One Day Work Week
It may have been a Friday, but after two days off, it definitely felt like a Monday. I actually found it a bit disorientation. Luckily, I don't think I have to worry about the week getting shortened to one day for a while yet.
Posts – Page 3
How I Track Our Money
In the deep distant past when I was fresh out of university and had just entered the workforce, I kept a very close eye on my spending. This was partly due to the fact that my reserve funds had all been depleted during my final summer before starting work and …
It Wasn't All Bad
I am noticing lots of people complaining about the state of the world, good riddance to 2019, hopefully the next year will be better. I fear that we are too quick to dismiss the progress that has been made. This could be progress on a personal level, as a society …
A Summer's Morning in Winter
This morning, I was up and ready to go to work with time to spare. I started looking for an excuse, some reason to avoid the bike and take the car instead.
It was dark outside and I was expecting the journey to be cold wet and horrible. I am …
A Visit to Blackness Castle
One of our Christmas gifts was a set of annual memberships to Historic Scotland that allows us to visit a large number of historical sites for no additional cost. This is useful when with kids that might get board after 10 minutes and want to go home. This would not …
Safety Systems Definitions
For my final Simple Saturday post of the year/decade I will cover terms and acronyms used as part of shutdown systems.
ESD: Emergency ShutDown. This is the generic name given to a system that trips the plant if it detects a problem. This generic name could refer to simple …
Making the Most of My Time: Learning a Language
Tags: Personal, Dyslexia, Esperanto
Following an earlier post, I have decided to review the activities I spent my time on and consider whether these activities add true value.
Today's post will look at spending time to learn a new language.
Why learn a language?
I have liked the idea of …
An Unexpected Gift
I got an unexpected gift on Christmas morning from Samsung. There was an android update waiting for me when I woke up. This update claimed to "improve call stability" as well as update to the latest security patches.
It appears that they also managed to fix the chrome cast function …
You Did Ask for a White Christmas
Though this is probably not what you meant...
Sorry kids, no sledging today.
Thanks for Keeping the Lights On
It is amazing the amount of effort required to keep things simply running. The huge variety of jobs that need to have someone doing them at all times of the day and night, every day of the year.
Ten Years ago, I was about to spend my first Christmas away …
More Smug
I was already feeling smug enough at getting our Christmas grocery shopping done first thing on s Sunday morning when the shop was quite. It just doubled when I went past another shop this morning about 9am. The queues were ridiculously long and I was really glad that I didn't …
An Advantage of Early Risers
On of the advantages of having young kids is that they don't understand the concept of sleeping in on a Sunday. They get up early regardless of the day of the week.
Normally this is a cause of frustration, but today we made the most of it and got our …
DCS, PLCs and SCADAs
Since starting work after leaving university, I have found several terms thrown around when talking about the control system. In every factory I have worked in, they have had a DCS, though some parts of it were controlled by PLCs. In some documents or training courses, I have seen references …
State of the World
Tags: Politics
Last year I read Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker which explains how much better the world has been getting, is continuing to get and why. I have met a lot of folk that really dislike this book and Pinker because he is seen as an optimist who is …
I'd Love to Help But
Just as I am shutting my computer down at the end of the day, one of the other members of my team walks over to talk to me.
Projects want to test a new piece of equipment tomorrow morning but I am off tomorrow.
He then starts to explain the …
It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Smugmas
One of my colleagues suggested that Christmas should be renamed Smugmas. It is an opportunity for organised people to be smug and show off how much more they have done than you.
I certainly can't claim to be one of the organised smug ones this year. We have decided to …
Making the Most of My Time: Going to the Gym
Continuing on with my series of posts on Making the Most of My Time, I have decided to review the activities I spent my time on and consider whether these activities add true value.
Today was the last Tuesday morning Gym session of the year, so today's post will look …
Stillness and Calm
It is easy to forget what Stillness and Calm can feel like. Particularly a sustained period of stillness when life revolves around two noisy kids.
I had the opportunity to sit in complete stillness and calm for an hour today. No phone to distract me. Just sitting and having to …
Deadbands
Continuing after last week's discussion about process noise, I will now cover another tool used to help mitigate noise.
Deadbands are useful when the the result is a digital signal, it is either on or off. Most control loops are analogue and have a range of outputs, usually a control …
Making the Most of My Time: Maintaining My Home Server
Following Sunday's post, I am continuing to review the activities I spent my time on and consider whether these activities add true value.
Today's post will look at how much time I spent maintaining a personal web server.
What do I maintain?
My personal web server acts as a private …
Making the Most of My Time: Following News
Following Sunday's post, I have decided to review the activities I spent my time on and consider whether these activities add true value.
Today's post will look an my news consumption habits.
Why do we follow the news?
The reasons most people give for watching or reading the news is …
Silly Graphs
And this elections prize for most deceptive graph that I have seen goes to the conservatives.
To be fair, I have mostly been ignoring this election as far as possible, but the flyer put through our door managed to surprise me at its creativity.
It …
Believing Signs
A local road on my route to work has been closed for over a week now. At the bottom of the hill, there are signs on the main road stating "ROAD ON LEFT CLOSED". There is a barrier crossing half the road saying "ROAD AHEAD CLOSED. LOCAL ACCESS ONLY".
Luckily …
Making the Most of My Time: Cycling to Work
After yesterday's post, I have decided to review the activities I spent my time on and consider whether these activities add true value.
The first activity I want to consider is my cycle commute.
How much does it cost?
Time wise, it takes about 15 minutes to cycle to work …
Deciding What Not To Do
There are lots of personal projects I want to work on. There are lots of skills I want to learn. And this is a great time to be around. There are so many opportunities to learn so many different skills for free. The barrier to entry for many projects has …
Filters
Previously I have talked about noise in the measurements that are used to control the process. These variations can cause the system to react unnecessarily and introduce disturbances to the process.
While we should always try to avoid noise by selecting suitable instruments and installing …
Changing the Plan
As eluded to yesterday, I had planned to get back to commuting by bike. On the days that the kids are in nursery, this means cycling across town to pick them up before heading home.
Yesterday was going to be the first time I did this after the accident. Unfortunately …
The Plan
Plan - cycle to work
Then cycle the kids back home
But.. not in that storm
True Wealth
A while back I read an article that talked about wealth. The author had initially thought that wealth was the ability to walk into a shop and see all the things that you can afford. Years later they decided that true wealth was the ability to walk into the shop …
Giving Tuesday
I have just been made aware of "Giving Tuesday", coinciding after Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It is a day to donate to a good cause instead.
By sheer coincidence, I did my annual charity allocation early this morning. I have a CAF1 account and make regular payments into …
Low Salt Salted Caramel
It has to be said, salted caramel is horrible. It is not as if I am afraid to try a new thing, I have tried it multiple times.
It tastes horrible. Every time.
It is the same with salted chocolate as well. I just don’t like the taste of …
Simultaneous Books
For the last couple of weeks, I have been "reading" two nonfiction books. One in ebook format and the other as an audiobook. The books have been about similar topics and written in a similar style. As a result, the two have mashed together in my head. I can't remember …
Noise
What is noise? Depends on what subject you are talking about. If you are talking about what your ears sense, then it is a bunch of pressure waves that move through the air. But in the case of this post, I am actually talking about noise in a process control …
Buying Time
As yesterday was Thanksgiving in America, and my family are American, I thought I would treat them to a roast.
Before heading out to the shops, I looked up a couple of recipes and added any ingredients that we were missing to the shopping list using an Amazon Alexa. One …
Being Thankful for My Mistake
Mayby the mistake I discussed yesterday was not such a bad one. If I had booked the correct tickets, I would have been stuck in London when this happened:
West Coast Mainline passengers 'stranded for seven hours'
Hundreds of passengers on the West Coast Mainline have been stranded for hours …
Reviewing My Mistakes
Back in August, I made a mistake. Part of me wants to forget all about it. Ignore it, pretend that it didn't happen.
But I have been fairly vocal that we should be learning from our mistakes and ideally, learning from other people's mistakes. If course that only works if …
Travel Nerves
For the last three hours, I have progressively been getting more and more nervous. I am about to leave on a short trip, setting off late in the evening.
Rather than rushing around during the day when kids are about to undo anything I had just done, I decided to …
Third One's a Charm
Tonight I hosted my third IChemE Members group committee meeting as chair. I had mentioned previously that I used to be able to chair quick meetings that didn't overrun. The Scottish Members Group meetings are notorious for overrunning, so I knew it would be a challenge. In the first two …
Smartphones = Cigarettes
When I was listening to a random old podcast interview with Cal Newport, he mentioned that a knowledge worker using a smartphone is similar to an endurance athlete smoking a cigarette.
Smartphones and the apps on them are designed to catch your attention. They end up distracting you from getting …
Output Characterisation
When a control valve opens, the flow through it increases. But the increase in flow is not necessarily linear, the rate of change in flow may be different depending on how far open the valve already is.
If the flow through a valve was linear, every time the valve opens …
Forrest School
My eldest son has been attending "forest school" for the last three weeks. This has been an outing organised by his nursery where some of the kids are taken to a local wood and they get to play, explore, built a den, help make a fire and roast marshmallows.
This …
Disastrous Dinners: Kegworth
Last night we held our final disastrous dinner of the year. This month's topic was the Kegworth air disaster when a passenger aircraft crashed into the M1 motorway just outside East Midlands airport.
Not long after takeoff, one of the engine fan blades failed, causing lots of vibrations. The pilots …
Jargon Overload
Today I attended a short introductory course on functional safety. The course mostly covered what we are expected to do to meet the the guidance for building and maintaining safety systems.
Personally, I think one of the main barriers to carrying out these tasks safely is the huge quantity of …
Frosted Windscreens
Aug, frosty mornings. The beautiful crisp air and sparkling ground. The sight of your breath as it condenses in front of you and of course the thick layer of frost and ice left on the car windscreen.
Of course it is frustrating to go outside and find your car all …
Relaxed Reading
I ended up alone the n the house for about an hour this morning. Rather than rushing around in an attempt to get some housework done, u took the time to relax and read.
I had a long list of articles that I had wanted to get around to reading …
PV Tracking
When a control loop is placed in manual, the output is fixed. It doesn't change any more, it stays where it was or where the operator sets it. As a result, the process can change significantly, the measurement or PV (Process Value) can go much higher or lower than where …
Recreational Rebuild
I spent my day off work attempting to rebuild a web server. As usual with these things, my initial estimate for duration was significantly off. Lots of silly problems and unexpected errors to get past.
In the end, I got to a stage where Ihad to decide if I was …
Eleven!!!!!
We got an amazon dot.
Sure enough, Alexa could not understand either of us when we said elevel no matter how we pronounced it.
Another Cycling Advantage
I am still not back on my bike yet, but there is one extra thing that is encouraging me to do so this week:
When cycling, I don't have to bother de-icing the car!
Armistice
After yesterday's post, though more about the different services to commemorate the end of the first world war. I knew that the day was called Armistice Day, yet it had never occurred to me to ask what armistice actually meant.
It means the end of fighting. Not necessarily lasting peace …