Be Excellent To Each Other

What is the best machine to buy these days?

Budget £60k

...A perpetual motion machine. Failing that, a time machine. My third choice would be some kind of super-collider.

edit: ah, just seen the subtitle. I think we need to make them stand out more, heh.

We have one, but we use it for thermoflour, lemme have a look.

"DNA Engine OPticon 2" it says on it.

I might throw those options into my monday meeting

"so...if we cant decide...I recommend we fuck it off and go for a space time continuum transfunctioner...or the lastest Prof. Farnsworth offering".

Yo.

I'm pretty sure I've seen one of those round here too. I never use it though, the only PCR I do is on a boggo standard thermocycler



A friend has one of those, says it's a bitch to drive around London. And he paid more than that for it late last year. Ooops.

Yeah, me too. Mastercycler Gradient representing.



80's style

WTF is a "semi-automatic" car?

Normally it means one with an electrically operated gearbox I think, the sort where you have paddles on the wheel or knock the gear stick backwards and forwards.

Basically, you have a clutch, but you don't have to use it to change gear.

I didn't think any of them had clutches, I always thought that was sort of the point?

Then what *do* you use it for?

This all sounds a bit silly.

I think the modern versions have two clutches in the transmission and no clutch pedal.

The computery gubbins operates the clutch doesn't it?

Never having driven one, I assume that the flappy-paddles are just like buttons that tell the car you want to change up/down and it does the rest (although not always, I guess it has limiters and things to try and prevent it getting trashed by doing something silly like changing down already at very high revs).

I think they can be set to fully auto too (depending on model) for a more 'relaxed' drive. I'd love to have a go in a sporty car with paddle shift, it sounds like fun for a little while.

Eppendorf branded, in da house?

I can't remember what PCR machine we used, but it didn't have the greatest capacity (read: it was crap) so I don't think I'd recommend it.



I'd miss the tactileness of a manual if I were to drive anything else for fun. Plus all those years learning about double declutching and heel toe pedal maneouevres would be completely wasted in a semi-auto.

Flappy paddles.

Ho, yuss.

And a couple on one of the robots.

All the semi-auto cars I've seen (proper semi-autos, not automatics with a bolted-on tiptronic box) have a clutch pedal, which you use in first or reverse to set off or stop, much like you do in a normal manual car. Once you are moving you don't have to use the clutch again until you stop. There are some that have a flappy paddle box with no clutch pedal (the Ferrari 575M springs to mind) but these are often criticised for just being an automatic gearbox with a fancy shift system.

Wouldn't the Ferrari be closer to a definition of "semi-auto" then? The other one is just a manual with a fancy shift system

fwiw, the F1 definition of semi auto involved removing the clutch... although they didn't really use them once moving even back in the H-Pattern days.