Telecommunications


As a committed budgie, like me, you will not have prostituted yourself by learning people-speak. We prefer to keep to the purity of digital communications.

In order to exploit the full range of outlets and media available to budgies in this electronic age, you will need become something of a technical expert, as I am.

Whether you choose to enrol and my College of Arts, Technology and Witchcraft, or attempt to teach yourself, I am happy to provide a few basic hints and pointers on this page.


Common Technical Terms

Bored Rate

I soon lose interest in any communication that takes too long to get through, or any message with more than about ten words. That's why I don't often bother to read your emails.

Bored rate is the frequency at which one's mind tends to wander to something else. For budgies it has a period of between ten and twenty seconds. People-pets can apparently pay attention even longer than this, with bored rates as low as one per minute.

Bits Rate

Whereas bored rate is a measure of how often your mind can wander, bits rate is a measure of how many things you can forget simultaneously on each occasion of wandering.

The two terms are often confused, but while bored rate is an innate limitation, a high bits rate just needs practice, enabling a budgie to become as delightfully scatterbrained as he or she wishes.

Multiplex

Sometimes you are surrounded by such a wide choice of entertainments that you want to try them all out, and forget them again, simultaneously. But how is this possible when your bored rate is between ten and twenty seconds and would seem to require sequential attention?

It is quite possible, with practice, to look at, and forget about, what is going on in a particular direction every ten seconds, having only actually looked at it for one second. If ten typical ten-second attention spans are staggered to begin at one-second intervals, as long as the sequence is maintained, you can effectively look at, and forget about, ten things simultaneously.

This special method of channelling ten times as much junk through short attention spans is known as multiplex.

Bandwidth

We are not talking about virtuoso operatic performances here. We need to be able to make a consistent logical distinction between as many pairs of frequencies as possible.

If you don't waste your time impersonating talk or singing like a canary (can't stand them), you'll find that the average telephone channel is more than adequate for all your needs.

A/D Conversion

This is not necessary in terms of the electronics, but it is very important that you can maintain the timing. Make sure you pause before getting out of breath, but don't pause in the middle of a word.

If digital communication still doesn't come naturally to you, do your A/D translation beforehand and scratch it out on the bottom of your cage. Then you will be able to read it down the line without a break.

Bot Alignment

No self-respecting budgie should leave droppings evenly spaced all over the bottom of the cage. You should stack them up neatly in one corner, but remember to make a careful note of where each one starts and finishes if you ever want to be able to use them according to their freshness/maturity (for different types of soldering).

Protocol

It is sometimes said that we shouldn't all talk at once but it doesn't bother me as long as I am one of those doing the talking. Warn me when you are about to transmit a dull anecdote in my direction, but I can't say it will make any difference.

Practical Skills

Soldering

A long term career, not just in telecommunications, but in information technology as a whole, requires the ability to stick bits of conductor together. There is simply no way of avoiding this unless you can pay someone to do it for you, and you can never be sure what they've been up to.

Fortunately, we budgies are ourselves among the best suppliers of naturally sticky material with relatively little corrosive effect.

You may need to vary your diet depending on the required workability and speed of setting for a particular task. Some properties are best achieved by allowing the material to mature while kept moist beneath a protective pile of your more recent produce.

Unfortunately, just when you have a nicely ripening pile, one of your people-pets is probably going to bundle you out of your cage while they pilfer it. This is an occupational hazard for a working budgie, but if you have to make urgent repairs to your transmitter in order to meet a deadline, it can be useful to have hidden a few deposits around the house which you can at least be collecting during such a raid.

Hacking

With the correct use of your beak, you can hack into most systems. Most of us have the standard 8-pin beak, but they can all be used to the same effect with minor adaptations.

I have absolutely no intention of giving away the most important secrets of the trade in this page. If you want to become a qualified member of the Beak-Hackers Guild (est 1998 by Doreen Bird) I suggest you enrol on the appropriate course when my College of Arts, Technology and Witchcraft opens fully for business in the autumn term.

Voice Control

If you haven't wasted your youth learning to say "You're a handsome devil this morning" in people-speak, your basic voice control should be adequate for simple digital communications.

For higher speeds and choice of protocols, however, you will need to develop your voice skills. I am developing a basic tutorial, which you will be able to access from this page. If you do not even have the basic skills, you will definitely have to enrol on one of my full-time courses.

Translation of incoming digital signals is not covered in the tutorial, since it is a very practical subject requiring expensive materials and examples for you to work on. Again, you will need to enrol on one of my courses if, having learned how to transmit digitally, you want to understand the reply. Who knows, it could be telling you that one more redraft will earn you millions, so isn't that course fee worth it?



Further Technical Advice
Voice Tutorial
General Advice
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