It is 2012

            It’s like waking up from a dream. Suddenly it hit me – bam! It’s already mid-2012, and I turned 60 a few months ago.  It kind of seems that way when one’s gotten off the rat race and had begun settling to a semi-retired life.  As I now just stay at home getting my bearings, things that were a blur begin to come into focus and start to reveal themselves in a new perspective. 

            I am basically a tech guy and loved the technology that I grew up with.  Flashback to my teen years, we listened to music on the AM band on tube radios, played 33 and 45 rpm records, had open-reel tape recorders, our rooms sported big speaker boxes with 15-inch woofers that pumped out thundering bass and horn tweeters for sparkling highs, brought along pocket radios when on the move, drove six- or eight-cylinder cars that we used to race around town, used CB and SSB radio for local and long-range communication, recorded our memories on Diana cameras, Brownies, and later the 35mm SLRs, our vacations filmed on 8mm telecine cameras and watched them later on wide screens (basically just white blankets tacked on the wall) – just to name a few.

            Those of you who were born in the 1950s and 60s could readily identify with these.  For those who came later, just keep on following.  I’ll eventually tell all about those and more   Those were great times, really.  Like seeing Apollo 11 (the first moon landing) on black and white TV, as we lived in the city; while those who lived in the countryside just heard the event broadcast live on radio. I especially remember the first time I listened wide-eyed to shortwave broadcasts in 1964 on my first portable transistor radio, a National T-350 which was a gift from my Dad for getting good grades in school.  I still have that radio to this day and it still works.

            And those science fair projects?  I earned the nickname of ‘mad scientist’ in our grade section for always having the most ‘advanced’ projects in Science Class.  You see, electronics, photography and general science had been my hobbies ever since and assembling projects was my pastime.  I’ll relate about that later in my future postings.

            Priorities began to change after I got married and started raising a family.  Most of my hobby activities began to take the back seat, almost forgotten through almost three decades as family responsibilities were attended to.  Technology meanwhile had also began to advance in many directions and I tried to keep up by acquiring and using the new devices but only because I had to.  We have to adapt as technology moves forward.  You can’t keep on using analog when everything else is going digital. However, I missed the fun aspect of my hobbies as I didn’t have much time to devote to them like I had previously, as in experimenting in electronics at length and the like.

            Now that I am semi-retired, recently my siblings suggested that I write a blog to share what I know (before I forget them due to old age, among other things – lol!).  So here I am with my first blog post.  What still fascinates me most is assembling functional and useful projects using simple circuits.  My first radio project when I was about eight years of age was a crystal set – a radio that needs no battery to work but continues to play as long as there are radio stations on the air.  I will delve into the details of the crystal set and many other interesting projects in due time.  You may even want to assemble some of these for yourself, or just perhaps gain the knowledge to fix some of the old gear lying around the house.  Or even start a new and fascinating hobby.

Meanwhile, off I go into my workshop to look for those radios, amplifiers, and whatnots that I had collected through the years which I had somehow left to gather dust.  These may be considered antiques by now. These masterpieces of yesteryears should be made to operate again before it becomes too late.  To give you a perspective on how much the electronics hobby landscape had changed, just last week I was in the process of putting up an outdoor antenna and went to the radio shop where I used to get my parts to buy porcelain insulators and lightning arresters, and the puzzled salesman could only ask, “What are those?”  Unmistakably, it is 2012, as the calendar on the wall continues to remind me.