Tuesday, November 01, 2016

A Day In The Life Of Movement Sensors

It's been a static day at the University of the West.
Me and my cough sat this afternoon in a glass booth with a sliding door, seeing student tutees.
Every time one of us moved slightly, the door slid open obligingly, and then closed again.
It was irritating.
Afterwards in the Ladies, an orchestra of taps whooshed on and off as I walked past laden with bags:
Shoooooosh
       Shooooooosh
             Shoooooosh
How very efficient, and how unnecessary.

When I worked there in the early 2000s, I had a scarily out-of-the way office whose lights went off if you didn't move, so you'd be on your own talking to a slightly odd student, perhaps, and be suddenly plunged into darkness.
Rather than getting up and waving my arms about, which might encourage the slightly odd student to become slightly odder still, I made a device out of that hairy string, with a black rubber bat that belonged to one of the Offsprogs tied to the end of it, draped over the industrial-chic metal bars on the ceiling around the light sensor.
As soon as the lights went off, you could yank on the string and make the bat jump up and down in front of the light sensor, and the lights came straight back on again.
I was never scared again.

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