affable-lurking – Page 43 – There's beauty doing nothing at all.

Playing Radio

Last weekend a bunch of us from the Havering Amateur Radio Club decamped to a field at the Kelvedon Hatch secret nuclear bunker and set about trying to contact as much of the planet as possible by radio.

It was a good excuse to try out my new radio, an Icom 9100, and break out the big beams and linear amplifiers.

We had two HF stations, on 20m and 17m and one VHF station trying to work though some satellites.
A total of over 300 QSOs were logged, a good third of those using CW on 20m. There is a QSO map on line. Some photos of the event are on Flickr.

You’ve got to photograph a bug or two when you’re in a field. Here’s a ladybird larvae.

The insides of things are beautiful…

…lets see what they look like.
These days I work with X-Ray systems. I’m just finishing up commissioning and testing of the latest one, so I’m using it to image various things.

This is a compact fluorescent lamp. At full size you can see the coils of tungsten wire in the electrodes in the glass spiral, you can also see some tiny droplets of condensed mercury at the end of the spiral. It;s this mercury that’s essential for the operation of the lamp, but is also what makes them (slightly) hazardous if the glass breaks.

Too soon.

Yesterday I read the news that Iain Banks wasn’t doing too badly all considered. This lunchtime I heard via Twitter that Iain had died.Â Fuck Cancer.

I first discovered Banks’ writing via the internet, a recommendation in a long forgotten place lead me to a copy of The Use of Weapons and a whole universe of dubious ethics and arrogant, playful super intelligences. Now the last word in that universe has been written, while there are still tales to tell.

Not only have we lost two of the best authors to have come from Scotland, on a more selfish note, we’ve lost a whole universe (or two, or three) and any number of fucked-up domestic tales.

Fuck Cancer.

Back in the Netherlands

Long time no post again. Spent much of recent time getting on with work and neglecting websites and fun projects.
A long weekend away has me back in the Netherlands; Rotterdam and Leiden to be exact.
There are real contrasts between the two cities, Rotterdam is very new; hardly any building in the center is more than a couple of decades old.
Leiden it’s a fine old university town, fantastic museums, beer and ice cream. The treasures of the university archive exhibit at the museum had several books over one thousand years old. To see a book that old is a bit of a shock, you’re used to stone tablets and similar off great age, not books.

Amsterdam.

The flight from Southend Airport to Amsterdam Schiphol is surprisingly quick. Barely have you got comfortable in the seat with your book open, and easyjet have given up trying to sell you bacon rolls, and you’re about to land again.

We stayed in an Airbnb place in the Emmastraat area of Amsterdam, a 4th floor single room flat alongside a canal and a couple of very nice bars, the city centre being a 20 min tram ride, or a 45 min stroll though Vondlepark, away.

The Rijksmuseum was still closed when we visited, and the Van Gogh Museum had relocated the paintings to the Hermitage instead. There is a 2-4h queue for tickets at the Hermitage in the day time, but you can buy tickets at the at the Van Gogh Museum with next to no queue and walk right in to the exhibition at the Hermitage. It’s well worth the 15 euros or so for entry.

The flower market is a bit subdued at the moment because of the cold. Blubs and seeds are available to buy, but there were very few fresh flowers.

The public library is excellent, really really excellent. It has a very nice restaurant on the top floor too. Good freshly cooked food and wonderful cakes. They can make a half-decent cup of Tea too.

Also worth seeing at the botanic gardens, a well welcome warm stop on a cold snowy day and the Van Loon canal house museum – the coach house in the garden makes for a very impressive shed.

Three days wasn’t enough time to really see as much as we wanted, will definitely go back when the weather improves and the other museums are open again.