Today marks my final day working at Grangemouth refinery. Though I'm not entirely sure how true that statement is, considering we stopped refining oil earlier this year. I've been working on transitioning the site to an import oil terminal.
Lots of people have asked how I feel, and to be …
We've had our Ooni 3 pizza oven since 2018 - back when the company was still called "uuni" and before they completed their rebranding. We use it almost every week, running it on gas rather than wood pellets, and it's been brilliant. Well, mostly...
The problem is that strong winds we …
Running the West Highland Way has been on my bucket list for a while. I remember hearing about people running the route, 95 miles of tough terrain, and doing it continuously, in some cases in under 24 hours, and it blew my mind.
About 4 years ago I met a …
Many years ago now, I implemented a significant process control improvement around the top of a debutaniser column and this significantly improved overall control of the column.
The E101 debutaniser column is used to remove LPG and Fuel gas from a gasoline product. It is critical that the light …
There's something oddly beautiful about the way unexpected events line up. Take last Monday, when Storm Éowyn's electrical antics and a recent obsession with poi led to what can only be described as a serendipitous evening of not setting myself on fire.
For the uninitiated, poi is the art of …
I once declared I wouldn't do many ultra marathons. They're expensive, both in time and money. The race itself eats up an entire day, but it's the recovery that's the real killer. It is nearly a month after Glasgow to Edinburgh and I am still unable to train properly again …
On Saturday morning, at 6am, I started running. That is pretty normal for me. What was different this time was that I was starting from the Riverside Museum in Glasgow and was about to run 57 miles to Edinburgh.
I had entered the Glasgow to Edinburgh Ultramarathon organised by GB …
I remember when I first started university in Edinburgh. Many of the students from further afield made comments about how beautiful the city was. Having grown up in a town with similar architecture, it just looked normal to me.
I was blessed to live in such a beautiful place, yet …
This post is based on an event that occurred several years ago now, after I had become a control engineer but when I had been seconded back to an operations role during a shutdown.
Knowing the hierarchy of control is one thing but it is useless if we forget to …
The automation team at work have been running a weekly bakeoff challenge. Each week a different team member brings in a cake to share with the team, and this week was my turn. No pressure at all.
I'd been watching my colleagues produce some genuinely impressive creations over the previous …
Yesterday the RTC warriors provided pacers in celebration of Falkirk Parkrun's 12th birthday. We had pacers, runners aiming for a specific time at a steady effort, all the way from 20 minutes up to over 35 (I can't remember the exact number).
I was pacing the 21 minute slot and …
I forgot how much I enjoy going for a walk. Today when the rest of the family were out elsewhere, I went for a walk around the block. But while out I kept changing my route choice in favour of walking through woods and along streams, keeping away from roads …
On Sunday, 19th June 2022, I did something I had not done in about 13 years, I started a race. That is a proper race with entry fee and pining a number to my chest, rather than a parkrun.
The last time I did the seven hills race was …
My break from running lasted much longer than it should have for a number of reasons:
The truth is …
As a student I loved running and entered lots of races but, after graduation that pretty much stopped. My first job in a sugar factory was pretty exhausting. Lots of shifts, involving lots of time on my feet. When I had a rest day, I needed to rest. On top …
I am going to cover an incident from earlier in my carrier when I made a mistake that could have lead to a very significant accident and it was only luck that nobody got hurt in this case. The incident in question happened more than 10 years ago now, I …
A couple of months ago now I bought an electric car and, as a numbers person, I have been curious about how clean it is. Clean in this case referring to CO2 emissions1.
Before I go much further, I should declare that I still work for an oil refinery …
To be fair we had a pretty good run with minimal periods of having to isolate, but this weekend has been particularly painful. In the early hours of Friday one child developed a fever.
So instead of going into the office/school/nursery we were all together in the house …
I realise that 2 months have now passed since I last posted anything here. Unlike when I was posting every day, I've had plenty of ideas of things I want to write about. What I have not had is the energy or patience to sit down and write anything.
Initially …
Every time I leave my house heading for the hospital, I have to fight my instinct to turn right. If you could fly in a straight line, the yes, the hospital is directly right from my house and I am driving towards it. Unfortunately, that isn't the fastest way to …
Yesterday was one of those days that no mater what I touched, it seemed to break. Both personal life and at work, I had a couple of big things break on me that were a pain to fix. By lunch time I was at a stage where I didn't want …
Today is Groundhog Day. I can definitely relate to Phil Connors more this year than the last time I watched the film.
I have now lost count of the number of times I have driven to one of the government torcher testing centres. Tonight was probably the easiest one so far. Usually it is a big fight to insert the torcher device swab into their mouths, you get one chance, and then …
This Christmas has been weird to say the least. Yes it was disappointing that we could not spend more time with our extended families. Yes it would have been nice to actually have the large gatherings for Christmas dinner we are used to. Yes it would have been nice to …
Congratulations, the darkest day of 2020 is now behind us! There are still many long dark nights ahead, but we know we can deal with them.
After my recent post about moving beyond personal productivity, I picked up Scrum by Dr Jeff Sutherland. Scrum is a way of team working that is very different from waterfall, the way most companies traditionally work.
In a waterfall company, plans are made by the higher paid helpers. Before any …
Beer52 is a beer subscription service. Get 8 beers a month for £24. Of course, I didn’t want that, but they had an introductory offer to get the first month at the cost of shipping (£5.95) and the option to end the subscription after the first box.
What …
Over the last few years, I have been increasing the amount of reading I have been getting done. I have attempted to read 'at least one page' each day, though this is a minimum. Most days, I read at least a chapter or two. Sometimes more, but I can always …
Over the last couple of weeks I have been dusting off and attempting to update my CV and LinkedIn profile (for obvious reasons). One thing that is becoming obvious is that I am struggling to convey my multi-discipline background. I have experience and could equally work well as an operations …
I don’t know what is special about today, I thought these things were supposed to happen on a Friday, but it turns out that both me and my wife may be getting made redundant.
Up to 200 jobs likely to be axed at Grangemouth refinery site as pandemic bites …
Over the weekend I enjoyed a beer with my dinner as a form of celebrating the end of another set of night shifts. One of my kids asked what I was drinking, and I was looking for a description. What I initially wanted to say was:
Beer: A drink for …
As I write this, I am about to live through this hour again. Tonight the clocks go back and I am up ready for the 2am, to spring into action and change all the clocks around the house (the ones that don't change themselves) back to 1am.
No - I am …
I have a Honeywell TDC/TPS tag that needs to be deleted. The system will not let me delete it if the point is still active. I Inactive the tag from the point detail display, then go to the builder tools page and select delete system entity.
Unfortunately when I …
As I was writing my last post, my home server had started to die. An intermittent fault had developed that got worse over time. While none of my data was lost, I did have a lot of downtime until I built a new one. Unfortunately this meant that I could …
To say that this week was interesting would be an understatement. I had started the week worrying about overpaying for some Perspex for the windows of my shed. I had replaced two panes a few years ago. Between then and now, the price had more than doubled. I wonder what …
I have just sent the following email to the scottish members of IChemE. For any of you who are reading this and are also members, please do sign up. It would be good to have a some feedback.
The Scottish Members Group will be holding our Annual General Meeting (AGM …
I am not sure if it was telling my mum that the car was doing well and had no issues, or if it was that we had visited a bike shop earlier in the week, but my car decided it had had enough. The battery died. The car was working …
I was sorting through old paperwork today including lots of bank statements from my school and university days. Two things jumped out at me:
Changed times.
I am currently trying to work on a mini project that uses JavaScript. I have used JavaScript many times before but I never took the time to properly learn the language. A university course covered the basics, but it focused on chemical engineering problems. The course did not look at …
At the start of the year my ability to do push-ups was pretty pathetic. I had been enjoying doing a weekly circuits session at the company gym for over a year. I had noticed a improvement in most of the exercises. But not push-ups. I was happy to do any …
For the first time in a long time, I have managed to achieve Inbox Zero. Both my work and personal email accounts have empty inboxes.
To be clear: Inbox Zero is not simply archiving or deleting every email from your inbox. It would be easy to move all emails into …
On Saturday afternoon, as I was enjoying the sun in the back garden, I received an unexpected notification on my phone:
New Device MY-EMAIL just used a new device to access MY-PLEX-SERVER (TiVo)
I do not have a TiVo. Considering I was relaxing in the garden, I was surprised that …
I am building a small web app and wanted to include some alarms. I spent too long looking online for examples, yet couldn't find any that I liked.
I really wanted to use vanilla JavaScript AudioContex without any library. I also wanted to generate the audio alerts without an external …
Last year, I started a small side project. I spent a few hours looking at various JavaScript Frameworks before deciding which looked best to use. I then spend a couple of days worth of work building a proof of concept of my program.
The framework certainly helped at first, however …
So far, I have generally followed the Guardian and Observer style guide when it comes to numbers. That is, write out in full any number less than 10.
There are four lights
I recently found the GOV.UK style guide which advises writing the numeric for any number other than …
I have previously written about filters when talking about signals in control engineering. To avoid reacting to a noisy signal, you take the average over a period of time, to allow the noise to cancel itself out. The resulting trend is smoother and represents the real trend.
I noticed another …
Fire and rescue services promote the slogan 'Test it Tuesday' as a way to remind people that they should test their smoke alarms every week1. While most alarms state on them, and in the documentation, that they should be tested every week, most people don't. As a result of …
In an upset to my normal lockdown routine, I ended up going shopping tonight rather than earlier in the week. As a result, I was halfway around the shop when it was time for the weekly 'Clap for the NHS workers'. While there were a fair number of people clapping …
Today I am 33⅓ or 100/3.
My birthday is in the darkest part of December when people are rather busy with some other annual event. As a result, I haven't had a party to celebrate in many years now.
This year, I realised that I turn 33 ⅓, and …
Are there more people out walking and running or are we just more aware of those that are out?
I can't tell. I went for a cycle with one of the kids earlier and it certainly seemed busier than normal, but it is part of my normal commute. When traveling …
