Electronic kit building

2 things have re-awakened in my fancy world this holiday. One of them is electronics.

Some pics of the little creepy simple light-attracted bug. It took only half an hour to build. This circuit is nice in only 2 ways, cheap, shows how a motor can drive the bug without any gearing, and thirdly simple, having a very low transistor count.

I was dissapointed on 2 counts with velleman. the website is wrongly silkscreened onto the board as http://www.vellleman.be/ . It should be www.velleman.be ,they also have a USA office and site. Why on earth screw up something that important. Secondly (but not last) is they give you 2 diodes, but neither of them have a place on the PCB... well actually I used one as a rear-axle.. and that is where the puzzle lay, because the horrid diagram they provided on the box shows a diode to prevent damage if the battery is the wrong way about (would actually heat the diode a bit IMHO, since it is drawn as going across the supply of 2 AAA batteries.) but it is not on the PCB, unless you solder it onto the underside! UGLY.

Overall a nice simple kit. Next is a microcontroller project He He!.

How to be del.icio.us

I figured out how to tag things with delicious yesterday, it's one of those social-bookmarking things, you start out by tagging sites that you would have bookmarked, to tag a site, you type in 1 romore keywords that may help you find it back. inityiallyI though, this is going to be totally huge effort, but it seems to work better than bookmarking for 2 reasons, it collects by date, so has cronology, and it graphically presents, so it has size. You can also add tags to a mark so that it sends the link to your buddies (or network), that is where the social angle comes in. delicious is also web-based, so your bookmarks are available anywhere.

So it's not evil, will probably not damage my karma, and I can probably drop my del.icio.us 'cloud' onto my blog page right here. (click on it to find my del.icio.us name)

Oh here is one awesome/hilarious Youtube series, primarily about vegetables to get you started - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYhuT5ksL4A&feature=dir .

Why youtube is evil
Ok not evil, just all consuming. I know Google own it now, and this blog-site. But this is a world of free speech, and youtube does that very well. Youtube is even better than TV, and TV is BAD, in a too-much-of-a-good-thing kind of way. It can eat away at your social life, and productivity. /RANT

More camping pics

I took lots of pics of the sky, I imagine it will still look like this 100 years from now, so maybe it was a bit pointless.

This one was not

Here are one of those helicopters I was chatting about...

This strange fellow is not directing traffic at all.

Caister castle, In this castle reflection.

It is not well preserved, I suppose that is the problem with all history, people deface it in the present by scrawling their names, pretty much in the same way as they did when if first probably fell into diss-use. I suppose it just started to fall down one day, so everyone ducked. Maybe they were taken prisoner, or worse, it was just too damn cold. Looking around inside the single standing tower was a bit spooky. I mean it is only one tower, the spiral star built into the stairwell is very steep (the original stairs would have been steep and heavier, hence going up or down would have to be done slightly stooped).

The nice part of the castle visit is the vingtage transport collection, with cars and bikes lovingly collected by the owner. The displays are light-hearted, alsmot whistfull, and packed in between is a lot of nostalgia. This was a worthwhile stop for £22 to get us all in.

I think the 'reflection' photo shots were not too bad, seing there is not much left of the castle, but the main wall ruin, and one opposite it. The inner courtward (it appears was divided in two) is well kept, and is a great picnic area. As you can see from the photo, the moat has been dredged, and actually works.

Our tent pitch

World gone mad

Or just a little cheap.

I spotted the fellow above taking these fake chimneys (obviously fibreglass) up north on day 1 of our little camping holiday. I wonder what the world is comming too. I imagine the chimneys are low-maintanance, and the brickwork looks real anything up to 4 yards away, as I drovepast I took a glance (my navigator was aiming the lense) and could see the fake brick-pattern.

We went to Caister-on-sea on the first day after pitching the tent, here is the lifeguard boathouse. The Sea-rescue thing is a big noise on the popular beaches, and there are large helicopters (clearly resue or transport opperations) flying over every few hours.

This statement (see detail below) was also a little too blatantly sexist, I mean what does the lady pilot do?

Your mind could turn in other directions as well, but the signage is just unfair to 60% of the population of the island.

UNIT testing

White box, Black box, Component test; is your UUT realy stand-alone. Is the interface stand-alone? Most likely not. Is the interface automatable? ...sometimes the input or output from software that interfaces with hardware like a fingerprint scanner might actually require that you need real fingers to get good input data because a testing-layer that allows 'fake' input to get injected was never desighned in. I think that for a test engineer, the big headaches are around, have a specified and desighned enough tests, and should not be around things like. "Is it automatable, can I get it stand-alone and in the spotlight on it's own?". Reality is that integration testing will show you which unit tests you should have created, but never thought of. I think these are the ones where I want to kick myself, because a small failure has caused project hiccups.
I imagine there is a good book on this stuff, (unit test specification that is) and how you can go about nailing the beast down to produce quality in the right places early and easily. I must say I look forward to the next Symbian component testing project (probably some blue-tooth work) ,and I have learned a lot about unit-testing in 6 months. I look forward to Bluetooth, because it is something I know little about, and the possibilities there are really wide for some fun to be had.

Who are you?

Asking this question without looking for a 'rhetorical-question' kind of response is difficult of yourself. How can one shout out THIS IS ME!, without being suspected of being a screamer at heart if you are not. My quest for clarity here is currently stemming from a desire to communicate happiness and energy, while wanting to be pretty much left alone, introverted perhaps. Since nobody has time for the quiet fellow in the corner, some 'quiet' folk let themselves get 'out' a bit and quite enjoy the attention; without realizing the damage done to the psyche.

So am I an extrovert screaming to get out of an introvert? Or just plain shy most of the time... on the extreme hand not blowing your own trumpet will never get you anywhere either. This topic will probably get resumed latter.

Warning, may contain nuts.

Sign found on a lanyard, which I thought was intended for hanging things about your neck.

The warning about climbing trees with a rope still around your neck makes sense, but a lanyard intended to not be worn about the part of you that seems to work best of all?

Frequency oh blot

So why would you want to admit your mistakes? Well plenty. In a world where everyone is perfect, you can hardly be blamed for lapsing into paranoia whenever you find there are some things you did not know. The perfect person mitigates this by saying, hey I have not been doing it for long enough. The paranoid madman just gets depressed (me).

Office life is tough sometimes and keeping up with the Joneses is probably goal number 1. Although you cannot ever be sure of your progress if the playing field is strewn with obstacles that you have never encountered before (see above philosophy).

/interrupt F1 GP!
Sometimes I just love the way the brain works, I was explaining to my neighbor James about a new feature I wanted to add to my modbus simulator program. When suddenly while doing on about it I get a brainwave.. Hey there is an easier way to create custom graphical forms, I mean you can use a browser, but everyone has browser favorites. The solution is just to let the user use any browser he wants, and hence no need for embedded a IE-activeX control into my program, just pump out the HTML. I mean having a graphical form inside your program is neato, but it is heavyweight, and for all the control you get, you have to write lots of extra code, then stress about the browser ActiveX stuff being there at all. Nobody wants to wish DLL hell onto their little program do they?

Oh, F1 you say :-) Groovy. Now I am no motor-sport fan, but this weekend is Silverstone weekend. OK enough messing about, lets do some work.

Some children links

coppied from a posting on Pencaitland Primary Blog http://edubuzz.org/blogs/pencaitland
http://www.funwithspot.com/house.asp?locale=UK
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/funandgames/
Numberjacks gameshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/numberjacks/games/index.shtml
For Doctor Who fans there’s
Dr who e-books
Dr who music maker
CBBC Wild gameshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/wild/games/
Art activitieshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/art/activities/
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artroom/

Blog taxonomy. the idea that some bloggers blog in one way only: Republishing, junk or research/creative. so this post falls into the first category, so what? Most of my posts fall into the junk category (personal posts of no real value) but what the heck. Heard some clever researcher fellow who loves little things that live in the ocean off antarctica. Invited to talk about global warning, I even got a question in about how bad it can become, his answer, serious! Another thing I got from this whle natural-history thing that he presented was how little accurate data we have about what life was like (temperature recordings, diet, methane, CO2 etc) was going back 1000s of years. The only "time-capsule" historians have of this stuff is things that got trapped or frozen into something. I rest my case, blogging may be boring, but so is molecules of methane trapped in ice 1Km down in antartica that was laid there 60000 years ago so that we can melt it and interpolate global conditions. Next topic is my diet LOL.

Time for more local pics

THe sun sitting low actually I had to drive with it sitting there, quite a nuisance, because for quite a bit of my long trip (50 miles) to the office, it was sitting just below the sun-visor. I think I did my back in a but ducking my eyes out of the sun in the driving seat.


I dunno where I took this one, this was early in the morning. The snow here was still very fluffy, and it never had a chance to compact either, so it almost got to the crunchy stage in spots where it had sat long enough to thaw a little and then re-freeze.


A little bit of snow from in the back yard after Xmas.

Some recent stuff in Cottenham:-)

This is a path along the lip of a draining ditch just a short walking distance behind our rental in Cottenham.



I think this pic was taken with my SE (P990i) The prob with this camers-phone is that the shutter button is quite stubborn, I suppose to stop you from photographing the inside of your pocket:-)

I am still going to figure out why photos aded to your blog appear in reverse order and not in the top-down sequwnce as you add them. I always got to copy-paste the tag in at the bottom as the poster/editor jams it in at the top each time.

Oh yeah, the camera button is quite stubborn on the SE, that means that unless you are really steady, that the extra effort to push on the button ends up jiggling the shot and blurring it. Try harder, well I think the shots will get better in the near future. But all this is hugely outweighed by the ability to have a multi-tool of the digital variety in your pocket, fun phone! Besides I did not pay for it.

Real life

Real life will carry on for us all. Sadly I think my boys will not have remembered their great grandparents. They might if taken back to the Willro park village up to number 64, I will remember it clearly. But that does not make the job of carrying on any easier for those that remain.

Taxis
Mailing a fellow who downloaded my modbus simulator from RSA I remember why driving in the UK is just as perilous. They all drive very close behind you, park on both sides of the road indiscriminate of direction of travel; and then to top it off park so that the road is only wide enough for one vehicle, I am left thinking I am on a farm-road in the Transkei. Well it is worth a laugh, because you get curteous, and you still get dumb, but at least not too many ram-shackles and donkey-carts. I have seen horses and had to follow them at a distance down the lane often enough. So who is complaining?

Peace

Ouma Braam Passed away at 5.00 this afternoon. After weeks of struggling Oupa is lost after 60 years. We are on our way to JHB to support him. There is little we can do other than be there for him. Keep him in your prayers.
Dad

---

This is not best, I cannot help but hold my breath. We miss you Giesje.

Happier campers

Not the camping type? Having a great time in our new village home, it is much quieter, only now I have some pics taken of the surrounds that need to come and get pasted up here. Going into Cambridge is still a bit of a 'mare, the traffic means you have to be sure of where you drive, and rather cycle or bus it. I shall have to try using the bus soon. Boys birthdays/combined-party on the weekend, they are getting bikes; shhh so not tell them, LOL. Rhys is quite a wizard at Iggle-pop game now, having skipped supper the other day to play. This is a sign that children are not born evil, their parents make them that way. I just have to feel a stab of guilt because when I was younger I used to skip meals etc all day long just to read and finish a book. Latter in life I would get stuck behind a screen for hours on end, first programming, then gaming. Children'ses is picking up bad habbitsss. In the old days, there were no games, you wrote your own actually, LOL.

Today's is a bit of a geeky log, WE have lots of news suddenly, moved house (sucessfully if you like)

I have included a lot of pics from a good while back of my PC, why, because I can. something I wasted a lot of time lovingly doing. Why? Why not, like why do dogs lick their balls?
Maybe one day science will have an answer for why boys msut rin through rather than around puddles. This boy likes to fiddle.

OK and some pics of my old workplace, Adroit Technologies in RSA. Yay!
Notice the small library behind my chair (keeper of all things paper/documentified - LOL). Yep, in the UK they ram you into a huge open space full of background hissying noise (aircon) to kill other peoples voices. It takes a bit of getting used to, but you do.

The light-bulbs were left over from a traffic-light (or redlight district) project that I made for a customer demo one year, I think I spent 2 weeks not working and building the demo rig with Powerpoint, ActiveX, VB script and a small spot of soldering while programming the Mitxubishi FX controller.

I can u tube, and you?

it takes a while to upload, and then around 15 mins to an hour before your movie actually becomes available. If you add the hours of editting it,5 minutes to encode it - That's a lot of waiting.

This little program is fun www.womble.com - and I made this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLk6_5PijUc - of our LAN Party in Feb 2007 down in Friars House. I am helping organize another LAN Party soon. And we have a Yahoo group running to promo the whole thing properly. gotta get some work done today, so this is just a quickie.

LAN Party

After creating a small LAN Party Yahoo group (login req.) And taking some pics...

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/epoc_lan_party/ for more pic of the Symbianites I work with having fun. Arranging the LAN party was actually an interresting affair, because it was held in London, while I work in Cambridge. I must say I am not good with names, but here we have (from right) David, Kunnal, Thando and one other person (name escapes me). On the left is Jacques, Ryan and Mr Fisher, myself taking the shot, and also not visible is Matt setting up the camcorder. Big thanks to the guys who did pitch, everyone had a good time, no complaints; so we must have done some things right. In fact the only thing that gave a hitch was the power cables that did not arrive, but we ended up with just enough power points anyway. We will have to use this same space again. I think the LAN Party success is in the welcome and quick setup, which David helped with a lot, since I got there a bit late for setup.
Driving home though London was neato. Zillions of small streets, and it just goes on and on, the lights at night when you cross the bridge is pretty cool, but it is a very busy place. At least my internal compass worked fine, and I just kept on headding north, consulting the map twice, before I found myself on the A1, and eventually in known territory again. Still want to blow some bucks on a satnav, we will give it a while.
So that was a high for 2 reasons, I have passed my probation period 6 months at Symbian and managed to arrange an event (albeit small). I suspect if I had been of the London office I might have found more frag victims, but bones to those that missed out, I will carry on.

Money-back

Can visitors to the UK get their money back if the weather does not get krappy? LOL

Sat this morning and wrote a letter from Rhys' dream.

Dear Mommy
Sorry that I broke
the cat
Love Rhys Greg Braam

All in a little story, just so from a dream. I suppose it is a short-story of sorts, there is more detail, funny how little people think so clearly. So when I get into the lowdown of what the heck is a middle school. It's a barbaric system where we send our children from one school to another as often as possible to throw them off balance. Somehow someone missed the point when it came to schooling our children.

Why blog regularly?

...sometimes the saddest things pop into your head, or do they? Catchy lines, that try to make your own life larger than it really is. Well I did hear some bad news the other day, BBC radio 2 had some fragments of an interview with a war veteran from WW1, looks funny written that way, but his storey and those of others is not funny at all. This fellow lost 49 of his schoolmates in the war. Those old gezzers are really at their end, but they were just boys when they went off to fight, and still do not know why so many had to die. I am no pacifist, sometimes I just want to blow the whole damn place up, I think that it only about 4 seconds though. I'm getting it down. One day it will be milliseconds, nowhere near enough time to actually even plot and plan anything, what can you do in 4 seconds? I still find it a bit sad though, that we can leave the love we all start out life with, and replace it with so much hate. Still not sure what makes a man believe that his mother would rather that he die for her, than that the whole family should suffer, but at least live and love him.

Is it as sad? no angry as when you get home and find the walls have been turned into an easel. Using a black marker-pen. On the week-end I tried painting over it all, quite succesfull I believe, and Rhy just had to help. Greg was a bit peeved, he was not allowed a paint-brush.

Next thing Rhys finds the tin of paint, and takes it up to his room, he painted his bedside cabinet from black to white. Quite a good job of it, no spilling, I guess he thought black sux, his old cabinet was white after all. I might think it is all about wishing to be home again, but it is just school. Stressful time for little people.

^Z

First Christmas in the UK

Boys are boys , the little and big boys play together.



It was cold, not hot for a change, still no snow yet, except the 'fake-snow-in-a-can' sprayed into the windows.



The first christmas in the UK was not bad at all, we had to suddenly rush out and buy a camp table for the extra guests, and loaned some chairs from the folk who live 2 doors down. The boys had tonnes of pressies, so nothing missing there.


Garry standing guard over the debris field after the dinner.

Assault on my inteligence

Intelligence? The 'may contain nuts' label is more insidious than initially thought.

When asked for a passkey or unlock code to GRAW, it wants it all in upper-case....? it is all uppercase, and if my keyboard has not got capslock, go get stuffed. I wish everyone would treat us all fairly, and stop nannying us. Go easy, but at least treat lowercaser as upper in a key that cannot have lower-case letters anyway?

Bleeegh!