Reboot in The Conversation

/

I really like The Conversation. It's driven by content produced by academics from around the world and it provides a good read on a huge variety of subjects. Occasionally they ask me to write bits and bobs for them. I've just written something about what happens when you reboot your computer, and why you have to do it. You can find the text here. 

If you want to hear me talking about reboots, and telling one of my favourite jokes in all the world, you can find me on the Conversation Anthill podcast here. 

And, just to prove that I'm a complete media mogul, you can find a printed version of the article in the i newspaper today too. 

Of Smoke Alarms and Amazon Reviews

/

Smoke alarm with free advice to would-be artists

During recent household decorating shenanigans we lost our Smoke Alarm. So I bought a replacement, what with not wanting to wake up dead one night. The new smoke alarm is probably very good at detecting fire. It's definitely very good at detecting steam. It went nuts after I'd had my shower, much to my annoyance. It's in exactly the same spot as its predecessor, which was no problem at all. 

A quick search of the Amazon reviews found that yes, this model is known for steam powered false alarms. Incidentally, the reviews for smoke alarms were an interesting read.  There were lots of reviews mentioning how small and neat the alarms were, how quickly they were delivered, but hardly any along the lines of "If it hadn't gone off that night when the bread maker started to smoulder we'd all have died in our beds...."

However, the good news is that a proper search of the area turned up the original (and a lot newer looking than I remember) alarm which has been fitted with batteries and is now working a treat. At least I think it is. 

Cosmic Catch and Coup at Simon's

/

If I'd kept it in the package it might be worth a fortune. But then I wouldn't have had a chance to play with it.....

Simon was kind enough to invite us round to a BBQ at his house today. We played Cosmic Catch and Coup. I bought a Cosmic Catch ball quite a while back. It's a bit hard to get hold of now. The ball comes with six coloured tags that players wear on their hands. Then you can play games which involve the ball telling you which way to throw it next. Great fun. After a few go's at that, and some great BBQ food for me the action switched to indoors and some very intense games of Coup.

Coup is awesome. The great thing about Coup is that it doesn't matter what cards you have. The only thing that really matters is what you say they are. Although actually for me it did matter a few times, so I ended up beaten in every game. But number one wife, who started the game with the happy advantage that nobody thought she would claim to have cards she didn't, manage to win twice. 

Many thanks to Simon and his family for organising such a lovely event. 

Beamish is Wonderful

/

We'd never been to Beamish before. People had told us that it's great. Turns out they were wrong. 

It's awesome. 

It's history meets Disney in a wonderful way. Think of something on the scale of a theme park, but with a strong historical strand running all the way through. It has themed areas, rapid transit all around and helpful and enthusiastic staff everywhere. Plus you learn stuff. 

We didn't quite see it at its best, what with the weather and all, but we saw enough to make us want to go back there. 

Thanks for the Trombone Tom

/

I've no idea who Tom is. But he has been reading my blog from 12 years ago. He noticed my lament that I'd failed to find any hits for the search "trombone playing dog" and responded with a link.  Thanks for that. Made my day. 

In fact, things have really moved on. I've just done my own search for "trombone playing dog" and found loads of hits. Such is progress. All we need now is world peace and a cure for cancer.

Birthday Moth Hunt

/

Saturday, and it's my birthday. And I'm up town with an unfamiliar lens. It happens. 

Anhyoo, the weather is rather nice and I decide to seek out a few moths. The "Moth for Amy" art initiative celebrates Hull lass Amy Johnson who flew a Gypsy Moth plane all the way to Australia, the first female to do this.

There are lots of moths scattered around the Hull area, including a "Stealth Moth" almost directly underneath my office window at the university campus. I've no idea which moth this is to be honest, but it looks lovely. And it was a nice test for my lens. 

Here's another one.  What with the photography, the cake and the presents I had a rather awesome day. Which was very nice. 

Light Musings

/

So, I'm having lunch in the library cafe at the university (a most excellent place) and I happen to glance at the ceiling. And it confuses me. I looked at the arrangement of the lights and it seems that the person laying the black trunking to the light fittings has done things in a sub-optimal way. It seems to me that if the "cross piece" was one section further to the right, the wiring could have been a bit shorter and there would have been no need for the connections running across to the near and the far lights. 

If you see what I mean. 

Anyhoo, I pondered this for a while and came up with two possible explanations:

  • the fittings were originally put in the wrong place and then fixed.
  • Somebody decided that it was artistically more valid if there was a "fork" of cables. 

Personally, I really hope its the "artistically valid" explanation. 

Bags of Wires

/

One of the inarguable facts of life is that if you throw away a particular cable you will, within minutes, have a need for exactly that type of connection. We're doing some industrial strength tidying up at the moment, and I've been sorting wires into bags. A number of categories, mains cables, power supplies, network cables, video cables and USB cables. It's actually been quite therapeutic. It's nice to have imposed some order on what was a whole bunch of tangled chaos. 

Graduation Fun and Games

/

I've been helping with graduation ceremonies for a while as a Graduands Marshall. Each year I try to take a picture of the audience. This is the effort for 2016. I've used a very wide angle lens to get everyone in. The results are a bit dark (sorry, there is not a lot of light in the hall), but you should be able to find yourself. You can click through the image above to find a larger one on Flickr and go exploring.

This was my final graduation ceremony as a member of staff of the university, and I'm very pleased to have been given the chance to do it. It's a matter of great personal pride to me that for a long time  I've been the first person to present to prospective students on the Open Day and the last person to present to them at their graduation ceremony. 

...and we're back

/

Well, that was fun.

We've just come back from a couple of weeks in Chicago. Lovely city. Pictures and discourse will follow over the next few weeks I'm sure. If you really want to see my holiday snaps (and why would you not?) they can be found here. More will be added over time.

It was most interesting to be abroad after the Brexit result. The universal reaction to our admission that we were English was "Oh. I'm sorry about that.".

By the end of the holiday we were telling people we were from Sweden.

German Floppy Discs

/

It's interesting how some things can acquire a life of their own. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a little item for The Conversation about the way that floppy disks are still in use in nuclear missile silos, among other places. One thing led to another, and since then I've been on BBC 5 Live taling about the issue, had the item printed in The i paper and there's now a German translation out there too. Great stuff. 

3D Printing at Cottingham WI

/

I've done talks at Cottingham WI before. Great fun. I was invited back again this year and, rather than talk computes I thought I'd take along the 3D printer and print some cheese.

The printer behaved herself impeccably. I love the way that I can throw my Ultimaker into a blue IKEA bag, take her somewhere and have her just work. Anyhoo, everyone was fascinated. Best question of the evening: "Why is it called a 3D printer?"I really don't know. You can't really call it a printer as it does't print as such. It makes things. I quite like the name "fabricator", but the world seems to have decided its a printer. So that's that. 

Thanks for inviting me and being a great audience folks. And I got to judge the chocolate brownie competition, which entailed sampling every one. Which was lovely.

There's always a catch in it...

/

One of the reasons why I like writing software is that I always find doing things in the "real world" much harder. Simple tasks can take on a life of their own. Take our kitchen door lock for example. We're doing some painting, which involved removing the handle. When I tried to put it back together I discovered that the catch mechanism had completely collapsed. Of course, I only found this out once I'd closed the door and then couldn't open it, which required some fancy shenanigans just to get the door back open. 

Once I'd isolated the broken part I was very pleased to find that I can get a new lock mechanism from ScrewFix for just 79 pence. I was somewhat less pleased to find that this replacement was a tiny bit too big for the hole in the door, so I had to spend a fiver on a smaller one. Which it turned out didn't fit either. I think our house was built in a time when the inch was slightly smaller than it is now. 

Anyhoo, the proper way to make the lock fit would have been to reach into my toolkit and produce a shiny, sharp chisel of exactly the right size and cut out the excess wood. Of course, that's not going to happen in my house, so I ended up using an electric drill to just enlarge the edges of the hole until it was big enough. We now have a door with a handle that works, having done only around three times as much work as I thought I'd have to....