Man Cold

Why is it that guys get it sooo bad? I mean, it's not just a cold, it's the blocked ears, sinus and general need for sympathy. I remember getting ill when I was still single - man those were suicide days. But it is great to have the missus look after you now. I would say it speeds up the recovery, but in reality, it's getting some rest, vitamins, some pain medication and keeping warm that does the job.

I am trying to formulate a theory on how stress leeches vital minerals and electrolytes until you feel bad, and actually become susceptible to the bug. I am just curious, because I am not in the habit of getting ill just as winter pulls in, I am a late-winter or spring catcher. And strangely (this is why I ask), it seems to always have a few days warning. Whatever the code says, man-colds suck!

Why Big Sux

I get a whole lot of e-mails telling me how big is better (if only e-mails were like texting)... anyway, bit only if there is any money in it, but when it comes to real service, big SUX.
Hotmail have done it again, not only is the vie to kill yahoo making miocrosoft punch-drunk, they now let advertisers put pop-ups into their sponsor adds! This sux and is really dragging the whole ecosystem down into the drain. I know it's free, but does it have to be 'ugly-betty' too?
/rant

How to add Search engine to FF

I wanted to do Google searches for a keyword + list of sites. Simple? Not really, so I will save myself the trouble of all the typing of something like:
DATASHEET NE555 site:datasheetcatalog.com
When all you want is NE555. Adding a new engine to the FF bar is simple, or you could spend 30 minutes to try finding a plug-in that does not do what you want.






Not scared of editing a bit of XML? Read on.

Find your firefox install folder, the default is C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins - you want the searchplugins sub-folder. Next make a copy of your fave engine file, I copied my google.xml file, and called the new one data.xml.
Open in a text-editor, and find the line:
<ShortName>Google</ShortName>
Give your 'engine' a name, (keep it short-ish) next go to the line:
<Description>Google Search</Description>
You can add a description, which I think gets used only in the properties to manage (add/remove) your engine. Next find the line:
<param name="q" value="{searchTerms}">
This is where the magic starts, and depends on which engine you copied, since other engines will not have a 'q' parameter for instance.

If you are lost now, use your engine to do a proper search, and then inspect the resulting location or URL to see which is the parameter is you actually want to modify.
To search only for datasheets I used this line
<Param name="q" value="DATASHEET {searchTerms}"/>
You could add a site or list of sites by adding the site:datasheetcatalog.com strings to your query.
The search-parameter tag might look a little strange to some of us who are new to XML, but you will notice the / slash in the closing, this is a space-saver telling an XML parser, that there is no 'closing' of this tag. If restarting FF does not give you a new engine, try double-click on your new file to open it in your browser, which should reveal what you broke.


Viola! (Fluit-fluit, my storie is uit.)

For those care-workers

Christmas 2007

Pretty good holiday 3 weeks, starting out just loafing (actually playing at being Santa's elves) and I must admit, this year, the Kid K-NEX was a bit overkill, too many small parts to go missing all over again; I would have done better getting the LEGO with a boat that goes in the bath or something similar. Unwrapping pressies was great, Rhys wants to help, and wants to play with whatever Gregory gets, like his kitchen-set. Greg wants to be a Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsey fan because he is always happy playing with the pots, pans and playing at making tea-parties. Then came Xmas down at Ross& Carron, we played Jenga for hours, I enjoyed videoing the towers collapsing. (Click below for pics)

Santa2007

Lastly some fun over at Alex and Mirek, along with little Sophie, whom Rhys actually enjoyed entertaining, which was unusual, since Rhys like to just control the play, and he kept her happy chatting and tickling away nicely. Just goes to show, the little people are sensitive and go through phases all the time.

Scotland : Last leg of the holiday, we extended this one a little over, since it is 600+ kilometers, and 7 hours of driving and stopping along the way so 2 days away was warranted. Left on new-years, but our return on 4-Jan was not nice on account the snow in Scotland. We stayed in Perth, at a little B&B, photo of the contact-card is in the web-album linked above. Caroline and Alistair run Albert Villa, it is one of about 8 B&Bs all packed closely a few blocks from the high street.

Satnav : Crashed again 3 times in total over the holiday, and I am beginning to get a idea that it is related to the bluetooth pod, or to navigating away from the intended route or something. Have to write a support mail to navman. Still the device saved the holiday, with at least 3 long trips into the no-where, and relying on it pretty much to save me the 30 minutes preparation-time normally needed for every journey, just long enough for me to write this posting up I suppose.

Electronics: Ordered some parts from RSH electronics, prototyped the amplifier circuit with a TBA820M amplifier, and the boys played with it like a mini PA. As usual, Rhys Giving the orders.

Merry Xmas

Just wanted to say that for £199 this baby was worth it.

92 km to Kent and then back again in terrible weather one day and bad jam the next definitely saved the arguing about who is driving or holding the map in the right way. Off to oxford to visit Alex and Mirek and little Sophie. Stuart and Liz are comming up, and they are leaving their woofits at home for the day this time.

Navman/satnav works!

Happy Birthday Rowan

Right day, wrong photo :-) Loves you lots Rhys Gregory and Conrad.

Foolery, sir.

"Foolery. sir, Does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere" Shakespeare Twelfth Night.

Well, we had the Plumtrees' around for curry yesterday evening. Their charge Daniel, managed to stay awake till around 10pm, which was a the latest our critters have ever been up, and so you can imagine we were happy that Gregory was the first to rise at 7.30 this morning. Since Claire was visitingand it was Rowan's birthday, I made most of the brekkie, which did not depart in the slightest from the curry in the evening in terms of calorie-count. Too much supper, and too much birthday-cake by lunch-time is a recipe for a midday nap.

The shutdown week

Been burning my way to this week for some time now - wheeee last week of work for the year!

Henk and Christa poste a pic of their little Hunno, and once again I get google mail addbars for things back home. This one was really good (requires venacular) http://www.onsdorp.com/joe.html I mean sometimes all you want to do is escape, really escape from a life that seems like a prison with all the modcons, visiting rights, TV, time out for good behaviour. but still prison. They say being paranois can keep you alive; but the stress leeches things from your chemistry over time, and it becomes hard toappreciate the gems like this one photo, which is not of an alien, but is Gregory, really close - something we spend a lot of time doing in fact. It is upside down,

but he does not care. Am I wanting too much, am I missing some pieces of this map? I want the best I can for them, anything so long as I am sane at the end of it all. Perhaps to fall in love is the answer; and I must say there are many distractions that one can follow - but which one will immerse the seeker? I think 2008 will be a good year to find out, until then we will enjoy the winter and all the good things that a holiday season brings.

Sex sells the box

Why do people put a sexy elf on the cover? To sell the box, but even if the game inside sux! ...will it still sell? Apparently it does. I tried out the demos for Spellforce and Spellforce2 (2006), it was easy enough to find and download, and immediately you discover that they come out with a swathe of expansions for extra play, the review ratings averaged around 6 and 7, which meant it was "worth a look, but do not expect anything". The graphics are good, and sound+voices are up to par, and if you had the patience to play through totally linear storylines and non-interactive combat, it would be fine. But I do not. I give it a 4. Basically because it suffers from something a lot of RPG types do, the magic-users are powerful, and die easily, but because it is impossible to pause the game, it is not feasible to swap spells an target properly. (See: Dungeon-Siege 2 from a recent post, which does this very well).

Whoohoo Photoshopping, well in this case picture-publisher.

I am ill this weekend. Having fun with the web cam taking photos of the room, and then giving them an electric effect. Not great, throat is sore - and I am lacking sleep as a result, (from playing spellforce demos more likely) my inbox is starting to flood over a little with Christmas cheer, and the Christmas cards are starting to come and go.

Rhys got very inventive, and has decorated the plain generic cards we sent out to friend in the village-school with some hand-drawn on-the-fly art. It looks more like noughts and crosses, but on closer inspection, the x's are kisses, and the noughts are hugs. I am astounded by the creativity displayed here. I am always wondering, what was I going at that age? The toys of today are so much advanced, the boys have slippers that flash at you when you walk or jump. I never had that, the world has so many more things that go roar, blink, giggle and squeak. I mean a laughing-toy for red-nose day is a disposable SIC with a simple motion-detector based on a loose spring inside a copper tube so it touches the tube when shook. When the battery dies, you turf it out (It costs £4 for batteries, and the toy is only £1). Oh back to the boys, Rhys made hand-prints the other day. All on his own - all prompted when he discovered a old foot-print made by Gregory at daycare back in Johannesburg. Rhys colored in his chalk-board, then wet the board with some paper-towel to make a blue wash. Next step, is two hands on board, then 2 hands on paper. Pretty good results actually. Clean-up was not a mission either, although mom had to mop the floor latter on because they carried on playing with the chalk.

Greg is very chatty when he wants to be, and can make up stories about how and why things are quite quickly. I have a few black T-shirts, with logos on them of course, so I ask Greg, what the TShirt says, and his answer? "Black shirt with letters" of course, how silly of me to not translate the Microsoft Logo like that. Rowan is working a day-shift at the local care-home, which works pretty well for us. It is not far, pays the minimum wage, but flexible. Rowan fits in night shifts normally Tuesday night, so I take the boys to school the next morning, and Greg spends a little longer the next day at the playgroup (called the rosary) Rhys only finishes school after 3:00, so it is a long enough day for mom to get some sleep in. I need sleep too.

I still feel a bit out of things in general. I think that's the winter depression, living with short daylight, the happy vitamins in your blood stop coming from the sun.

Transistor is 60

Article : http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9829403-7.html. Wow, and I thought I was getting old. Technology does move a-pace. And to think that a semiconductor used to have at least 5 pins before. Today so much is easier though the cleverness of those who went before, although their "invent" is not really lost and covered over by everyone who appreciates the detail.
Go on, have you hugged a tranie today?
Hey, bring that sheep back!

How to wrap your presents when you own a Cat.

This applies to having children of <>
1) Clear large space on table for wrapping present.
2) Go to wardrobe and collect bag in which present is contained, and close door.
3) Open door and remove cat from wardrobe.
4) Go to cupboard and retrieve rolls of wrapping paper.
5) Go back and remove cat from cupboard.
6) Go to drawer and collect transparent sticky tape, ribbon, scissors, labels, ect.
7) Lay out present and wrapping materials on the table to enable wrapping strategy to be formed.
8) Go back to drawer to get string, remove cat that has been in the drawer since the last visit and collect string.
9) Remove present from bag.
10) Remove cat from bag.
11) Open box and check present.
12) Remove cat from box, replace present.
13) Cut paper to size, trying to keep a straight cutting line.
14) Throw away first sheet as cat tried to chase scissors and tore the paper.
15) Place present on cut-to-size paper.
16) Lift up the edges of the paper to seal the present, wondering why edges now don't reach.
17) Find cat between present and paper. Remove cat and retry.
18) Place object on paper, to hold in place while cutting transparent sticky tape.
19) Spend next 20 mins carefully trying to remove transparent tape from cat with pair of nail scissors.
20) Look for ribbon. Chase cat down hall and retrieve ribbon.
21) Try to wrap present with ribbon in a two directional turn.
22) Re roll up ribbon and remove paper that is now torn, due to cat chasing ribbon.
23) Repeat steps 13 to 22 until down to last sheet of paper.
24) Retrieve old cardboard box you know is right size for last sheet of paper.
25) Put in present and tie down with string.
26) Remove string, open box, remove cat.
27) Retrieve discarded sheets of wrapping paper, feed cat and retire to lockable room for last attempt, making certain you are ALONE and the door is locked.
28) At the time of handing over the present, smile sweetly at the receiver's face, as they try and hide their contempt at being handed such a badly wrapped present.
29) Swear to yourself that next year you will get the store to wrap the darn thing for you.

Next time you get a badly wrapped present, remember it could be from a cat owner !!!

Retro gaming again

Unfortunately nothing out at the moment seems to come up to the standard of BG and IWD forRPG gamers wanting a system closely alligned to 3rd edition classes and skills. And amongst others I am replaying my selection of games I managed to keep after the relocation; to numb the brain.

Picked up on a guide to playing System Shock, which I missed out on in my youth, if this works, I will be hunting for a box-set to put on my shelf.

On the serious side I am also having some continued requests for my modbus simulator, and it is about time I found a minute or 2 of time to turn this program into a money-spinner or even a job-spinner? Anyways it needs a serious re-coding/re-fractoring. And it just sounds like hours of work with no reward? Well how do you set a goal and reward for a project with no real reward? Make up a reward of course, and this reward to myself will be a domain-name. Still got to think what it will be, either to host this 'orrible blog or to host my programming+code? Well, the best planned ventures with achievable goals are most likely to succeed are they not!

Next I need some coffee!

Little Girl Lost

It is easy to point fingers at a parent who looses a child, well if you do not have your own that is. When a little girl well known by now went missing, I just shrank inside of myself thinking, that could be me, what if my boys crossed a street and were killed, the grief would be the same, but the self-recrimination would still surpass the publics' ire.
My very first question when the news broke was, "Who leaves a child alone in a foreign country? "The answer is probably lots of people who are not like you and me, and I suspect lots of the people at that fateful dinner party amongst them. I really feel they have paid for their mistake now, and only wonder how long does the pain go on, for the rest of your life? The future for Madelaine is very grim and dark, but there is no more chance of redress now than of getting struck by lightening at this point. Can we just bury this child now, I think we have all learned our lesson.
Conrad is not a happy person right now over all this news, if I pick up a paper I need to take an anti-depressant too.
I am wondering if the government (nanny-state) know how to look after their children anymore. They tell parents that you may not strike your child, should teach British values to them, and skip out the bit about going and getting married in a church. We are event told what kind of light-bulbs to put in with a real display of having lost grip when 25 million children's details are leaked through the mail.

The last one to be in a position to criticize UK government, I was surprised by the resignation of the HMRC chief. Similar to the Northern Rock CEO resignation case, the captain should never be allowed off the ship before the water covers her decks totally. I believe the UK govt it-self is not at fault, but rather the mentality on the ground needs bolstering. The child-benefit data (our boys birthdays are out there now too) is like a customer database, most companies guard theirs with their lives, since it's their revenue stream. The silly paranoid stuff about bank details being given, come on gentlemen, do we know how valuable this data is on the street? Even encrypted this data is usable regardless of it taking 5 years to decrypt, because that is when it will be most valuable to fraudsters who want to pose as our sons and daughters and phish and defraud them just as they start out in new jobs. To then spam and attack them through all manner of means when they are gullible and have money of their own to be robbed of. At least re-issue the NI numbers at no cost? Staff at child-benefit unfortunately have been lulled into thinking that children are not customers, but rather a burden on the taxpayer, so scarring off future claimants is not necessarily an evil thing if it lightens the load on the war-chest. Rubbish!, Lets all pull our fingers from our arses, smell the aroma, and then get back to the work at hand instead of staying stuck on a missing girl who, even though we still cry for her, is really lost to us all.

Thanks mom

I suppose I need a thanks-dad post, he also deserves one, and why it is important to spel wel is another. My mom, Julia Beatrice Kretchmer ('nee Walton) was born in the UK, that's important, because it currently makes me immediately eligible for citizenship. Something that was not "fully" the situation when I came to the UK almost 2 years ago. To apply involves proving model citizenship, something that will probably take a while, but untill the time is right, we will move forwards; things like buying a home are next in line if possible. My mum was born in Shropshire, I've been there once, it's probably a bit prettier than Cambridge, but memory tends to do that to anything when you are on holiday bouncing around. So, thanks mum, because according to immigration law, applicants probably need to be Here, for about 3 years to take up the option, and be able to provide references. It's not a simple or cheap process, but much faster than staying and working for 8 years. And in reality, buying a home is probably out of the question until then.

My help-meet (doormat) tells me I write about grumpy things, but it's my diary. And years from now I will say it's my diary, so chew on that! I cannot understand how destructive the boys are lately, not a week goes by and something is damaged. They get spoken to, and they spread flour about next week. The week after it will be crayoning the floor, the future destruction is unpredictable. My mum was patient, very patient; but she never lost her hair. Thanks mum.

Electronics
Still hacking about, I am amazed that I remember so much, and am building small IC circuits, using trannies again, and now am hungry for more parts to project/bread-board. I've got quite a bit of vero, but have not "committed" much to it yet. The nice thing is the old parts are still very much available, and new things like the CIC (circuit in chip) make to possible to build sound-effect generators for toys for instance, with pretty much 1 semiconductor only. Right now I am building a traffic-light toy. It's not exactly 1/32 scale at all, since this one is a prototype, and I am still working out a way to make it robust enough for kids to play with.
TODO: attach photies :-)

Cyclometer resolved

It seems to have taken hours, in fact I think it's more like 800ms. That's the reaction time on the cyclometer CPU. Definitely no good for timing the green robot (traffic-light!) with. So that's working properly now. Downside it I have to install it on the front wheel of a kid's bike, on account the wheel gap is too great, so I am changing my mounting-strategy a bit to compensate. I would really have loved to have seen some installed photos. I work better with real pictures.

First Ice
First frosty windshield morning, it dropped to 2 degrees last night, so I guess the shade and wind off the fens was just enough to ice it lightly :-). The clocks roll forward soon, at lease that will stay the darkness in the mornings, and give us one 'slow' monday morning. I love the fact that most mornings I can sit in bed for 15 minutes and chat with my lover, or if the boys are 'arisen', talk and play-fight a bit.

Am I unlucky or what?

Sent on tokens for my free cyclometer from Kelloggs. It arrived (even amid the postal strike) but is the most pathetic freebie I have ever seen.
step 1: mount it (simple enough), having fun... measure wheel
step 2: enter setup menu by holding down all 3 buttons for 2 seconds.
$%^&^%$

that is as far as I can get. Are 50% of these things broken? So far I can get the diameter setup screen if I am super-patient, after that it wants to set miles/km. but it never ever goes out of that screen. I figure the buttons are either just crappy build, or my home is built over an ancestral burial ground, and some ghosties are mucking with the cyclometer. I believe Kelloggs dropped the ball. Have to call them on monday to see if is is returnable/swappable or what.

Snoekie (.pl Snoekie Pookie)

'n troetelnaam. (trans. afr. "Term of endearment"), much like sweetie pie, are totally orthogonal to things like babe or hottie, which are plain and simply not in the same class of describing 'who wears the pants?'
Why have a love-name? Primarily as a way to say, hey we are a 'item' or more correctly a team. My helper Rowan is a lot more than just the one who provides the big and little-men with hot supper, and the ironed shirts. The woman in your life is a very important connection to the goings on of the real world if you find yourself in the artificial environment of an office. Special white-noise is pumped in, the air gets dried out so your respiratory problems act-up, some idiot forces you to 'sit' in front of a machine with a million tiny lights in it. All blinking away demanding your attention. this is not natural, but I digress. "Love dove" means, I loves you. It is not something to call someone when frustrated at not finding anything, or when the mood is low.

Love-dove will be around for a long time (I hope) and although sometimes it looks like I do not care enough, I do worry enough, trust-me.

Social bookmarking #2

I might just be giving it all away, but this morning I had a brainwave. which means that a one-in-a-million event (brainwave happens to travel the universe, happens to have flightpath near to the conrad, brainwave actually strikes me in the cranium - makes it through my thick skull... at this point it all becomes quite futile really. It's probably been thought of already

So here is my idea.
Map-books with a built-in compass; to make them work in a car, it uses a gyro-compass to defeat the electric and magnetic fields in your car's faraday-cage. Well there you have it, if you like some details, just leave a note below :-)

Satnav Bliss

There are few things in this lifetime that cause more conflict than map-reading. I believe it has something to do with caveman mentality. Caveman is out hunting, now this is usually something non-stressful, like fishing could be. But now we are fishing not all alone, but competing; so you get the picture - all these wild drivers on the road, competing for position. some of them are there fishing for fun- on a sunday afternoon drive. But I'm competing! I've got someplace to be, and my navigator is continuously twisting the tatty pages of the map-book about like you do when you are testing to see if a compass still points true-north if you spin around quickly.

Now that gives me an idea for a quick invention, but more on that latter... so we got a satnav. It makes the peace, because when you go wrong, or it goes wrong,you blame the digital box, not your best friend. It is possible to laugh at the funny voice, and even turn the volume down so that the annoying litany can be safely ignored until you decide you really are lost. Overall I was not impressed with the NAVMAN F50. It came with bluetooth, which paired with my phone on the second attempt (The first time I was still fussing with my phone), and just worked, doing all bluetooth/handsfree things without fuss. But the satnav still has bugs, and you discover these on day 1 as well.
After setting up the 5-mile drive home,I followed the prompts, until it showed a quick left-right turn that did not exist in real life. Strange, the road was planned, but the folk who build the new housing estate 10 years ago never put that road in. They were supposed to, and that was not the only issue. On day 2 I typed in a postcode, the unit simply responded with 'no reachable route' and refused to give any directions at all, even though I was 80 miles away, and the navigation error was to the order of a mile or less. Notwithstanding the monument I wanted to reach was a popular POI on a main road... Let's see what happens.