A Time of Magic

It’s quite surprising to think just how long Las Vegas has been a major league attraction and yet if anything it’s even more popular than it was 30 or 40 years back.

Of course, it’s really because it’s not the same vegas that greets people when they vacation there as when they vacationed 5 years ago never mind 55 years ago. The big names that you know from decades ago are still around today but they’ve substantially updated their presentation and continually both add to the variety of attractions and the quality of them as time has moved on.

Still there, of course, are the big name acts though obviously the names of those acts have changed over the years with very few exceptions (the most notable probably being Cher).

And, of course, among the updated but familiar attractions there are completely new attractions that didn’t exist 30 years ago. What’s not changed though is the great value that the place represents.

You might think that you’d never need to be thinking about getting a cell phone repeater but in fact in some buildings or rather structures that’s just what you do need.

For example, on any underground transport system you quickly find that the people operating the system haven’t allowed for mobile phones as the signal drops out as soon as you go underground. However, you don’t need to be underground to get this effect as the construction methods used on some modern buildings and, surprisingly, on some quite ancient ones as well means that signals do drop out.

Although the problem is normally down to Faraday cage effects on modern buildings it also happens on much older buildings where you can be looking at two feet thick stone walls and radio signals don’t get too far through walls like that.

Still, ’tis nice to know that there are solutions to these problems.

Last year they picked up a PSP each and they’ve been amongst their favourite toys along with the bikes that they got for their respective birthdays.

This year is more complicated as there’s no strikingly obvious “big toy” to get for them. At the moment, they’re both pretty addicted to the little Acer AspireOne that I have but I’m not sure that getting another one is really a runner (three in the house seems a little much!) although the selection of games that’s available for it seems massive and that’s made even larger because many of the emulators for older games consoles run on it too which brings thousands of games.

But aside from that possibility there doesn’t seem to be any really attractive major toy around at the moment. In some ways that’s not really too surprising given the state of the world economy but still it’s a little disappointing in terms of Christmas presents.