Latest posts

Parkrun Pacing

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 …

Going for a walk

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 …

Seven Hills of Edinburgh 2022

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 …

Running with the Warriors

My break from running lasted much longer than it should have for a number of reasons:

  • I was too proud of my old pace. I didn't want to "return to racing" so much slower than when I stopped.
  • I had forgotten what I enjoyed most about running.

The truth is …

Why I Stopped Running

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 …

How Clean is my Electric Car

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 …

Four Hours of Freedom

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 …

Blinked

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 …

Direct Vs Fastest

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 …

Stop Touching Things

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 …

Happy Groundhog Day

Today is Groundhog Day. I can definitely relate to Phil Connors more this year than the last time I watched the film.

Torturing/Testing Children

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 …

Not That Bad

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 …

The Darkest Day of 2020 is Now Behind Us

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.

Scrum

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 …

Review: DO NOT sign up to Beer52

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 …

Beyond Personal Productivity

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 …

Writing a Multidisciplined CV

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 …

Redundancy in the Air

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 …

A Definition of Beer

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 …

Changing Times

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 …

Inactive TDC tag won't Delete

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 …

Getting Started Again

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 …

Interesting Times

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 …

IChemE SMG AGM 2020

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 …

A Complex Operation

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 …

Past Interest

I was sorting through old paperwork today including lots of bank statements from my school and university days. Two things jumped out at me:

  • The overall balances were much smaller than they are today (no surprise there).
  • I received more interested then than I do now.

Changed times.

Learning Again from Scratch

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 …

Keep Pushing It

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 …

Inbox Zero

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 …

Plex Alert

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 …

Alarming Sounds

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 …

Doing it My Way

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 …

Changing my Style

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 …

Shift the Filter

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 …

Test it Tuesday is not Enough

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 …

Showing Your Support

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 …

33.333333333

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 …

More or Just More Aware

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 …

IChemE Scottish Members Group - What now?

The email below was sent to the members of the IChemE Scottish Members Group


Hi Everyone,

As you may be aware, the Scottish Members Group have cancelled two events and we have no future events currently scheduled. To rectify this, the committee are now trying to make some plans in …

Two Different Experiences

As we are nearing the end of our first week of lockdown, I notice that people will be having one of two very different experiences. Many people will be finding themselves with much more time on their hands. Perhaps they are unable to work or even if they can still …

A Different Type of Haircut

Last night I shaved off my winter beard. It has certainly been a noticeable difference, feeling the cool air on my skin as I walk about.

This morning, when I joined the kids at breakfast time, the older one asked 'Daddy, have you had a haircut?'. I tried to explain …

COVID-19 vs Disastrous Dinners

We1 have a couple of IChemE events planned for later this month, or rather had. Today we have postponed our Troubleshooting Distillation and Absorption Column Internals event that was scheduled to be held in Glasgow on the 19th. Many businesses are cancelling all but essential meetings and the presenter …

Getting Warmer

I had an interesting interaction with my son this morning. He offered me a pretend cup of tea, I took it, made a comment about how hot it was and put it aside to let it cool down. He then took the cup, blew on it and told me he …

Reflections of a Pause

I decided to stop posting daily and use the extra time to work on other things in the evening. I wanted to see the effect of changing how I use my limited resources of time and focus.

The first night was very successful. At the time when I would normally …

Pressing Pause

Towards the tail end of last year I spent a number of days considering how I spend my time and asking if I am truly getting value for it. For example, I don't spend time watching the news or any other TV shows. I do go to a gym class …

Synchronising Wants and Commitments

There are times when I want to do all sorts of extra activities, write about this, program something to do that or fix some other thing. Sometimes these activities are based on the computer others are physical tasks around the house or garden.

Unfortunately of late, I have found that …

Not so Different

On Tuesday night I bemoaned that I was unable to borrow my wifes brompton fold up bike because it has been out of service for several months. One nut had fallen off and we had never gotten round to getting it fixed. For some reason I had gotten it into …

Cooking with Science

Last night, the IChemE Scottish Members Group hosted a Cooking with Science workshop. Our presenter, Kostas, has hosted this kind of workshop at a few of the local science festivals.

The event was hosted in one of the classrooms at the University of Edinburgh; I believe that the last time …

Life Without Two Wheels

I am attending an event at n Edinburgh tonight, a fair distance from the city centre. In the past when going to this venue, I would take a train, with my wife's Brompton, then cycle the rest of the way out.

Unfortunately my wife's Brompton is out of service just …