“I'm not young enough to know everything.”
― J.M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton
Gadgets.
Gizmos.
They're synonymous.
Interchangeable.
Two of my favorite G words, although I am particularly fond of the word gynotikolobomassophile.*
Gadgets and gizmos, as I use those terms, don't refer to things with names I don't know, or can't recall. Rather, gadgets and gizmos are cool tools and useful, if not necessary, items. I'm thinking of sunglasses, pens, watches, bicycles, flashlights, headphones, recorders and so much more!
Inside The Yellow Studio
Today I'm surrounded by gadgets and gizmos. A quick cursory count of buttons on my audio mixers and processors inside The Yellow Studio reaches 160. There are 142 sliders or knobs and well over 80 jacks. These are just some of the components that make up gadgets and gizmos. It's impossible to have a good gadget or gizmo in a studio that lacks buttons, knobs, sliders or jacks!
I've got four microphones around here: 2) Heil PR40's, 1) EV RE50B and 1) RODE NTG2. I've also got at least 2 lavaliere mics: 1) Audio-Technica ATR-3350 and 1) Giant Squid (you gotta have a gizmo named, Giant Squid).
I've got an Edirol R09HR digital recorder. Somewhere I've got a little Olympus digital recorder. Headphones abound. A Jawbone blutooth device is around here some place...and so much more!
I got to looking around here, thinking about my life with gadgets and gizmos and all the fun times I've had with them. I'm not a terribly materialistic person, but I confess that I've had a lifelong love affair with gadgets and gizmos.
Two Of The Most Important Gadgets Of My Childhood
See that Deluxe Schwinn Sting-Ray® in the upper lefthand corner of that ad? I had one just like that. Same color and everything. Ten bucks more and I could have the Super Deluxe, but it was a gift from my parents. They weren't Super Deluxe kind of people, but I was thrilled anyway.
No matter, my mobility factor skyrocketed since I had been previously been limited to using my PF Flyers to get about. Now, me and my PF Flyers could ride in style and comfort that only a banana seat on a Sting-Ray could provide.
When I was 15 I saved my money for what seemed like forever so I could buy a GAF Super 8 movie camera. It was among the first major purchases I remember making. It was almost $200 so I vividly remember going to the store to buy it. One 40' roll of film, which required professional processing, would last about 2-1/2 minutes. Then you had to have a projector and a screen (or a white sheet hung up on the wall) to show it. If you wanted home movies, you needed lots of gadgets. And time. And money. That was the late 1960's and early 1970's.
Today, I've got at least 5 digital video devices within reach of me as I type this. A built in webcam (that's 1). An external webcam (that's 2). An iPhone (that's 3). A Kodak Zi8 sitting nearby (that's 4) and a Canon point and shoot camera that will also shoot video (that's 5). Three of the five (maybe 4) will shoot in HD.
We don't make home movies any more. We shoot video.
This Magazine Was A Game Changer
A classmate showed me a Playboy magazine when I was in 2nd grade, but that's not the magazine that was a game changer for me. Well, at least I don't think it was. I was mostly horrified at the time because I knew it was wrong. I told my parents about it when I got home. My dad and I drove to the kid's house who brought it to school. I sat in the car while my father confronted his dad. The kid's mom was our 2nd grade teacher. I'm guessing that's why my dad decided to confront the boy's father. It didn't go anywhere. Turns out his dad didn't much care.
Few things fascinated me more than the cool stuff you could buy in the back of Popular Science ma...
