I have spent the day troubling myself with the design of a weather compensated central heating thermostat, a relatively simple concept, but for some reason I cannot get my head around it. Designs similar to this used to just fall into place, is this the engineer’s equivelent to writers block? Or have I just been away for too long?
With Phenylketonuria, there is the possibilty that intelligence can fluctuate according to the levels of phenylalanine (Phe) in the brain, I have been on a strict diet for more than a week, I know the Phe levels in the blood follow closely with eating habits, but the concentration within the brain lags somewhat, and as I have been off diet for a considerable long period, maybe I need to wait before the concentration subsides and I become more focused. This is something that has blighted my everyday functioning when it comes to the way I eat. So my relationship with food is stained, knowing I have to eat correctly to function normally is obvious, but functioning normally doesn’t necessarlly correlate with continuing a special diet. All I can do is continue with the diet and hope it improves my cognitive processes, but there is a little part of me that is sceptical, how will I know unless I endure this?
October 16th, 2011
Sit out in your garden and facing north this evening and stare up into the sky, astromoners are predicting that the Dranonid meteor shower could produce upto 1,000 meteors per hour, that makes it officially a storm. They will emerge form the constellation of Draco, hence their name – Draconids, though there are varying forecasts for the actual intensity. Ordinarily, the Draconid meteor shower is a “sleeper†with just about 10 meteors per hour. But this year, the Earth is forecast to pass through more of the comet 21P Giacobini-Zinner’s filaments than usual according to dust stream models used by scientists, These models simulate dozens to hundreds of meteors per hour, given this large range, the shower could be either quite a spectacle or a bit of a let down. ’21P Giacobini-Zinner’ is a periodic comet which returns every six years and four months.
One problem for potential spectators in the south of England is that it could well be cloudy when the peak is expected between 7pm & 10pm BST (1800 and 2100 UTC, these times varied a little in my research) but I am keeping one eye on the latest satellite forecasts in hope 😉
Update 1845: Err… complete cloud cover and no breaks looking at the satellite imagery, looks like a night in. 🙁
Update 2116: A clearing in the clouds and I saw ONE very bright Draconoid!
This photo doesn’t include the meteor, but it was taken in the same vicinity, about 67 degree elevation SSW.
October 8th, 2011
