Ahoy Shipmates

I have been reflecting on the place/value that PC's have in our day to day lives and in particular modelling.

My home PC was just about dead and I have been nursing it along for a few years. Now finally after about a 6 week period I have now built and have running a brand new PC. When it was up and running the comment was made that " we are hooked up to civilization again". Man there was over 500 emails to sort out oh boy.

Judging by the sounds from my old hard drive as I extracted data of it I think it was very much on its "last legs". The new one is bigger and better and is a quantum leap in technology on the former one.

The question is modellers how valuable is the pc/laptop to not only our daily life but to our hobby?

Could we imagine life without it?

Cheers


Sean

Good point to ponder, Sean...and quite honestly, I personally couldn't imagine life without my laptop, mate...there would be no net to surf for research and developement, new model kit news, and the updates for the hobby, international contact, and most importantly, no KitMaker! (yikes!! )...in this day of the electronic information transfer, going backwards would most definitely be an impossibility, as well as a direct hit to our advancement as a society............

Let's see. I would lose an hour per day of time being connected to the modeling world via the internet. Would have to build models instead. (that's a net gain of seven hours per week building models)

Would be back to the days of research from my books and the library. Wouldn't know about new kits until they showed up in the LHS. (As if I need more new kits for the stash)

Connection to modelers? Would have to treasure the time at the monthly IPMS meeting with other modelers, and talk with other people encountered at the LHS.

The only down side is losing connection to purchases of aftermarket parts and equipment via the web. Would have to order from ads in the magazines - probably not impossible.

All in all, not a terrible prospect. I think I will leave this mind-sucker for the rest of the night and go work on a model.

Rick

When I re-model by growing workbench, I want to rig an old PC so I can have reference pics next to my builds... beats pinning up B&Wa xeroxes on corkboard with thumbtacks


And yes, too much e-everything in real life, college kids "read' an average of 1,000Facebook pages per month, and only 30 actual textbook pages. Other stats like that have been popping out in a variety of HiEd publications.

Well, aside from the work I do for the site with my computer, I use mine a great deal for hobby related things. Each project I am going to do I search for reference pictures. I have sat at my workbench with my laptop open to a web site about a certain project so I could get things just so. Yes, my computer is very important to my hobby.

When I get a chance to move into our new pottery/modeling studio, I plan to have a dedicated PC out there so we will have a reference at hand.


James good point too many kids focus on social issues instead of educational issues.

As a student I find that it is important to not use these social networking sites. A lot of my friends want me to start using facebook. The thing is it is absolutely useless for me. I use my computer to talk to my parents (boarding student), do homework, and read the news, weather. I also use it to be part of modeling sites like this one.

I enjoy using my computer for researching model projects and reading forums here... They are always helpful.

My use of the computer is ENORMOUS when it comes to model making.
First most of my picture references are on DVDs with stuff I found on the net, then I scale all my plans using specialized tools and then finally, as I am that kind of scratchbuilder that i don't like to cut plastic, I design my photoetch frets using some vectorial drawing tools
take me my computer out, and I just can't do my dioramas anymore the way i am doing them
JB

J Hogan - Good job mate! Not to sound pedantic (I am a College Professor), but you are SO much in the (good) minority, I have seen so many students ruin their college careers by having their laptop become an extra non-academic limb..... keep modelling! cheers

Thanks Professor Martine, It is problematic here at school with such social networking sites... I.T blocked the websites from the school for a year but through weird means they still kept using the site so they got a social networking specialist to come in and talk to us about the dangers of using such sites. I listened and it was interesting, I hope that so called minority grows.... Enjoy your weekend.