I have a program at work that generates some slides to display on various screens around the site. The program is a bit of a hack and bodge but it mostly works. I have set up a pretty good error handling system and regularly check it to see if anything …
Today was the LUCS1 Canal Fun Day in Linlithgow. There was lots of stalls and boat rides and one of the main events is the annual cardboard boat race.
It was fun to watch what parts I could between the crowds, though there was also a bit of nostalgia …
Today we spent the day doing nothing. At least nothing I would consider answering "what did you do at the weekend?" with. We did make it as far as Tesco, but that was the only excursion.
It was partially nice to spend time as a family together rather than galavanting …
One of the nice things about working in a blast resistant building is that none of the windows open. This means that the air conditioning is able to cool the air within the room without risking some bright spark opening a window"to help keep the place cool".
Unfortunately sometimes …
Earlier this week, I decided to install Plex on my home server after getting irritated that I couldn't watch anything on my media server easily.
My home server currently consists of nextcloud and subsonic. Over the years nextcloud has been getting used more and more with the many additional apps …
I have just finished reading an article about the challenges and opportunities of remote working, and I noticed that many of the bits of advice that the article provides to remote workers could equally be applied to those of us that work on the same site1.
In-person time is …
Earlier today I was attempting to make some changes to a Windows server in a secure way1. I fully accept that my knowledge in this area is not particularly strong and so I started looking for the information online. This was harder to do than I initially thought.
It …
I went for my first run since my early summer break today. I have been very poor with my running since leaving university and never gotten into a consistent training routine. The only thing I have been consistent with is that I take a break from running from some point …
I would like to take the opportunity to thank Abby Norman for her wonderful podcast series Let Me Google That.
Almost every day she picks a subject that interests her and does a five to 10 minute talk about it. These subjects can be on almost anything, the history of …
Last time we hosted a picnic party I failed to post that day, breaking my streak1.
Not today. Today I am posting no matter what!
I have previously written about alarms and following on from yesterday's post I want to write about stale alarms.
These are alarms that initially come in, but for some reason the operator cannot remove them. They are usually classed as stale if they have been on the alarm page continuously …
I have previously written about nuisance alarms particularly during shutdowns, but today I want to cover the fundamental questions of what an alarm is and what it is not.
The definition of an alarm is:
Alarm: An audible and/or visible means of indicating to the operator an equipment malfunction …
It is nice to know that when a safety concern is raised, it gets acted on quickly.
As part of the building works being carried out in our office, one corridor was blocked off with a wooden wall. As I was about to leave last night, I noted that two …
This is the 31st post I have made in as many days. One full month of posting something every day.
I am not sure how much longer I will be able to keep this up but in any case it has been a good run. I have managed to write …
As I wrote about last week, I am dyslexic and struggled to learn to read and write. The silliness of the English language is becoming more noticable now that my eldest son is starting to recognise letters. He is already able to recognise numbers1 and now we are trying …
Last night we tested out our new family tent. Previously we used a 4-man dome tent which worked well enough for two of us. It also was fine at EMF in 2016 when the weather was really hot, so we (two adults and a toddler) didn't mind hanging around outside …
These posts cover how dyslexia has, and continues to, influence my life.
Previously:
My performance at school started to improve once I started getting the targeted support. It also helped that in secondary school, classes were more interested in my knowledge …
These posts cover how dyslexia has, and continues to, influence my life.
Previously:
My previous post finished with the conundrum my primary school teacher had: They knew that I knew the answers but was not completing the school work on time. Most of my primary school …
These posts cover how dyslexia has, and continues to, influence my life.
I have been meaning to write these for some time but never quite managed to get the ideas out of my head and onto the screen before.
I am dyslexic and I really struggled at primary school. I …
For the last week, I have been a workplace nomad.
We were kicked out of our office. All of our stuff had been placed into storage boxes and I have had to live out of one laptop bag.
Initially I wasn't too bothered by the lack of proper desk. I …
I have decided to add comments back to this site. They were removed when I switched from wordpress to a static site generator (pelican) and I:
While I had considered writing a post on this theme, I had not intended to write it so soon after yesterday's post. What has made me change my mind is a post by Daniel Miessler stating:
If you aren’t reading at least one good book a quarter, you are …
I love to listen to podcasts, particularly when doing simple tasks. Podcasts allow me to learn new things and entertain me while I continue to get some things done. If I was getting my entertainment by TV, then I would have to sit still and be unproductive.
The key aspects …
If you are following using an RSS feed or look back at the dates published articles, you will notice that historically I have managed short bursts of relativity frequent blog posts, followed by long periods of silence.
Recently I have started trying to post something, anything, daily.
The main reason …
Within our plant, we use the PI as our main plant historian. We can access process history using PI datalink to import the data into excel. There was a situation last week where I was attempting to create a dashboard view of the process.
Unfortunatly one of the tags I …
I recently found out about a podcast that was started back in January 2013 called DisasterCast.
A podcast about scary things and how to stop them happening.
It is presented by Drew Rae who I recognised from his contributions to The Pod Delusion a podcast I was listening to …
At work, I have been asked to help look into why a web based tool has been having performance issues. I am on the team as an outside person without any direct involvement with the project so far. The suspicion is that it is a server configuration issue however those …
This afternoon I got a chance toplay with python again. I had been trying to do some analysis using Excel but I found that it was generally just getting in the way. What I thought should have been a simple tweak turned out to be a real pain.
Eventually …
This weekend, the office where I have worked for the last 6 years is getting split in two. Lots of engineers have been moved to new locations in other offices around the site and those of us who are remaining are getting squashed into a smaller area. The rest of …
My brother-in-law and his wife were visiting this weekend, mostly to see their nephews but they also wanted to see some of the local tourist attractions in the area which they hadn't yet visited.
It was an opportunity for us to spend time as a family and also go to …
At last week's party, one of the discussions lead to the power demand of your typical petrol station1. What would the power requirement of a typical station be, if the energy from the fuel were supplied by electricity?
This is assuming you have some form of local storage, such …
Once an engine attached to a train
Was afraid of a few drops of rain
It went into a tunnel
And squeaked through its funnel
And wouldn't come out again
The sad story of Henry, Rev. W. Awdry
The route I use to cycle to work goes under the motorway …
Today we had a school pupil shadowing our team, trying to work out what a carrier in chemical engineering would be like. Earlier in the week she spent time with developement and optimisation engineers but today it was the turn of the automation team to explain what control engineers do …
I remember a getting some advice from a lecturer when at university and thought I should save it here.
There are three Ss in life you should never pay for:
- Sex
- Stationery &
- Software
The stones a0t the bottom of our garden have now been replaced by grass.
So now we have more room for the kids to play on. And of course more to cut.
For a number of years now my preferred cycling bag has been a messenger bag but with clips built into it so it can be attached to a bicycle rack. I prefer this style over the traditional pannier bag style because it is more convenient to carry when you get …
Last weekend we hosted a BBQ picnic and had lots of friends over. It was a great day but I felt like I spent the whole time rushing about checking on folk and checking on the kids. I never really felt like I had a proper catch up with folk …
I have just had the uncomfortable experience of running into someone who I didn't recognize out of context. They clearly knew who I was (greeted me by name) but my brain just completely failed to make the connection.
I am used to not remembering people's names and having to work …
Yesterday I viewed a webinar on proof testing1 organised by IChemE.
The presentation was a good overview and went at a decent pace for following along but was too fast for me to take any decent notes.
Below is a quick writeup of what I took from the session …
I have had a few more comments made in the last few weeks about my waistcoat than usual. I believe it is because of someone has been wearing one in Russia. Perhaps it will reduce again now that England are out of the world cup.
I thought I would take …
I have finished listening to a podcast that consisted of an interview between two people.
The creator of the podcast decided to make full use of the stereo streams. The interviewer was asking the question in the left audio channel and the interviewee was in the right channel. This may …
Vanessa Sutherland was1 the Chair of the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) and delivered the fourth Trevor Kletz Memorial Lecture2 at the IChemE hazards conference.
I did not attend the lecture in person however the IChemE have put a video of the presentation online3.
[
That is when people worry about each other instead of what they are doing.
That was a quote from Sunday Stoic episode 71 (2018-07-08).
I had never thought of it that way before.
Thanks to Mary Miller and the Sunday Stoic.
This weekend has been pretty busy in our house. We had our 4th of July picnic (on the 7th) where we invite lots of friends over.
Normally we invite far more people than actually attend. This year we ended up with a record turnout and brilliant weather.
It was a …
Yesterday I watched the latest video from the Isaac Arthur Science and Futurism youtube channel on Colonizing Ceres.
I have been enjoying these videos recently which offer hard sci-fi without any (or very minimal) plot. They look at what would be possible in the future assuming known science and only …
I have not been particularly good recently at updating this site. I note that the last post was made nearly a year ago.
It is not as if nothing has happened in the meantime (my second son was born last October), but I have not managed to get any thoughts …
I have just finished listening to the Frekonomics episode when helping hurts and am staggered.
The episode talks about a large study, the Cambridge-Somerville study, into social interventions and attempts to reduce gang viollence.
This was as close to perfect study in terms of it being a long term, randomised …
It Hurts!
I would advise everyone avoid doing this.
So today I had a bit of a puzzling problem with my car which ultimately had a very mundane solution. It took me longer than it probably should have to find the answer and I didn't find an answer online with my brief search so I have decided to document …
I decided not to post this on the day of the incident but wait till more was known. There have been too many occasions where comments made in the immediate aftermath of an incident are ultimately unhelpful. A week has passed now and I feel that my comments are still …
