After yet another dissapointing telephone coversation with one of the Tiscali numpties, I’m told they can’t enter my bank details onto their system due to some kind of technical glitch, could I ring back the following day, after I had been on the phone to them for god knows how long. This isn’t the first failed attempt at getting them to bill me, it’s been going on now for 2 years!!! I also originally signed up for unlimited downloads and a while back I was sent a letter saying I was regarded as a “Heavy User” and could I not use the internet at peak times unless only for general browsing??? So after a month or so I receive another letter saying my bandwidth had been restricted at these times as I’d ignored their previous request. After receiving red letters from them about payments they were supposed to be taking from my bank and trying again and again to sort out a payment arrangement only to finally have my sevice suspended, I decided enough is enough, so I politely asked them for my MAC code and signed up with 02.
So I wake up in Wales this morning to a lovely sunny day and I pinch myself, no it’s reality all right. Chain’s wandering about somewhere in North Wales so I brought my 2M radio, I was meant to fit it in the car this week but I am still undecided about a mount for the antenna. With my old Dagenham Dustbin the choice was obvious, drill a bloody great hole in the roof! Job done, but the new car is quite clean and tidy and I don’t really want to be drilling holes in the bodywork, though it is still an option. The plan is to venture onto a hill somewhere, there’s one or two to choose from, and try to access a repeater near him, a technical challenge that I’m quite up for. As I don’t have an antenna fitted on the car I have brought with me my homemade J-pole (click diagram) that I built a couple of years ago and proves to perform quite well, plus I can just stick it in the ground. Until then I need to do some research on the local geography and find out which repeater it is that Chain can access so I can set up the CTCSS tones etc. I think a yagi (directional) antenna would be more appropriate for the situation but I don’t have one.
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God have I been moaning again? Seriously everything’s just fine, I’ve been thinking about the next big thing! How can I predict what it might be and get to the front of the queue to reap any rewards? There’s a lot being written about emerging technologies, Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED) will soon replace plasma and give us roll up displays for presentations or portable TV, they will also set alight the imaginations of architects and interior designers when it comes to new buildings, imagine a entire wall that lights up when you flick on the switch in your living room and then gently dim to suit your mood, or even the floor, how about a sound to light setting? Now, as I’m sure you’ve heard, scientists are growing peoples’ fingers back! How cool is that? I can see an opportunity for a party trick there… And of course Rapid Manufacturing is surging forward, BMW are manufacturing prototypes using this technology and swear it saves them an absolute fortune, soon we will all have a 3D printer in our homes to manufacture basic items such as combs, hairclips, party crockery etc. kids could even design their own lunch boxes. Then who knows? There are loads of things being worked on at the moment most of us have no idea about, I do find it all quite exciting, but from where I’m looking, ultimately all technologies will converge and we will basically become part of it ourselves (not that we’re not already). The Mayan’s talked of an eventual global consciousness and it could easily be perceived that soon in the future we will be able to connect our nervous system to the world wide web and experience anything we decided as if it were real, a bit like The Game of Life in Red Dwarf or maybe we could have a spinal socket like Neo in The Matrix. With the way in which technology is progressing, all these ideas are a possibility, but progress needs stability, and the world is far from a stable environment.
Have been flicking around on 2 metres (144-146Mhz Amatuer Band) recently because of lift conditions, in particular the GB3DA Danbury repeater nr Chelmsford in Essex has been consistently very strong (4-6bB) and I decided to break in and have a natter, at that point a kid called Rhys who was 11 years old called through and it turns out he has only just passed his foundation exam and earned himself an M3 callsign (ZFM), transmitting from an antenna on a metal tin from his bedroom in Harlow, North London. So I say hi and explain that it isn’t bad chatting to me 90 miles away on the south coast with such a simple set up and only 10 watts and he was seriously chuffed, and I thought how nice it was that a kid had bothered to take the exam and have the confidence to join in a net on a busy repeater, and he was very proficient too, only one operator had a moan about his slightly rookie radio procedure but he soon got fobbed off. Maybe Chain could access this repeater… hmmm.
Got a new effects processor for my guitar, put a pick up on my acoustic, seems to work ok, will do till I get an electric anyhow. Also won that Marshall Valvestate amp on ebay, was delivered today but no bugger was in! I’ll pick it up tomorrow from the Hailsham depot. interested to find out just how far gone this amp is, hoping the Power Amp stage is ok and the screaching problem is down to dodgey pots or something. I’m quite sure the pots on those amps are quite standard PCB mount jobbies. It’s an anniversary today, exactly 20 years since I passed my driving test! It’s amazing how little can be achieved in such a long period of time.
Hello, bought a sealed lead-acid battery off of ebay for a fiver recently and it will not charge. I’ve done some research and it looks like its down to sulphation, lead sulphate forming on the plates because of being left in an uncharged state for a long period. I measured the charge current at 60 microamps initially and have had it wired up to my power supply for 3 days now and the charge current has hit a wapping 4.7 milliamps, hmmm I have the design for a small electronic circuit to build that is meant to desulphate batteries, it’s quite a simple idea that pulses the charge current at 50 milli second intervals up to 6Amps, which is more than enough for a 7Ah battery, from forums I’ve read the success rate is very high, though patience is required as it could take weeks to significantly improve the performance to a point where the battery would be usable. All a bit long winded, but hey I gotta do something otherwise my brain will dry up and come out my ears in powder form. Or did that happen already?
Anyway I may get onto that and will bore you all to tears with it in the future no doubt, BUGGER! Just been offered a job in Brighton, Embedded Systems Test Engineer at £35 an hour but I have no Visual Basic experience, man that sucks! But the girl on the phone sounded very nice and I now have her email address 😉 Blimey, I’m sounding desperate now, no surprise really…Well Chain’s off to the Quacks good luck matey, the charge current on that battery has risen to 5.2 milliamps in the time its taken me to type this, about 1 hour as phone ringing and chatting to Angel on MSN too. Maybe load up that program to design the inductors required for this desulphation circuit, or maybe just wait till I can just buy them, £1.20 each not exactly gonna force me to remortgage is it? Popped in to see Cam today who’s off work with a dodgey arm, had a good old natter, we’re like a couple of old women putting the world to rights when we get together but it’s cool.
God have I been moaning again? Seriously everything’s just fine, I’ve been thinking about the next big thing! How can I predict what it might be and get to the front of the queue to reap any rewards? There’s a lot being written about emerging technologies, Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED) will soon replace plasma and give us roll up displays for presentations or portable TV, they will also set alight the imaginations of architects and interior designers when it comes to new buildings, imagine a entire wall that lights up when you flick on the switch in your living room and then gently dim to suit your mood, or even the floor, how about a sound to light setting? Now, as I’m sure you’ve heard, scientists are growing peoples’ fingers back! How cool is that? I can see an opportunity for a party trick there… And of course Rapid Manufacturing is surging forward, BMW are manufacturing prototypes using this technology and swear it saves them an absolute fortune, soon we will all have a 3D printer in our homes to manufacture basic items such as combs, hairclips, party crockery etc. kids could even design their own lunch boxes. Then who knows? There are loads of things being worked on at the moment most of us have no idea about, I do find it all quite exciting, but from where I’m looking, ultimately all technologies will converge and we will basically become part of it ourselves (not that we’re not already). The Mayan’s talked of an eventual global consciousness and it could easily be perceived that soon in the future we will be able to connect our nervous system to the world wide web and experience anything we decided as if it were real, a bit like The Game of Life in Red Dwarf or maybe we could have a spinal socket like Neo in The Matrix. With the way in which technology is progressing, all these ideas are a possibility, but progress needs stability, and the world is far from a stable environment.
