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Maplin Mystery: Commercial Curiousity

INT21 said:
the place under the railway arches by Leeds station.
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I think if I had to rank every place I have ever been in order of likelihood of being the scene of a rape, this place may well feature right at the top. Despite the distance between, when I think of Jack the Ripper or Fu Manchu in an abstract locale, this it it--the rushing water after rain just adds to the ambiance.

It's a bit less rapey since they put shops down there, confessedly, but in the small hours it had a distinct air of menace.
 
Ermintruder said:
(when they claim "40 years on the UK high street, no, that is utter nonsense...maybe a handful of core shops, for that long, but most, five-ten years, at max)
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I remember them as a high street presence since the mid 80s or so. And no, I don't remember Mandela dying around the same time.
 
We have at least one thread on places that make you feel weird.
 
Dr_Baltar said:
I remember them as a high street presence since the mid 80s or so. And no, I don't remember Mandela dying around the same time.
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There was one in Southend since the late 80's at least - I would say earlier but can't guarantee it.
 
I have to side with those who rather like Maplins. Certainly our local one has always been a pleasant place to pop in for a rummage, especially if you're after smaller stuff - adapters, readers (like my natty little USB card reader) cables, and so on.

I suspect, personally, there's a touch of nostalgia, in that it's as close as I'm likely to get to the small Currys/Dixons of the 80s kid me loved nosing around. The only Currys we have now is a vaulted warehouse of a place that somehow manages to have a lot less stock and variety than a store that huge ought to. Maybe if they didn't insist on having a bigger wall of flatscreens than a rock concert and overlarge displays for Apple, Google and the like.

True, Maplins does tend to have more staff than customers, and yes, it is a little peculiar in its randomness and, sometimes, atmosphere. But then, I like peculiar. I'm on this board, after all. ;)
 
I like Maplins as well, the keyboard I am typing on came from there, nice and sturdy,it cant spell rate tho, :p and they have always been quite knowledgeable whenever I have been in for anything
 
Another vote for finding Maplins odd .. the staff I met seemed out of place, as if they were pretending to be shop assistants but actually weren't. I bought a shredder from them which I think needs a prize for the Device Least Suited To Its Purpose, as it jammed, fatally and forever, when faced with 3 pieces of paper. Maybe it was actually another device altogether, in disguise.

ps I'm pro nerd, and didn't get nerd vibes in there.
 
Cochise said:
There was one in Southend since the late 80's at least - I would say earlier but can't guarantee it.
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They had 2 shops in the 80s - one was in Southend, yes.
Their downfall was really all those shops they acquired since. Weighed them down, when they should have stuck to mail order.
 
Ermintruder,

I can't remember the name of the place in Leeds, and it may have shut down.

I used Maplin quite a lot but only to buy things like 'D'type connectors and other components. So I never had to test the knowledge of the staff.

RS is indeed the grail, and I have an account with them. But as they wanted £80 for a contactor to fit my lathe I don't use it often.
These days I order virtually all the stuff on line. That is if I can't scrag something from a discarded bit of electronic kit.

Thought for the day... Never pass a skip without at least taking a quick look in.

INT21 said: ↑
undergrad in Electronics

I've helped create many of those, over the years.

But did they stay with digital or go over to the dark side and study the ancient art. You know, Analogue.

Makes the blood run cold just thinking about it.

INT21
 
I also found Maplins faintly odd. Our local one is near to a Currys and a PC World, the latter of which was recently merged into the Currys branch. I have actually bought from Maplins several times in the past few years but each time was somewhat of a compromise. Until very recently I quite often tried Maplins first before resignedly heading to PC World but since the PC World store was merged into the Currys store I have actually reversed the order trying Currys first then falling back to Maplins as Maplins has now become better than PC World but definitely more expensive. Somewhat ironically I have probably bought more from Maplins in the last 2 years than the previous 5 years. Despite its weird vibe I will be sad to see it go.
 
Our local one is pretty much within sight of our house, but I rarely used it. Why?

A few years ago my pen-drive packed up, and I needed one urgently for a presentation and other materials the following day. As it was a Sunday there was no chance (then) of getting one on Amazon or Ebay to arrive on time, so went to Maplin. £16.99 for an 8GB pen-drive, and not even a particularly good one (why not buy a smaller one? They were £12.99 for 2GB.) All their stuff was ludicrously overpriced. Even their bell-wire cost about 50p more per metre than our local indie hardware shop. Their staff were ok, but only one or two seemed to really understand their stock. Their phone tech support people, however, did know their onions (I had an issue with an old desktop that one helped me sort with a small cheap component and a patient talk-through of how to replace it.)

Had they switched to being an online business some years ago and dropped their prices to more approximating everyone else they possibly could have thrived.
 
Regarding the idea of staff not knowing what they are selling a trend I have started to notice in job adverts is companies listing Product Knowledge as one of their desired requirements but providing no information on what the product is thus ensuring that staff are applying without any idea of what they are selling so perhaps the staff have been hired on the basis of worked in a supermarket for a bit rather than can fit an interositer to an ansible.
 
kevinjwoods said:
so perhaps the staff have been hired on the basis of worked in a supermarket for a bit rather than can fit an interositer to an ansible
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Love it, love it, I immediately recognise that first device!!! From so many years ago, it genuinely frightens me.

Who needs a flux capacitor, when you're faced with an interositer/interocitor?

An interocitor is a fictional multi-functional device that first appeared in the 1949 story "The Alien Machine", which became the beginning four chapters of the 1952 novel This Island Earth, which in turn was made into the 1955 science fiction filmThis Island Earth. The device arrives in kit form as an intelligence test for scientists who might prove helpful to an alien race.
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An interocitor is an alien device with unusual and strange properties. The concept was invented by science fiction writer Raymond F. Jones, who wrote the original novel This Island Earth beginning as a series of three sci-fi short stories now known as "The Peace Engineers Trilogy" appearing in the sci-fi pulp magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories from 1949 to 1951. Raymond F. Jones then did a novelization of the complete story into full book form and it was first published in 1952 by Shasta Press. Universal Studios purchased the screen rights to the novel in 1953, since the novel was a popular sci-fi best seller, and made it into a Technicolor film in 1954, which was then released on June 1, 1955. The film was a modest success and has somewhat impressive visual effects. The first third of the trilogy of stories was titled "The Alien Machine," referring to the Interocitor, with original graphic artwork penned by sci-fi artist Virgil Finlay.The story was sold to the press with the help of literary agent Forrest J. Ackerman.
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The term interocitor itself, rather than referring to a specific device, likely refers to a general class of devices that share a common set of operating principles (similar to the term computer). This is inferred from the fact an interocitor is observed or described in many different roles:

  • Telecommunications device
  • Aircraft autopilot
  • Surveillance and security controller
  • Directed energy weapon
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In the film, advanced physicist Cal Meacham first becomes aware of an interocitor when a book arrives at his lab titled Electronic Service, Unit #16. Inside is contained a bill of materials for the interocitor, describing it as, "incorporating greater advances than hitherto known in the field of electronics." From the specifications, Meacham opines, "There's no limit to what it could do. Laying a four-lane highway at the rate of a mile a minute would be a cinch."
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Of the 2486 components comprising an interocitor, only three are mentioned by name in the film:
  • Bead condenser (model # AB-619)
  • Cathermin tube with an indium complex of +4
  • Intensifier disk
The instructions accompanying the components also caution that no interocitor part can be replaced, and to bear this in mind while assembling.
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Once assembled and powered, Meacham places the intensifier disk into the right-hand control and rotates it 18 degrees counter-clockwise. Upon doing so, the telecommunication function of the interocitor is activated, and Meacham establishes contact with Exeter, the party responsible for sending him the components for the device.
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During their conversation, Meacham's lab assistant, Joe Wilson, attempts to photograph the device but is informed by Exeter that, "Your camera will pick up nothing but black fog. Images on the interocitor don't register on film." Exeter then destroys all evidence of the machine and its blueprints using its functionality as a guided energy weapon – Meacham tries to pull the power cord just as Exeter initiates the process, but the interocitor self-destructs, leaving nothing but a pile of debris.
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Meacham later boards a Douglas DC-3autopiloted by an interocitor to join Exeter at his research facility. Exeter is also seen using an interocitor to remotely observe a private conversation between Meacham and two other scientists at the facility, Ruth Adams and Steve Carlson. Exeter's assistant, Brack, later uses the weapons capability of the device to thwart the attempted escape of Meacham, Adams, and Carlson from the facility.
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And at least, if an interocitor was found to require half-a-dozen oddly-inadequate C-sized batteries, and a small pack of dried-out double-sided sticky-fixers (at 4.30pm on a wet Sunday afternoon in April) a totally-disinterested and non-motivated guy standing in Maplin would sell it to you, for probably £25. He would then go back into suspended animation, awaiting the next person to come into his store, which could even be a decade in the future. Goodbye Maplin. We will miss you. But not nearly as much as we should....

ps my ansible is misbehaving, these days. I changed to a SIM-only contract, and now I seem to have difficulty in keeping reality in perspective for much of the time. Plus, the service provider's always contacting me at weird times of the day and night, trying to get me to upgrade everything to Universe 2.0....I've never a fan of any big-bang approaches, so, it's steady ahead, as we go...(that guy who called last, Neo was his name, yes, he's the one...)

pps I once bought a turboencabulator from Maplin, years ago. Looked great, at first, but I never quite got it to work properly. I was never quite sure why, but this quote from an old review helps unclarify things....

The original machine had a base plate of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two main spurving bearings were in a direct line with the panametric fan. The latter consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzlevanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar waneshaft that side fumbling was effectively prevented. The main winding was of the normal lotus-o-deltoid type placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a nonreversible tremmie pipe to the differential girdlespring on the "up" end of the grammeters.
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Interocitor3.jpg


My interocitor is always on the fritz. Friends warned me not to buy one at Radio Shack, but did I listen? They were deeply discounted. Found out why pretty quickly.
 
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Bigphoot2 said:
Always read instructions carefully
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Ah, it's good to see Reggie / Rigsby's face again (or, officially, Leonard Rossiter).

It's interesting that a reverse image search done on that composite image you've posted, @Bigphoot2 , comes back with his name, and not the background interocitor context.

But that makes sense, in a sense....you can't take a picture of the alien technology that is the interocitor.

Just like in Thunderbirds, if cameras all become mysteriously-deactivated, the same thing may-well happen with Google Images.

And hence the arising of Reginald Perrin.

I didn't get where I am today, without mixing my canons & my tropes (as CJ might've said).
 
Ermintruder said:
Ah, it's good to see Reggie / Rigsby's face again (or, officially, Leonard Rossiter).

It's interesting that a reverse image search done on that composite image you've posted, @Bigphoot2 , comes back with his name, and not the background interocitor context.

But that makes sense, in a sense....you can't take a picture of the alien technology that is the interocitor.

Just like in Thunderbirds, if cameras all become mysteriously-deactivated, the same thing may-well happen with Google Images.

And hence the arising of Reginald Perrin.

I didn't get where I am today, without mixing my canons & my tropes (as CJ might've said).
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Ah that's because I did it myself on Photoshop this morning. Not bad after only one cup of coffee, the brain normally needs three to get kick-started :)
 
..Looked great, at first, but I never quite got it to work properly. I was never quite sure why,..

I have the same trouble with Linux.

INT21
 
INT21 said:
the place under the railway arches by Leeds station
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nooooooooooooooooooo! nightmare! dreadful place.... and that is accompanied and in the day time. Has anything (you know, /anything fortean/) ever happened down there?????
 
Krepostnoi said:
For ease of initial use, it's got to be slackware Mint, Shirley?
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Not from what I've seen. Puppy is crazy-easy.

Also: it is practical to run it, forever, from a USB pen-drive.
2018-04-04 22.37.10.jpg

(10p coin for scale. The 16GB USB drive is threaded onto a carrying-strap).

So my 'laptop/desktop computer' (ahem) effectively is smaller than a postage stamp. Has run flawlessly for nearly two years. Simply ensure the BIOS on any host computer is temporarily-forced to boot from USB. Save your session each time, and (optionally) back-up to the cloud.
 
Ermintruder,

..Go Puppy..

I already run Puppy 5.2.8 on a different machine.

But it does bring it's own set of problems.

Very useful for bypassing passwords on other other operating systems though.

INT21
 
When I started out it was CP/M and 8" floppy discs.

My first practical computer was an Amstrad PCW8256 (still got it) that also ran CP/M And BASIC86.
Loved that machine.

Now the 'Big Machine' runs Puppy, has a 950 Gig SCSI hard drive running UEFI.

What is coming down the road next, one wonders ?

INT21
 
INT21 said:
When I started out it was CP/M and 8" floppy discs
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Ditto-snap. I too pre-date DOS.

INT21 said:
My first practical computer was an Amstrad
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For me, probably a Rockwell AIM65 (and other dev board micros and a PET, but I did own a number of early PCWs as well.
INT21 said:
What is coming down the road next, one wonders ?
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Well, from an 'enthusiast' perspective, probably an increased desire to put late Android OSs onto desktops/legacy laptops.

Also, a possible rally/resurgence in interest for ChromiumOS.

XFCE has got an ever-growing fanbase, but Windows10 (despite being bloated and flawed in so many ways) is still deservedly-popular.

I feel AppleOS, for desktops, may 'blink first', and call a halt. Microsoft will stagger on with upgrades a lot longer (I predict), but I think the future belongs to a lightweight consolidated Android device OS, with integrated cloud storage (Chromium rethunk / repackaged, with proper local peripherals & I/O support).

I'm fed-up with tech falsities such as the BS regarding Google Glass, or excessive hype regarding AR (augmented reality). There is a plateau of practicality, a consumer concensus upon limits / expectations & true needs. The interface is everything: intuitivity and ease of access need to keep pace with genuine repeatable useability.
 
I use Linux for all my computing needs, except at work where I am obliged to use Windows. That said, one of my colleagues has switched his PC to Ubuntu and so far no one has noticed. (We're software Devs).

Regarding lightweight desktop environments, I like Openbox. I use BunsenLabs, the continuation of Crunchbang, on several computers, which uses Openbox.
 
Frideswide,

..nooooooooooooooooooo! nightmare! dreadful place.... and that is accompanied and in the day time. Has anything (you know, /anything fortean/) ever happened down there?????..

I don't know, but it looks like a handy place to dispose of a body.

INT21
 
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