Fun with technology

Some years back I bought an electric flyswatter. I'd intended it for "kinky" purposes, but hadn't known that there were two kinds and only the older ones would work without modification.

So it got used a few times and then sat around unused.

Recently we've had a minor fruit fly problem and fayanora's complaints reminded me of it. I went looking Thursday and found it.

Fruit flies are a bit small for it. It will get them, but it's not certain.

The flash and loud POP are impressive though.

Friday when Fay came over for our regular TV night, we traded off trying to zap the flies. I think our total score was over a dozen.

One interesting lesson was that if you swing at a fly and don't see it in the wake, keep holding down the "zap" button for a few seconds.

Y'see sometimes the fly will have landed on one of the outer wires. And oftenm if it has, it'll crawl around onto the "inner" face of the wire. At which point *zap*!

I'm reminded of the gizmo I had someone on the TML (Travelleer Mailing List) design for me years back. A laser bug zapper. Basically siome sensors (sonic? lidar?) that could track moving objects and use lasers to zap any bug sized ones.

Amazingly enough, there is actually such a thing in the real world now. Only it can identify the different sorts of insects by a combo of the sounds they make flying, the way they "appear" to the other sensor and (I think) flight patterns. So it'll zap all the mosquitos and leave the other insects alone for instance.

Hopefully they'll be cheap enough for folks like me within a few years. <evil grion>