Archive for October, 2008
Wednesday I began a course in microcontroller embedded design run by The Product Development Centre (PDC) who support businesses, designers and engineers with their understanding in rapid product development at a seemingly misplaced venue called The Innovation Centre, a paradox in the cultural vacuum that is St. Leonards-on-Sea. The building itself is specifically designed to help firms with an innovative approach to business grow and thrive. In the building are offices, studios and workshops, all fully equipped including meeting rooms and a reception, although the receptionist on duty when I attended was a sour faced old cow who was obviously not getting any. The course continues for a further 4 weeks presenting microcontroller circuit design and simulation using a software package called Proteus VSM, this uses an innovative method of allowing you to design a circuit and write the processor code together and then run it in real time, simulating its function. 
The PDC also have a Rapid Prototying area, a subject I have touched on before, click here to read, I got to see a Rapid Prototype machine or 3D printer in action, at which point I proved what a Geek I am and videoed it on my phone, due to poor resolution and reflections from the door screen though, it’s very bad quality so I haven’t uploaded it. The course is funded by Brighton University and the lecturer is a Martin Bates who is an author of several books on programming and interfacing microcontrollers, he has also introduced the foundation degree to us which I will be seriously considering…maybe.
October 26th, 2008
October 24th, 2008
Answers in the comments section please.
October 18th, 2008
Ok, I am a fat git it is official, weighing in at 105.7 Kilos that’s 16 and a half stone! Even though everyone seems to be saying I don’t look like a Lard Arse my Body Mass Index (BMI) is 30.21, anything between 30 and 39.9 is considered obese. My Ideal weight for my height is between 65 and 85kg… Hmmm, that aint gonna happen. After receiving test results from my last visit to hospital saying I have high cholesterol; high blood pressure along with raised liver enzymes ALT and Gamma G.T. on top of being a bit of a bloater, I thought it might be about time to hit the gym, cut out crap food and find something else to do in my spare time other than getting pissed! So 3 and a half weeks into my mission I’ve put on weight! WTF? I find this a little difficult to understand and if anybody else says to me ‘Well muscle weighs more than fat don’t you know!’ I will push them in front of a bus. Anyway I am tracking my results on a spreadsheet and the current trendline puts me at 20 stone for the new year, if the results become at all interesting I may post them here for no other reason other than to make it seem worthwhile bothering to start it in the first place. So all I can do now is continue as I am and hope for more positive results very soon, time will reveal all.
October 16th, 2008
Cruising down the M4 towards South Wales on Friday night all was well, the fore-warning of hold ups displayed on motorway signs apparently a left over from an earlier rush hour well behind us, Jade was snoozing and the radio was low, all was cozy; in an instant the engine noise changed form a well tuned purr to a Grunty Roar! I pulled over on the hard-shoulder to investigate, a weld had broken on the new exhaust and the pipe was just dangling below a nice big hole in the engine block. So with another 110 miles to go I proceeded gingerly at a reduced speed of 70mph and increased volume of 120dB. I was worried the lack of back pressure from the detached exhaust system may upset the mechanics of the engine at such a prolonged and sustained speed but we made it, although 25 minutes later than planned and attracting more odd looks from motorists and drunk pedestrians than were necessary.
I have found an autoparts place in Cardiff that has my exhaust in stock! (Gasp!!!) Though slightly expensive I expect to get a refund from the Unipart center in Hastings where I originally bought the one that woke up the entire population of Caerphilly at 2 o’clock on Saturday morning. I can’t pick it up till Monday morning so I will have to ring work and explain..ooops!!! Initiative will come into play to get the job done, I need to get the car up on ramps that at present don’t exist, luckily I carry my own tools with me for such occasions but I know the nuts on the engine block are an odd size and I don’t have a socket to fit, hmmm. I expect to be back on the South Coast by the evening as I need to take my guitar round Chains and teach him a few learning techniques, may show him some stuff on the guitar too đŸ˜‰
October 12th, 2008
Cam, I still have your animal top and I dunno where you are, I have a new number by the way. If you type “/the name of your Mum’s road” after the URL at the top, it will take you to my number.
October 12th, 2008
I love this time of year, the crisp autumnal mornings, the rich tapestry of colours in the trees whilst kicking through the leaves amidst a plethora of birdsong, uninhibited by the inane squawk of the seagulls that once circled the skies above. I try to soak as much up as possible as autumn is the precursor for winter, although winter can hold some beauty, it is somehow masked now by the mild, wet and windy turmoil and endless overcast days that cloud your well-being and drown your ambition. There hasn’t been a descent snowfall in 12 years, every year the rivers would freeze and our landscape would be transformed, snow covered, silent and serene for days into weeks, a tranquility lost.
I always hold hope that things will reverse, nature will stabilise, but I am not necessarily the kind of person who thinks of his glass as half full, more like double the size it needs to be. So as the financial crisis takes it’s grip and the world dissolves into chaos, I will be seeking moments of calm and quietness all the more.
October 9th, 2008
Society could be likened to a machine towards immortality, are we are being administered legal toxic chemicals enabling certain diseases to proliferate thus subsequently providing a platform for practice to eradicate such diseases? Controls on responsible organisations (BBC, The Press etc.) who are left to continuously glorify things such as binge drinking (Chris Moyles comes to mind) and the endless exposure of arseholed celebrities, not to mention the ones who are leniently dealt with by the courts over possession of class A substances, are non-existent and the problem of the relaxed attitude towards things such alcohol or drug* addiction is often left to the intervention of the British public at the receiving end of the media, let’s face it, most of us Brits find it easier to just let it be rather than jump up and down and complain. (* loosely phrased – including any medication)
The bio-chemistry of the liver is highly complex and we still have a lot to learn about how it functions, alcohol remains legal, cheap and in plentiful supply. Before we knew about the myriad of complications created by smoking, it was legal to smoke in public places, cigarette companies had a free run in the advertising sector and smoking was not seen as the anti-social habit that it has become today. This is possibly because there is not much more to be learned from the serious diseases that smoking can cause and proliferate. Anti-ageing creams are another issue, we don’t fully understand how the daily application of billions of nano-particles that can easily skip the barrier of the skin ending up in the bloodstream will affect long term health, but still there are no restrictions on their use. And of course there’s the controversy with mobile phones, it’s a fact that if you bombard living cells, especially in the brain, with high energy electro-magnetic radiation at reasonably high frequencies (900Mhz-1800Mhz in UK phones) it will damage them clearing the way for tumor growth, there are restrictions on the effective radiated power (ERP) of phones however. So it seems apparent that until things are more fully understood we will continue to consume the notion that it’s all under control when in all honesty, a lot of it is highly under-researched and thrown out into the public with government controlled backing, the government who know well enough that it could be a risk but will never know for sure otherwise, so in effect, we are very much a part of the research.
October 7th, 2008
It’s Wednesday, and I’m sitting rather dazed at the thought that there is only two and a half days until the weekend, as we all know time tends to accelerate Monday-Friday so the latter part of the week goes quicker. I was chatting with my daughter Kayleigh yesterday and she mentioned about going to the cinema today with the college, something they do every Wednesday to see one of those odd unheard of matinĂ©es as part of their study, yeah right! My reply was, “You only went the other day!” At which point she emphasised ‘that was actually last Wednesday,’ we both agreed that time had flown by the past week and I pondered if it was relevant to many other people. Weekends to me are mostly just a blink of the eye until time seems to hit a wall at 6am on Monday morning and the cycle starts over.
Odd to think that Mondays are usually quite depressing, is this because time is actually going slower? Or do i just perceive time traveling slower because I feel depressed that it’s another 5 days until the weekend (cause or effect). In practice it seems the happier (busier, less bored) you are, the faster time seems to go the or vice versa. The irony is, if your busy and time seems to be traveling faster, you get more done than if you’d had the same amount to do in the same period when time was traveling slower because you were bored. Erm…yeah.
October 1st, 2008
The PDC also have a Rapid Prototying area, a subject I have touched on before, click here to read, I got to see a Rapid Prototype machine or 3D printer in action, at which point I proved what a Geek I am and videoed it on my phone, due to poor resolution and reflections from the door screen though, it’s very bad quality so I haven’t uploaded it. The course is funded by Brighton University and the lecturer is a Martin Bates who is an author of several books on programming and interfacing microcontrollers, he has also introduced the foundation degree to us which I will be seriously considering…maybe.