Just thinking it might be a good idea to ask if members can display their age or year of birth . It has just come to me as I am reading some of the latest discussions that we might be talking some one that is from a younger generation and we might be mistaken to think that they know our terminology.

For example I was talking to a lady about her LP collection and her boyfriend asked me what a LP was?. Upon asking this fellow how old he was I had surprisingly worked out that he was some twenty years her junior and I said to him " no wonder you dont know what a LP is and laughed. Another circumstance was a few weeks ago I bought a AWA Clock radio off Gumtree and struck up a conversation with the seller. I really thought I was talking to a guy the same age as me but after a little more conversation and giving him a few hints about radio restoration he revealed his age to be 18. He has since joined my facebook group The Real Bakelite And Antique Radio Page and is a very intelligent and keen member that wants to learn more. But the issue I am touching on here is that the older restorers here may not realise the age of the person they are advising and might miss a very important point.

I am not suggesting anything of a personal nature but this may be a good point.

There is a spot in the membership table of the database for dates of birth though it has never been a requirement to supply that information and the site was never coded to populate that portion of the database. Next time I do a rollout of updates to the site it could easily be added but I would leave it to individual members as to whether they wish to divulge that little detail about themselves.

In the meantime, people who need brushing up on their acronyms and 'old' terminologies should have a look at the glossary on this site, linked from the sidebar, although LP ain't there.

41. I’m interested to know who is younger than me here, and is also fairly regularly visiting.

We used to have a couple of regulars who were teenagers that were into televisions but they haven't been heard from for a while. They've either got their own site going or are into other things that tend to distract school leavers such as employment or tertiary education.

Chris is still on Facebook, but you’re right. It would be employment taking up the time.

I'm 29 and just come back after a long leave of absence. Life does have a habit of getting in the way of your hobbies.

Do you know what a LP is Damien lol

Kind of, though I don't think I'm a fair representation of someone in my age bracket when it comes to identifying obsolete technology.

Some of my giant CDs:
http://www.imgur.com/zi6GDnb/

Tried a few different permutations of the above URL but could not get the forum software to correctly identify as such. Not 100% sure why it's failing to parse so you might have to copy and paste sorry.

This forum doesn't auto-detect URLs, the admin will fix the link for you.

That is a lot of records. I've only got about 50, and I'm looking to toss them out sooner or later.

This forum doesn't auto-detect URLs, the admin will fix the link for you.

Well, it does, sort of. It's not instant though an internal crawler robot (meet ZScan) does scan for them and convert any strings of text beginning with 'http' or 'https' once every ten hours or so. ZScan also verifies the URLs as live links and not a link that points at a 404 or 403 error. If the latter occurs I get an e-mail about it and can either edit or delete the link.

The only downside to this way of doing things is that ZScan is not set to cover the entire database so it can't verify very old links that remain on the forums. This would slow it down too much. One day a better robot will be made to sort that little task out.

Does it fix HTML errors, too?

Forum tags? No. Such things are case-sensitive and IE 11's spellchecker uppercases the letter I when it is on it's own. I should just add the uppercase version of those tags to this site's spellchecker to override it.

Thankfully Edge, which is what I use at home, doesn't make that mistake.

A lovely, and very heavy Teac quad too Damien!

Interesting question to ask. I am 64 and became involved with electronics in the valve era when I was 10. I was lucky enough to live next door to a nice old bloke who was a Ham operator and also a science teacher. I must have been a pest but he kindly taught me and the basics PLUS electrical safety. My first homemade radio after the obligatory crystal set was a two valve set from a Radio, TV and Hobbies design. My main interest now is old phones but I dabble with microprocessors and Art shows me how much more he knows about them than I do.

I am also a member of a couple of phone collector societies and the local radio society. Attending meetings of these societies it is sobering to see that the average age of members is in the mid to late 50s (including the female members). It appears that younger people are not interested in the old technology. However it may be something to do with a disinclination to attend meetings as it seems that there are younger members on these forums.

Impressive 'CD' collection Damien. The reel to reel tape deck is nice but the Western Electric 'candlestick' phone is the best bit of old 'tech' in my elderly option. Any chance of a better close up photo please?

Andrew

Good eyes Andrew! The candlestick is an authentic WE 20B in OK nick, it came to me from New York. The felt on the bottom is original but starting to fall apart a bit. Unfortunately at some point the original transmitter has parted ways with the phone and a substitution was made for a Stromberg E-BB which has a nick to the Bakelite. I get the feeling this was an older repair as the cotton wiring has faded the way you would expect from being knotted that way for decades. Still a nice piece. I will get around to building a subset one of these days!

Here's a couple of closer shots. http://imgur.com/a/ItyrM