Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

“So, why did I create a whole webpage about my motorcycle?
It runs UNIX!”
…and creates some fairly tedious videos of the journey to the Burrito store…it’d be potentially helpful in a crash, except I suspect the harddisk’ll get wiped out on the way down. Uncached solid state is the way to go.


Categories: Memories.

/ 10 Comments

10 comments

  1. pjc50

    There was a wonderful web page somewhere of pictures from some photographer who’d put his camera a bit too near a demolition .. the camera was destroyed, but the flash card in it had recorded a photo taken during the explosion!

    Reply
    • neilh

      Yeah, I think I remember that, it was a bridge demolition or something, wasn’t it? And there were those guys who tortured various cards to see how they’d behave, most of them gave out when they got nailed to a tree.

      Reply
        • neilh

          But that, while devastating on a human level, wasn’t a desperately hostile environment for technology, anything that can survive reasonable water ingress should be able to cope. Wouldn’t rate the chances of magtape, though.

          Reply
          • maluse

            I’d have thought that churning salt water full of abrasive sand and rocks is pretty hostile, though thinking about it some more I imagine that the camera absorbed most of the damage.

          • neilh

            While things like cameras need places to insert batteries and film (or flash cards), the cards themselves don’t have any reason for a water penetrable casing, so the minor improvements in design needed to proof against water ingress will easily pay for themselves by reduced returns from people who have accidentally put their cards through the rinse cycle…

  2. neilh

    Not in the black box recorders, surely? I guess they’ll be fairly resiliant ones, if so. I know they can take a fair old whack while they’re parked (300G or something) but operating is a different story. And if you’re making a system intended to record accident behaviour it has to be built to withstand pretty much anything the vehicle is capable of. And, sure, you can cushion them quite well if you’re thinking about it. But solid state is going to be more reliable.

    Reply
    • neilh

      There was at least an allusion to some connection to the console, though I suspect that was just power light and reset button.

      Reply

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