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>> 2008/5/10 <<
| root@theedgeofsanity> init 6 please wait ... |
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| Yet another excessivly long time without an update :(. I`d like to sort this site out, but never seem to have the time. My main problem at the moment is that I have a new job developing and building wind turbines. This means putting in a 9 hour day and, because the job is far away, a 3 hour commute (assuming everything is on time). I`m moving closer to work in a month`s time, but untill then, I have absolutely no time for anything not completely essential. I will get back to this site, though. I had such grand plans for it.... |
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| In the process of implementing version controll for my software efforts (both at work and at home). I`m using Subversion on a SuSE Linux server (in both cases). Looks like a _very_ good idea, even though I`m the only person working on these things. One interesting thought: I`m listening to some of Eight`s music ( http://www.eightland.com/music.php ) and the thought occurred that if musicians and other artists used version control, then they could continually fiddle with a piece of music (or whatever) and people could still get the old versions, if they preferred. Hook it up to a web interface which records a histogram of the revisions` popularity and you have an instant poll of whither or not people like the changes. Perhaps. Er, back to work, methinks. |
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| Perhaps I should stop thinking of this log as having huge gaps and more of it having a monthly update schedule. Aquired at the weekend three sturdy looking green painted steel shelves, which someone had discarded as refuse. If I can find a couple of big timber uprights to mount them on, they`re going to make a big control panel (like the one at the bottom of this page: http://www.hcc.mnscu.edu/programs/dept/chem/abomb/page_id_31406.html ). It really is quite interesting to watch, as a pile of "rubbish" which someone has put out gets smaller and smaller towards the day the binmen come round. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! |
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| Bah. Another huge gap. I really hate it when I don`t get to do at least something. That and it`s high time I finished some of the things I`ve started. On the plus side, I was visiting my parents at the weekend and retrieved some old Hornby railway set power supplies. Two are just 240-12 volt transformers with three tappings, a rectifier and an output polarity switch. The big one though is a "Hornby 900 power control"! This is rated at 25 VA total, with 15Vac, 12Vdc and 0-12V variable output dc. Should be very handy for any number of bits and bobs. Goodness knows what it must have been worth all those years ago... I know we could only afford it second hand. Actually, my biggest problem is that I live in a flat, so I have to be carefull about blowing the electric supply, RF tat and chemical leaks. If I had a tower on a hill, or a secret underground layer, none of this would be an issue..... I did add http://theedgeofsanity.com/data/misc/country_codes to the data section. This is a table of country codes in ISO2, ISO3 and CIA World Fact Book (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/) format, along with the country`s name. I wanted it to link to the CIAWFB from a database of components, depending on the nationality of the component`s manufacturer (trivial to do, but looks sooooo powerfull!). |
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| Hee-hee! Had a bit of an incident today. I snagged ten neon bulbs, and some extra resistors and unpolarised capacitors on the way home from work, so I could try some neon bulb circuitry (there`s some interesting ideas at http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/ and I`ve been meaning to try and make some flip flops or a memory plane or something for some time). I got a nice little oscillator going: DON`T TRY THIS AT HOME! VERY DANGEROUS CIRCUIT, MADE BY ALLEGED PROFESSIONAL!
This oscillated quite happily at about what seemed to be 4 cycles per second. I then had the "brilliant" idea of trying to bung in an 8ohm speaker, to see if I could get an audio tone. So, with the circuit live, I started prodding around with the connector of the speaker in a pair of isolating pliers. Somehow, I managed to switch into a mindset more suited to silly little transistor amps and thought "ooh! The resistors are like the collector resistors in a common emitter amplifier! That`s where the output comes from!". So I put my 8 ohm speaker across one of the resistors. There was an almighty BANG! and a flash of blue light as about 28 ampares ran through one of the neon bulbs, then the whole thing went dead. I think the rectifiers may be feeling a bit under the weather..... It did oscillate, though. Interesting aside: Due, presumably, to the enormous 100cps ripple in the D.C., the oscillation tended to run for a few cycles, then pulse, run for a few cycles, pulse, etc. When viewed side on, so that the two bulbs were /almost/ behind each other, it looked not unlike a candle. Some variant on this circuit might possibly be usefull for a theatrical effect. I wonder if the pulses were actually the oscillator running and the rapid flicker the supply ripple, given that RC = 0.66 seconds. WARNING: Working off the mains is very dangerous. Always use an isolating transformer. Do as I say, not as I do. |
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| Right. I am now in my new flat and ready to start back at the old projects: COCKROFT-WALTON SET Due to my trying to be a cleverclogs and make this in two parts that could be variously connected to provide positive, negative, centre tapped or double current outputs, I`ve not actually got past soldering one of the two stacks together. Getting the base made is top priority, as I can then run at least the stack I`ve got. TESLA COIL It`s still sitting around. Making the main condenser is proving to be a particularly boring task, but I`m loathe to make shortcuts and risk putting together something worse than it has to be. I also need a neon sign transformer. ELECTROLYTIC CELLS FOR OFFSHORE WINDTURBINES I`m reactivating this. It served very poorly in University as a final year project and I`m determined to go after it again. In fact, it`ll be getting its own section on this website. Electrochemical etching can be lumped in here, as it uses much of the same kit. The following need designed and built: Three or more electrolytic cells, all identical 100 ohm lightbulb ballast Resistance decade box (0-2,000ohms) Flying spot galvanometer There`s also a few odds and sods to buy (resistors, rectifiers, etc.) I recently came into possetion of the innards of an big, old drum vacuum cleaner. This amounts to what I assume is some sort of induction motor (or perhaps a universal or something), attached to a centrifugal blower. I`m hoping that I might be able to run it backwards as an alternator. Having a portable source of variable frequency A.C. would be just the thing for any number of experiments. |
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WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! ADSL, baby, YEAH! |
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| Moving into my new flat on the 16th. I hope to get back to the Cockroft Walton set soon thereafter. I`m also looking at building an audio hetrodyne to convert bat calls down to the range of human ears, but one thing at a time... |
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| Just a quick note to keep the page updated. My threat of redundancy has been lifted, but now I need to find a new flat. I`ve got plans for building all sorts of stuff, but there`s no point until I`ve sorted my self out. I`ll get back to this site as soon as possible. |
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| Well, the transit of Venus was a complete disaster. I was all ready with a pair of pinhole cameras (with optional lens) and it turned out to be one of the cloudiest days I have ever seen in these parts. I would have sworn that there were faint tendrils of /fog/ in the streets. Indeed, the cloud has only just cleared up today. Fortunatly, there are a few more transits due over the coming years: TRANSITS OF MERCURY: Wed Nov 8th 2006 9pm GMT Mon May 9th 2016 3pm GMT Mon Nov 11th 2019 3pm GMT TRANSITS OF VENUS: Jun 6th 2012 1am GMT Dec 11th 2117 3am GMT Dec 8th 2125 3pm GMT I`m tempted to organise a holiday around the 2006 & 2012 transits, perhaps go somewhere more likely to have clear skys. It would literally be the holiday of a lifetime... I think I`ll get a couple of lenses and look for Lunar outgassings (Aristarchus was always my preferred location for a Lunar base, just on the offchance) or perhaps sunspots. |
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| No updates for now. Lots on my plate at the moment (like getting made redundant & looking for a new job). Things round here will prolly pick up a bit early next month. The Cocroft-Walton set is still sitting on my windowsill, waiting for me to have the time to finish the soldering. |
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| Working on this site. This here logviewer thingy is suffering a bit because the server isn`t honouring the php functions for checking if a file exists. The result is that IE spits up an uggly missing graphic thing (gecko based browsers seem happy to just leave a gap). Must talk to my provider about it. On a happier note, the log now supports text hyperlinks, thanks to some code by "toxic79_spam at yahoo dot com", down the bottom of http://www.php.net/preg_replace Some colated information on the projects I am undertaking is in the pipeline. This log will still form the core of my records, but it will be handy to have some more focused ramblings as well. Much to do.... |
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| Well, the day`s run out and I think I`ve knocked a fortnight off my lifespan with all the lead fumes, but my Cocroft-Walton stack is half complete. I bought 75 100V 100MFD axial electrolytics, which were the biggest still stocked by Tait`s. Higher voltage electrolytics would have been much better, since most of the work is in soldering the 100V ones together. Luckily, my 1N4007 rectifiers` leads are just long enough to bridge between every third capacitor in the stacks, whilst still maintaining their triangular arrangement (good for structural reasons). I intend 12 stages (a lot for a C-W set), which should give out somewhere between 2.5 to 3 kilovolts when fed with 240V. |
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| Bah. Another huge gap in this log. Have added a few files to the /data section, including a new /data/mathematical subdirectory, complete with a bunch of things I typed up (yes, on an old mechanical typewriter!) while an undergraduate. Today, however, was a minor victory. I cleaned the local Maplin`s out of 100V 2.2MFD electrolytics (the wusses were out of anything with a higher voltage rating) and spent the afternoon soldering together a bipolar Cocroft-Walton set with four stages on each side, fed from a resistor ballasted transformer giving about 100V input on load. I could draw small sparks from it fairly well, but it could do with a big fat output L section RL filter, given the C-W set`s hyperbolic voltage drop under load. Rectifiers were 1N4007 and condensers 2.2 microfarad radial electrolytics. Load was a couple of close spaced wires taped to an old ceyene pepper jar. Only about 800V out, but as a practice run, most satisfactory. I will have to order some big HT capacitors from Tait`s and feed a stack or three from a motor generator set (to provide a higher input frequency). A friend of mine has offered the motor out of her now kaputt industrial sized vacuum cleaner, so now I just need an alternator. Perhaps I should think of a use for these things before I build them?.... nah! |
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| Bought a pair of surplus British Army pocket dosimeters and as charger off ebay. They are of the mineature electroscope pattern and seem to be in good order. They have a full scale deflection of 500 centigrays, which is a lot: the UKAEA calls an investigation if a worker takes 5 centigrays. The trick with these devices was (as far as I can tell) to carry two, one of about 500 centigrays FSD and one of about 200. Either way, these constitute my first ever atomic instrumentation and will come in very handy when visiting waste stores, piles, etc. and if I ever get round to building a Farnsworth reactor. |
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| New section: "/projects/relay_logic". This is intended to hold such relay circuits as I dream up. Not all are tested, none are guaranteed, as usual. To start it off, there are three designs for relay based flip-flops. A relay circuit to impersonate a uniselector is on its way. |
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| Ugh. Things are moving far too slowly. I now have the electrics for the etching bath done (complete with a moving coil meter to monitor the battery's EMF, as a simple discharge monitor). I forgot to buy salt and I need to find a plastic bucket or something for the cell. Some sort of workpiece would be handy, too. |
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| 6V sealed lead acid battery and matching charger (For electrochemical etching) procured. |
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| Good grief, that was close! TEOS`s host servers took a tumble yesterday and corrupted their discs so badly that they had to be rolled back to the last backup: the 2nd of November. Thankfully, I had started my own backup scheme several hours before, thus just squeaking in by the skin of my teeth. Even though I lost no data, it brings home the importance of backups. When I go into work on Monday, I may actually kick up a fuss about how much of our data is stored un-backed-up on peoples' workstations. Built today: a "Beige Box" to turn a phone into a linesman's handset (my old one having come apart at the seams) and a dohicky to jack a 9V battery across the lines of a phone (disconnect a house's incoming line, add the battery and you can use the downstream extentions in the house as a rudimentary intercom - remember to put at least one phone into the master socket to catch incoming calls). Would have been very handy to have whilst pulling cables the other weekend. Beware: the polarity shouldn't matter, but some cheap phones aren't up to standard and won't like a backwards voltage. If it isn't working, swap the polarity. (Usual internet disclamer, I am not responsible for anything going wrong with this. I hereby officially advise anyone reading this not to actually carry it out and expect it to have A: not worked and B: caused armageddon). Actually, I did it away from any phonelines, in a standalone scheme, so there was no issue of accidentally getting it connected to the GPO equipment. |
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| Great improvements in my ability to use kedit to update these pages. I am now in a position to update merely with a text editor, rather than having to maintain a set of mirror directories on my workstation and FTP the changes by hand. KDE is so kewl... All I now require to do is craft a script which will periodically backup teos onto one of my home boxen and I'm set. |
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| It has come to my attention (and about time too), that these logs are at the best sporadically updated and, at the worst, not updated at all. A further point is that the logs are generally updated on a log-per-day basis, which is to say that there are a limited number of instances upon which the logs are updated simultaneously. Thus, it seems sensible to coalesce them into a single log. The originals shall be retained, as an exercise in the prevention of bit-rot, although it is realised that nobody bar the author ever reads them (my Dad excepted, on account of the fact that more has been covered between us by means of Mr. Bell's apparatus than by ASCII exchange over the medium upon which this very document is intended to be circulated!) Therefore, there shall be but one log from this moment on, baring substantial circumstance to the contrary. I should, at this moment, also make some manner of excuse for the extreme paucity of postings in the last few weeks. This has in part been due to my social appointments, but to a larger part due to my inability advance my understanding of the mathematics of power systems analyses (and concomitant embarrassment). This was the main thrust upon which these writings were to be based, but has proved more of a bugbear than I had anticipated. My hat is off to professor Lo of the University of Strathclyde: he _really_ knows his stuff. If I could grasp even a fragment of his portion of the Postgraduate course, then I might consider myself a competant engineer on that basis alone.... Some small improvements to this site have been achieved. The spacionautics section has been drastically enhanced by the addition of the concept of working in "Clarkes" as a measure of length. Although this length measure is almost as arbitrary as any other, I feel that it brings out the important point of not trusting to SI units to sort everything out. Frequently, the best approach is to define a system of units for the problem at hand ("per unit" to power engineers, "normalisation" to mathematicians), rather than become bogged down in convertion factors or constants of proportionality. Actually, I feel cheated by every orbital mechanics text I have read. It was a feeling of revelation to suddenly realise that the constant of proportionality in Kepler's second law bears the same units as the universal constant of gravitation multiplied by the masses involved and is, on close inspection, essentially mu of the orbited body (I here simplify, in order to allow the student of orbital mechanics to discover the exact whichness of the why for themselves - a most valuable educational experience in and of itself, although I am at a loss as to how the student is to stumble upon the revelation themselves, short of years of frustration, as was my lot). Indeed, an understanding of this constant of proportionality allows the immediate and convenient use of a table of squares against cubes, as presented in the spacionautical section. This table is immediately applicable to any orbital mechanics problem, as it is in normalised units (ie an orbital radius of unity corresponds to an orbital period of unity). |
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