Quick on the Drawer

I made nine drawers tonight. By the end I had a little production line where I worked on the same part of each drawer before moving on to the next one.

I've got one of the drawers slightly wrong, in that the drawer bottom (the thing you can see being slid into the drawer in the diagram) is the wrong way up. But at the moment I don't care that much. Because I've finished making drawers.

Coping with a Skewed Universe

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Today I was fitting handles to doors. As you can see. Note that the handles line up exactly. Turns out that there are two ways you can make the door handles of your wardrobes line up.

  1. Fit the handles in the centre of the door and then make the doors line up. (difficult to impossible outside of laboratory conditions)
  2. Fit the doors and then put the handles in the place where they line up. (easy if you stick some tape across the gap and then use this to line the holes up).

I much prefer the second method. Experience has taught me that when you put big things into houses the concepts of "level" and "right angle" kind of go out of the window. This frequently means that you can't get furniture to line up with the floor and ceiling because they are already wrong at the start.

So you have to go for the solution that looks right. If you look very closely at the very top of our wardrobes you'll notice that the doors are very slightly out of alignment. But the handles are perfect, and those are the bits you focus on.

Press Reviews and Colds

I don't mind having a cold. It's the getting of it I don't like. For me there is a stage where your body knows that something is wrong and is trying to work out what is going on. Then the throat and the nose kick in to make it clear what is happening. But for me this is a good thing, it means that I can begin the process of getting better. 

Yesterday I was in stage one. Today I'm in stage 2. Of course, life being that it is, today was also when I had to go into town first thing to do a paper review thingy with Radio Humberside. It was great fun, and this time the picture that I took with the fat lens actually came out. 

Hymers School Summer Students Visit

We had some visitors today all the way from China. They are summer school students who are visiting Hymers College in Hull.  I did a talk about developing for the Arduino which was great fun (at least I enjoyed it) even though I managed to break one of my props half way through the session.

Thanks for coming folks, and I hope you enjoyed your visit to the university.

International Driving Permit - Most Unimpressive

We're heading off on our holidays over the weekend, and in a change of style, I've hired a car. This is because one of the stops is Los Angeles, and apparently you can't get anywhere without wheels in that part of the world.

The travel guides reckon that an International Driving Permit is a useful thing to have in this situation, and since my driving licence is made of paper, very old and falling apart (in other words it has two things in common with me) I sent off for one to bolster my credentials behind the wheel. 

It arrived earlier this week. It is a paper document with a colour picture of me stuck inside. I reckon you could produce a reasonable facsimile of it with a colour printer and maybe ten minutes of effort.

I just hope the relevant authorities are more impressed with it than I am.  

An Unbelievable Gas Bill

I'm not sure what a naughty hacker could do with my gas meter number, but I'm taking no chances....

I'm not sure what a naughty hacker could do with my gas meter number, but I'm taking no chances....

I got this thing through from the Gas Company asking me to read my meter. They keep sending meter readers round during working hours and finding that I'm not at home.

Who'd have thought?  It's almost as if I had a job that kept me out of the house during the week.

 


Anyhoo, I went into the garage and took a snap of the device.  I then copied the numbers into the web page and was promptly told that my numbers were unbelievable. There are two possible ways to interpret this:

  • Our gas use has been so high that I've "wrapped round" the meter.
  • Our gas use has been lower than expected because last year I bought a Nest heating controller. 

I really hope it is the latter.

eBay refunds in actually works shock horror

Campus looking good today

Campus looking good today

Some time back I bought something on eBay. It never arrived. I heard nothing. Very sad. I wore black for a few days.  As you do.

It wasn't a hugely expensive item, but it was irritating nonetheless. So I took up the matter using the eBay resolution centre. And the great news is that after pressing a bunch of buttons the eBay judgement computer (or whatever they use) has decided to give me my money back. Which is nice.

I am not always me

You know those scary moments that you have every now and then, when the world seems to wobble slightly on its axis and you fret that horrible things are happening that you are only just becoming aware of? 

Well, just had one of those. On Tuesday, just as I was limbering up to do my talk at the Institute of Physics, I got an email from booking.com congratulating me for making a booking I hadn't made. Oh dear.

I'm not that happy with Booking.com to be honest. Last year I used them to book a few days in a Swansea guest house. It was very nice and all, but the company is now convinced that Swansea is the only place I want to go in the world, and keep sending me what they think are enticing offers to stay in the area again. And they keep telling me that "I've unlocked another discount". I haven't. I've just not used the company for a while. And it is likely to stay that way.

Unlike someone with a similar name to mine, who has just made a booking using my email address. I got the "click here to confirm it is you" message (which conspicuously lacks anywhere you can click to confirm it isn't you). I sent an email off to customer support and got nothing back. Except more emails about few places that my namesake might like to visit. Near Swansea as it turns out.

I've just got an email from booking.com addressed to my namesake, asking me to rate my recent interaction with a customer support person. Oh well. That has to count as progress I suppose.

Eye Test

Coming soon to a face near me...

Coming soon to a face near me...

So, I went for an eye test yesterday. Cue all the eye test jokes.

"Tell me sir, have your eyes ever been checked?"
"No, they've always been blue."

"Can you see that eye-test on the wall?"
"What wall?"

etc etc

Anyhoo, I was pleased to find out that my eyes haven't changed that much since last time. I've had my present specs for quite a few years. A year and a half ago a bit fell off and I made a "temporary" repair using heat shrink tubing that has been a bit less temporary than I intended.

This time I've just gone for a single pair of glasses. No messing around with "two for one" deals. Experiments have shown that I can't wear two pairs of glasses at the same time, and that I'll probably lose the second pair anyway. They should arrive in a couple of weeks. Rather excited.

No more SatNav

We drove down to Bristol today. We've now got a policy of not using the SatNav on journeys like this. 

Experience has shown that all it does is make you unhappy by warning you of traffic disruptions that you can't do anything about. I'd much rather sail along in blissful ignorance of the enormous tailback waiting just around the corner. And the alternative route is quite often a lot less pleasant than sitting in a stationary car for a while.

Humber Bridge Cross

We did our Humber Bridge cross for Christian Aid today. We've been doing these for ages. The very first one we did was so long ago it involved a push-chair...

The weather forecast was not great, so we were fully decked out in waterproof everything, but in the end it was just a bit windy, but with some lovely clouds. I took the camera with the fat lens, which made for some interesting pictures..