Remembering PRESTAGS

Chivalry

A Dream of the Past, Sir Isumbras at the Ford, John Everett Millais (1857).

Look what I found

a blast from the past (I also found the access codes too). I don't know where disk 1 is though.

I don't have a working computer that accepts these disks anymore ... 

Wonderful PRESTAGS Era Technology - Sony Earth-Orbiter CRF-5090

I picked up a wonderful old radio last week.

1972, made in Japan. That is almost half a century old.

Genuine PRESTAGS Era Technology. Would have been playing as the SPI classics came off the printing press.

It’s the Sony Earth-Orbiter CRF-5090. It really doesn’t get any cooler than a name like “Earth-Orbiter”. When it was released it must have been some pretty top notch kit.

It is big, heavy, and made of beautiful metal and chrome. Everything is rock solid unlike the junk made today. I bet most of today’s radios won’t be around in 48 years. And more to the point – it still works.

Here it is with the front cover closed, and then with the cover open next to my modern short wave radio, the Tecsun PL-880. I don’t think the modern one will be going strong in 48 years time.

It has a massive long aerial, and 9 bands including air band and marine band. The bands turn in an analogue cylinder with 3 bands showing at one time. Last night I was listening to the local AM and FM bands. I will need to play around with short wave.

I find it remarkable that it works so well. The circuitry must be primitive compared to the advanced circuitry now, and it obviously doesn’t have a PLL receiver or Digital Signal Processing and other features that enhance weak signals.

The sound is rich, crackles slightly until precisely tuned. It has a big shiny metal tuner with a fine tuner inside. Also a tuning meter. A little red light goes on inside the tuning band when a good signal is hit. All works fine. The main light works. The headphone jack works.

One great feature is that the front cover folds down, then slides in half way under the radio revealing a spectacular time zone map of the world, with a slider for calculating times. I love this map.

No power cord came with this radio but it did also originally hold batteries. Someone more technical than I has rigged up a pack inside the battery compartment than uses 10 x current AA batteries. This is the only post 1972 modification that I can see.

Why don’t we make solid beautiful equipment like this anymore instead of plastic junk with built in 3 or so years redundancy.

I found some history on radiomuseum.org.

New toys. Food. Old toy. Birds.

NEW TOY

So I got a poor man's RX100 - a used Canon S120 (for $120 incl post) with the teeny 1/1.7 inch sensor.

I'm pretty impressed. Solid build - metal top and bottom. Lot to learn to drive it though.

Should be good for quick photos.

Dinner last night.

Carl: spring rolls, chicken things, wedges


Thygo - stir fry / satay + kanga bangas

Packet cake made by Carl & Thygo last night, iced today, tastes good.

Lexi enjoying the sun

selfie of Grumpy old Man

 

Another NEW TOY - old binoculars (Gumtree special, $30)- object d'art

image quality good and much more comfortable to hold than the new-bought Olympus.  Both 8x40. Dad had/has a pair like these older ones when I was young.

thi

 

OLD TOY - D7500 + (stellar little) AF-P 70-300 DX VR - Crested pigeons from the clothes line. No cropping.

PRESTAGS Era Technology

I found my old high school calculator.

The Sharp ELSI 8107. It came out in 1974. That's 44 years ago.

I remember my Dad buying it at the time, and it was top end because it had a square root function.

I found some specs for it:

When we were young

I found this photo - no date or explanation, but I think this might be a pre-USA Peter - perhaps early 1990s - tending mutant potato plants. Perhaps this photo is classified still and I will be unable to play a turn until ASIO confiscate my old photos!

Peter still had a love of moustaches and fashionable clothes back then, but perhaps did not yet own a second lens for his camera. I suspect his favourite game was still Wagram (unless I had lent him my Crimean War quad) and he had not seen a computer game beyond Star Trek on the university mainframe.

I wonder if Shirl or I had shown him a PRESTAGS edition back then. I suspect that we did not appreciate the genius of the gaming system until much later.

Does Peter want a the photo? When is he coming to Sydney?

Hey Cisco

With the end of summer, we can finally start to enjoy comfort food again: chilli in Tacos is up there with one of my favourites. Food you can play with, use your fingers and just tuck in.

All you need with it is one of those real Westerns where the cowboys wear makeup!

Retaliation demo ...

Hi baby, want to play a wargame with me?

Royal Easter Show

I have always enjoyed the Royal Easter Show. It is how I get my annual Phantom comic hit.

I am always trying to see different things. This time I started with the Alpaca. These young people in red shirts were being trained in how to show the creatures. The Alpaca treated the whole experience with equanimity, but clearly found it beneath them, chins high in the air! There feet are amazing; to big claws coming from camel like pads.

Then it was off to see the bees. These are a true idol of mine, with their ability to make honey and their oly attack being a suicide attack. (I am not so taken with their propensity for hard, unceasing labour.)

I managed to catch the Apiarist demonstration. (If I was born 100 years ago, without computers or blogs, I would be an beekeeper!) These guys are the true masters of the hexagon!

They even pulled out the queen for us to look at.

Not far from the bees there was a reptile display. The snakes must have eaten recently and were somnolent, but the bearded dragons offered a photo op.

Then it was off to see the working dogs. Like a professional sports person, you look at them and just can't believe how good they are. They seem to move to block the sheep even before the sheep moves.

I had lunch at the main showground and watched stunt bikers and horsemanship. The photographer gave me the idea for my previous post.

I set myself a challenge to get a horse fully airborne. It took me 20 attempts with the clumsy fire button on a phone. (Press too quickly and the while picture becomes a blur. I need a wireless thingy to make the snap. Maybe I should write a voice recognition app that knows "Zoom in", "Zoom out" and "Snap".)

Finally it was off to the show bag pavilion. I was delighted with someone's Lego effort at the exit. As I was traveling alone, I had to shoot someone else's girlfriend next to it.

Bring out your dead!

Much like the Monty Python skit (the inspiration of the developer of the programming script after which I am named), everything in the near pile still works and wants to go out for a walk, but I asked the chaps in yellow to do me a favour.

I remember the brown speakers in the foreground being assembled by my father when I was about 6. He pointed at a bit of metal on the inside as he worked and told me that if I touched it, I would be thrown across the room. Perhaps I did. It would explain a lot.

Long gaps between turns

When I was young... you played more turns when work sucked. I fully understand how that has changed. When work gets hard now, everyone looks at the grey haired people and asks "What should I do?", and there are no one for the grey haired people to try the same trick with.

So when you get a turn, you need to savour it, play it slow, individually move the planes, or it will be over too quickly and you will be back at work! And this time, I needed a turn because the Manila Airport Taxi are scoundrels. Last time I got ripped off paying about $20 from the airport when the return journey was only $8. This time I intended to stand my ground, and I did. And I kept standing there until I agreed to a $50 taxi fare! On the right is my artist's impression of Manila Airport Taxi.

Anyway, when you are playing EDEE and your airforce bombs the enemy groups troops off the board, they are well served to look around to see what your enemy's production schedule is like. I found this oddity, and I do not know how to explain it. A very good city is producing "unknown". Is this like an Iranian nuclear reactor producing peaceful energy, or a government agent scanning Internet meta-data. I tried bombing it, but still got no answer. I politely ask my dear enemy: What are you up to?

At the end of my turn, I discovered a Tasmania shaped peach. If I can pluck this peach, I will get an East West connection and no longer be encircled. But dare I turn from the remaining neutrals to give it a go? I can take a peach and lose a game from here!

You know you are getting old when...

...your warmgaming table always has a magnifying glass on it

(and I think the unintentional blurring of the photo gives the effect I am struggleing with!)

Now, where is Grouchy because I'm getting grouchy.

In praise of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Radio

 

You can get to hear stuff like this:

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/13/248195238/does-the-subjunctive-have-a-dark-side

or this:

http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids - I heard this one the other night.

(here's another version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXhddUqNNjo - 5 dangerous things you should let your children do. )

You would never get any of this from the private firms ...

or this - THE trusted source of info in an emergency:

 

 

 

Sometimes I don't think of wargaming

It is nice to remember what I was like as a young man...

Picture joining done in the GIMP. I am intrigued that the phone (Samsung Note II) found a different colour in the Carrillion top and bottom

WE HAVE BEEN GOING ONE YEAR!

A huge thank you to the Python and Thygo, and all the other contributors. May this mad blog prosper for another year.

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When I Was a Boy

When I was a boy we had green soldiers, but we did not have green soldier erasers! Very cool.

 

First Post - Remember and Rant

Gidday, this is the blog for Paul and (hopefully) his mates Peter and Maurice.

Why?

Because we are over 50 (well, most of us) and feeling our age. But our minds are sharp and we want to be cool, or at least internet geeks.

What is it?

A forum for remembering (especially for Maurice), in particular all things board wargames. Sorry, historical military simulations.

And a forum for ranting (especially for Peter), in particular all things religious and political. And historical. And social. And scientific.  And (I didn't forget) photographic.

And for me, well, I'm just (very, very) complicated.     

As the standard game rules for PRESTAGS say:

"Not to belabor the obvious, but the best way to learn PRESTAGS or any other conflict simulation, is to learn from someone who has played already" (clause [2.2]).