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Emotions Wheel
Recently a friend posted on Facebook an image of a wheel style chart of feelings/emotions where the centre contained five basic emotions and the two outer rings expanded on those five emotions into more nuanced feelings. Even though it’s not necessarily an exhaustive list, I thought that the presentation was useful for developing a greater…
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Then and now – 37 years in electronics
In 1985 I completed the final year project for my electronic engineering degree. The project I chose was an ultrasonic level detector. Here is the introduction from my report which explains the use scenarios… Without getting too technical, the solution involved using a special purpose ultrasonic transceiver integrated circuit (LM1812 by National Semiconductor) surrounded by…
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Contemplating the power outage
Recently we experienced a severe storm that left the area without power, phone & internet. The water supply for the house that we occupy comes from a tank that collects rain water, and is fed to the house via an electric pump. So when the power is out we also don’t have any tap water…
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The case against having pets
Whoever came up with the idea of domesticating animals and turning them into pets had one of the worst ideas ever! My rant 😀 Ok, with that out of the way here are some thoughts around why keeping pets is not a good idea. They start out fairly personal and mostly opinion and progress to…
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Learning 3D – modelling & printing
A “real life” situation When learning something new, I find it very useful to have an actual application to which the learning applies. I had previously made a couple of attempts at learning 3D modelling using Blender but with essentially nothing to show for it, due to a few reasons, one of which was that…
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New job and an offering
Last March (2020) I started a new job. Since being made redundant in 2015 I have tried a few different things – starting a hypnotherapy business, freelancing, and doing traffic control. What this has led me to realise is that the place where I really belong (in an occupation sense) is in software development. Fortunately…
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Bedside Table Project
Creating a bedside table with an invisible wireless charging area.
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The Ossification of Sport
In the beginning a few people got together with a stick and a ball, or maybe just a ball or something else, to have some fun. Some of them tried to get the ball to one particular spot and the others tried to get it to a different spot. Some onlookers thought it was quite…
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On sex and gender identity
Exploring the difference between the two There appears to be a lot of confusion around the topic of sex, gender and gender identity. The terms get interchanged when they shouldn’t be which hinders a clear understanding of each term. Let’s lay it out starkly first and then delve into how these differ in one’s own…
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Relaxation
“How do you know how relaxed you are“? For the past while I’ve found myself asking that question, as well as a related question “Can I be even more relaxed than I am at the moment?“. Short of measuring certain chemicals in the body, or maybe even in spite of that, a person’s level of…
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Sailing in Thailand
Over the first two weeks of March we spent time sailing in the Andaman Sea and visiting some of the smaller islands there. Wave Dancer The yacht, Wave Dancer, is a James Wharram design which uses rope lashings based on ancient Polynesian boat design. It is a modified (lengthened) Tiki 30 model. A video of Wave…
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Yacht keel winch controller – Part 1
Quandary My friend came to me with an interesting problem… he was doing some work on his yacht and wanted to improve the mechanism for raising and lowering the keel. Mechanically the keel is controlled by an electric motor (essentially an old cordless drill) turning a drum that winds a cable attached to the keel.…