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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
I was asked to join some others on a site visit today to look at an upcoming job. As a control engineer, it is very rare that I have to ware overalls and do site visits, most of my time is at my desk, in the control room or in …
In the past I have commented that I have limited a lot of my general consumption. I have mostly stopped using social media and after a week when our TV broke, I noticed that I didn't miss anything and have not watched much since then [ref] With the exception of …
One of the problems with trying to improve is that you don’t know what you don’t know. I don’t have any solution to this problem (if you do have a solution, please let me know). But there are sometimes clues, occasions when you realise that there is …
You have probably heard the quip
You only live once
It is usually used as an excuse to justify doing something that is unwise.
On a podcast today, I heard a brilliant response:
No. You only die once. You live every day.
Recently, with the Queensferry Bridge being closed there has been a lot of people getting stuck in their vehicles longer than normal. Even people who would normally go nowhere near the bridge are getting feeling disruption because all the bridge traffic is now clogging up their normal route. Then there …
I looked up the physical properties of sugar to answer a question, and while I was reading, I noticed the LD50 value.
LD50 or Lethal Dose 50 is the dosage required to deliver a 50% chance of death. Obviously we have limited data on this for most substances, it is …
I attended a training session today on compressors, turbines and how they are controlled. It was specifically looking at the advanced control schemes used to avoid surge, while maintaining smooth operation and maximising the operating range of the machines.
While the specifics of the algorithms used were interesting, it was …
I have had a couple of occasions over the last few days when I have been left to my own thoughts, able to think freely without distraction for a prolonged period of time. During these occasions, I thought of lots it things that I want to write down, long flowing …
I have just caught myself trying to come up with excuses for not doing a job, looking for alternative "better" tasks to do instead. The thing is that the task wasn't that hard or unpleasant. I spent longer looking for a alternative than if I had just done the task …
Despite the forecast of Storm Ciara, we decided to risk it and go on an expedition today. This was not us being cleaver, only cheap. Denise had a spare train ticket that was about to expire. So we ventured into the city to make the most of the day.
While …
The best way to find out if you really understand something is to explain it to someone else. I haven't found any other test that is as rigorous and certain to uncover the truth.
I was reminded of this today. I knew that I wasn't completely up to speed with …
