Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Index of social inventions #4

This idea is based on observation, and concerns RFID chips and card readers; those now ubiquitous devices that read your loyalty cards and bank cards (and protect high value items from theft). On the occasions that I have accompanied the aged parent to the shops, I have noticed that she struggles to hear the polite bleep that acknowledges the transaction. It's well known that as one ages the high frequency tones are the first to be lost, so the discreet noise that the readers emit is quite inappropriate. 
I have a number of suggestions to improve matters; 1) add a haptic response to the card reader, so you feel the acknowledgement as well as hear it, 2) make the tone lower and a couple of bleeps, so it isn't lost in the background noise of the shop, 3) make the illuminated keypad flash a couple of times, 4) make the whole tone louder (I appreciate that this is not a popular notion).

posted by Lampy @ 5/21/2019 03:18:00 pm 0 comments

Wednesday, May 01, 2019

young visiters...

There's a vixen in my mothers garden who is burdened with five cubs, she brings them out onto the grass every now and again to have a bit of a play. Her patience doesn't last very long, and she's looking a bit frayed, interesting that the colouration of the urban fox seems to be drifting away from the bright colouration seen more often in the country and towards a sort of muddy brown.





Apologies, I have a video, but for some reason it won't  upload, I only had my phone with me when they appeared.

Update: my researches indicated that there was a 20% mortality rate among fox cubs, and this has certainly been borne out by my discovery of a sad little corpse in the back garden. It had been mutilated, and one of its legs eaten. I couldn't determine the cause of death, although its neck was unbroken, I'm guessing that a dog fox must have been passing through, or one of last years cubs seized an opportunity to even up the odds a bit.

posted by Lampy @ 5/01/2019 02:50:00 pm 0 comments