Confessions of a (former) geek

Damien points out that it’s Science Week this week, and that there are prizes in the offing for blogging about science-related topics! How very lovely – and I now have something to blog about that doesn’t involve my three major (but boring) concerns this week, namely work, dieting and Christmas lists.

Anyway. To childhood, and favourite inventions (for there are a couple). I should mention, before any of my sisters blow my cover in the comments, that I am still the subject of frequent slagging for my childhood geekdom. Most three-year-olds had a favourite toy or blankie or soother… I had my dad’s Casio calculator. My memories of this are pretty hazy but I am told I used to take it to bed with me every night. I was a fiend for numbers when I was little and went through copybook after copybook of big long sums. I think my parents must have had great hopes for me as an accountant or maths professor. They must be gutted!

Sunday afternoons as a kid were usually spent at my grandparents’ house. My uncle is a sound engineer and had a ’shack’ at the back of the house where you couldn’t see an inch of floor for the masses of cables, speakers, cabinets and parts catalogues lying around. I loved it. I’d sit and watch and try not to get in his light as he built circuit boards, fixed amps and soldered wires. After a while I was allowed to help, and taught the basics of circuitry and what all the tiny bits and bobs on the circuit board did. I arrived up one Sunday at the age of about 11 to find the best present ever… wait for it… a build-your-own amp kit, with an old speaker to hook it up to. It took me the best part of a day to piece the thing together, but build my own amp I did, and by god I used it until it died.

So there you have it. Calculators and amplifiers. These days my mental arithmetic capabilities are shot, I spend my days playing about with online content, and I probably couldn’t point out a capacitor if it was waved in front of me. So sorry, Science!