The times they are a changin’

This is an interesting one, as it is a bit age dependent. I will tell you that we are once again in the computer realm. But kind of that classic computer realm. So, I can’t guarantee that everyone reading this has used this bit of tech. I would put the over under at if you were born before 1990, you have used this. Does that help? I’ll add an additional hint with the number 1.44. Got it? Scroll for the big reveal.

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It’s the center spindle from a 3.5″ floppy disk. You remember those. They held 1.44MB of information. For fun, the RAW file for the photo I took of the floppy disk would require 26 floppy disks to save. And my phone holds the equivalent of 23,000 floppy disks. How things have changed.

Let me hear you shout…

This one is a bit tricky. Everyone has been in very close proximity to this thing, but may not have actually interacted with it. The post title is also a clue. It’s a lyric, and the song title points you in a direction. Do you have it? Scroll for the reveal.

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It is a Molex LP4 power connector from inside a computer. These were most commonly used for hard drives and CD/DVD drives, but have been relegated as we charge forward with saving all our bits on SSDs and pretending that optical disks don’t exist. You will still find them hanging out in computers, and possibly plugged in to your video card.

The lyric was from AC/DC’s High Voltage.

The more things change…

Another interesting tech puzzle for Wednesday. Do you recognize this? You should. Chances are if you haven’t used one of these in the last day or so, you will be using one soon. Is that timeframe enough of a hint? Scroll for the reveal.

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Ah yes, it is the mild-mannered USB charger. This one is from Motorola. I assume I got it with my G7 (using Google Fi, which is a good idea for another post). I titled the post ‘The more things change…” as a nod to the old proverb, ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’

And I stopped short of completing it because this is not one of those times. Our increasing reliance on technology doesn’t have an equivalent from back in the day. An example! I did a photoshoot in a park recently, with a model I had not met before. About half way to the park I realized I did not have my phone, and I had a mile panic attack. Oh no! What am I going to do? What if she can’t find me and tries to text? All that, lumped on top of my general need to be connected to email and messaging. It was eye-opening.

I am old enough to remember pre-cell-phone and pre-internet. Once you walked out the door, you were a ghost in the world. There was no reaching you. Just a couple weeks ago I was sitting on a train… under ground… in NY… having a casual chat with a friend back in Seattle. From 30,000 feet, this is all crazy.

And these magical little dongles power it all. Have you checked your battery lately? You should make sure it’s ok. Might want to top it up before leaving work for the rest of your Wednesday adventure.

If you can see this photo…

Another mystery. This is something that everyone reading this should be familiar with. It has started to fall out of favor as technology has progressed, but is still in heavy use today. Scroll for the wide shot.

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It’s a VGA connector. These have been shuffled to the side in recent years as they are replaced with digital connections like DVI, Display Port, and HDMI. The switch to digital has some benefits, like being able to carry an audio signal. But the most prudent reason for most people is our ever increasing display resolutions. The VGA connection capped out at QXGA resolution, which is 2048×1536. And that is just not enough in our 4K (transitioning to 8K) world.

Better than my Triumph!?

I was reading an article about ghost flights today. That is, when an airline needs to get a plane from location A to location B, but there are no passengers and they make the flight anyway. There are a myriad of reasons this happens. Sometimes, that plane just needs to be at that location to make the next flight. A bit more problematic, often the airlines access to flight slots are tied to actually using them, so if they start canceling a bunch of flights, the slots might not be available at that airport when demand returns.

And none of that really matters where the trivia question is concerned, but it is how we got here. It was mentioned in the article that some jets can use 5 gallons of fuel per mile. That number, on first blush, seems astounding. However, if you start to rub it down with some math, it’s actually pretty impressive.

For our purposes here we are talking about medium and long-haul flights, 1750 to 7200 miles. These are where you will see planes like the Boeing 777, Airbus A380, etc. The trick to the math here is number of passengers (between 241 and 544). These planes are getting absurd MPG as a plane. But if you start to look at the MPG per passenger, it gets really interesting.

On the low end, you have the Airbus A340-300, which burns 26 pounds of fuel per mile. Roughly, that is 4 gallons per mile. But the A340-300 carries 262 passengers, which puts their individual MPG at 67.4. On the other end, a Boeing 787-9 burns 20 pounds of fuel per mile (~3 gallons) while carrying 304 passengers, for 102 MPG per seat.

For reference, my Triumph motorcycle is knocking down about 42 MPG. I have to say, I was surprised. I thought the motorcycle would be better than the jet.

And this was all a great excuse to break out my latest train picture, because that’s traveling, so we are saying it applies. This is the NY subway at 72nd, right next to Central Park.

Money money money money

We’re going sneaky easy with today’s picture puzzle. I assume everyone will see the photo above and know, that is a coin! The tricky bit though… Which coin is it? The wide shot with the answer is below.

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It is our old friend the silver dollar, which was also a bit sneaky, because these are getting pretty rare to see. This one is of the 1978 vintage. I considered going with a ’76, for the liberty bell. But then I was struck by how weird it is that the eagle is flying over the surface of the moon, with the earth in the background.

Video killed the radio star

Another close-up challenge. This one is fun. I am guessing most people will not get it, despite the fact that they have taken advantage of that little gizmo above for hundreds of hours. Even though it is a nearly impossible to guess image, it is still very cool with all of the little details. So, are you the one in a thousand that knows what this is? Scroll for the wide shot.

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It is the business end of a DVD drive. That is the mechanism that reads the data off of the disk. It’s a little tricky, because if you don’t have a slimline DVD like this one from a RP4440, you probably never saw the actual reader. But it is interesting to see the inner workings of something that was so ubiquitous.

Of course, now, DVD is certainly on the way out. Just as video killed the radio star, streaming is quickly putting an end to physical disks for movies and television.

Just a bit old school

Another picture puzzle today, and this one is just a bit more to the nerdy side. Most of us have probably taken advantage of that thing you see pictured above. But they have fallen out of favor over the last few years, so possibly are no longer immediately recognizable. Do you know what that is? We’ll zoom out down below.

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It is the old PS/2 mouse port. The PS/2 port was developed by IBM to connect a mouse and keyboard to a computer. You may still have them on your computer today, but the world has pretty much moved on to USB and bluetooth at this point.

Shocking!

Another little photo game today. Can you guess what the photo at the top of the post is? I will say it is not anything obscure and I would guess there is a 99% chance you have held one of these in your hand. So, place your bets, and then scroll down to see the zoomed out version. 🙂

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It’s one of the terminals on a 9 volt battery. This particular battery was hanging out in the Jam Cam we featured before, so I am guessing it is about 20 years old. Not surprisingly, there is no charge.

What is it?

Super simple post for Monday, taking advantage of our macro lens. Can you guess what it is you are looking at in that leading picture? Scroll down for the answer. 🙂

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It’s your friendly neighbourhood chocolate chip cookie!