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February 1st, 2010
09:26 am - Some not so good news
We've had confirmation from the lab that they've found tumour cells in the fluid drained from his lungs. The vet is now more convinced that the problem is a cancer, but we remain hopeful that he will recover as the other two have done - they've obviously had something infectious. At least he is eating again, though not as much as we might like. All we can really do is keep on with the antibiotics and see what time brings.
Thanks once again for all the kind thoughts. I'm sorry I haven't had the emotional energy to reply to them all - this week has been rough.
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January 15th, 2010
09:08 am - Sticky
Much has been written about the average house cat's aversion to water. But stranger still is their reaction to peeled sticky labels. They are compelled to touch them, yet cannot stand being touched by them. Peel a price tag of something and drop it on the floor. A cat approaches, slinking. Reaches out a tentative paw, then withdraws it. Again. The label is touched, and the paw jerked away and shook faster than the eye can follow. There's a brief respite as the label floats serenely down, but only until it lands on the cat. It's snatched off and dropped on the floor, and the cycle begins again.
Warming waxing strips by placing on the tiled bathroom floor with the underfloor heating was a good idea, and worked very well. More effort needs to be made to exclude cats.
No cats were harmed, but they were spooked.
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January 11th, 2010
10:18 am
I approve of this: Breakfast Tray. It's just what's needed to put a laptop on when you're holed up in bed with some kind of gastric flu.
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December 10th, 2009
02:28 pm - I've never before seen ...
... anyone actually win anything from one of those "crane" (the Claw!) machines in an arcade, but last night was an exception. I'd always assumed it was more or less impossible given the weakness of the claws and the weight of the prizes, but the individual in question claimed to be good at it. We then went bowling (and I think I had the worst score I've ever got). Spookily though, when we left the lanes and went back through the arcade, the toy in the crane machine had been replaced, and the others set upright again. Can only assume that some kind of alarm goes off in a back room when something is won.
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November 18th, 2009
07:11 pm - Letraset
Today, I discovered that Letraset has a shelf life that is somewhat under 20 years. The adhesive loses its stickiness, and the backing becomes brittle. I've a couple of boxes of the stuff that was being thrown out back at Plessey, and have carefully kept it safe for the occasional front panel. Though to be fair, the last time I remember using it was on the case of a 1200/300 modem.
Feeling somewhat nostalgic, I pulled out an old Mecanorma catalogue, a glossy softbound book of some 350+ pages, covering everything from Akilines to Zelek Shadline, and sheets and sheets of symbols, lines, arrows, and those trees and vehicles from architectural plans. It was printed in 1984 (in the sheets of rub-down cars are the Volvo 760 and the Datsun Cherry), and begins with the following bold statement:
Each day in over 100 countries Mecanorma products are being used by 2 million users, graphic artists, srchitects, draughtsmen in engineering offices and students in technical colleges.
No more. There are maybe a dozen typefaces in the little Letraset sheets you used to be able to by in stationers, but the big professional sheets, the hundreds of fonts, sizes, and colours, those are gone.
Seems you can still get dry transfers made - but you have to prepare your text in illustrator first.
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October 27th, 2009
09:34 am - If it weren't for Yag...
... and his recent-ish posts about Clive Sinclair and tv series Electric Dreams, I'd have been even more surprised about encountering two, yes two, people risking life and limb by riding C5s along a dark road last night, and without the optional visibility pole (which made them look even more like dodgems).
I used to see a fair number of these things as we lived near to Sinclair Vehicles (which was an impractical black building with a red trim, rather like a zx81), and they'd often travel in convoy, presumably for demonstrations or training.
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October 20th, 2009
10:55 pm - Where's my crayon...
The last few days I've been keeping myself busy with an electronics project that's been in the back of my head for a while. Since it will need some elements to be replicated, I decided to put some time into preparing a half way decent pcb. After all it is so easy and relatively cheap now.
Back when I started as an electronics engineer, pcb layout was done at 2:1 on the floor of the drawing office using track tape (pin-striping tape by another name). You can tell these boards by the gracefully curved, but slightly irregular, traces. Soon though, CAD arrived, and pcb design became the province of specially trained folks kept in a darkened room (as opposed to the actual dark room where the photo plotter was). Save for a few signals where impedance had to be carefully controlled, or HV isolation needed, it pretty much became a case of preparing a schematic and "chucking it over the wall". Eventually a series of layer plots and a netlist would come back and armed with a crayon we'd check it by hand against the schematic. Fast turnaround for PCB manufacture was a fortnight and a bit, even with thousands of pounds thrown at the manufacturer, and someone to courier the plots down by motorbike.
Nowadays a scant £30 gets you 15 day turn around and you submit your files online. The files though are still the same Gerber files which used to control the plotter in the darkroom. That £30 is more than compensated for by the additional time it would cost me to design and build the thing on stripboard.
I'm still tempted to check the netlist though - first time through with this tool set and I don't trust it yet. Where's my crayon...
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October 6th, 2009
07:07 pm - Back on Mac
I develop demos and so on used by staff who all have mac book pros. However, up 'till now I've developed them on Windows and Solaris, and never really been 100% that they'd work on macs, even n virtual box. Now I have a mac book pro too - admittedly slightly dented (might take a hammer to it tomorrow) - but at least it is the same model they all have, which makes some sense.
Last time I worked on a mac the OS was all Apple proprietary, before all the Unixification, so it will take some getting used to. However, my first irritation has been that Apple has seen fit to remove the '#' key from the UK keyboard. As a software developer, this is rather inconvenient. It is a Unix box after all - how am I supposed to write shell scripts now?
So, question to all you more recent mac people: what free utilities should I seek out and install?
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September 22nd, 2009
11:12 pm - ...but the ice cream is great!
One thing you can eat on Atkins is ice cream. Not the starchy overly sweet processed kind, but the simple cream, sugar (well, sweetner as it's Atkins) and flavour kind. So, we bought a simple ice cream maker, something I'd always regarded as a fairly pointless kitchen gadget until now. It's just a stainless steel bucket surrounded by phase change cool pack stuff, and a motor to turn the paddle.
I have to say the Cointreau and co-op clone Maya Gold choc chip I concocted is easily the best ice cream I've had in a very long time.
Oh yes, my desktop background? It's black. Not for any emo reason, just because I noticed that some areas of the screen normally occupied by my IDE were getting burnt in.
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September 15th, 2009
09:53 am - Atkins vs. Crohn's
For the last three months or so I've been following the Atkins diet (low carbohydrate) as I'd heard that it can help with Crohn's. I have to say, for me, it's worked a treat.
( TMI? )
I've been able to eat large quantities of nuts that previously would have left me in such pain that I'd have to spend the day in bed. I'm gradually re-introducing possible problem foods to see if there's a specific trigger, but it may just be the volume of sugars or starch, or possibly yeasts. Yet to tackle my bête noire, sweetcorn, but its time will come.
Oh yes, and I've lost some weight as a side effect.
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September 14th, 2009
01:40 pm - Catwoman's whiskers
I don't watch much TV, but did catch part of the second half of Joanna Lumley: Catwoman last night. Obviously the program included lots of great photography of cats, but what particularly struck me was a device to simulate having whiskers.
It was basically a balaclava with IR proximity detectors mounted on it in the approximate positions of a cats whiskers. These were feeding a microcontroller and pager or rumble motors to provide tactile feedback to the face if something was in range and how close it was. There was also a wireless link to a PC, but it wasn't clear to me if this was in the feedback loop or not. Wearing the mask Joanna was able to negotiate a corridor of potted plants in pitch dark.
It struck me as an interesting thing to try, and I'm surprised that it hasn't been done by furries before now. Potentially it's also a way of getting round limited fursuit vision. For that matter, why haven't furries been to the cat festival in Belgium? Or have they?
Program is available to watch online, for 30 dyas or so, at least in .uk.
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August 16th, 2009
10:37 pm - And rest - though probably not without some concerns...
So, have been very busy the last week or so, and having to keep quiet about it too. But, yes, I've been re-working the EF reg system (thanks so much you guys) to do something it wasn't meant to do, namely work for a con other than EF. I've also been enjoying the little humorous gems that always creep into such a project!
I just have to wait now and see what happens tomorrow at 6pm. Though I suspect our German friends will be doing an excellent job of distracting folks from registering. EF? One day, one day...
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August 6th, 2009
12:11 am - Road trip
The last week we've been on a bit of a road trip, first the lake district (where I haven't been since Lex's howl), then up to Hadrian's wall, on to Loch Lomond, and finally Fort William. We also had a night in the lakes on the way back to break up the drive.
The lake district was, predictably, wet. I expect that. You bring walking boots, waterproofs and so on. I was a little surprised to see the strange things other people regarded as appropriate attire for a 7 mile walk/scramble though; the "most unlikely to succeed" had to go to the combo of t-shirt, skin tight cropped jeans, flipflops, and one of those disposable ponchos you get from Alton Towers. Though the Man U, kit and green wellies was a contender too.
Hadrian's Wall is kind of how I remember it, other than it's width pretty much indistinguishable from all the other dry stone walling (but it was important to keep those Scots sheep apart from the English ones), and in many cases re-purposed into field boundaries. The excavations though have gone a long way.
The transition into Scotland was noticeable by the increased number of signs indicating how to drive properly like "remember to indicate" and such. Loch Lommond was pretty, and the hotel rather grand. Fort William suffering (like Keswick) from closed shops (after all there is a limit to the number of outdoor shops that can be useful on one street).
Ben Nevis was a long, tiring slog in and back. There was cloud from around 1,000m up, and we were treated to a brief hail storm for good measure. Visibility at the top about 30metres, so we didn't hang around. Seems it's like that 9 days out of 10, which makes you wonder why anyone would consider it a good home for an observatory really). Ached a fair bit for a few days afterwards.
Picked up some odd souvenirs - bits of timber from a timber yard in the lakes, and some bismuth from a geological exhibit in Scotland - I'll pass on the Scottie dogs, tartans, flags, blow-moulded roman swords, celtic jewelery, and other assorted tat though.
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July 7th, 2009
11:11 pm - A happy 45mins in a dark garage
...just add one joss stick and one laser.
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June 1st, 2009
04:47 pm
Tomorrow I'm off to Ireland for the first time. By Wednesday afternoon the demo occupying all my time (12+ hrs a day) since before ConFuzzled will be over. By the evening I'll be enjoying Guinness, and Thursday will see me back home. Quite looking forward to it really.
Friday and the weekend will be the Code Red office move, and I hope, really hope, that on Monday I can begin to wind down from one of the busiest months I've had. I can also start sorting through the piles of stuff that have built up in the garage, on the floor, and in my inbox.
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May 26th, 2009
11:05 am - A long hot soak...
I ache. I'm physically and mentally drained - but in a good way. Last after emptying the car I just needed a long bath, then off to bed. ConFuzzled is over until next year (or until next month if you're staff).
It's great to read all the good stuff on LJ about how much it has been enjoyed, but at the same time it's difficult to forget the various things that didn't go so well - particularly the things that were my own fault. I guess that is a symptom of being exhausted.
Much, much, praise to the Pawpet crew for bring off a excellent show. I haven't laughed so hard in a very long time; and that's despite having read the script and knowing full well what was about to happen.
Many thanks too to Yagfox for giving his blood, sweat, and equipment to the stage and for the laser show.
And my thanks once again to all our staff, many of whom hardly got to socialise or attend any events they weren't actually running. That's something we will be fixing for next year for sure!
For everyone who attended the conference, your energy and enthusiasm for all things furry is inspiring! Thank you.
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May 18th, 2009
05:55 pm - And then three come at once
So, Thursday morning I load the car and head North for ConFuzzled, stopping off at Leamington to help disassemble one creation, and maybe pick up some bits. I've known for over a year it would be a mad time.
But life is never simple. Work has been mad - I'm part way through building a demo on a new product I've had just four days training on. That's taken up most of my weekend and will do after ConFuzzled too.
And if that wasn't enough, Code Red is moving offices at the same time. So I've a new network to install, and a IP telephony system to learn. At least the new building has structured cabling, so there won't be the need to create a room sized cable harness!
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April 5th, 2009
08:38 pm - I love the smell of plasticiser in the morning
Much ConFuzzled build work done this weekend, with plenty of drilling and sawing of pipework. Now I ache. Tomorrow off down to the Frimley area for a week of training, and more ConFuzzled work in the evenings. Busy copying files onto the laptop. Later, some essential ironing...
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March 26th, 2009
10:26 pm - 35µs!
That's how long it takes my integer arithmetic based program to calculate the next point along a cubic spline on the Arduino. I am excited, aren't you?
What this means is I can can build animations with ease in and ease out to drive 16 RC servos independently (with a separate LED driver doing the PWM), and still have around 70% of the CPU cycles to play with. Or, put another way, this little chip could manage over 25k points a second driving a set of laser galvos without having to solve all the splines beforehand like ILDA files do.
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March 24th, 2009
06:09 pm - Liquid nitrogen, Arduino, Blinkm, RBBB
So, the surgery thing didn't happen. Doc decided the lump was just scar tissue, and a better option was repeated freezing with liquid nitrogen and local steroid injections repeated monthly. Right now it's not too painful, though having been "burnt" by solid CO2 before I'm anticipating that it will take a few days for the area to recover enough to report the pain.
A couple of toys arrived today, an Arduino Duemilanove, and a Blinkm RGB LED module. These should keep me happily tinkering. I'm hoping the Atmel processor will have a bit more grunt than I'm used to from PICs and vaguely sensible amounts of RAM so I'll be able to do what I want with servo control.
I'm wondering about ordering a RBBB kit for breadboarding, and their USB/Serial module, though it would be cheaper to buy a few. Anyone here interested? I suppose I could ebay the ones I don't use...
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dingotush's journal
