Monthly Archives: February 2020

The coil resistance calculator

When trying new wire or different coiling diameters by changing wicks it can be a hit or miss affair trying to work out how many wraps will provide the desired resistance, especially if you are new to coiling.

We would like to present a calculator for your use that takes all of the hardwork/guesswork out of the process.

Simply enter in you wire and wick details then the resistance you’d like to achieve and the calculator will do the rest – telling you how many wraps to make.

Clearly this will depend on how tightly you wrap your coils but it beats sticking a wet finger in the air. The calculator works for different sizes, types and even mixed wires.

Carpe Diem

There was one point, during the fag-end of the 80s, when Yuppie business talk fused into day-to-day conversations. You couldn’t discuss football, DIY or washing up liquid adverts without someone wanting you to ‘seize the day’. Not that I held any strong opinions about DIY. Worse, if you had a job working for an international chemical company and were greeted each morning with the Managing Director shouting:

“Carpe diem, Dave! Carpe diem!”

Big Quitter

When the going gets tough the smart find somewhere else to be or a good excuse. This isn’t a famous quotation by anyone important, it’s just been the story of my life. I’m brilliant at quitting, you name it and I’ve quit it. Well, almost all of it.

My Curriculum Vitae was inspired by a lecturer I had who took a break from the topic in hand to explain to us that the only thing important was getting a job. I asked her whether it was best to tell the truth or lie (having had over seventeen different jobs prior to doing the course at 22). She said that if I told the truth I’d never get the job and that if I lied I might get a job but then be sacked if found out. Lying won the day then.

Choices, choices, choices

As an ex-primary teacher you get used to seeing fads come and go. One minute the playground is awash with marbles and games of tig, the next everyone is playing Call Of Duty and rifle butting their friends in the face with sticks. Things come into existence and vanish with the rapidity of atomic particles at CERN.

Some things remain constant. Tycho Brahe mapped out the movement of the stars and planets in ream upon ream of measurements (in-between his daytime job of sword-fighting to resolve mathematical disputes). Those measurements were honed by Johannes Kepler into three laws of planetary motion that hold as true today as they did in the 17th Century.

I’ve been vaping for around 18 months now and throughout that time fashions have come and gone. Currently, it seems that every mod being made in the Philippines is then produced in two different types of metal before being released in a black coating that has all the durability of butter in the sun.

A little bit of politics

“A little bit of politics!” was, for anyone old enough to remember, Ben Elton’s catchphrase on Friday Night Live. For a large number of people now a little bit of politics is a little bit too much – and so this will attempt to be as apolitical as it is possible to be.

As vapers (or however else you elect to term yourself) I’m sure that very few of us are unaware that legislation of some form or other is heading our way. The lengths to which it will impact upon us may vary due to how you vape, what you vape with, where and when. All that we can hope for is that the decisions made are based on sound science, fair and reasonable.

The F5 button

Some are past masters, some have never needed to, others dream of the day they can afford to and there are those who think the whole process is ridiculous.

F5 refreshes the browser screen for those on the hunt for limited quantities of vaping goodies, by which I do not mean Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill (just a little bit) Oddie. Special launches, high prices and ridiculous demand.

But what do you do if you don’t have an F5 button on your keyboard.

Hotspots

“What’s a hotspot not?”

Ahh, who doesn’t look back fondly remembering those times when Michael Barrymore was nothing more than a genial host, in front of a bank of television sets, asking obvious quiz questions to people who seemed to be out on day release?

It’s not a good spot,” replied the audience. If any one knew where a good spot was in those days it was the British public because we were a generation raised on public information films.

We knew where not to fly a kite, we knew the dangers lurking in watery depths and we knew to be extra safe when crossing the road with Darth Vader. Public information films educated us all to know where our children were at night as they had taught us how to protect ourselves against an imminent cold war nuclear bomb.

One’s too many, ten’s not enough!

“One’s too many, ten’s not enough!”

It’s a line from a Pop Will Eat Itself song that a mate of mine had as the signature to his emails for years. Given PWEI’s predilection for appropriating popular culture (as well as samples from other songs) into their songs it has always bothered me. I needed to know what it meant, I think I do now.