Onoff Posted February 12, 2017 Author Share Posted February 12, 2017 It was a Design Technology O Level for me. All getting clipped round the ear by the master if he could see your construction lines at arm's length! Had the small A3 drawing board at home with those funny little clips to hold the paper on. Then a full size drawing board. All long gone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 12, 2017 Share Posted February 12, 2017 Funny how you remember these things, years later. Our Tech Drawing master was a chap called "Stolly" Stevens, who also used to take us for Metalwork and was the Assistant Headmaster as well. Bit of a bastard as I recall, and very fond of the slipper................. When our Drawing Office at work got rid of most of the old A0 drawing boards around 1990, I acquired one, complete with cast iron floor stand and drawing machine, plus all the add-on rules, pencil holders etc, and used it at home for a few years, until I managed to get a copy of AutoCad from work (officially) for home use. I still have a box of those chrome clips for holding a bit of paper to a proper drawing board, although I gave the drawing board away to a former colleague when we living up in Scotland. I never really trusted those clips and used to always add two strips of masking tape over the top corners, just as reassurance that the paper wouldn't slip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogman Posted February 12, 2017 Share Posted February 12, 2017 6 hours ago, PeterStarck said: Yes I took Technical Drawing O level in the 60's, those were the days, also took Statistics which was a separate subject back then. Not quite the 60's for me more 79's and we had progressed to engineering drawing at O level by then. Still have my staedtler drawing set and some very hard pencils somewhere. How many of us took the same subjects. Is it why we like building things and in my case taking them apart first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 12, 2017 Share Posted February 12, 2017 (edited) 1 hour ago, dogman said: How many of us took the same subjects At 'O' level I did English, English Lit, Math (the harder one, was it called Modern Maths), Physics, Biology, Chemistry, General Science, Geography and History. Edited February 12, 2017 by SteamyTea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triassic Posted February 12, 2017 Share Posted February 12, 2017 3 minutes ago, SteamyTea said: At 'O' level I did English, English Lit, Math (the harder one, was it called Modern Maths), Physics, Biology, Chemistry, General Science, Geography and History. I only did one English subject and did woodwork in addition to the above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 12, 2017 Share Posted February 12, 2017 I was at a school that did 'the classics'. There were kids there doing Latin and Greek. History was the main subject for most. I hated it, along with Chemistry (just a memory test). I I was 1 of 3 that did Physics in my year, pretty poor out of 20 of us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted February 12, 2017 Author Share Posted February 12, 2017 (edited) O Level English Language, English Literature, Maths, Physics, Biology, French, Design Technology, Geography. I dropped German, History & Music. Let's just say that overall I squandered my educational opportunities I was more interested in scouring tips for old tvs, radios, lawnmowers etc than school. The 6th Form really wasn't for me and I couldn't wait to start an apprenticeship which at that school really made you look a commoner. I frequently now pick my son up from this or that after school study club etc and we've been to presentations where he's been top of his year. My father delights in telling him that he only ever picked me up from school due to DETENTION! I did love a scrap. Going round unis with him now though I feel I missed an opportunity. Edited February 12, 2017 by Onoff Just realised I dropped History too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 12, 2017 Share Posted February 12, 2017 Like a lot of underachievers at school, I ended up as a teacher (well university lecturer). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted February 12, 2017 Author Share Posted February 12, 2017 7 minutes ago, SteamyTea said: Like a lot of underachievers at school, I ended up as a teacher (well university lecturer). I've always fancied teaching tbh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 12, 2017 Share Posted February 12, 2017 I used to really like it, but the management paranoia when inspections are happening, and the constant threat of redundancy (end of every year, then end of every term) just made it too stressful. These days it is not good enough to get all your surviving students though the course. I made the decision at the end of last year to not go looking for teaching jobs anymore. Catering may be busy and stressful at times, but when the customers go home, it is all forgotten. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gone West Posted February 13, 2017 Share Posted February 13, 2017 13 hours ago, dogman said: How many of us took the same subjects. My 'O' levels were English Lang., Maths, Advanced Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Statistics and Technical Drawing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 13, 2017 Share Posted February 13, 2017 14 hours ago, dogman said: How many of us took the same subjects. Is it why we like building things and in my case taking them apart first. O level Maths, Additional Maths, English Language, Geography, Technical Drawing, Metalwork, Biology. Physics, Chemistry, Domestic Science. For those sniggering about Domestic Science, it was because I failed English Language first time around (seeing my typos here you can perhaps understand that!) and I did a one year accelerated sixth form to get A level Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Craftwork (Metal), and, together with the English Language O level re-take that wasn't enough for a curriculum, so I (and two other boys in the same accelerated 6th) opted to do Domestic Science (basically a mix of cookery and nutritional science back then, and exclusively a girls subject!). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted February 13, 2017 Share Posted February 13, 2017 Domestic science in my opinion should be compulsory for boys and girls. I firmly believe the health of so many is bad due to lack of knowledge about nutrition and how to cook. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogman Posted February 13, 2017 Share Posted February 13, 2017 It does look like we all took broadly the same subjects with the variation probably down to the school. I managed to do computer science as a CSE instead of English lit. Oh so much more fun playing with a BBC computer and learning to code in Basic. Hated English with a passion, but loved math Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted February 13, 2017 Author Share Posted February 13, 2017 22 minutes ago, joe90 said: Domestic science in my opinion should be compulsory for boys and girls. I firmly believe the health of so many is bad due to lack of knowledge about nutrition and how to cook. I'll respond to this later once I've tracked her down and found where my dinner is! FFS all she has to do is open the lid and stick it in the microwave! I distinctly remember her asking what flavour Pot Noodle I wanted and me saying blue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted February 13, 2017 Share Posted February 13, 2017 I rest my case m,lud ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 13, 2017 Share Posted February 13, 2017 (edited) 50 minutes ago, joe90 said: Domestic science in my opinion should be compulsory for boys and girls. I firmly believe the health of so many is bad due to lack of knowledge about nutrition and how to cook. I agree wholeheartedly. I learned the basics of how to cook myself a decent meal, and that was then invaluable when I was a student and trying to live on next to sod all! I lived on my own for around 10 years altogether (before and between wives.................) and probably ate better than most on a lost less money. 41 minutes ago, dogman said: It does look like we all took broadly the same subjects with the variation probably down to the school. I managed to do computer science as a CSE instead of English lit. Oh so much more fun playing with a BBC computer and learning to code in Basic. Hated English with a passion, but loved math I encountered my first computer in about 1973, at work. It was programmed via punched cards, in machine code, and each card had a single instruction. To run a programme you first had to manually key in every single instruction for the boot loader, using a row of switches and a load button, in octal. Once you'd got all the boot loader instructions loaded you could then make sure all your punched cards were in order and feed them in. There was no permanent storage, apart from the punched cards - it made things pretty time consuming! When we got our first DEC PDP-11, with 8" floppy discs that stored an amazing 250kb AND ran a VT100 VDU terminal, we were just gobsmacked at what we could then do! Edited February 13, 2017 by JSHarris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogman Posted February 13, 2017 Share Posted February 13, 2017 Careful @JSHarris you will show your age. I was 10 in 1973. Did you work at Bletchley Park some lovely old computers there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 13, 2017 Share Posted February 13, 2017 We just used them originally to do lots of number-crunching, modelling 3D trajectories. Prior to that, trajectory calculations had been either done by hand (using mechanical "computers") or using analogue computers, that took ages to set up and would tend to drift a fair bit over time. Things progressed at a staggering rate in the 70's and 80's. I remember sitting next to the Tac Nav in a Nimrod MR2 and playing a game with him as to whether the tactical computer could predict the water entry point of a weapon faster than my little Psion3, running a spreadsheet to predict 3D trajectories from the same input data (A/C height, speed, heading, wind speed and direction, plus coriolis correction and the trajectory characteristics of the parachute retarded weapon). The little Psion3 beat the tactical computer hands down, every time, despite me having to manually key in the initial data, taken off the tac nav screen. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gone West Posted February 13, 2017 Share Posted February 13, 2017 4 hours ago, JSHarris said: I encountered my first computer in about 1973, at work. It was programmed via punched cards, in machine code, and each card had a single instruction. In 1970 when I first started at the MOD I programmed in a language called MIRFAC which was run on an inhouse built computer called COSMOS. IIRC I took the instructions over to the ladies in the computer centre who punched out the cards and ran the code. Cards then changed to paper tape. COSMOS was replaced by an ICL machine running George4 I think, it's all a bit vague. I remember the calculators were electro-mechanical and when the first electronic ones were bought soon after I joined they cost a fortune and the following year they were half the cost and could do twice as much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 13, 2017 Share Posted February 13, 2017 (edited) I remember we had a teleprinter link to an ICL at Portland that ran George 3. It was a bit of a pain to use, as I recall, as I'd write some code in Fortran, transmit it using the teleprinter to Portland, where the ICL would compile it overnight. Next morning I'd get in to reams of paper that had been printed out, more often than not with loads of compilation errors....................... Thankfully we got our own PDP-11 pretty soon after the ICL link had been put in, so could at least write code and compile it on the same day! On the topic of calculators, I bought one of the early LED display Commodore scientific calculators, after having struggled for a short time with a Sinclair Scientific, and its reverse polish notation (bit like the HP calculators we first had at work). I still have that old calculator, I'll dig it out later and see if it still works. I remember is was very expensive, and cost most of a months pay to buy at the time. Edited February 13, 2017 by JSHarris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gone West Posted February 13, 2017 Share Posted February 13, 2017 By the time I left computing power had gone up to a Cray YMP and programming was in FORTRAN77. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 13, 2017 Share Posted February 13, 2017 (edited) Way more than we ever had. When I shifted from flight test to management we'd got as far as the dizzy heights of a DEC VAX! Pretty much all our code was written in Fortran 77, though. Edited February 13, 2017 by JSHarris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gimp Posted February 14, 2017 Share Posted February 14, 2017 (edited) Looking at the price of Catia it seems to run into the thousands: Link: http://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2012/05/whats-the-price-of-catia.html I personally use Rhino I find it a bit more easier to construct more complex stuff in than Solidworks which is more geared towards product design. Revit is also good, but I personally think it could do a lot more for the user which it is missing out on. Designing 3D can be real good particularly if there is anything complex in the build. Often I've done stuff thinking 'Ok this will go like that' only to find when putting it in 3D that it doesn't quite work out and it needs to go somewhere a little bit different to what I had in mind or an unaccounted for problem or clash of details is discovered. Can no doubt overcome many real headaches on builds by resolving them on screen in a few minutes rather than in the middle of a build where the tracks have already been laid. Edited February 14, 2017 by Gimp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted May 5, 2019 Author Share Posted May 5, 2019 It would appear that Draftsight is no longer free for what was a useful 2D CAD program! I've read it had been become a bit of a loss leader to the detriment of other products. I think it's in the SolidWorks stable now. Barstewards! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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