| Music of the Naugties |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|01:18 pm] |
The decade is coming to an end in one month and 8 days and an apathetic wave of Noughties nostalgia seems to be sweeping over the country, a breath of relief after the tentative steps of a new millenium in which nothing broke (except the international banking system, respect for international law and modern socialism) if you will.
Musically I would describe the 00's as a bit of a low patch from my point of view, the first five years were almost entirely taken up with my Ph.D. , an activity involving the purchase of almost no new music and latterly i became 30 which I think pretty much disqualifies me from having a valid opinion on music, if I ever had one in the first place. Thie NME has just released their top 100 albums of the decade and it's time to compare notes.
( NME top 100 comparison ) |
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| Robot Chassis |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|11:24 pm] |
Whlie waiting for Hagen's thesis to print I did a little parametric design for my turtlebot chassis. It's done using GeoGebra. Stuff like the servo and battery dimensions are fixed but most of the other basic properties are variable or dependent thereon.
Now just need to figure out where to mount the brain and the lasers. |
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| Laptop stand |
[Sep. 18th, 2009|05:54 pm] |
I'm trying to get into the habit of working with my laptop at the right level and with keyboard and mouse at work as it seems to be better for my wrists/general state of "wellness".
A while ago I saw these guys selling laptop stands made of cardboard and many other people who had made them from scratch, so I decided to have a go at making my own. Some (100% recycled) laser jet paper boxes, a craft knife, parcel tape and about 1/2 an hour later I ended up with this:
The results turned out quite well if I say so myself (no religious connotations intended, it's just a very stable structure!). |
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| MP3 Player Restoration |
[May. 27th, 2009|02:18 am] |
Having stumbled through to my mid-twenties on a archaeic mix of personal music technologies such as "tapes", "minidiscs" and "listening to music through speakers in the privacy of my own home", about 5 years ago I got my first MP3 player. The play in question is a Cowon Iaudio X5 (which is very good by the way, especially with rockbox) but over time the battery has been dying and a year or so ago I managed to drop the mean time between intermittent failures on the disk to about 2 days by unceremoniously propelling it across the office in a cable-tripping-over incident. Instead of buying an iPod I decided to have a go at fixing it:
 
New battery (ebay) : £10.
32Gb CF card ( MyMemory) : £45 (it was on sale currently seems to be about £60).
CF- 1.8" Toshiba adaptor ( LinITX) : £10 .
  
Opened case, removed drive, de-soldered old battery, re-soldered new battery (make mental note, buy a new nib for soldering iron and some flux, curse EU for banning lead solder), reassemble.
  
Charge, test, play, woop. |
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| House letterbox |
[Mar. 27th, 2009|11:05 am] |
One of the most annoying things about our new house is the flapping letterbox, we are quite high up (175ft anyway) on a relatively exposed spot and the wind makes it flap continuously.
Fortunately I ordered a big box of Neodymium-Iron-Boron supermagnets a while ago from wondermagnet :
 .
I was able to affect a successful repair by supergluing two connecting magnets to the flap and the letterbox respectively:
Prompt snubbing of those people who claimed that owning 100 assorted supermagnets would never be of any use for anything. |
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| Plastering |
[Mar. 22nd, 2009|12:36 am] |
I do realise that decoration is very boring, but this will not stop me from inflicting my enthusiasm on you (and other people):
Dave the plasterer came and did a fantastic job on our fireplace :
There is something about taking a bag of powder and some water and making things which are not flat or solid-looking, flat and solid looking which I am unnaturally excited about. Either that or I've drunk too much tea (plasterers seem to drink a lot of tea). |
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| aspviz-3d |
[Mar. 18th, 2009|01:11 am] |
Last year Marina and I converted a few hours of frivolous time-wasting into a paper about visualsing answer set problems in 2D.
I've had a 3D block puzzle (which has belonged to the lab since I have been here) sat incomplete on my desk for the last couple of months and after a couple of hours of tinkering with the original visualisation code, I can now visualise problem solutions in 3D:
from
to:
Much joy; I no longer have 6 pieces of randomly shaped wood sat on my desk. Hoorah. |
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| Arabic |
[Mar. 13th, 2009|11:17 am] |
I have always liked learning languages, I suspect that this can be attributed to a subconscious feeling that being able to communicate with everybody will some how make the world a better place. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm has not always been met with an equal level of ability or study and so far (at 29 and three quarters), my efforts have led me to have smatterings of French, German, Russian and Spanish. I speak none fluently but by my reckoning I should be able to buy a train ticket, order a beer or have a brief conversation about the weather in the native language of about 20% of the worlds population (English included of course).
( and so on ) |
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| Eating out |
[Mar. 5th, 2009|12:24 am] |
I've just got back from dinner at Aqua on Walcot st., great place for a restaurant; in a converted (presumably methodist) church, high ceilings and all that, swanky modern decor, relaxed atmosphere, all good.
Shame that the service, food and wine were a bit crap really. There were about 15 people in the restaurant, being served by 4 waiters who managed to be both slow and, when prompted for service, rude. I had mussels which tasted of nothing and lacked the advertised crostone, and liver with a balsamic sauce which seemed to be lacking any ingredients other than balsamic vinegar, yeilding what I can only describe as pickled liver. Cost £30 inc 1/3 of a bottle of wine.
Tonight was the seventh time I've eaten out in the last nine days and it was probably the worst, which, considering that one of these places was at schipol airport, is saying something. |
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| Dinner |
[Feb. 25th, 2009|01:25 pm] |
Went to Lieve on Herengracht for dinner last night. Food was amazing and each of the (4) courses was accompanied by a specially selected beer(e47pp inc drinks). After that we did some more drinking, my head hates me. |
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| Lounge phase 2: dismantling |
[Feb. 2nd, 2009|12:55 pm] |
Lounge floor is still not finished, unfortunately replacement boards are not easy to come by with modern ones being either too thick or too thin and reclaimed ones being both expensive and out of stock at our local reclamation yard.
In an attempt to at least get something done this weekend I opted for removing the boxing on the side of the chimney breast in the lounge (this used to hold the water, gas and electricity for the old boiler of doom).
( Read more... ) |
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| Emmy the great |
[Jan. 20th, 2009|07:29 pm] |
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Are playing in bath on friday the 6th Feb, anybody want to come and see them? |
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| Lounge phase 1 |
[Jan. 11th, 2009|11:31 pm] |
First stage of lounge re-decoration is replacing/reinforcing some worm-eaten joists.
Needless to say this was not finished in the anticipated time frame (some confusion over the number of mm in an inch and how exactly to use a circular saw). On the plus side the lounge now looks a bit like a set for the crystal maze. |
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| Lounge in 3D |
[Jan. 6th, 2009|12:44 am] |
Instead of doing the things which I probably should have been doing this evening (see previous bathroom-related construction work), I've been making a 3D model of our lounge under the cover of "seeing what our floor might look like". It's probably fair to say that I have got a little carried away, in fact I suspect I passed that point when I started looking for my digital camera to capture realistic textures for our existing upholstery and obsessively re-measured all of our furniture.
Anyway the initial results are here:
There is also a walkthrough movie in the making, but, for the want of my own personal render farm that won't be ready till sometime tomorrow. |
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| DIY 101 |
[Jan. 4th, 2009|07:20 pm] |
Today we broke the first rule of DIY:
Do not, under any circumstances try and do more than one room at once.
The sealant around our bath was going a bit mouldy so we decided to replace it this turned out to be a bigger job than we'd originally estimated:
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| Science Museum |
[Dec. 11th, 2008|12:25 am] |
I was in London today to see off a friend who is going to Singapore for a few months. Shaking off the necessary hangover from last night, it was decided that a visit to the science museum would be a fitting thing to do.
Having read about it in the press I decided that we should go and see the Japan Car exhibit which alleges to provide an exploration of Japanese car design and its relation to the growing city. The exibit, it turns out, is a gross dissapointment (especially when you consider that it costs £8 to get in), consisting of a mixture of boring (the cars themselves) and a pile of pretentious and patronising design twaddle which fails to excite in any way.
Some small consolation comes in the fact that the exit to the exhibition hall leads you directly into the "Listening post" installation which, I think is one of the best examples of public art that I've ever seen. |
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| New central heating, in pictures |
[Sep. 23rd, 2008|01:02 pm] |
As anybody who has been following ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) 561's blog will know, we have had our central heating replaced over the last week. Mostly things have gone well except for the discovery of more exciting features of our house (cracks and woodworm).
( photos ) |
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