to cheat at a game has helped me make friends and influence people...
 

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