Shedding

For some time now Melodie has wanted more outside storage.

The current outhouse is an 3 foot by 8 foot converted outside toilet. Due to its age (built 1884) this building is no longer watertight and is generally disintegrating at an alarming rate. One day soon it will have to be demolished. That day has not yet arrived, instead we purchased a plastic shed.

Unfortunately the only viable place for the new shed was next to the old one, this required removing a six foot section of flower bed complete with ivy, bamboo and an old sink.

Last Saturday I completed this removal and lay a concrete base ready to take the new shed. You would not think such a small area (2.8m square) would require so much material and effort to concrete over. 300Kg of 3:2:1 aggregate:sand:cement concrete mix went into the hole along with 100Kg of instant set concrete (for a rapid surface in the changable weather).

Thursday afternoon Geoff (my nice helpful neighbour) offered to assist me in the assembly of the shed. I re-arranged my work schedule (yay home working) and after three hours the shed was assembled.

This morning it occurred to me that my webcam had recorded a time-lapse movie of the construction. I uploaded it to YouTube and present it here for your amusement.

It is a bit breezy

The weather has been a bit odd round here for a while now. The snow storms in December and early January were a mild inconvenience for me but as I work from home the advice not to travel was not too much of a problem.

It seems however that now February is here and the snow is gone we are in for some pretty strong storms. This actually affected me today when my neighbours garden wall was blown over!

As you can see my nice new IP camera captured the event, well OK the frame before and after but you get the idea. Unfortunately for my neighbour the wall collapsed onto his pickup causing extensive damage.

A short time later when my weather station was recording gusts well over 50mph nearby drains started flowing the wrong way and it became a case of water, water everywhere!

It seems that when the new buildings were erected a few years ago that the architect while maximising used space on the building plot may have inadvertently created something of a wind tunnel.

The Gap between our properties is on a parallel (north to south) to the valley below. The wind seems to travel along the crest of the valley and be funnelled through any spaces between the houses. Fortunately the rest of the properties on green lane are pretty old and the spacing between is very generous and the funnelling effect is minimal.

I wonder if we could fit a wind turbine in there? Alas it was too much for my secondary anemometer which is now smashed in three parts.

Also gaining access to the gable end wall of my property has become somewhat perilous (Hence the wonky APT antenna I cannot get fixed). Yes that really is a guy balancing on a ladder 10m high in a strong wind. And indeed the platform the ladder is resting on is built from scaffolding board wedged between the houses.

I guess the hospital emergency room being 300m away means medical assistance is on hand, even so he is braver than I am. So my weather satellite imagery will just have to come from the internet like everyone else's for a while.

New Video Camera

Last week they boys were playing with their remote control car in the snow (which was fun) and Alex wanted to record what his car saw. I immediately dissuaded him from the idea that he can use the family's DV camcorder taped to his car!

Later on that day though I saw a rocket project on LMR which used a micro camera and suggested such cameras were available from ebay very cheaply. I did a quick search and ordered on from a UK seller at £15 plus £2.99 pnp and thought no more of it.

This afternoon the camera arrived and it really is tiny and Alex is already scheming of ways to use it in addition to attaching it to his RC car.

The video output is low quality (very blurry in low light) and I have yet to figure out how to disable the time stamp (which is wrong) but it does indeed record video to the storage and can download it via USB and played using VLC.

So if you want a tiny video camera (and an 8Gig micro SD card) which is so cheap you do not care if it gets broken, I can recommend these.

Mobile Telecommunication Luddite

Actually I can not really be called a Luddite because I am not really against telecommunication progress nor do I fear it will negatively effect my employment...but the title sounded good? ;-)

Anyhow, I have a strange relationship with mobile phones. My ability to have a functioning device has historically limited their usefulness to me.

Because of my low usage and odd attitude for a techie I have always used PAYG for my personal phone. Work may have provided me with a device with a contract for being on-call etc. but in general its been PAYG all the way. My first phone was a Nokia 1610 back in the late nineties, second user after my employer at the time contract upgraded and had a load of "leftovers". I paid 50quid for it and bought a ten quid SIM and ten pounds credit.

The standing joke among my friends for the next decade has been that whatever provider I moved to they would go out of business within the year. I went through about eight providers in ten years. And for the first six the same tenner credit went with me! Each time the PAYG provider folded etc. I would be moved on to someone new with a tenners credit and a new SIM and number.

After Easy Mobile closed they did not have an option of a new provider with credit and the "recommended" provider was very poor, so this time I shopped around and went with Tesco mobile but remembered to take my number, which did at least stop my colleagues making fun of me for another move.

During this period my phones were no better than my providers. I bought a Nokia 1100 and used other peoples leftovers. Culminating in Daniel Silverstone taking pity on me and giving me his Sony Ericsson K800 at the end of his contract, despite acquiring an ADP1 and a G1 (both have which have dropped dead) this is the phone I have been using for three years now.

Due to my dreadful relationship I did not get the most from the technology and felt like I was missing out. Over the last few years to try and address this I have set myself a target of having a phone physically with me, turned on and in credit at all times. This I have finally managed for a whole six month stretch and as a reward I have bought myself a nice Android based smartphone on contract with T-Mobile.

I have done all the administrative things to port the number so no-one will need to alter their address books :-)

After only a few days of usage I have already discovered why the combination of smart phone and decent contract are so appealing. The freedom to just call and text and use the internet wherever you are without stopping to worry if you have enough credit is a wonderful thing. And decent hardware with the guarantee that if it breaks all I have to do is go into the store and they give me a new one.

I went for the HTC Wildfire instead of the Desire on cost grounds (100 pounds up front instead of 290) which seems perfectly reasonable hardware performance wise. My one and only niggle is T-mobile have nobbled the media player so it only plays some mp3s and not oggs or flacs. No real challenge, just a bit disappointing that vendurs seem to think they need to fiddle.

Keeping kindling dry

I, along with a great number of people I know, now posses a 3rd generation Kindle. It seems Amazon have found a feature set and price point which makes this device a winning solution.

I did look at a huge number of alternatives like the Sony PRS600 and others but they were all more expensive than the £110 for the Kindle and did not have enough features to make a compelling argument for spending more.

Yes it has DRM. Yes it "only" supports PDF, MOBI and mp3. Yes it will not win any style or usability awards. But I went into this eyes open the device is "good enough".

The device lets me read books from a reasonable display. The integration with amazon.com is so seamless it poses a serious danger to my bank account. I should expand on that last point :-) Amazon have got the whole spending money for a book thing executed so well that you do not think twice about a couple of pounds here and there, this soon adds up. I have set myself a rigid budget.

My main complaints are really just niggles:

• Another different USB connector! Wahh, I thought everyone had agreed on mini USB? seems that I now have to have yet another lead for micro USB


• The commercial book selection is a bit limited and missing a surprising number of popular titles. Some of this appears to be the publishers and authors simply clinging to their old business model. I fear some of them might not survive and early indications are they are behaving like the music industry did...Guys you are selling an infinite good a scarcity model is going to fail!


• The price of some of the books is absurd...they are asking hardback prices for the electronic edition! Seriously? how on earth can that possibly be justified? I can see that a hardback book with its print run could cost £5 per physical item (going from hulu print on demand prices as a worst case) plus shipping and stocking fees. So how can you possibly justify charging the same price for a pile of bits where none of that applies? Also the pile of bits cannot be lent or sold, not impressed.


• eBook formatting is generally dreadful. I do not know who is mastering these books but they need to do a better job. If they tried to pull this in the physical editions they would get a seriously large number of returns.


• I still have to pay for whispernet delivery fees even though, because its the wi-fi model, I am providing the bandwidth myself. I can see that differentiating between 3G and wi-fi delivery is a bit hard for them though.

However my one and only real complaint with the offering as a whole is the astronomical asking price for the leather cover. The cover is currently 25% of the price of the kindle itself! (£30 cover £110 kindle) which is just silly. It is a pretty nice cover and the clever clip attachment means it does offer an integrated solution to protecting your kindle, but not £30 nice.

So my lovely wife (her kindle was bought with the cover) made me a sock for mine. This is great for casual round the house usage to stop me scuffing the screen but was a bit lightweight for protecting the kindle when out and about.

One day last week I had an idea. I would make my own protective cover by crafting something I had wanted to do for ages. And the (unoriginal I am sure) project of a hollowed out book for housing my kindle was implemented.

A quick Google later and I had a set of plausible instructions to follow. I used possibly the most out of date book ever (published 1981) on electronic test equipment, partly because it was a ex library sell off book which cost 10pence back in 1995 but mainly because it was the right size to just enclose the kindle without adding to much size.

I learnt a couple of things doing this:

• Do not let your pva (white) glue mix get too runny, you want it fluid enough to be easily absorbed but not watery - this is important because otherwise the paper absorbs too much water and crinkles
• Do not use a book where the binding has gone bad already and select a "clean" book. The spine of this book was yellowed and cracking before I started. This means the book spine simply cracks open at the hollowed out bit and it is very obvious.
• Work out where the "solid" part at the back is going to be and treat that separately so you get a nice solid base at the back of the hole. In mine its not all stuck together and is a bit wavy. Do be sure you left enough depth for the kindle though.
• Take your time and be careful with the glue, it is amazing how obvious even a simple splash of glue in the wrong place is. Use a small brush for this a paint brush is fast but sloppy.
• Measure carefully and cut only a few pages at a time, it takes a bit longer but looks much better. Also I did not drill the corners of my hole which means they are a little scruffy.
• Use the sharpest thinnest knife you can, this really helps. I started with a small stanley knife but switching to my hobby scalpel gave much better results.
• If you have some, use woodworking clamps to clamp a bit of timber (I had some offcuts of shelving) around the book to compress it while the glue dries. Do not clamp the spine if you can avoid it. This method ensures:
  1. Heavy things do not fall off the book while it dries.
  2. An even strong pressure is applied.
  3. The book does not warp or bend while the glue dries

All in all I kinda like the results and I think I will try again with a more modern book where the spine is not so broken to begin with.

Coming to terms

Yesterday was not a great day. One of the family's cats died.

Molly, for that was her name, came to us the week Melodie and I moved into our first house together. September 15th 2000, in the middle of the fuel protests which were raging at the time, we hired a van and moved in.

Most people would have considered that enough for one week! We happened to be in Halifax on the Sunday afternoon at the supermarket and decided to visit the RSPCA because somehow we decided what our new home needed was a cat.

On that day a decade ago we saw Molly and Lucy, a pair of cats who needed a new home as their previous owners had a baby who was allergic to them. I still recall them skulking at the back of their cage in the cattery, Lucy who was reluctant to come down of a perch to be petted and Molly looking generally unhappy. No-one else wanted this misfit pair because they were already both over 5 years old, the warden despairing of ever finding them a home.

Of course they were obviously the right animals for us! ;-) So by the end of the week we had taken them home. Molly immediately showed how things were going to be by shredding her way out of the RSPCA provided double walled cardboard carrier. To the day she died she detested being placed inside a carrier, funny that.

By the end of the year, when the snow came, the cats ruled the house and we were all happy together.

Little did we realise that soon in the summer of 2001 there would be another arrival to the family.

The arrival of our first child in June 2001 was a complete change in all our lives but we all managed to settle back into a routine. Although the banishment of the cats from upstairs remained a point of disagreement for a long time.

As Alex grew up the cats learned that feeding times for Alex could result in all manner of things falling from above. Soon Alex was mobile which resulted in different lessons on cats being sharp objects if not treated with respect. In February 2003 our family grew once more with the arrival of Joshua. The cats, now used to infants, took this in their stride.

While still about day to day the cats are not captured on camera so often form this point on.

Over the forthcoming months they ensured they were out of reach of the newborn and the precocious toddler.

By the time of Joshuas first birthday in 2004 Molly had taken to hiding "out of the way" as much as possible but remained as affectionate as ever.

As the children grew up and life progressed Molly became ever more at home and developed the odd aggravating trait like taking clean washing off airers and dragging it out the window, through the cat flap and upstairs so she could sleep on it!

She still enjoyed participating in claiming boxes and defending them vigorously though!

The kids took on the job of feeding the cats which made their bond closer ensuring they were greeted by happy cats sitting lookout as they came home from school each day.

Molly continued to be a good companion and an infuriating self centred animal like all good cats.

Then on Tuesday evening our Neighbour knocked on our front door. They gave us the news that one of our cats had been run over and taken to the Vet. I immediately went to the back door and called and shook the treat box.

Lucy came running, but molly did not. We rang the vets who confirmed they had molly (we had them electronically tagged back in Halifax) and that they advised we did not come and see her until they had chance to asses her and deal with the shock.

As the days progressed her prognosis improved and then sank. She had a broken jaw, broken teeth, a dislocated hip, extensive bruising and something was definitely wrong with her kidney function.

Thursday evening the whole family went to see her and she purred and seemed happy to see us, she looked as bad as I feared though and somehow I knew there and then that this was probably goodbye. The children stroked her and petted her for a while and we left with an odd sadness, oh and to the sound of molly trying to gouge the veterinary nurse.

Yesterday she was due to have surgery to fix her jaw and hip...Alas when she was anaesthetised and x-rayed once more it became evident the hip was not just dislocated but her femur was fractured and there was additional damage. So just after midday came the call to ask what we wanted to do. The vet could attempt the repairs but due to her age and the other complications it was probably futile. So with heavy heart we agreed the best thing was not to revive her and she died a short time later.

I shall miss her morning greetings, her demands for attention, her sleeping in odd places and her companionship. I keep calling for her at meal times forgetting she will never come. I think Lucy is upset too, after spending their lives together her friend is gone and I cannot explain that to her.

So that is the end of Molly, a good cat.

Compiling!

When I am writing software sometimes XKCD is accurate!

Alas I can only fully participate in that activity when the boys get home from school.

The rest of the time I have to make do with other distractions.

I am currently participating in a "higher" speed broadband trial (I already have a 50Mbit service). This appears to involve the drastic step of remotely reconfiguring my Cable Modem :-)

In the last week there has been the odd request from the trial organisers to test throughput using various website based testing applications. These applications seem completely unable to cope with these 50Mbit+ connections and the results are as unreliable as expected.

To address this the trial organisers asked us to time downloading of a gigabyte file from one of their servers. I was surprised to discover that it took over 350 seconds to download the example file giving a less than stellar 3Megabyte/second rate.

So I used some "compiling" time today to look at what was going on. Firstly I went looking for an iperf like tool for http. Turns out there isn't one which came as a bit of a surprise...oh well with a little help from my friends I came up with

curl -o /dev/null http://target.domain/1GB.bin 2>&1 | tr "\r" "\n" |awk '{print $12 }' >test1.dat

Which gets a file with a "Current transfer speed" for each second of the transfer. Well ok so lets do the transfer a few times and collect the output so we have a reasonable data set.

So we have a pile of numbers...not terribly useful, lets visualise them! to the gnuplot mobile!

We need a gnuplot script something like say this:

set terminal png nocrop enhanced font arial 8 size 1024,600 xffffff

set output 'xfer.png'

set style data linespoints

set title "1Gigabyte file transfer throughput"

set ylabel "Throughput in Kilobytes per second"

set y2label "Speed in Megabits per second"

set xlabel "Seconds of transfer"

set ytics 1024

set y2tics ("10" 1220, "20" 2441, "50" 6102, "100" 12204)

set grid noxtics y2tics

set yrange [0:13000]

set datafile missing "-"

plot 'test1.dat' using 1 title 'Test1', \

'test2.dat' using 1 title 'Test2', \

'test3.dat' using 1 title 'Test3'

Once run through gnuplot I extracted a lovely graph which shows a couple of things.

Mainly that even with a nice fat downstream you are unlikely to realise the maximum throughput very often even from a server on your ISP local network.

On the other hand I now have a way to examine throughput of downloads ;-)