Protected: Crap Van
Enter your password to view comments. May 20th, 2011
It’s not Robert’s it’s mine!
Another week at work endured and a weekend that has passed before my eyes before I had a moment to blink, one thing I have managed to accomplish though is that I have repaired an old Roberts radio I have had my eye on in a local bric a brac shop for months. Apart from the broken pulley that guides the dial, it would turn on with audio for about 3 seconds then nothing. On dismantling I recognised the aroma of cooking silicon and pinpointed some very hot power amplifier transisitors, it turns out the thermal conduction to the heatsink was inadequate, and luckily the thermal runaway was controlled enough not to blow buggers to bits. A spot of heat transfer compound and a rearrangent of the bracketry and and a good tightening has done the trick. Radio currently on soak into hour number two 😉 Oh and a PP9 battery cost £4.95! Let’s hope it lasts more than a week.
On another level, my diet is improving. I couldn’t find the time to manage bloody prescriptions and surgery appointments that were necessary, so Lisa took control thankfully and things are getting back on track. My mood has been difficult to summarise as influences have moulded things uniquely of recent, which is a kind of pattern that ironically I can familiarise with, so I’m not discontented. Again it’s a head down and get on with it scenario, I occasionally lift myself up and catch a breath of fresh air, question the point of it all, see the insanity around me and quickly bury my head once again.
Add comment January 25th, 2011
All is at Peace…?
Throwing out the feelers and all is calm as I peruse possibilities of hidden disturbances in the darkness of our space, I sense nothing. Whether that’s good or bad I am yet to find out. I spent a fantastic evening with Lisa at the Hertsmonceaux Observatory on an open evening in conjunction with BBC’s stargazing events, although it was cloudy and saw little in the way of cellestial embodiments, we did open up one of the domes and spin it around, I also met some amateur radio guys who adorned a radio telescope and we listened to the magnetic flux of Jupiter and one of it’s moons IO, the latter of which we slowed down by 100 times and it sounded mysterious beyond comprehension, another station was on 144.800MHz, a well known packet frequency linking amateur weather stations across the south, getting my interest uprising again. We then dissapeared for dinner at the Treacle Mine. I must make a point of getting out more, especially in the best of company minus the inane racket of childhood enthusiasm.
Add comment January 16th, 2011
Yes It’s Early
2.30am and unable to sleep, so got up and had a cuppa tea. Productive day around the house(flat) managed to arrange the living room slightly better, had a general clear up. Visit to the gym and devised an upper body circuit routine including abs and obliques which I will keep up, along with some leg presses working the hip abductors, quadriceps and gluteus muscles. I certainly feel I am toning already after just 3 weeks 🙂 I’m back to work from Monday and I’m hoping my busy days will give me plenty of exercise as frankly, aerobic exercising at the gym is bloody mind numbing, I much prefer cycling or a brisk walk outdoors. Spoke to an Amercan fella in the health suite who is a Vietnam veteran, turns out he is on Warfarin and has several complaints due to a chemical accidentally(?) sprayed on troops, interesting bloke.
Well it’s 3am, am I tired yet? Not really… more tea 🙂
2 comments November 19th, 2010
Protected: Another Week Begins
Enter your password to view comments. November 15th, 2010
Technically Insomnia
Hmmm… It’s 5.25am and I’ve been up since 1am, but I’ve found time to test the UPS and determine that the battery (12V 12Ah SLA) is totally knackered, looking around online they are reasonably cheap @ ~20quid… so mees wont be geddin one of dem den… being a little short of the old spondoolies so to speak. I did connect it to a 13.8V PSU to test it and got some odd results, can’t think why right now. Radio’s next, first off the handie I blew up while repairing the battery pack, not sure what is wrong, I believe I over volted it at about 22V so could be something simple like a regulator or supervision device I’m hoping, just don’t want to have blown up the uP coz that’ll mean binning the whole thing. And of course the Yaesu 2/70, can’t remember how that stopped operating. Oh look, sunlight, will be drinking more coffee and finding more random stuff to keep me occupied before I inevitably pass out.
Add comment July 29th, 2010
Planck’s Microwave Universe
Image: ESA,HFI and LFI consortia
This is an awe inspiring picture. It was taken by the Planck telescope and it is the first ever full sky map of the cosmic microwave background. The satellite was launched by the European Space Agency in May last year and sent nearly a million miles into space to record the origins of the universe. It began taking data in August 2009, by the end of its mission in 2012, Planck will have made four maps of the universe.
The bright horizontal band through the centre shows the Milky Way with streamers of cold dust extending above and below. But the interesting part to researchers is the scattering of yellow flecks in the red background. These are the oldest photons in the universe and are thought to have been generated about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when matter was finally cool enough to start forming atoms. It is hoped data from here will help scientists seek out some signature radiating from a period fractions of a second after the Big Bang.
It may also confirm the existence of the “axis of evil” – a weird alignment of hot and cold spots in the emptier regions of space. Planck will also stare into an ominous hole in space that some physicists suggest is evidence that our universe is not the only one… Now hold that thought and look again at that photo…
“From the closest portions of the Milky Way to the furthest reaches of space and time, the new all-sky image offers an extraordinary treasure chest of new data for astronomers.” – Professor Peter Ade, Cardiff University
Add comment July 5th, 2010
You think the iPad is cool?
Touch screen, built in camera, scanner, GPS, MEMS, WiFi, google map/earth, google search, image search… all in one device. This way, when you can see a building through it, it gives you the image search result right on the spot.
Another Example:
Travellers? Students?
This technology is here now and there is a million other applications this could encompass.
…Think On!
.
Add comment June 21st, 2010
Pending Solar Storm
NASA have forewarned of huge solar storms 2012/2013, interesting eh? It’s not just the National Grid in the line of fire, I wrote a post not long ago detailing the fragility of a society so heavily reliant on technology, Clicky Here to have read.
Source=www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7819201/Nasa-warns-solar-flares-from-huge-space-storm-will-cause-devastation.html
1 comment June 17th, 2010
Techno Failings
Having trouble with my internet connection and it’s making me even more anti-technology, my brain is tuned to problem solve, specifically in engineering although the older I get the more I can use the same thought strategies in a more lateral way and I see more and more flaws other things such as peoples’ live’s, society in general, politics, religions, capitalism, communism, even science. The problem relating to my internet is I have little control over it, I’m relying on a third party, I used to use packet radio many years ago before the internet which was a basic internet system used amongst Amateur Radio enthusiasts, the great thing about it was there was no necessity for a third party, you could connect directly with whoever you wanted to file share with or chat to (providing you had a suitable set up), there ‘were’ bulletin board systems (BBS) and nodes where you could share information with other parts of the world but generally they were local and operated by other Radio Amateurs that you were either friendly with or knew somebody who was. My beef with modern day communications is that it is getting far too complicated and with that comes fragility, the system is becoming vulnerable to a myriad of potentially disabling influences.
Solar Activity/Magneto Fluctuations:
Solar flares create huge electro-magnetic pulses that penetrate the Earth’s ionosphere, these propagations can induce power surges into electrical transmission systems such as our national grid large enough to severely damage sub station transformers (such conditions caused a massive black-out in the US some years ago). The same thing applies to any large cable network, telecoms for instance, although fibre optic cables will be immune in such a case any sensitive electronics could be susceptible and many telecoms system are still largely copper cable.
Satellites:
Our reliance on satellites adds to the situation, not only is there an ever increasing amount of space junk floating around that could easily destroy a satellite in a collision (nothing really floats in space, it’s all moving at several thousands of miles an hour!) but radiation from solar flares could also easily annihilate it’s electronics.
Weather:
Kind of obvious, flooding, high winds, extreme high/low temperatures; not only directly but anything that might paralyse essential maintenance services.
Cyber Attack:
Cyber Warfare is already happening, China especially are targeting Western infrastructures and may possibly already have a method of disabling key areas of our communications system.
Terrorism:
Terrorist organisations could target communications networks in order to gain notoriety or interfere with emergency operations.
Pandemic:
The whole of civilisation could crumble on this one, but nationally it becomes even more acute. Consider 10% of the workforce across the board are off sick, that includes managers, supervisors, delivery drivers (in particular tankers to deliver fuel) farmers, police, doctors, nurses, emergency personnel, air traffic control and the administration staff that do the shed load of paperwork involved with all of it, and also engineers servicing & maintaining all this technological marvelry including the communications network. At first 10% doesn’t sound a lot and we could easily cope for a week or two, but how about a month, or even six? And what if the working populous off sick was fifteen percent, or twenty?
Political Red Tape:
Health and Safety, Political Correctness, ethnic integration over skills based employment all pose a threat for reasons that defy logic.
Economic Decline:
All this stuff costs a fortune to keep running let alone improve, so with dwindling resources companies will inevitably struggle to provide an effective service
In time I believe we will be protecting ourselves from the expense and the possibility of being cut off by abandoning third party utility providers for a simpler solution. What that will be who knows, maybe there’s a niche there?
So I can’t solve my internet problem, because it’s not my problem.
Ironically as I’ve been typing this, Orange, who provide my mobile phone service, have barred my phone!
3 comments March 10th, 2010
