Inktober 2020 - Cars

 Hi all. It's been a while. Been busy, mostly with the Snacking Otaku.

After a four year hiatus I decided to do inktober this year. This year I decided on the subject of cars. 

This last one was friend request.

Snacking Otaku - Pikachu

Snacking Otaku - Betamax vs VHS

References and Further info

The Technology Connections YouTube channel has done a series of videos on the format, exploring both formats tapes and machines in detail.

Click here for playlist

Click here for video exploring each format's cassette design 

(and here for the details he forgot to mention in the above video)

Click here for Sony's own telling of the story of Betamax

Click here to visit Total Rewind - The Virtual Museum of Vintage VCRs

How Teletext Worked

The following post was originally made in 2015 to accompany what was originally called "informative strips," now called Snacking Otaku.

To prevent readers from over-analysing this, some of the names in this 
graphic are completely made up.

How many of you remember teletext systems? I suspect many Europeans do (They didn't take off in America).

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, a teletext system was a means of transmitting computer-generated pages of information to a wide population though TVs with special decoders via the analogue TV picture signals. It was an analogue internet (without the hyper-links, gifs, jpegs, and video streams).
They were first developed in the early-1970s and became widely-available across the globe by the 1980s, particularly in Europe. These systems were known under many names, such as Ceefax and ORACLE in the UK, Antiope in France, Televideo in Italy, Austext in Australia, and (after the demise of ORACLE) .... Teletext.
As they were carried by the picture signals, different TV channels can carry different teletext services from one another, which was truly the case in the UK. The BBC carried Ceefax while the independent channels of ITV, Channel 4 and (later) 5 carried ORACLE (which later became Teletext).
These systems were used a lot (as much people use the web services today). My dad regularly used it during the 1990s and early-2000s to check sports results. I did my self as a teen to check cinema listings. Many people did at the same time for various reasons, from checking the weather forecast to noting down recipes.
These systems only really came to an end in the last decade or so, with the transition to digital TV broadcasting. Ceefax ended in October 2012 (at the same time the last analogue TV transmitter in the UK was shut down).

The reason for this post was not to be nostalgic about teletext (mostly). The reason for this post is to celebrate a personal piece of investigatory achievement - I had finally found/worked out how teletext worked.

I bet many of you who have used such services in the past wondered how they actually worked. How did these pages of information got into your TV and where did they come from (and why you had to wait about ten seconds for your desired page to appear on screen). But when it came to finding out how it worked, most of you found only sources like this one....

(taken form my collection of old reference books)

From Reader's Digest How Is It Done? (1992 edition, p219)

It doesn't tell you much, does it. And with this level of information in regular reference books, you'll imagine that you had to study electrical engineering journals to find out more detail. Fortunately, the internet has made this of an issue, and thanks to this it was in 2013 that I finally found out how teletext worked... and discovered how neat an idea teletext was. How they actually worked is very clever. But its hard to understand using text alone. It'll help if we had pictures. That is why the subject of my next "informative strip" is teletext.

The (what use to be called) "informative strip" can be accessed by clicking here

Snacking Otaku - Teletext

The following snack was originally made to accompany this post penned in 2015 that was only published now.

References and Further info

A lot of info came form this website, that I recommended seeing.

http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/

YouTube Channel Technology Connections has made a video about a related technology - Closed Captioning (and said in it about a future video about Teletext).

Closed Captioning: More Ingenious than You Know

There are a number of software online that allows you to create your own teletext pages. A list of some are here.

http://teletextart.co.uk/make-teletext-art

The one I used is edit.tf (I suggest seeing the tutorial video on the link above before you use it. Making teletext art is very fiddly. The final result (I admit) isn't that good, so I might change it in the future.

Introducing The Snacking Otaku

You may remember a long time ago (2015) that I made a few infographic-like "strips" that called "informative strips (working title)."

Today (when most of humanity is forced to stay indoors) I am announcing that I plan to start working on new "strips" this year. Not right now... but soon (when things get sorted at my end).

And I finally come up with a proper title for this series - The Snacking Otaku.

As many of you know the word "otaku" is used to describe a (mostly male) fan of something (mostly anime girls). But it can apply to someone who is a fan of a sports team, or a rock band, or Tom Cruise. You get the idea.

Sometime in the past I discovered an other Japanese word that describes the opposite of otaku - tsumamigui, meaning "snacking." Its the opposite because while an otaku will eat up every piece of information on their obsession, a person who practises tsumamigui will only eat a bit or so of information at a time.

That's how the title came about. 

Yesterday I have posted a message asking friends and family for ideas for subjects. I wanted a list of subjects to do when I finally come around to making them. No time wasted thinking of subjects myself. Someone pointed out "why can't you do your favourite things?" Well, it would be boring if I stick to what I already know. I want to explore. Find out new stuff.

I wasn't disappointed with the suggestions I got so far. But I want more!

I am open for more suggestions. It can be anything. From Atoms to ZZ Top. Big or small. General or obscure. Historical or contemporary. Art or science. Natural or artificial. Far away or close to home. You can choose anything.

I'll be making a list of upcoming subjects that'll show up HERE. 

Until then comment your suggestions below.

Christmas 2019

Happy Christmas internet.

My apologies for the lack of content in the past year.

My pizza delivery job robbed me of my spare time to blog. 

Hopefully, this won't be the case soon, so watch out.

P.S. I acquired a new phone in August.
A Samsung Galaxy Note.
I used it to draw the message above.