RCN 116

[Jean]

At long last RUMCAR NEWS No116, the first of the year is in the post.  I must apologise for the delay but I was struck down with some sort of bug two weeks ago and this is the first time I have ventured out to get to the Post Office.  I hope you enjoy your first read of the year and if this jogs your memory and you still have to subscribe let us hear from you and we will send you No 116 by return.  Don't forget, in these days of austerity you can always have ecopies for £10.00 a year (£10.50 via PayPal).   All the best Jean

[Chris Thomas]

Dear all

All of the email copies have also been sent off to subscribers and clubs around the world so some of you will have already received your copies. Happy reading.

Chris Thomas
Rumcar News

[Chris Thomas]

My copy arrived in the post this morning. I am sure I am not the first as my postman gets to me at about 10.30. So who had the first copy drop on their mat?

Chris Thomas

[Peelpower]

My copy arrived as well today !

[Chris Thomas]

Dear Rumsters

As editor of RCN I am getting a bit concerned. It appears that only Ferdi and I have received our copies of RCN 116. This can mean one of two things, either Royal Mail are being slower than normal, or very few members of the Rumcar forum read RCN. Neither of which is a good prospect.

How many Forum members have I-pads, Kindle or other tablet based devices?

It has been suggested that some people might like to buy their RCN magazine through one of the electronic news stands, and to read their magazines on a tablet. Now I know that some RCN readers do not have a computer, but I assume all forum members do have a computer, and therefore may also have a tablet on which they read books, documents, newspapers and perhaps magazines.

Now, reading magazines or books on a tablet is not my idea of ideal, but clearly it is for others. What if any, are your comments regarding electronic magazines?

Chris Thomas
Rumcar News

[Jim Janecek]

I use an iPad and love reading things on it.  Oddly enough, I don't like sitting at a computer and reading PDF files.
I can sit on a couch/chair/bed and pull up any number of things to read at any time without a connection to the Internet.
I put my digital RUMCARS News on my iPad.
I have every Issue of MICROCAR NEWS on my iPad
I put the 800+ page Microcar Museum Auction catalog on my iPad!
I also have a few books, I've put school textbooks (well chapters I need to read) on there as well.
I actually use the built-in camera to take pics of the pages of the giant medical texts I need to read and can then pull them up and read them whenever and wherever I want.  Reading an oversize textbook in bed is terrible.  An iPad makes it possible.

My wife is voracious reader and she used to have piles of books at the bedside and on the bedside table.
Since I got her an iPad when it first came out, she now rarely reads paper books.
We can be watching TV and see an interview with an author, she will immediately find out if the book is available online and download a "sample" (if available).
Sometimes she will buy the e-book and have it downloaded before the Interview with the author is finished!
A side benefit of this is that now her friends know what to get her for a "gift": iTunes Gift Certificates!  She just applies them to her online account and so far she has never had to actually "buy" a book.  She will also get things on the Amazon Store as there is a Kindle app for the iPad.

The downside to reading magazines on an iPad is that you don't see the "spread" or two-page layout when the magazine is open.

[marcus]

I got mine 2 days ago and have not yet had time to read it but a quick glance looks as good as usual.

[Big Al]

Its all wonderful but I remain a technophobe over all this. The PC is a great tool. The internet is a great resource. It does not get away from my liking to have the thing I have been researching, if its available. I therefore tend to look at the achievable, rather than the dream. What I find for sale or am given and my immediate problems to resolve therefore tends to drive my PC adventures. If I want to look at the theoretical I prefer to look at the amazing and extensive work some folk put into the most bizarre ideas like the Earth being hollow etc. If all that effort was put to practical use, by gum, some serious work would get done!

Sadly the internet is like the other media. When you know a topic very well you realize that a percentile margin of information on that topic available is plan wrong. It is perpetuated by people who are theoretical experts but never have had hands on experience to actually underpin what they profess to be an expert on and too much time on their hands. It is therefore a dangerous thing to believe the facts until you can cross reference them. The other problem, as someone who has got several areas of specialist knowledge, is that the internet tends to be a very off hand way for good information to be sought out, skimmed and discarded with no great effort or engagement by the viewer. That leads to further poor information spread as often the original and accurate information is miss-understood or miss-quoted setting off a further set of red herrings. So as a format to publish on I think the internet rates rather low. Yet if I wrote a challengingly good book on how to build and service the very popular Waldoff Bottmobil someone would plaster it over the internet or be knocking it out cheap underneath me, directly. Good information should cost effort to find. When it does not it tends to be ignored or simply does not get offered in the first place.

Going back to these hollow earth sites. They all quote the same sources and tales in an incestuous way yet manage to draw hugely differing results from the same material. Fascinating. This squandering of effort in producing quality written items to be ignored or bastardized is one reason I have slowed right down in supplying articles to magazines. It takes a long time to write a good one and then 6 months later I get it quoted back to me incorrectly as an answer to a question I did not actually ask by an armchair expert from the comfort of his deckchair outside his campervan. Why bother?

So I want a library of good quality reference material I can hold in my hand. All very old fashioned but it cannot be turned off or altered when your not looking.

Next PC tool I want is the chip in the neck to talk in foreign languages. No doubt it will have to come with a free spin cycle, decimal clock and access to advanced moon bouncing as we cannot have a chip that does one thing anymore but it might be worth it.

[richard]

agreed so much of whats on the net is incorrect al . if you back to the original write ups and reviews there you have the answers .
oh by the way nearly all period articles link the Tourette with a Bruetsch design - see what i did  that'l stir 'im up again 

oh haven't got into all that yet chris but i do like to go to bed with a real dirty book - it's usually a well thumbed ( oily ) copy of a villiers manual or suchlike

[Jim Janecek]

So I want a library of good quality reference material I can hold in my hand. All very old fashioned but it cannot be turned off or altered when your not looking.

Sounds to me you would like an iPad filled with books and magazines.

[Big Al]

[

Sounds to me you would like an iPad filled with books and magazines.

Its true. I should note prejudge something I have not had. I will be returning to a 'mobil phone' in about a months time as I will be moving to the building site up t'north! Not looking forward to it but maybe I ought to go for one of those Raspberry things or whatever and leap forward into the 21st century. Have to get my techi chums to sort me out.

[marcus]

You are not alone Al! I have never used many of these new(er) gadgets. My mobile is 8 years old and a very basic (and RELIABLE!) model without internet access. I have an old mac and a lap top. Blackberries, ipads, smart this and that all mean absolutely nothing to me!