I once was pretty handy with a bottle of deletion fluid and a very fine brush. You could take stuff off a plate that way. Apparently it would delete fingers just as handily, so I always took great care with it.
In terms of other useless print-related skills: I can hand-develop 3M Color-Key material, I can repain and set type with a Linotype or a Ludlow. I can shoot halftones and separations with a process camera. I can make a wicked blow guy out of an Xacto, a roll of mylar and a tube from a imagesetter film package.
My genetic engineering skills are still useful, for now, but are rapidly becoming obsolete.
To assemble synthetic genetic sequences, for the past few decades the process involved a sort of tedious cut-and-paste process. Truly synthetic pieces of DNA were limited to very short sequences, usually 20-50 nucleotides long. We’d collect various genes and other DNA of interest in bacterial vectors, and to make something new we’d (say) cut a piece out of gene Y to fuse it to gene X, and then add tag Z and resistance marker W. Except “cutting” can only be done at certain DNA sequences, using one of hundreds of sequence-specific enzymes, most of which have their own peculiarities. And “pasting” can be just as complicated.
Now, it’s possible to chemically synthesize DNA in much bigger pieces (500 bp or longer) and arbitrarily assemble smaller pieces into big ones. Any number of commercial services will synthesize and assemble many kilobase sequences for a hundred bucks.
For the last few years I’ve still done things the old way, because grad student time is cheap, and my lab has already made the 5-figure investment in the necessary collections of enzymes, vectors, and equipment.
The same thing applies for the part where we insert the DNA we made into some organism of interest. Again, until recently, everyone had to make do with a collection of arcane, inefficient, and very narrowly applicable techniques. Now there’s something called CRISPR which is far more efficient, precisely targeted, universally applicable, and stupid easy to get it to work. In a few short years it’s almost taken over all of biology.
Anybody ever heard of COPYMODs? I taught myself how to do them and was pretty good. Lots of mainframe skills I had. Sigh. I used to like to write JCL.
But the one skill that never went obsolete by the time I retired was being able to understand what the client actually wanted. We had so many Indian coders that couldn’t (or were shy of) talking to clients, it was a necessary skill. Even though I hadn’t really written any code in donkey’s years.
I started my career at my current employer as a Wang word processing expert.
But my hobby was working with VHS tapes. I knew everything about recording on them, hooking up two machines to created edits and mix tapes, and even repairing broken cassettes. My most exciting purchase ever was a dual-deck VCR.
Started in printing in 1978. Dealt with all the technological advances. But I’ve always said it’s easier to teach an experienced prepress tech about computers, than it is to teach a computer expert about printing. (“Trapping? What? Creep?”)
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[QUOTE=seal_cleaner]
…I’ve always said it’s easier to teach an experienced prepress tech about computers, than it is to teach a computer expert about printing. (“Trapping? What? Creep?”)
[/QUOTE]
Dot gain? Wuzzat?
Oh thanks… You just reminded me of a conversation I had with someone about 15 years ago about undercolor removal vs fat black and why pages coming from their inkjet printer were looking like lasagna noodles after being soaked with ink. :eek:
At my peak, I could splice a break in a 35mm movie, rethread the projector, and hit the start button within 30 seconds of the alarm going off. I doubt the audience appreciated that speed, but I was proud of it.
Back in the '70s - after Linotype machines, but before floppies - typesetting was stored on paper tape. The type was set on a keyboard that punched holes into paper tape (no display, at first), and the tape was read by the large typesetting device. But there was no way to edit the tape, if there was a typo or an incorrect code. You had to splice it manually. Which meant you had to actually read the holes in the tape, sort of like reading Braille. I taught myself to do this. It wasn’t unusual to go through hundreds of feet of tape to find the exact spot that had to be edited, then to create the splice and do the repair.
And then there were all the changes in graphics and printing. I still have my old Rapidograph pen set and a hand waxer (for the “paste” part of “cut & paste”).
It was obsolete when I learned it in the 1970s, but I ran a Linotype and set type by hand, as a hobby and as a job in a few print shops. Also worked as a bridge tender and opened a swing bridge by turning a large lever in a capstan. I loved that job.
I knew my way around a Macintosh SE running System 6. Formatting the new hard drive with an interleave ratio for ideal performance. Using the case cracker and the long torx to get into the damn thing. Cutting the resistor to add 4 MB of RAM. Installing the accelerator card into the PDS socket. Managing extension conflicts after boosting the system heap high enough to handle an array of 40+ INITs and cDevs comfortably. Popping the programmer’s key and entering SMFA700A9F4 / PCFA700 / G at the prompt to kill an errant process and exit to Finder instead of losing all my other work. Configuring MacTCP and FreePPP to work with my dialup connection. Stuffing and BinHexxing file attachments and uploading them to info-mac’s repository at sumex-aim.standord.edu from an FTP command line via a Kermit session to the local university’s IBM 3090 mainframe. Installing FKeys to modify line endings of the clipboard for cross-platform compatibility or do other cute things not natively installed in the system. Font/DA mover shenanigans to install fonts into applications or document files so the right font would be available when viewed on other folks’ computers. Blessing the correct System Folder on a drive containing multiple system folders (against recommendation). Using FONTastic to create my own bitmap fonts. Using SuperPaint to generate my own graphics work. Automating workflows with MacroMaker. Booting from a RAM disk loaded from floppy and then plugging the data cable on the hard drive to bypass an errant boot-order issue. Resetting the PRAM by selecting Control Panel with the command key held down. Using Switcher and then MultiFinder to multitask.
I learned how to do drafting by hand in high school in the late '90s/early 2000s, with a T-square and all, and finishing the process by making actual literal blueprints on vellum.
I wouldn’t say I was ever all that great at it, but it was a skill that was already obsolete at the time I was learning it.
In the 1970s I was the programmer for a company department that sometimes needed last-minute changes to their weekly output.
Bear in mind the company is using a mainframe processing in batch mode.
So I learnt how to type instructions on a punch card machine, so I could submit the changes.
:eek::smack:
I disagree. I won’t rather have key numbers–I’m thinking the cell numbers of out-of-town loved ones – in my head thsnthan in my phone, so I always dial them manually.
