Fixing everything, really slowly

Ok, so this is cheating somewhat as this is a re-post of something from my old web site, but what the heck at least its not stolen from elsewhere!

Instructions:

Up Jenkins! is a team game for six or more players. It is preferable to have an even number of players, though not essential. You will need a table that is wide enough to the two teams to sit opposite one another and a 2p coin.

Players split up into two teams. The two teams need to sit opposite one another with a large table between them. The two teams take it in turns to play. The object of the game is for the playing team to hide a 2p coin in a number of pre-determined ways, while the opposing team attempts to guess which person has it. There are three ways in which the playing team can hide the coin, “palms”, “fists” and “wibbley-wobbley”.

Palms:

All the players must place both hands in front of them on the table, palms down. The person who has the coin has to hide the coin under their hand. The hardest part of this call is that coin often makes a noise as hand meets table, so the whole team needs to try and get there hands down at the same time to disguise the noise. Of the calls available this is the one that depends most on teamwork.

Wibbley-wobbley:

The most physically challenging of the calls, “wibbley-wobebley” requires composure and stamina. Like “palms” the player with the coin must hold it in the palm of their hand. With “wibbley-wobbley” all the team must place both hands in front of them, palms down but above the table, and wiggle their fingers – rather like pretending to be a spider. Keeping the coin in the palm can be challenging and some players prefer to use a thumb tucked under their palm to hold it in place. While this is permissible it does look obvious to the opposition who has the coin. With “wibbley-wobbley” good bluffing from the other team members is essential.

Fists:

“Fists” is entirely psychological and is probably the least used of the calls. The player with the coin has to hide the coin in their fist, and all the players have to clench both their fists and place them on the table, again with palms facing down. “Fists” is best used as a surprise call, because it is hard to clench your fist if the coin is in the centre of the player’s palm – as is often the case when expecting a call of “palms” or “wibbley-wobbley”.

How to begin playing

Toss the coin to decide who goes first. The team to go first is the playing team. That team places all their hands under the table and gives the coin to one person. This has to be done secretively so that the opposing team can’t tell who has it.

When the playing team is ready the opposing team must call “Up Jenkins! . . .” and then one of the three methods of hiding. The playing team must then all act on this call. The opposing team then has to guess which member of the playing team has the coin.

Tactics

Bluffing, bluffing, bluffing – Bluffing is the essential to the success of the game and is encouraged. There are many ways of bluffing, some more subtle than others. Many players don’t like to discuss there bluffing tactics publicly through fear there opposition may hear of them and lessen their chances of winning.

There are however a few well known bluffs:

The Drink: The player (who may or may not have the coin) lifts one hand from the table and takes a drink. This suggests to the other team that the player doesn’t have the coin or that he is double-bluffing and in fact does have it in the other hand. In either case it can confuse the opposing team. This can be an effective distraction if one of your team mates has just given the game away, perhaps through lack of skill or concentration.

The Malformed: The player pretends to be extremely nervous, as if they have the coin, they also hold one of their hands differently so as to suggest they are struggling to conceal it. The malformed is most useful during “wibbley-wobbley” because of its challenging nature. Note that the opposing team does have the right to request that the players wibble their fingers fully so use with caution.

The Clinker: This bluff applies only to “palms”. When the call is made, any members of the team who have any rings on their fingers try to disguise the sound of coin hitting table by making the rings hit at the same time.

Enjoy playing Up Jenkins!

I went home on Saturday to visit my parents and had a truly remarkable experience. I should point out this is story is probably only remarkable, or interesting for that matter, if you are a geek, but what the heck, I’m going to tell it anyway …

When I arrived at my folks house I noticed a DVD player yanked out of their TV stand sat on the floor. “It’s Alice’s and its broken” I was told by my Mother who proceeded to tell how my Sister, Alice, had removed their DVD player the previous evening to watch a film with a friend in her bedroom. Being a the son of an electrical engineer I immediately thought to myself “yeah right it’s broken, I’ll give it a sharp tap later and see if I can’t get it working”.

The evening came and we were gathered in the living room as a family, something that rarely happens these days. We we sitting listening to music and having a chat when the subject of the DVD play strewn across the room came up. My mum explained it she’d had it a year and only used it once, only when she came to use it did it break. It was a cheap Panasonic one, I thought it looked quite decent, but it was essentially the standard budget DVD player chip set but a little better for having a reasonable casing which presumably is the only input from the company who’s brand adorns the front of the device.

“The sound it totally broken” said Alice …

What followed was your standard fault finding exercise to correct the muffled sound. Was it the scart lead? No, they’d tried that, well lets try the phono outputs and a different input to the telly, no? Hmm, well it really is broken. I issued a sharp tap on the top of the unit. “I’ve tried that” said Alice, “We really beat the crap out of it, it won’t work”. I picked it it, it felt alarming light, I commented as such and my mind began to wonder what was inside. I held it up and let go and it crashed to the floor. The disc which was playing (The Borne Identity) made a kind of scraping noise, then stopped and the film kept playing. We decided to put a rubbish disk in since we didn’t want to scratch the disk.

After that I sat on the thing. The top buckled a little and there was more scraping sounds, but the sound was still muffled and the film kept playing. It was definitely broken. I unplugged it and took the casing off. I immediately understood why it was so light, there was hardly anything inside! Even the power supply was integrated on the the single circuit board. We had a look for obvious signs of damage, prodded a few bits and decided we should plug it back in. At this point my mum became rather touchy, asking if this was a safe thing to do etc. We reassured it was, whilst knowing it wasn’t.

We powered it on, watched the disk spin up and started the film playing. It was kind of nice to watch this simple machine at work. All the functions pretty much were performed by the on board chip, but still it was nice. I unplugged the ribbon cables that connected the DVD drive to the circuit board. I was amazed how resilient the software was, it coped fine if I unplugged either the control or the data cables (I worked out their function from the nature of the failures), when I plugged them in again it all started working again. I can’t imagine a PC ever becoming so tolerant!

We started prodding components with a plastic screwdriver, being careful to avoid the areas where there was mains voltage running (this was clearly marked on the circuit board). I guess we were hoping to find a dry joint or loose connection. We hit, warped and wobbled every part of the machine, but nothing fixed the sound problem, the disk just carried on playing!

As that point my sister, my dad and I were crowded round the thing and all agreed it was dead (much like surgeons round an operating table perhaps?). Disappointed, I admitted defeat and we agreed we should throw it away. In reality this meant smashing it up, which is always fun. Then my dad had a brainwave, if we were going to destroy it, why not play “component roulette!”.

He suggested we could remove a component from the circuit board while a film was playing and see if it continued to work. We thought this sounded fun so we took it in turn to remove a component with a pair of pliers. There were a few ground rules, firstly to avoid the mains area, and secondly the objective is to keep the thing working on your turn (think Jenga or Buckaroo).

Dad took the first go and grabbed a small capacitor in the middle of the circuit board. He twisted, tugged and pulled, then … BOINK! it came clean off in his hand and the disk kept playing. We fell about laughing, and then it was my turn. I picked another capacitor, BOINK! it came out and the thing kept playing. Alice had a go, BOINK! Film still going!

We managed to have another two rounds each, removing a total of nine parts. By this point we were crying with laughter and were amazed the thing was still working.

Dad took the pliers and went to take his turn, he selected another capacitor, took a firm grip, pulled, tugged, wiggled, pulled some more then … BOINK! … at that same point the sound of the film blasted out of the telly, clear as day! We’d removed 10 components and fixed the fault!

We’d had the sound up loud in order to hear it when it was faulty and all of a sudden it was working fine! It was truly remarkable, we fell about laughing on the floor for several minutes in disbelief. Then I put the case back together, leaving the removed components to one side, tested it, then gave the DVD player back to Alice and said “There you go, we’ve fixed it!”