A little over a week ago the labyrinth plaque was installed on the platform at Dagenham Heathway.
Designed by Mark Wallinger, these art installations are part of the TFL 150 years celebrations.
I wonder how long the Dagenham piece will last?
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. 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.
