Journal
[2010/03/02 10:19 am]Yesterday I spend some time delving into sync.
( This is long, and probably boring )[2010/01/24 10:42 pm]
The first stage in a project to build an interface between my Ford Focus' steering column radio controls and my Kenwood stereo, which lacks a wired remote interface but does support infrared.
The control stalk turned out to be a simple array of switches attached to a resistor network, meaning that it appears as a different impedance depending on which switch is pressed.
The stalk is connected to one of the Arduino's analogue input pins via a simple voltage divider.
[2009/10/22 11:14 pm]
As if playing with radios or computers on their own weren't geeky enough activities, I've just finished rigging up an interface to allow one of my computers to tune my radio.
[2009/08/19 5:12 pm]
A while back I took a fancy to getting myself a new wristwatch. A particular Seiko pilot's watch caught my eye, and the lovely
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
ljquin kindly decided to buy for me as an anniversary present.[2009/08/18 8:33 am]
Over the weekend months and months of planning and discussion came to fruition in the form of the sixth of the Ayacon series of conventions which started in 1998, of which this is my second time working as a committee member (although in 2005 my role was mostly 'in name only' as I was on honeymoon the weekend of the event)
Seeing ~1200 people (many of the sporting absolutely fantastic costumes) take over the University of Warwick conferences facilities and have themselves a great time was heartwarming.
Our guests and event organisers provided us with a wonderful programme, and the Warwick conference and technical staff were more than we could have asked for in providing all the assistance we needed.
Needless to say I'm now sore an exhausted, but overall very pleased with the way the weekend went.
[2009/07/24 10:56 pm]
My exercise in breathing new life into old hardware has taken another couple of steps forward - the first being the arrival of some drive belts for my Amstrad 3" floppy drives from PCW enthusiast John King, the second being the resurrection of my external 3.5" drive (the voltage regulator which provided a 5v supply for this had apparently gotten fried at some point, fortunately I had a suitable PSU with which to replace it).
The latter, and the fortune of having one other computer left in the household with a floppy drive gives me a means of data transfer to and from the machine.
[2009/06/28 12:07 am]
Spend most of today catching up on the housework - a bit dull and domestic but fairly unavoidable, and had a nice meal in town with Laura (marred slightly by a bit of a headache which had been creeping up on me all afternoon).
Inspired by seeing the film we've finally made our minds up and booked tickets for Ten Years of ATP this December, which from the (likely to expand) line-up that's been announced so far is looking like it will be a cracking weekend.
[2009/06/25 10:06 pm]
Had an evening that was in different parts fun and eventful.
The eventful part came before the evening had really started - whilst driving to the train station we had another car run into the back of ours at a roundabout with a very attention-grabbing bang. Fortunately the damage seems to be limited to some small scrapes on the bumper.
A blissfully uneventful train journey to Edinburgh brings us to the fun part of the evening - A screening of the 'All Tommorow's Parties" film. Pulling together material from a staggering number of contributors (ranging from professional DV to mobile phone video and super-8 film) the filmmakers presented a musical montage of the festivals ten year history offering a glimpse of both the on-screen performances and the off-screen character of the festival. Not quite as good as actually being there, but a reasonable second.
[2009/06/23 12:17 pm]
Something I've been doing for the last few months and haven't written about yet is that I'm now a volunteer staff member on the freenode IRC network.
I've been participating in freenode as a user for many years, out of all the IRC networks I use it is the one I am the most active on.
During 2008 I started to take a bit more of an interest in the network outside of my usual haunts, and as well as joining a few social channels I started helping out in the general support channel, #freenode - answering the odd question where I could.
In February network head honcho Christel approached me and asked if I had any interest in coming on board as a staff member.
The months since then have been quite interesting as I've gotten to grips with the technical side (from my experience running an IRC server as part of the backnet and imaginarynet projects I knew a bit about what goes on 'behind the curtain', but freenode is on a completely different scale from that exercise) and gotten to know the staff team - who I've found to be friendly, professional yet fun to work with - and the wide and diverse freenode community. The work has ranged from the day-to-day technical stuff to liaising with users groups and helping mediate where there have been problems.
[2009/06/23 7:45 am]
Had the 1-year on check on my hip yesterday.
Overall it looks encouraging - the X-rays didn't show any sign of serious deterioration. There's a suggestion of a flat spot on the top of the ball which the consultant reckoned might be a tiny bit of dead bone, but not enough to cause concern.
He doesn't reckon there is much they can do about the discomfort I get from it, about the only option he could offer would be having the metalwork extracted which wouldn't offer any guarantee of making things better (and, being quite intrusive, could possible make things worse, not to mention the inherent infection risk). As It has not gotten perceptibly worse in the last year we agreed that I'd just keep an eye on it and if I felt the pain was getting worse I'll go back and talk to them again.
Nice to have that bit of worry off my mind, at any rate.