Hmm, well I created a very special door closer out of left over meccano from
my youth some years back and apart from the cord needing to be replaced and
the plastic bottle of water turning green, and needing cleaning its still
there. Not as efficient as a shop bought solution but its a talking point
for visitors who all cannot work out how a blind person can do such a thing
and for that matter put screws into walls, replace kitchen cabinet hinges
etc. I look on it as my bit toward educating people that there is life after
blindness, and also that functional things do not need to look pretty,
indeed, I used, when I could see make RF amplifiers made on what I used to
call the birdcage method. Worked fine at VHF!


For many years my porch light was controlled by a simple Schmidt trigger
with two transistors, an ORP 12 photocell and a relay. I had to make a small
psu of course but it lasted many many years, but its been replaced by a
thing the size of my thumb, simply wired into the mains circuit of the
light. Even if I could see to do it, I'd not be able to beat such a neat
device.
So are artisans being replaced by technology?
Brian

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This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"williamwright" wrote in message
...
Me and the dog felt like a walk, so off we toddled. We went through the
back gate, around a field, and back the way we'd come. When I got home I
put the kettle on and as I did so it occurred to me that I'd twice used
the gate that I'd so laboriously repaired only a couple of days before,
with ne'er a thought. So it is with so many jobs. A job needing doing
reminds you of itself all the time; a done job maintains a low profile; so
low that you forget about it altogether. Washed pots, darned socks,
emulsioned walls, completed paperwork, laid bricks, vacuumed carpets,
no-one celebrates the toiler who produced them, including himself. When I
was working I often did jobs that were not visible unless you looked hard
or had special access, or both, and anyway who looks at cables and
suchlike? I used to think, "I made a good job of that, but no-one
including me will know I've even done it by this time tomorrow (and ever
after) because I'll have forgotten all about it and no-one else will ever
think to look at it." Which is a bit sad really: all those hours of work
going unrecorded and unremembered. Maybe in a hundred years' time when the
building is demolished someone will get a glimpse of a bit of cable or
something and say, "I wonder what became of the cove who installed that?"
Or, more likely, no they won't. Only the great artists can immortalise
themselves in their work; it isn't a possibility for the common man.

Bill