Michael Saunby

RHOK Oxford - next steps

2011-12-18T19:09:00.003Z

Now I've had a few evenings fiddling with the code and ideas generated at RHoK Oxford two weeks ago I have something that I'll be able to demonstrate to my Met Office colleagues in the new year. The URL for anyone who'd like to try it out is http://floodsourcerhok.appspot.com/

The simple idea here is to make weather data from global reanalysis available to help develop flood forecast models. See http://www.rhok.org/solutions/floodsource for more information.

What happens next isn't certain but I'm optimistic that something along these lines will available soonish.

RHoK Oxford - FloodSource

2011-12-07T23:03:00.001Z

Ok guys - here's the idea....

And here's some data...

What you see plotted here is sub-daily precipitation data from the 20th Century reanalysis. Before going to Oxford I had a prototype API for extracting mean monthly data. Now there's an improved version that can extract sub-daily data for a range of variables including precipitation, temperature and soil moisture.
The above example is for Cambodia in August 2007. There was a major flood on the 24th August.

Giant leap - Random Hacks of Kindness, Oxford

2011-12-06T23:17:00.001Z

Over the next few evenings I'll draw together some of the work on the FloodSource project at Random Hacks of Kindness, Oxford.

Here's a visualisation of the cleaned up CSV file of global floods presented in Google Fusion Tables. The information shown is from Dartmouth Flood Observatory.

Small moves - an introduction

2011-11-30T18:19:00.001Z

Here are a few slides to stimulate discussion around weather, climate, models and humanitarian work. Not quite finished yet - please comment.

Strike day

2011-11-30T08:00:00.000Z

http://www.prospect.org.uk/news/newsstory.php?news=967

Small moves - adding the reanalysis data

2011-11-26T18:06:00.001Z

Here's the next step in my gradual development of an API for easy access to historical weather data.

The interactive demo is at http://www.saunby.net/climat-rean.html so please do try it out and leave comments here, or email me.

The next "small move" will most likely be combining this data with other data. What I'd really like to see is this data combined with datasets of the impact of weather events such as droughts, floods, landslides and wild fires. That might just happen at #RHOK on the 3rd December 2011 - not long now.

Small moves - CLIMAT data in Fusion Tables

2011-11-19T12:43:00.001Z

Converting, uploading and merging the CLIMAT records from here - http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/crutem3/data/station_updates/ proved quite simple, so I set about building a test web page http://saunby.net/climat-layer-fusiontables-query.html

My next "small move"? I like being able to query a table and then simply show the resulting data in a graph, as above, so I'll have a go at doing the same with 20th Century Reanalysis data.

Small moves - WMO Publication No. 9, Volume A

2011-11-12T16:49:00.004Z

Thinking ahead to RHoK in Oxford and reflecting on (h)activate in the summer - one of the things that pretty much everyone participating in a hackday needs is an API (or many) that does something useful.

So - what weather APIs already exist?

For current weather and short range forecasts there are several to choose from -

http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/04/15/5-weather-apis-from-weatherbug-to-weather-channel/

Yahoo also has one for forecasts http://developer.yahoo.com/weather/

These are nice, but I couldn't make worthwhile use of them in my work, so maybe there's a niche still remaining for climate and historical weather records. An API for all of that would be a big project. So, small moves...

How about a map of all WMO recognised observing stations from WMO Publication No. 9, Volume A?

Here you go -

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S316216Iz7P

As I've used Google's Fusion Tables getting KML is easy too - https://www.google.com/fusiontables/exporttable?query=select+col2+from+2146249+&o=kmllink&g=col2

Next small move? Getting CLIMAT reports from CRUTEM3 into a table.

Who? What? When? Where? Why?

2011-06-21T20:51:00.003+01:00

An Englishman, Irishman and an Indian came together at the Guardian (h)activate hack day. We went away with prizes for our W5 mashup. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/jun/21/hactivate-developers-mashup-results for more information. More importantly see http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/whats-the-point-of-a-hack-day/ for why it, sort of, matters.

Future Perfect » Cairo Jewelry

2011-04-30T16:49:00.000+01:00

Future Perfect » Cairo Jewelry

Changing climates

2010-12-04T12:57:00.002Z

As I hardly ever write on my blog about my work I know that sometimes I meet people - when working - who take the trouble to "google" me, and think there's another Michael Saunby. Well, there probably is somewhere but the chap who was in South Africa in the last week of November was me.

It was great to meet like minded enthusiasts at the CTA Mobile Observatory 2010 and I'm confident that great things will happen as a result of our meeting. Thank you very much to everyone who made it happen, particularly Kevin and Pete.

http://m4agriculture.pbworks.com/w/page/31566154/Mobile-Observatory-2010

Another distraction

2010-09-21T21:17:00.005+01:00

Just acquired this bargain on eBay -

A 1940s Vortexion EG 20 electric guitar amplifier. Must be the big brother of the EG 10, as advertised in 1947.

Valves used are 4 x CL33 in parallel push-pull and 2 x EF40, no rectifier valve as metal rectifiers are used.

The amplifier is complete and very clean so my plans are to first do a minimal restoration to get it working in as close to original state as possible, then convert to safer AC use only with a modern mains transformer and 4 x EL33 to replace the CL33. Though I suppose that 2 x 6L6G would give similar performance.

I'll keep notes on the restoration here

http://mike.wepoco.com/Home/retro-geekery/vortexion/vortexion-eg20

KT44 push-pull valve "quality amplifier"

2010-07-19T19:32:00.006+01:00

From Quality Amplifier

Here's the latest of my Wireless World Quality Amplifier builds. Again I've avoided the expense of vintage PX4 or PX25 triodes and used tetrodes. This time however they are strapped as triodes as in the classic Williamson and Leak TL/12. Those amplifiers used a pair of Marconi KT66 beam tetrodes as triodes. Williamson reckoned the characteristics of these valves when strapped as triodes was equivalent to the PX25. I've chosen to use the less common, but now far cheaper KT44 - actually Mazda 11E3, but they're the same valve. The KT44 is a rather different looking valve, it looks more like an 807 - itself a variant of the popular American 6L6G valve, much loved by electric guitar players.

From Quality Amplifier

The circuit is very simple. In essence it is the output valves and drivers from the Williamson, with the phase-splitter and feedback loop removed. So at present there is no negative-feedback, as in the original 1934 Wireless World Quality Amplifier.

Back at the ranch

2010-06-26T10:01:00.004+01:00

Last weekend I did something a bit different, a first for me. Indeed a first for the UK. The Vintage Computer Festival 2010 at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.

From VCF 2010 Bletchley

I took the uniselector clock with me and it was quite a hit, much photographed and now featured on several blogs, here are some -

But I'm at home this weekend enjoying the sunshine, so perhaps tonight I'll put my snapshots from Bletchley online. - Done. More 3D (anaglyphs) of the festival, museum and park on PicasaWeb.

Stereoscopic Projection by Polarlised Light - demonstrated in 1936

2010-04-18T11:44:00.003+01:00

The Wireless World - August 28th, 1936

Stereoscopic Projection by Polarlised Light

Experiments in Manfred von Ardenne's Laboratory

AT this year's Conference of the German Society for Photographic Research, in Berlin, a paper was read by Dr. Haase, of Jena, on new polarising filters and their applications. During the subsequent discussion it emerged that more exhaustive tests and measurements on stereoscopic projection, with the help of the new filters, had been carried on in the 'Manfred von Ardenne Laboratory. At a demonstration at the Lichterfelde laboratory an opportunity was given of seeing the almost startling results given by this solution of the "plastic film " problem. The optical quality of the pictures shown was so good that one felt oneself to be actually standing in the midst of the scene portrayed on the screen.

The idea of obtaining stereoscopic pro-jection by the use of polarised light was, as von Ardenne mentioned at the demonstration, suggested by Anderton a good many years ago. Practical application of the principle, however, failed because at that time there were no suitable polarisers available.

Polarisation Filters

It was not until the appearance of the new " polarisation filters " which have only been on the market a few months that it was possible to produce polarisers in the form of apparently ordinary spectacles, which, however, thanks to the correct orientation of the two "filters " forming the glasses, enable each of the two eyes to pick out only the appropriate image from a composite picture of two images thrown on the screen, each with its light polarised at right angles to the light of the other. Since the image visible to one eye vas photographed by a camera situated a little to the right or left of the camera photographing the image visible to the other eye, the effect on the observer is to give a stereoscopic picture. With the old-fashioned stereoscope, where the two pictures were side by side, the eves were inclined to strain themselves in bringing the two images together. With the present system there is no tiring effect on the eyes, because the two images are merged together on the screen by the projecting apparatus. On removal of the "spectacles," the naked eye sees only one picture (as the photograph shows). This is "flat," with its outlines double.

Completely satisfactory stereoscopic projection, such as was here seen, demands that the state of polarisation of the light should not be changed at the screen. Demonstrations and measurements have shown that this difficulty has been eliminated to such a degree that from all seats of an ordinary cinema the stereoscopic picture can be seen faultlessly.

Bluetooth A2DP for the Quality Amplifier

2010-03-27T11:59:00.003Z

In December 2008 I started building a variant of the 1934 Wireless World Quality Amplifier, and by the summer of 2009 I had a pair of these working with a valve preamp based on a Mullard design from the 1950s and a pair of the original Leak Sandwich speakers from the 1960s.

All very well, but this is 2010 and I seem to listen to music on Spotify more than any other source and radio programmes on iPlayer.

This week I added a Bluetooth A2DP stereo receiver to the amplifier, and I am very impressed by how well it works. Given that these things are almost being given away (mine cost £15) I cannot recommend it enough.

From gadgets

For anyone looking to do the same, here are my notes on getting it working with Windows 7 or Ubuntu.

Frakenfone

2010-03-07T20:13:00.003Z

My latest "gadget hack".

From gadgets

Not sure what this 1940s telephone was originally used for, some sort of radio telephone link I guess. Anyway it seemed ideal for conversion to a bluetooth phone. With the handset down the original loudspeaker fitted in the dial aperture is loud enough to be heard clearly in a quiet room. I though some extra amplification might be needed, but I got lucky.

The clear glass bezel was in my junk box and works beautifully to allow the bluetooth earpiece blue/amber LED to be seen.

From gadgets

A simple project, but very pleasing.

Hiding a castle - no magician required

2010-02-12T19:27:00.004Z

Update - 9th March. Since posting this Okehampton Castle and Okehampton Primary School have been given their correct locations on Google Maps. Well done Google! Oh and it's now easier to make corrections; see new-way-to-edit-places-on-google-maps.

Search for "Okehampton Castle" in Google Maps, and you'll see something like this -

Which looks so very plausible. There's no castle there though! Switch to satellite view and there's nothing to be seen.

Where is it hiding you ask?

Here it is (or yertiz as the locals say) -

View Larger Map

Another thing computers will never be able to do...

2010-02-08T19:54:00.002Z

Allegedly.

This time from a BBC Radio 4 program. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/8495946.stm

Computers will never be able to simulate the "warrior ethos", the mindset and ethical outlook of the professional soldier.

Presumably it's vital to the proper conduct of war and only true soldiers have it.

Will 3D save consumer tech?

2010-01-10T14:53:00.004Z

Maybe, maybe not. Best experiment rather than go with guesswork.

Notes on my new Fuji FinePix REAL 3D W1 "on me wiki 'ere"

Getting to the point

2009-12-17T22:48:00.003Z

Continued from Short and to the Point.

What I found with organised open plan desks where teams are in tight clusters is that people can become quite tribal, defending nearby resources and establishing their own laws! Examples I saw were almost enforced silence except for agreed meeting times. Something that annoyed me was reduced interest in work in progress by some managers. They could now see who was at their desks working, so progress was assumed. Presumably these geniuses assumed that when progress hadn't been achieved in the past it was because staff were slacking off!

Anyway, the above hardly matters now because over time the need to adapt to new staff arriving, others leaving and projects ending, starting, etc. etc. means that many staff are sitting in spaces that became available rather than shoulder to shoulder with team mates. So 3, or maybe 4 moves on, I now find myself sitting by the entrance door. Not a popular spot, which was why I was able to secure it through a small number of swaps, but it suits me. One of the advantages being that it gives me some of the best notice board space in the building.

Most folks don't spend much time by my desk as they'd be blocking an entrance, but nearly all my colleagues will pass at least one each day, so they can't help but read any notice I put up. They're walking and I don't want them to stop to read, so I've established a routine of posting an A4 page with no more than 20 words in large font that I change frequently. Usually it's a quote from someone famous, but it could be anything that made me think, smile, or groan - depending on my mood.

So to get back to the point I was heading towards in my last post. I plan to extract short quotes from What Matters Now and post them on my desk to share with my colleagues.

Short and to the point

2009-12-14T23:13:00.004Z

Just trying to think how to write what I'd like to say here... and I know already that it won't be short. Hopefully I'll get to the point eventually. But just in case I don't get there, or you get fed up and click "back" or decide to check your email again here's the important bit.

Today I read Seth Godin's excellent What Matters Now and felt moderately inspired by several of the contributions. (Seth is the editor, the material comes from a host of thinkers). Have a read, it's really very good, and will hopefully encourage many people to do meaningful stuff. As I read it I knew I wanted, as intended, to share the content.

Now for the story that is likely to take me drifting away from the point of this post never to return.

When my employer moved to a shiny new building near Exeter I was one of the first to move in, as I already lived locally and had been commuting to the old site in Bracknell. I was given a temporary desk in the first block to be completed. A couple of months later I moved to my proper desk with the rest of the team, as did all the other hundreds of small teams that make up our organisation. For most people it was the first time they had ever worked in an open plan office. The hope of management was that putting everyone in one building and teams in large open spaces would make us all more productive and better teams.

Did it work? More soon.....

Random Hacks of Kindness

2009-11-14T09:54:00.004Z

I keep thinking "Random Frequent Flyer Dent". But other than that I'm having mostly useful thoughts so far today.

As I didn't figure out how to actually get to be at the Random Hacks of Kindness Disaster Relief Codejam without spending a fortune I've set myself the task of following progress from home.

Here's a press release on the keynote speech by Craig Fugate of FEMA.

Here's the Ning social site for Random Hacks created by Patrick Svenburg.

Here's what I believe to be the official RHOK website on Google Sites. Which is where you'll find the problem definitions.

Here's an interesting blog post from Open NASA.

And now back to look for more useful snippets on Twitter with the tag #RHoK.

---------------

Update

The winning hacks http://www.rhok.org/events/rhok-0/winning-hacks

The winning team http://disastercam.blogspot.com/2009/11/random-hacks-of-kindness-first-prize.html

Valve amplifier components

2009-11-01T19:06:00.003Z

Went shopping for old junk today and came back with some interesting transformers.

More info here - http://mike.wepoco.com/retro-geekery/reference/radio-spares-output-transformers

Now I know that some of my colleagues read my posts from time to time and will wonder what on earth this is really supposed to be saying. All I can say is, to the best of my knowledge Google Analytics doesn't lie and it tells me that far more folks are interested in valve amplifier stuff than anything else I ever write about.

Disaster tech

2009-10-21T22:09:00.002+01:00

I'll edit this post and add more links over the next few days ......

Here's one to start http://www.frontlinesms.com/what/ (from http://www.janchipchase.com/)

Broadband Global Area Network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGAN

EUMETCAST (weather data via satellite IP multicast) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eumetcast

Another time

2009-10-17T10:05:00.003+01:00

Back in the summer I was recorded by the Antiques Roadshow with the Uniselector Clock. Unfortunately this segment won't now be shown on 25th October. The letter I recently received from the production team states "there are always difficult editorial decisions to make during the editing process to maintain the balance and variety of the programme and sadly, we cannot include every item that is recorded."

Natural disasters and weather

2009-10-16T19:40:00.006+01:00

A recent announcement from the World Bank - http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/2009/10/hackers-and-the-world-bank-unite.html

has me thinking once again about little nudges that could change the world -http://nudges.wordpress.com/

Back when the Wepoco team (anarchists?) were trying to think of ways of getting weather forecasts to people who really could change the world - poor farmers - we deliberately chose to exclude weather warnings from the service. I'm not sure that we ever properly explained why. Well if you work for a government you very soon learn that governments are very protective of their right (responsibility?) to tell citizens when to panic (and how much).

What we hadn't considered is that once the s**t actually hits the f*n, it makes little difference to those affected who is helping them - speed and quality of service is everything.

So perhaps I can make up for not pushing hard enough on the original Wepoco concept by figuring out how best to use technology and weather forecasts to prevent bad situations getting worse.

sudo ifconfig lo up

2009-10-05T09:27:00.002+01:00

Before I switch to English here's some more Linux gibberish -

0xb7fc2410: ????* Heartbeat Failure 2 (Step 3)

The above line and many, many others came out of the very useful Helix DNA server when I restarted it yesterday. Why? Because once again I'd forgotten than when I reboot my Ubuntu server it doesn't bring up the loop-back device. Hence the command in the title of this post.

VNC, Google AppEngine Java SDK are a couple of other things I use that fail to work properly without 'lo' up. In some ways what is more remarkable is that the Ubuntu distribution itself is so content to work without this widely used (essential?) virtual network device.

Going, going, gone!

2009-09-26T20:14:00.003+01:00

Vintage technology up for auction. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8275483.stm

This story both pleases and saddens me.

It pleases me that old tech is being taken seriously. After all, this stuff changed the world way more than (almost) any book, painting, or tune ever did.

It pleases me that in future people might think twice before throwing old electronics into a skip and not consider if someone, somewhere, might like it.

It saddens me that as with so much collecting it is seen as ticking off items on a list - the first TV, computer, pocket calculator...

"Another possibility is that either the squirrel or the bat were mentally off balance."

2009-09-20T23:40:00.003+01:00

You couldn't make this stuff up - http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8261000/8261364.stm

Then again, perhaps it is made up -

Rodents are not known to eat meat or hunt animals, so it is unclear why the squirrel would launch such an attack.

Really? So insects aren't animals any more? When did that happen? Perhaps the reason rodents don't hunt "proper" animals is that mostly rodents are the smallest mammals (proper animals?) about.

Hell - what do I know? I just read stuff and observe things around me. I'm not a "proper" scientist.

Thankfully the web has a plentiful supply of "dead squirrel" pictures to maintain balance.

News of the week - Nation shall speak unto nation

2009-09-01T19:11:00.002+01:00

Here's how The Wireless World covered the outbreak of World War II.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7TH, 1939

Wireless and War

Services to the Nation

THOSE of us who have spent our working lives in the service of wireless must often have taken

encouragement from the thought that the part we have played, humble though it may be, has contributed something towards the good of humanity. The record of wireless is indeed nothing to be ashamed of : we think of the thousands of lives saved from the perils of the sea by wireless telegraphy and of the interest and widening of outlook brought to millions by broadcasting. But it has long been a cause for regret to many of us that the self-evident potentialities of broadcasting in the cause of peace have been exploited with such poor success.

"Nation shall speak peace unto nation" was an inspiring motto for those responsible for British broadcasting, and it was one which they conscientiously strove to justify. That it has so far failed to achieve results does not imply that any blame is to be apportioned, and, even if it were, this is no time for recriminations.

International Broadcasting

Although wireless may not have succeeded in this respect, it has performed a wonderful service to everyone during the dark days of suspense. Anxiety and uncertainty has been relieved, and the extraordinary calmness of the British nation must surely be due in no small measure to the thoroughness of the B.B.C.'s news service. Other organisations that deserve the thanks of the world are the great American broadcasting networks. Considering their position as neutrals and making allowance for the Transatlantic tendency towards dramatisation of news, the crisis

has been handled with admirable restraint. So far as broadcasts that we ourselves have heard or seen reported are concerned, nothing, has been done to exacerbate the European situation ; on the contrary, obviously genuine efforts have been made to play the part of peacemaker. The broadcasting of news bulletins from America in the languages of all potential belligerents has probably done good. Coming from a neutral country, such messages probably carry more weight than if they emanated, from a more directly interested and inspired source.

We must not delude ourselves into thinking that the kind of international short-wave broadcast to which we have just referred reaches a very wide audience. The number of efficient short-wave sets in use is still small, though the better types are now more readily available than hitherto. We can foresee a wide market for them when more normal conditions return. As a contributor says elsewhere in this issue, there is nothing like a good wireless set for collecting news ; it gives its owner the feeling of being in intimate touch with things as they happen, and he becomes something more than a mere spectator, remote and aloof from actualities.

Whatever the days ahead may have in store for us, there is one thing that we can face with the most serene confidence. The wireless service, though young in years, has already established a tradition of steadfast devotion to duty on the part of its personnel of which we are all justifiably proud. Maintenance at extreme efficiency of all forms of wireless communication is now vital to the successful prosecution of the war ; the various branches of the service may meet with difficulties that none of us can yet foresee, but, whatever these difficulties may be, communication will be maintained.

It's alive!

2009-08-16T20:09:00.002+01:00

The Wireless World Monodial is now working again. I've not checked the alignment, but it pulls in LW and MW stations just fine. The silent tuning feature works, but probably doesn't justify the extra cost then (or now). The tuning indicator isn't right. The resistor controlling it had been changed, maybe my replacing the weak vari-mu pentode affected things. More investigation required when I do the alignment. But first I need to order parts to build a suitable amplifier.

I'm thinking of using a 1940s pentode, e.g. KT61 rather than a 1930s type.

How to innovate like a robot

2009-08-13T19:09:00.002+01:00

Over on Innovation in Practice it's suggested that machines will most likely never be able to innovate - Automated Innovation.

Granted such discourse can be quite dull - computers/machines cannot think/love/walk properly/chew gum/...../invent seems to be for my generation the equivalent of the ancient "how many angels can dance on a pin?".

What saved this post for me was the description of what innovation is -

For a machine to innovate, it would need to:

Take a product or service and break it into its component parts
Take a product or service and identify its attributes (color, weight, etc)
Apply a template of innovation to manipulate the product or service and change it into some abstract form
Take the abstract form and find a way for humans to benefit from it

Surely not. This is the blogosphere, at a minimum 4 should be "... find a way for cats to benefit from it."

More seriously if the process of innovation were to be simulated in a worthwhile way, some benefit would probably need to be delivered to the innovator. What I'm saying here is that feedback is required. I'd also argue that for a machine 2 and 3 are probably not required either. After all if a machine was capable of generating prototypes at a fantastic rate - consider synthetic drugs - and then test them for good and bad effects, it is quite likely that useful new drugs could be developed. For all I know this is happening right now.

Eckersley on public sector pay for technical staff

2009-08-10T20:59:00.003+01:00

"The conditions of service are not such as to attract people who think that informed enthusiasm deserves bigger rewards than are paid to civil servants. All honour, then, to those brilliant people who accept the conditions ; there could be more of such people if the pay were more attractive."

P.P. Eckersley, December 1942.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Eckersley_(engineer)

There is crisis in Europe

2009-07-30T20:41:00.005+01:00

I've got many copies of Wireless World magazine from the 1930s and 40s, including the famous A C Clarke issues. Mostly I find these of interest for the technical material, but there are a few adverts that can take your breath away for various reasons. Here's one from November 1935.

ALL-WAVE RADIO

for

EVERYBODY

AND AT

EXTRA COST!

Giving you - in addition to ordinary programmes -

AMERICAN PROGRAMMES DIRECT

EXCLUSIVE SHORT-WAVE NEWS OF

THE EUROPEAN CRISIS

Political Propaganda Broadcasts, in English,

from the Dictators of Europe

TO-DAY there is crisis in Europe ... and the air is alive with the broadcast news and views of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini ! But the dictators of Europe use the SHORT WAVES for the propaganda, and you cannot hear them on an ordinary radio set.

At this critical moment Burndept have produced an ALL-Wave Radio Receiver for everybody—and at NO extra cost! For £8 8s. you can buy the Burndept All-Wave Battery Receiver which not only gives you all your favourite home and Continental programmes as usual, but receives as well the world-wide Short Wave stations on which you get the dance-bands of New York direct, the politics of Europe, the last-minute news of all the world. The Burndept All-Electric All-Wave Receiver costs -£10 10s.

It requires no extra skill to receive the Short Wave stations, on this Burndept All-Wave Radio. You tune them in like any distant ''foreigner " -- and you have at your fingertips a new and never-failing source of radio interest and entertainment. Ask your nearest Burndept Accredited Dealer or POST COUPON BELOW for full details.

Other folks projects

2009-07-27T13:44:00.003+01:00

When I wonder if the time I spend on my projects is worthwhile it's great to read about daft/strange/incredible things that others are doing.

Here's a couple -

The Toaster Project - hey the electric toaster is 100!!!
Maybe the end result will have a retro look - how about these? 1920s Toasters
See the Toaster Museum at http://www.toaster.org/

The Impossible Project - "shake it like a Polaroid picture"

The Beat Generator

2009-07-26T10:11:00.005+01:00

Not sure if the Marconi Beat Frequency Oscillator in my "lab" is the one shown in this picture, but it's probably from the same batch.
This week I got it working again. Not sure if it was built to last, or just to prevent theft. It's very heavy - lots of iron components and plated thick brass sheet for the chassis and control panel.

From valves

See http://mike.wepoco.com/retro-geekery/test-equipment

Smeaton's method

2009-07-21T19:00:00.006+01:00

This week I'm on holiday; one nice thing about living in Devon is that holidays can be very cheap, as there's no need to go away. So I get to relax, reflect, mess about, enjoy the countryside, fresh air.... without leaving home. As I sipped a beer in the late afternoon sunshine I thought about what I might do tomorrow and the "engineering method" came to mind.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A918371

For those who believe the "scientific method" lies behind the modern world, perhaps they also need to sip a beer and reflect on the genius of John Smeaton.

The Modern Quality Receiver - 1935 and today

2009-07-16T20:30:00.006+01:00

Another W.T. Cocking design from 1935. Unlike the 1934 Quality Amplifier it would be asking a bit much to build one of these from scratch today. Getting the valves would be fairly easy, but all those special variable selectivity transformers - not a hope.

Fortunately all sorts of things show up on Ebay......

The Wireless World 1936 Monodial A.C. Super

New (to me) loudspeakers

2009-06-27T09:37:00.003+01:00

The latest refinement to my Quality Amplifier is a pair of loudspeakers designed for use with valve amplifiers. I've been looking for something suitable on Ebay for some time. This week I managed to pick up a pair of original Leak Sandwich speakers for £32 locally. Large heavy items often don't make high prices here in the UK because shipping is very expensive - it would have been over £30.

So what are they like? Well at first they sounded great, then after a day one started to sound rough. I did a bit of Googling, took a close look at the sandwich driver and decided that gravity had probably got the better of the cone and surround. Though the cones and surrounds all looked to be in great condition there was a slight tilt downwards. This is apparently a known problem. So I tried standing the speaker upside down - it sounded fine again. So all the was required was to remove the driver and turn it through 180 degrees!

History of the Leak Sandwich here http://44bx.com/leak/sandwich.html

Music to code by

2009-06-23T17:39:00.003+01:00

For many years I've had SlimServer (now SqueezeCenter) installed on my Linux server and found it very good for streaming music to my Nokia tablets. These tablets have excellent sound quality so I often plug one into the hi-fi. These days it's usually the Quality Amplifiers.

But I wanted more music - what to do? I tried "tuning" the N800 to last.fm but the results weren't good. Nokia tablets run Linux and have limited computing power, they are great at streaming audio and video, but not so good at running Flash, and can't run any Windows software. So I had an idea...

How about running Spotify on my laptop and streaming the audio to the hi-fi? Simple - well - simple-ish. I used a Pinacle USB TV thing to grab the audio from the laptop headphone socket and Helix-producer on the laptop to convert it to a Real Audio stream. From there to Helix-server running on the Linux server and via wi-fi to the media player on the Nokia tablets.

From this description it's probably hard to believe that the results sound very good indeed. No dropouts, no machine being loaded too hard; each can carry on with its normal duties.

Very happy! I'll wait a while before I think about paying to not hear adverts.

Mobile communications to revolutionize African weather monitoring

2009-06-18T19:52:00.001+01:00

Weather Info for All

From a press release by Ericsson today -

* Global Humanitarian Forum, Ericsson, WMO, and Zain and other mobile
operators to deploy up to 5,000 automatic weather stations in
mobile network sites across Africa, where less than 300 are
reporting today

* Partnership will increase dissemination of weather information via
mobile phones to users and communities, including remote farmers
and fishermen

* First 19 stations deployed more than double Lake Victoria region
weather monitoring, where 5,000 people die every year due to storms
and accidents

http://www.cisionwire.com/ext/ericsson-b/mobile-communications-to-revolutionize-african-weather-monitoring

Jai Ho! The millionth word is web2.0

2009-06-10T18:36:00.000+01:00

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1192131/Word-Millionth-phrase-English-language-Web-2-0.html

Stereo quality amplifier

2009-05-31T20:07:00.004+01:00

Late last year I started building a Wireless World Quality Amplifier. The original design for this amplifier (mono) was published in 1934 and it became the reference British hi-fi amplifier - holding this position until the Williamson replaced it in 1947.

As my intention was always to create a useful working piece of equipment I was going to need a preamplifier suitable for use with modern sources - OK maybe LPs aren't considered modern any longer.

The solution was to build a stereo pre-amplifier to the 1950s Mullard design, but subsituting 1930s style octal valves for the 1950s 9 pin EF86s. Plus I needed to add a phase splitter. Six of the the excellent EF37A made a quality pre-amp. Now I just need to complete the cabinet.

From Quality Amplifier

Pre-computer

2009-05-13T20:44:00.004+01:00

Although computers were developed during (and slightly before) WWII, they weren't widely available. Most likely they weren't even capable of many of the things we use computer for today. But there are other ways of doing real time data processing and even simulations.

How about this -

Read all about it (PDF)

Designed for repair II

2009-05-12T15:47:00.004+01:00

Here's another example of a piece of test equipment designed for repair.

From gadgets

This is a painted brass plate from the rear of a signal generator. It shows the complete circuit diagram on the left and operating instructions on the right. Of course it makes lots of assumptions - e.g. not everyone can read circuit diagrams, and there were many perfectly good substitutes for the valves used. The positions of valves are shown, but there's no indication of normal voltages to be found in the circuit - the easiest way of locating a fault. Even so much better than is generally provided today.

Designed for repair

2009-04-25T23:42:00.002+01:00

Last weekend I collected a van load of very old electronic junk from a very nice chap in Cornwall. He had a barn full of stuff he was clearing out so for a few quid I got some quite interesting stuff. All of it was in a pretty poor state, rust, woodworm, that sort of thing. It's hard to store things in the West Country climate.

Included were a couple of old Marconi signal generators -

one a BFO audio generator - a pair of RF oscillators on slighlty different frequencies mixed to give an audio signal,
the other an "ultra short wave" signal generator - 10Mc/s to 150Mc/s.

The Ultra Short Wave Signal Generator had a small wooden storage unit fitted to the back of the case. Originally it had a spare lamp, fuses and set of valves. Though some were missing - pressumably used during its working life a couple of valves and fuses remained.

From gadgets

This is such a nice idea I plan to copy it as I add the finishing touches to my Quality Amplifier.

Thoughts on British foreign aid

2009-03-22T20:00:00.006Z

Over on William Easterly's blog I posted the following as a comment. You can read the article here -

http://blogs.nyu.edu/fas/dri/aidwatch/2009/03/why_does_british_foreign_aid_p.html

Back in 2007 I visited Ethiopia, it was my first, and so far only visit. I'll not go into too much detail here, but just that one visit, preparing for it, and what happened next taught me a lot about Ethiopia, aid, and how my own country - I work for the UK Met Office, fails to help the poor. The reason for the visit was the realisation that I and some colleagues had that providing "developed country grade" weather forecasts to Ethiopian farmers would enable them to produce more food, perhaps as much as 10% more for the whole country. So we wanted to see if the infrastructure there could support delivering the right information to the right people, and as far as it went the answer was yes. Though as with so many things related to aid, the sensible thing didn't happen, so the farmers still don't get the forecasts. What happens instead is of course entirely rational if aid is being provided by a democracy. Except of course much of the aid is wasted - since there's no reason to be efficient, or effective, just as fair as possible. It seems likely that those who identify where UK aid goes don't want to be providing aid to people who could be helped by their own government. Hence aid goes to the poorest countries. Once the country has been identified the aid is then directed towards the poorest regions, and quite possibly to the poorest communities and eventually to the poorest people. In many ways I'm entirely happy with this arrangement if it doesn't stop development. Trouble is my own experience is that it does inhibit development. To trial improvements in agricultural productivity in Ethiopia our project needed to work with farmers that weren't on the edge of famine but who produced a surplus and had the necessary networks to market an even greater surplus and invest in their community. There are many such farmers in the more central regions on Ethiopia, that of course never get discussed when aid is the topic. We haven't given up, and after quite a lot of grief from our bosses, we didn't even get sacked - I suppose that's one bonus of being a UK civil servant. So if all goes well the project will restart later this year, but working with farmers in Nepal.

Invention of communication satellites

2009-02-19T20:17:00.002Z

Over on my Google Sites wiki I've added a page on how Arthur C Clarke developed the idea of the geostationary communication satellite. The idea resulted from the question I posted in an earlier blog, but as I could find no other mention of this earlier letter on the web I felt I ought to post copies of the pages and a little background information.

As always one thing leads to another, and now I'm tempted to find out more about the BBC Brains Trust radio programs on which the Wireless World Brains Trust was based.

New Year 2009, in a 1930s style

2009-01-04T17:16:00.005Z

From Quality Amplifier

Largely ignoring this credit crunch thing with "experts" comparing the present situation with the 1930s I've been reading through magazines and books of the period, brushing up on my retro-electronics skills. The latest result of which is this, my shiney new Wireless World Quality Amplifier, based on designs from 1934 to 1945.

The transformer to the right is an old Varley phase splitting transformer, I'm using this for now while I decide what style of pre-amplifier to build. I'm torn between another 1930s style project, or using smaller valves such as EF86 and ECC83 to build a stereo pre-amp and phase splitter to drive two Quailty Amplifiers.

clunk...clunk...

2008-12-06T13:59:00.006Z

The digial clock works!

There really wasn't much that needed to be done. There were a few lose connections on the lamps, but none needed replacing. The two pin mains power connector and dual fuses were replaced with a single fuse and 3 core flex. But it was running slow, this was fixed by cleaning out the gearbox with contact cleaner and replacing the oil.

From Uniselector Clock

The first video shows how the calendar mechanism advances and resets. The whole mechanism is driven by a single large solenoid that is activated every 12 hours.

From Uniselector Clock

The second video shows the time being set. The rotary switches on the control panel are turned to the correct time and the "reset" switch lifted. The time then advances, as show by the lamps, and stops at the required minutes. The hours keep advancing until the right hour is reached and the switch released.

div>Follow this link for more pictures and information on the clock.

Who needs a nixie clock?

2008-12-03T20:41:00.006Z

Quite possibly built in the late 1930s here's the electro-mechanical digital clock I've just acquired.

It doesn't have a digital display, i.e. one with digits, instead it has 12 lamps for the hours, five for the tens of minutes, and another 10 for the minutes. The lamps are switched by telephone exchange type uniselectors. There are rotary switches on the side to set the alarm.

The calendar part is entirely mechanical, but it has a cam on the month wheel to set the number of days in each month.

I'd love to know if anyone has ever seen this clock or a similar one before, where it was used, who made it, or anything else.

Over the weekend I'll see if I can get it working.

Some nixie clocks have used Strowger (uniselector) switches. See the gallery here http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/nixiegallery.html (search for the Tomlin clock).

Digital (display) clocks did exist in the 1930s - see http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10305697

and http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/02/digital-clock-from-1.html

Privatization, what is it good for?

2008-11-28T20:57:00.007Z

It's been an interesting week. On Monday, in the UK Government's Pre-Budget Report, one of the less reported items was "reviews of the Met Office, Oil & Pipeline Agency..."

So maybe, just maybe, in a few months my employer will no longer be owned by the Ministry of Defence. Okay, for most folks in computing that probably doesn't seem like a big deal. But for an organisation that's existed for over 150 years, that's a big change. Especially so for those employees who give the impression of having been there for most of that century and a half.

National meteorological services (or NMS's as we call 'em) are almost always state owned, and pretty much every country has one - even Somalia is trying to re-establish(*) one right now. I doubt it's because having crazy bearded scientists who claim to predict the weather is a source of great national pride, just that in an age of air travel, climate change, and expectation that governments anticipate, rather than just deal with, disaster having a decent weather service is a necessity.

Anyway, now there's some new things for me to learn. This looks to be a useful resource -

http://www.privatizationbarometer.net/about.php

------------

Links:

http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=270

http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/cdoidge/tag/met_office/

------------

* Typing this "re" reminded me of a recent internal email advising staff who had signed a security document, that had since been amended, that they would be "asked to resign". How we all laughed!

Mullard 3 3

2008-11-23T11:49:00.004Z

Almost exactly a month ago I "won" a "homebrew vintage amplifier" chassis on Ebay. It looked to have a couple of decent quality transformers and I reckoned that it's hard to destroy them both accidently so bidding for what I reckoned one to be worth wasn't taking too big a risk. Both turned out to be OK, but I decided not to use the mains transformer for the rebuild.

Here are the before photos -

From gadgets

And here's the rebuilt amplifier -

From gadgets

For schematics and project notes see Mullard three-three.

Cheap triodes

2008-11-08T18:05:00.005Z

Judging by the high prices valve (tube) amplifiers and their component parts are making on EBay these days the following notes might be of use to others. As I've now managed to gather more than enough parts to build a Wireless World Quality Amplifier I should really get on with building it - not buying yet more valves, transformers, etc.

Decent triodes seem to be unreasonably expensive at present. OK, the likes of PX4, PX25, PX25A output triodes are bound to be pricey, more than £100 even for a used tube. Which is why most folks on sensible budgets use output pentodes (or kinkless tetrodes, KT66) with the more extravagant using them as triodes, as in the famous Williamson amplifier.

But... why pay more than a few quid for a used L63 (6J5G)? Here's an old idea that might save valve amp experimenters a few pounds - 6Q7G was designed as a first audio triode for wireless sets, sure it's also got two diodes, but you don't have to use them. When I bought my wartime Vortexion PAs one had a couple of 6Q7G the other used EF37A connected as triodes - see the datasheet that can be downloaded from the Virtual Valve Museum, Mullard give data for using this valve as triode or pentode.

The answers to that question

2008-10-23T19:28:00.005+01:00

A couple of days ago I posted a question from Wireless World in 1942. Here's the answer that was published at the time, and a letter from Arthur C Clarke published a month later.

THE mere fact that we are able to observe the light which is reflected from other planets shows that there is nothing to prevent an electromagnetic wave traversing the space intervening between the earth and those planets—or rather between the. earth and the planetary atmospheres. For it must be noticed that this light —which originally comes from the sun —is not necessarily reflected by the surface of the planet itself, but may come from its outer atmosphere. Some planets have very dense atmospheres, others atmospheres of great rarity, while, in the. case of 'Mercury, there is hardly any atmosphere at all. The spectra of some planets contain strongly marked absorption bands, indicating that the light has penetrated the planetary atmosphere, the gases of which have caused absorption of certain frequencies. The light waves in these cases have probably reached the surface of the planets themselves. In other cases the planetary spectra are very similar to that of the solar spectrum, which would indicate either that the planet had no atmosphere, or that the light had been reflected from the outer part of the atmosphere itself.

In some cases, therefore, though not in others, an electromagnetic wave—even one of such a high frequency as that of light — can penetrate the planetary atmosphere and reach the surface of the planet itself. And if a wave of light frequency can do this, why cannot also one of radio frequcncy? Where there is an atmosphere which is penetrable by the sun's rays there is probably also an ionosphere, brought into being by the action of the rays upon the gas molecules of the planetary atmosphere. And since the nature and distribution of the gases of planetary atmospheres differ from those of our own it is reasonable so suppose that the ionospheres of the planets—if they exist—would exhibit different characteristics from those of the terrestrial ionosphere. There is also the question of the intensity of the sun's rays at the planets to be considered in this connection. It is probable, therefore, that there may be planetary ionospheres which are impervious to different ranges of radio frequencies than those to which our own ionospheres is impervious.

It would appear to be possible, however, for a wave of radio-frequency to penetrate to the surface of a planet in some cases. - The frequency used would have to be of such a value that the wave would easily penetrate both our own ionosphere and that of the planet in question, and would not be greatly attenuated by absorption in either of these regions. So far as the terrestrial ionosphere is concerned these conditions are suited by a radio wave in the "ultra high " part of the spectrum—of a frequency of, say, 50 Mc / s or higher.

The answer to the first part of the question would therefore appear to be " Yes—in the case of some planets." In order to " hold wireless communication," however, habitation of the planet by intelligent beings is implied, in order that the communication may be two-way. This would rule out a number of the planets, for it does not seem reasanable to think that intelligent beings could exist on those planets whose density is very low—in some cases it is less than that of water. In other cases there are other reasons for thinking that habitation of the planet is improbable. But in a few cases—such as that of Venus and of Mars—the existence of intelligent life is not so highly improbable.

Attenuation and Absorption

The practicability of holding wireless communication with an inhabited planet is quite another matter, and does not at present appear to exist. When a radio wave travels outward from a transmitter—even when it is sent out in the narrowest possible "beam "—it gradually "spreads" out in directions at right angles to its direction of travel, so that it covers a greater and greater area the farther it advances. But the energy present in the wave front at a great distance from the transmitter is the same as it was when the wave front was near the transmitter, and, since the wave front covers a greater and greater area as it advances, the energy present at any one point in it becomes

less and less the farther it travels. This weakening of the wave with distance travelled is called "spatial attenuation" and will occur even when no absorption at 'all is taking place. Considering the relatively great distances involved between the earth and other planets-4o to o million miles is about the shortest distance—it is evident that spatial attenuation would be very great, and that colossal power would have to be used at the transmitter in order to overcome it and provide a workable signal—according to our standard—at the receiving end. A rough estimate indicates that a transmitter power of the order of 6,00a,000 kW would be necessary in order to provide a radio field intensity of 5 microvolts per metre at the nearest planet in the absence of any absorption. True the power necessary could be considerably reduced if a highly directional transmitting aerial array were used, but even so it would still be far in excess of that radiated by any existing transmitting station. So we may rule out the possibility of getting through to the planets at present.

As to whether there are any inexplicable radiations reaching us from outer space, so far as the Wireless World Brains Trust ` . aware, no ionisation which is detectable by present-day apparatus occurs at the earth's surface which cannot be attributed either to cosmic rays, gamma ray radiation from the earth itself or to radioactiye emanations in the atmosphere. The cosmic raya themselves are thought to be due to radiations occurring during

the creation (or possibly during the disintegration) of atoms in interstellar space, and therefore, not to be associated with any -agency on one of the planets. There may, however, be rzdi tions reaching us which are of an entirely different character to those capable of being detected by existing apparatus. The answer to the second part of the question would therefore appear to be "Not known." T. W. B.

More Views on Interplanetary Communication

"CATHODE RAY," in a postscript to his letter which is printed on page 271, writes:—

IN my capacity of Member of the Wireless World Brains Trust, and referring to the question of whether there are any inexplicable radiations reaching us from outer space, I recall that in 1933 Karl Jansky reported in Proc. I.R.E., as a result of at least a year's experiments, that he obtained continuous reception of radio waves from a certain stellar region. So far. as I know, this matter has never been cleared up. -

ARTHUR C. CLARKE, Hon. Treasurer of the British Interplanetary Society, adds a note :THE fantastic figure of six million kW, quoted as necessary to produce a 5 microvolt/metre field on the nearest planet, presumably relates to spherical radiation, which no one for a moment considers. The use of beam technique would reduce power requirements to a minute fraction of this. Moreover, there seems very good evidence that radio waves from comparatively low-powered transmitters have travelled distances which are almost interplanetary. The existence of echoes of several seconds' duration (equivalent to the distance of the moon) is well established, and delays of up to ten minutes or so have been reported—corresponding to distances of several times those of Mars or Venus at perigee.

Secondly, the evidence that radiation reaches the earth from space is quite strong, and I am surprised that your contributor did not mention it. I refer to Jansky's reports on the subject (Proc. I.R.E., Oct., 1935). Jansky reports this " star-static ''as lying between 9-21 Mc/s and being 10-30 db. above the level of thermal agitation. (See also Jansky, Proc. I.R.E.. Dec., 1937, and Friis and Feldman, Proc. I.R.E., July, 1937, for a further discussion of this matter.)

Finally, if radio is incapable of really long-range communication (which I doubt) the solution to the problem lies in the modulated light beam. Light can be focussed with extreme accuracy and the sensitivity of a photo-cell collecting light at the focus. of a giant reflector, and backed by an electron multiplier and the usual amplifying stages, is so enormous as to be almost meaningless. It is certainly capable of maintaining communication between all the planets in so small a space as the Solar System! As to the objection that most planets have opaque atmospheres, I would answer that all except Venus have airless satellites very close to them to which they could be linked by UHF.

More amplifier repairs

2008-10-23T18:26:00.006+01:00

After a failed attempt to "win" what looked to be a valve-less Mullard 5-10 chassis in the hope of getting a replacement output transformer for my 5-10 at a reasonable price I did a bit more googling on the topic of transformer rewinds. Somewhere in the many forum posts I found a mention of checking for failures where the transformer windings are joined to the connecting leads. Given the style of transformer I've got, this seemed worth a check. So I opened it up carefully removed the outer layers of tape. In the picture you might be able to make out that the connections to the yellow wires are good but all four strands that should have been connected to the red centre-tap had failed. There was some charring and a little bit further away from where the connection had been some green traces. Further poking around and I had all four strands again. A little shorter than originally, but by scraping off the enamel I was able to test for continuity. Three of the four windings were OK. I don't know enough about transformer winding to know why each half of the primary was made up of two parallel windings, or why for the half that still had two good windings (I presume they were both good) one had a higher resistance than the other. Anyway I decided to use the two of the three good windings with the nearest resistances. Put it back together, and hey presto, a working "five - ten" with its original transformer returned. It probably can no longer safely deliver the full ten watts, but that's not really a problem.

With that job being easier and more successful than I'd expected I decided to keep going and "re-cap" my workshop Leak Stereo 30. This was bought very cheaply on ebay - "spares or repair". With the view that it would provide

spare parts for another that I have in the house. I'd ordered the capacitors from RS and decided to get axials, as originally used, so I spent a couple of hours pulling out the old, and bending and fitting the new. The left channel was always a bit weak, so I did that first and checked at the 1/3 and 2/3 count.

After the first third through the left channel it still wasn't great, but by 2/3rds it was as good as the right channel and with all replaced it was better. So then I did the right channel. Then checked the voltages and currents at the test points and all done. Now it sounds better than the good one in the house. So now I guess I'll have to do that one too. But for now I'll just swap them over :-)

Can a good question change the world?

2008-10-20T19:18:00.005+01:00

It's hard to know what really changes the world for the better. Is it good people, or good acts, or good ideas, or, perhaps, good questions?

Why do I ask? Well, in my idle moments I'm reading, scanning and learning the history of the Wireless World Quality Amplifier, the valve amplifier, that gave the British hi-fi in the 1930s and 40s. See here for what I have so far. (I shall be attempting to build a copy this winter).

Anyway it's now well known that in 1945 Wireless World also published a paper by the young Arthur C Clarke of the British Interplanetary Society (oh, and Royal Air Force). Less well known is the question that led to that paper. Here it is -
Is it theoretically possible to hold wireless communication with other planets? And is there anything in the nature of inexplicable radiations (i.e., apart from cosmic rays) reaching us from outer space?

(Wireless World, October 1942)

I'll post the published answer soon.

Blog Action Day 08

2008-10-14T12:21:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow is Blog Action Day. The theme will be Poverty.

Return to 21st century

2008-09-18T20:34:00.006+01:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything about technology from the present century, so here goes -

On Tuesday I attended the London Google Developer Day, I have the T shirt to prove it!

As with last year I don't intend to blog about it in any detail, since there were other bloggers there who are far better at such things than me. See UK Developer Blog: A blog is born (the official blog) for links to those blogs.

For me it didn't have the buzz of last year, but I don't expect that's likely to be beaten any time soon. Though for my colleague Angela it was pretty special as she was one of the non Googlers invited to speak.

So what did I learn. Well that there's a lot of interest in Google's AppEngine, but some folks aren't such fans of Python - why on earth not? And some folks worry about SLAs but don't have their own on site power generation (OK, maybe that's a Devon thing). I learnt that GWT is very, very cool and I probably should have been using it for months if not years - so I'll try and fix that soon. And that I need to watch all the presentations on You Tube ASAP, because it's not enough to just learn more about the things that seem interesting now.

Mullard Five-Ten - out with the old.

2008-09-14T15:12:00.004+01:00

Over the last week I've spent evenings removing bad components and replacing with good ones. I found a few old Dubilier 0.1uF paper in oil capacitors that looked sound and measured OK on the test meter, so I've decided to try them. They certainly look the part. I decided it best to buy new electrolytics (except for the large HT filter cap - expensive) - Rifa's from RS look good and have decent specs.

As for the output transformer I've decided to borrow one from one of my Vortexion's. It's far too big (you can see the original in the background of the photo), but it will allow me to try the amp out before spending a lot on a new one, or a rewind of the old one - I wonder how much that might be? These days it always seems cheaper to buy new rather than repair, unless you do the repair yourself. Umm, maybe I need to learn how to wind transformers.

Yesterday I switched it on for the first time, and it worked! There was a lot of hum and some motor-boating so it was fairly obvious that the 50 year old HT smoothing capacitor wasn't up to the job. In my junk box I happened to have an LCR 68uF 500V electrolytic that happened to be exactly the same diameter as the existing 40+40uF one, though much shorter (I peeled off the bright blue plastic wrapper). So I've fitted this as C1 and for C2 used a 47uF 450V axial I had. Both were bought about 12 years ago, so should be good for a few years yet. It did the job. There's still a little hum, though it vanishes completely when the EF86 is removed, so I suspect it's due to the wiring layout.

Acoustical (Quad amplifier) and Leak "Point one"

2008-09-08T21:28:00.003+01:00

I don't own either of these, but I've been skimming through the many copies of Wireless World I've acquired and came across these adverts.
More constructively I'm listing the developments that led to the Williamson Amplifier - see here.

LINKS
History of Quad
Leak (Wikipedia)

Next patient - Mullard Five-Ten

2008-08-31T22:54:00.008+01:00

One of my colleagues has just given me this valve (tube) amplifier built from a kit based on the Mullard Five-Ten design published back in 1954. Though this design is still being built by audio enthusiasts today, it seems this one is the genuine 1954 article. It's far from working condition though, so it's going to need a fair bit of work and a few replacement parts.
As it's likely this will be an extended project with a few stops and starts as I seek components - I don't really like to buy new, because it's expensive, and because new parts often don't look right - I'll be keeping notes in my mullard-five-ten wiki page.

Here are a few more "before" photos. Things to note are that this kit uses the higher power rectifier option of the GZ30. The quality of construction of the chassis is good, so it was certainly built from a kit. The quality of the build is competent, but not great.

From the rear we see the two EL84 output valves, these look as though they've been very, very, hot and a check of the output transformer reveals the primary is open circuit. Between the output valves can be seen the ECC83 phase splitter and behind that the EF86.
There's also an empty hole (far left) that's exactly the right size for a Bulgin 3 pin mains connector.

From the underside we can see that there are some very old electrolytic and paper capacitors. Note that the dates on these are "JUL 53".

A closer view of the hole for the missing Bulgin mains connector. It seems there was once an earth tag here that has been replaced with a picture hook!

Mullard Five-Ten resources

My Mullard five-ten project page
Mullard Amplifiers information on 3-3, 5-10 and 5-20 amplifiers
Notable historic valve amplifiers (Wikipedia article)

Adding a stereo demultiplexer to the Leak Trough Line 3

2008-08-31T22:42:00.018+01:00

When I bought my first Trough Line 3 on Ebay a few weeks ago I did a little googling and found this article on replacing the stereo decoder in the stereo version and this one on an external decoder. It struck me that converting a mono tuner to stereo might be a fun project that could be achieved fairly cheaply with salvaged components. All I needed was a tuner with a stereo decoder, which I had. Fortunately for the Sony, before I ripped it apart an older manually tuned Chinon receiver came up on Ebay locally, so I grabbed it for a fiver. Here it is accepting the multiplex output from the Trough Line.

Being a fairly ancient receiver, mid 70s I guess, the stereo demultiplexer chip was the only IC in the box, so fairly easy to spot, a mix of tracing the wiring, from mono/stereo switch, stereo indicator lamp (N.B. lamp, not LED), voltage checks and poking the pins with the CRT revealed what did what and the fact that it used a single 12V supply. I reckoned the easiest way to get it into the Trough Line would be to cut out what I needed from the circuit board using a hacksaw. So that's what I did! Here it is with a voltage doubler power supply taking 6.3V a.c. from the Trough Line heater supply.

So far, so good. Now to try and fit it in the Trough Line. The obvious thing to do is to put it where the decoder is fitted in the stereo version. Wow, it fits! But it's a tight fit. Looking at the board more closely reveals that the tallest component is the smoothing cap for the regulated power supply. A modern cap of the same value taken from an old PC motherboard is half the size!

That done the installation can continue. I decided that screening probably isn't necessary. Perhaps I'll be proved wrong on this later. The voltage doubler goes underneath. Done!

BBC FM radio transmitters and broken switches

2008-08-24T09:38:00.007+01:00

This weekend brings a new FM aerial and the second Leak Trough Line is brought back to life.

As hoped the second Trough Line arrived, albeit with no valves, in fact no glass at all, the fuse and 'fuse lamp' were both missing. Before replacing the valves I checked continuity of the mains transformer and on/off switch. The transformer was OK but one half of the switch was faulty. So I removed the switch from the circuit. Connected to the mains, with chassis earthed, gave ac on the heater and HT windings. So I put an EZ80 rectifier in the appropriate socket and checked the HT dc. All fine. With the rest of the valves in everything was still good. With aerial and amp connected I now had a working tuner. Unbelievably easy.

Checking the on-line Maplin catalogue for fuse lamps was a disappointment, it seems they've gone the way of variable capacitors and 3mm (1/8 inch) wander plugs. Such things are still available from some sources, e.g. Farnell have Belling Lee wander plugs, not cheap though. Then I noticed that my "donor" tuner, bought for £4.99 on Ebay, had 6 of them. They're 8V, rather than 6.3V, but perfectly usable. The main purpose of the donor was to provide a stereo decoder. I'll describe how I extracted it in a later post.

A few minutes use revealed that not only had the mains switch failed, but so had the two slide switches. Fortunately my Trough Line surfing had already take me to Keith Snook's page on repairing and tuning the Trough Line. I pretty much did exactly as Keith described, though I noticed that there were some fine cracks in the rubber cushion behind the brass strips. Which made me think that the rubber was probably quite a bit harder than when new. As a, probably temporary, remedy I cut a couple of small pieces of self amalgamating rubber tape and super-glued one to each of the cushions. Oh, and to clean the contacts I rubbed the ball from an old PC mouse over them. Now both slide switches are working well, and I've replaced the volume control, and its faulty switch, with a rotary switch.

As for the aerial, I've replaced my cheapo omni-directional loft aerial with a cheapo 3 element directional one. Which way to point it though? Perhaps this is another job for Google Earth - see BBC FM.

Experiments with the Leak Trough Line

2008-08-18T20:33:00.014+01:00

Reckoned by some to be one of the finest FM tuners ever, the all valve Leak Trough Line is a very simple radio. Trough Lines can be bought fairly cheaply on Ebay (well for under £50, though some do fetch much more). I've recently picked up a couple for under £20 each.

Initial impressions of the first buy was that the sensitivity really is very low indeed, but it sounds great. The accepted audiophile solution is a big outdoor aerial. Fair enough, but are there alternatives, e.g. using a decent low noise RF amplifier? This was to be my first experiment with my newly acquired Trough Line 3, but then I saw an opportunity to acquire another very cheaply, albeit with no valves. Rummaging through my boxes of valves revealed that I had spares for everything, including the tuning indicator, except for the ECC84. So what is an ECC84 and did I have a suitable alternative? Looking at the circuit diagram I could see it was the first RF stage, but the circuit diagram was hard to read so I looked at the circuit for the stereo version. Hey, it uses a different valve, the ECC88, these I have.

ECC84, PCC84, ECC88, E88CC, PCC88 - what's the difference? If like me you've got a lot of old valves from old TV receivers, radios, and test equipment you probably don't have any spare ECC84s, but you may well have a few of each of the others. The good news is, they're all usable in early Trough Lines that use the ECC84, though some modification to the wiring of the Trough Line will be needed to use any of the 88s. It seems the ECC88 was an improved replacement for the ECC84, though the base connections aren't exactly the same. It also needs a slightly higher anode current. To check this without modifying the Trough Line I put together a simple adaptor. Here's the circuit.

And here's what it looks like.

And yes, it works! In fact it works very well, bringing in stations that couldn't be received at all with the ECC84. So I'm making this a permanent change to my first Trough Line. Hopefully nobody reading this will imagine I have any special powers or knowledge; all the information required to put together the adaptor can be extracted from the two circuit diagrams, but to be completely sure I checked the valve specs at the Virtual Valve Museum. Here you can also find details of the other valves I mentioned. It's worth noting that they aren't exact equivalents, since ECC84 and PCC84, etc. were designed for slighlty different uses and have different heaters.

Some explanation is possibly required regarding the heaters. The standard heater voltage for mains powered radios from about 1940 (earlier in the USA) was 6.3V. However for AC/DC sets and TVs the heaters were connected in series and so valves were designed to all draw the same current. Valves with a first letter 'E' are for parallel use at 6.3V, whereas those with a first letter
'P' are for serial use at 300mA. What you'll find is that for all these valves the heater voltage and current is within 10%, so for practical purposes they are all usable at 6.3V, and most likely all but the ECC88 are usable at 300mA (I've not tried this). Note this is not generally true for E and P valves, especially not output valves. Other heater variants are also possible, for example a UCC84 would have a 100mA heater.

Before -

And after -

I've seen PCC88 as substitution before. Though these are radio frequency (VHF) amplifier cascode triodes they were used unstead of the last ECC82 in my Ferrograph tape recorder when it was built. I'm not sure why though. What this does show is that the two triodes in the (E/P)CC88 are the same, this doesn't seem to be the case for (E/P)CC84.

Messing about with capacitors

2008-08-17T08:57:00.004+01:00

After a couple of messing about with valves posts I was going to call this messing about with transistors, but mostly it has been capacitors. My wanderings through my electronic junk has now reached the 1960s. Again the challenge is what to keep and what to get rid of. Fortunately I've not kept much from this era, the age of black and white TV, transistor radios, and FM. I've got one item to sell, so on to Ebay to check prices and see what's hot or not. Errrmm, interesting maybe there's more to the 60s that I thought - British hi fi seems to be selling well, but with some bargains too. The temptation was too great so I snapped up a Leak Stereo 30 amplifier and Trough Line 3 tuner. These were described as "in good condition", which I took to mean complete, but not working. I reckon it was worth the (not much) money to have a couple of boxes with MADE IN LONDON ENGLAND on them to mess about with.

A few days later the postman struggled to the door with a large box. I quickly unpacked the box and opened up both cases. Everything seemed present and correct, so off they went to the workshop.

The tuner worked perfectly, sure it needs more signal than I have at present, a better aerial is needed.

As for the amplifier, the left channel worked but not the right. So I clipped a lead across the wipers on the volume control and the right channel came alive. Both power amps were fine, so the problem was with the right pre amp stage. A glance at the circuit diagram shows that there are two routes for the tape amp input one through the pre amp, and one direct to the power amp via the tape monitor switch. However plugging a Sony tuner in and flicking the tape monitor switch gave output on the right but not left! Tracing the signal showed the fault here was with the hi/lo slider switch on the rear panel. Replacing switches that will most likely never be used seemed pointless, so I just soldered all the hi/lo switches to the lo setting. That done I traced the signal through the the right preamp. It vanished at C16R! So something was wrong at T3R. The capacitor didn't look quite right, the plastic cover was clouded, so I pulled it and replaced (25uF, 25V axial). Still no joy. Checking the voltages around T3R showed they were very wrong, emitter at almost 0V. C17R (125uF 10V axial) was also faulty, replaced and now everything is fine!!!! Interesting that C16 had failed open and C17 closed. Odd things electrolytic capacitors. Perhaps I should replace them all, but it seems like a lot of work for little gain.

Here's the tuner. It's mono so I'll have a go at adding a stereo demultiplexer soon. I think I'll try and take one from another tuner (maybe the Sony), rather than build one with new components.

Still messing about with valves

2008-06-22T10:45:00.003+01:00

Here are some pictures of one of the older electronic components in my "collection".

It's an early 1920s valve. Valves like this were used in the very first broadcast receivers around the time the BBC was formed. This one still works, which given its age and type is probably unusual - it's a bright emitter or "r-type" so only has a few hundred hours working life. With the heater connected to a 1.5V cell it lights up like a light bulb! You can just about make out the internal construction in the photo - a thin wire filament (cathode) with a spiral grid inside a cylinder (anode).

Since there's not a lot on information on very old valves on the web here's some technical details. Manufacturer: Métal Radio (France). Model: BW 303. Markings: 1,6 - 1,8V 30 - 75V XX.

Now I must go and try and fix my AVO valve tester, it's cutting out and putting 110V across the heater terminals. Perhaps this has something to do with the 0V and 110V coarse setting for heater voltage being next to each other....

Messing about with valves (tubes)

2008-05-26T16:23:00.006+01:00

It's been months since my last blog posting, so there's not a chance of covering the many random things I've been up to of late.

Actually there are a couple of posts that I didn't finish, so never posted. Back in March I nearly posted about my largely unsuccessful efforts to spring clean the garage (well workshop come junk store).

I've got a very large stash of electronic 'stuff'. My stash includes crystal set components from the 1920s, a couple of working 1930s battery powered wireless sets, mains sets from the 1930s, 40s and 50s. There are many other 'treasures' including test equipment such as Avometers, and a Mk 1 Avo valve characteristic meter. And of course lots of components such as valves, connectors, even pieces of wire and nuts and bolts. Most of it is mixed up in large cardboard boxes in the garage and attic.

So how to deal with all this stuff and sort the junk from the treasure? There are certainly a few things that I believe to have some value, the Avo valve characteristic meter and the Ferrograph tape recorder. A couple of 1950s bakelite cased radios, both with cracked cases - they can't be worth keeping - off they go to the local auction. What about the two RF signal generators? Maybe I should keep one (now you can see how I come to have so much stuff to start with). I've decided to keep the TE20D and sell the ancient Triplett 1632 (it made £16 at the auction).

Well I did eventually get around to throwing out some the junk, after many enjoyable hours salvaging things I might find useful, motors from disk drives, crystals and sockets from computer motherboards, and other interesting (to me) bits and pieces. Along the way I got the Avo valve characteristic meter working, and even tested a few ECC82 and ECC83 valves to replace the broken ones in the Ferrograph - so that now works again.

As a consequence of these diversions I've now set up another website, Wireless Words, and a wiki, self-aware.

So on Saturday I took the van, loaded with scrap metal, circuit boards, and other rubbish to the "recycling centre". Where I discovered this "treasure" -

It was mine for one pound! OK, so I bought some rubbish, but it's interesting rubbish. A 1930s wireless set with push button tuning and a "magic-eye" with sockets for pickup and television sound. Being as geeky as I am I could tell it was pre-WWII, but probably only just. Well it turns out it's a 1938 set, here's the evidence -

Women demonstrating an Ekco radio, Radiolympia, London, 1938.

Thanks to the Science and Society Picture Library. It would be fair to say I've got no idea what I'm going to do with it. But the motorised tuning mechanism lends itself to a remote control system of some sort. A computer controlled valve wireless perhaps.

Google Earth in your pocket

2008-01-29T19:39:00.000Z

Though I expect many of my colleagues will just shrug and wonder whether I can get any more geeky, it seems that a couple of my geek interests have, probably temporarily, crossed paths.

Over on Ogle Earth there's some speculation as to whether Nokia buying Trolltech might bring Google Earth to Nokia phones, whilst on Internet Tablet Talk the speculation is about the impacts on Maemo.

Well as an Internet Tablet carrying "alpha geek" maybe I can add further confusion, or not, by posting pictures of Google Earth "running" on a Nokia N810.

In truth it isn't actually running on the tablet, the tablet is using the laptop to run Google Earth and using VNC to display the graphics and get the stylus and keyboard input. The end result is much the same though - so long as you've got a wifi connection to a suitable "host". Though not ideal for Google Earth, I've used this method to run applications "in the cloud" using Amazon EC2.

Encrypt your data. How hard can it be? [1]

2008-01-27T18:09:00.000Z

In the light of recent events here in the UK[2] I thought I'd investigate data encryption - well try it out. Fortunately my work doesn't require me to handle confidential data, and these days, for the most part, I don't carry much of my own personal information with me. Though I've long been either pragmatic, or perhaps wealthy, enough to consider that the loss of any portable electronics - phone, laptop, etc. would be more of a nuisance from the data loss, than the physical loss. So maybe the data does matter to me enough to consider encryption.

As a scientific programmer much of my life is spent in the Unix/Linux world, added to which I'm a (Linux based) Nokia Internet Tablet enthusiast, so I felt I needed something that would allow me to exchange encrypted data between the Linux and Windows worlds. A quick Google led me to TrueCrypt, Windows and Linux versions available for free download, and the source too, so maybe I could build it for my new N810. To cut a long story short, in between checking on a sick alpaca, I was able to build TrueCrypt for OS2008 - the latest Nokia tablet OS over the weekend. OK, I've not proved it's totally secure, but how hard is it? Not very.

[1] What's the point of rhetorical questions?
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/21/ndata121.xml

My first week with the N810

2008-01-13T18:19:00.001Z

I've had my new Nokia N810 for just over one week. It's the gadget in the bottom right of the picture, also shown are a HP calculator from 1985 (which I still use but it lives in my desk drawer) a Palm IIIe and last year's Nokia N800. So what's it like? Well a colleague who owns a N800 described it as "techie bling", which is what HP calculators were in the 1980s, so it's probably a fair description.

Initial impressions are that the keys on the keyboard are too small, the miniSD memory slot is too fiddly, the keys on the top are very hard to find with the keyboard open and the display quality much better than the N800. The built in GPS is interesting, and I'm bound to find uses for it.

Weather satellites

2008-01-13T16:31:00.001Z

Over the holidays I built myself a weather satellite receiver. It receives data from MSG, Meteosat 7, and GOES 11, via the EUMETCAST relay on Hotbird 6. Not being a satellite TV user it's a few years since I last messed around with kit like this and it's amazing how cheap and simple it is today. Though getting everything working as I wanted it in Linux was more of a challenge. There are more photos of the "receiving station" in my Picasa album.

2007 in links

2007-12-26T12:40:00.000Z

A quick summary of my 2007 as the web sees it -

January.
Carlo and I visit Addis Ababa and Nekemte in Ethiopia - Exeter Ethiopia Link newsletter (pdf)
BCS HQ London. Fifty Years of Fortran.

March.
Leeds. High Performance Computing.

May.
Google Developer Day, London. (Impossible)

September.
Web2ForDev, Rome. A climate mashup. (Français)

Back to mashups

2007-11-11T09:12:00.000Z

ICT update published a very nice article on my climate change mashups presentation at Web2forDev - A climate mashup. You can even listen to me and Carlo talking about why we feel this sort of experiment is valuable.

Of course we're far from the only, or even major, players in the field of weather mashups, the most famous of which is probably Weather Bonk - recently acquired by The Weather Channel. I wonder if that will result in more innovation or less? I'm sure their Weather For Your Route will soon become a standard feature of route planners. Though probably the biggest news is that Google have just added a weather layer to Google Earth.

So now I need to get back to WeMapr and get the chart import working properly.

Mobile computing

2007-10-20T12:51:00.000+01:00

No so long ago I used to work from home, in fact most days for nearly seven years. I enjoyed it, though it is most certainly a lifestyle choice rather that a career move. But then it's lifestyle choices such as exercise, diet, hobbies, and spending time with friends, family, even pets, that seem to improve happiness, health, and the like, far more than business meetings, report writing, etc.

It seems odd, but working and living in one place was what made me value portable computers, even mobile phones - though I'm still not a big user of the latter. Why? Because when you have ready access to email and www whenever you choose, it's then a pain when you haven't. I never really found that laptops were the right tool. I had one, and have owned others since - I'm typing right now on a Compaq nx6325 which I rather like. What I like about it isn't that it's portable. I like that it has decent size keyboard and screen, connects to a wired network and various gadgets, runs off mains electricity, is very quiet and small enough to sit on a table and leaves room for other things, even writing with pen and paper. What I did like back then was the original Palm Pilot because it was small enough to carry around all day and switched on and off quickly and easily. OK it didn't really give me access to email, but it did give me access to my (recent) emails, and most of the time that was enough. Later I got a, slightly, more advanced Palm IIIe and even a Nokia WAP phone. If I still worked in that way - four days at home, one travelling two hours by train, meeting, meeting... then train back home I guess I'd be toting a BlackBerry or similar. I don't, hence the rest of this post will consider rather different mobile computers.

In 2005 when I first heard about the One Laptop Per Child project I was immediately intrigued by the idea. Of course there were plenty of folk who declared "I want one too" and there were, and remain, plenty of objections. See here for a long list of them. With my inclination to experiment, the obvious choice for me was to try and find, or build, the nearest thing I could to a OLPC. Why? So I might be able to help in some way, and have fun of course. I'd already experimented with Linux, mesh networking and of course owned much simpler solid state computers - Palms. So what was out there? Well as luck would have it Nokia had just announced their first Linux based Internet Tablet, the 770. Now in October 2007 Nokia have announced their new N810 Internet Tablet, and a couple of weeks ago at Web2forDev I got my hands on a XO, the One Laptop Per Child. So today I'm able to say I have no desire to own a OLPC, but a fairly strong desire to continue to own an Internet Tablet. I don't think that Internet Tablets have any particular educational merit, but I still feel they can be useful for developers targeting the OLPC platform. What won me over to the Internet Tablet is that it's a handy thing to have around for my own use, and in the end that's what personal stuff is about.

Psychoceramics

2007-10-13T17:58:00.000+01:00

Today I received the latest mailing from the OUBS (Open University Business School) which listed various seminars that are supposed to help me keep my business knowledge up to date - it's a few years now since I took various courses leading to an MBA. Perhaps because yesterday was my last day managing a team, well as a full time job, I glanced through the list with a less than serious frame of mind and wondered if these events would be of any use to me other than perhaps as fodder for a history of management fads.

This set me wondering if anyone actually took the trouble to study management fads, and a bit of googling led me to
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/psychoceramics.html

Perhaps at present such research is best left to the professional cynics such as the gifted Scott Adams.

Mashing maps in Google Earth

2007-09-30T14:34:00.000+01:00

As I've already been asked a couple of times to show how I combined maps and RSS feeds in Google Earth during my presentation at web2forDev it seems sensible to write a short note on it here.

Overlaying charts
This really is very simple. For those who like to experiment then all that needs to be said is - select the menu item Image Overlay... from the Add menu. There's even a keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+O. For those who would like more detailed instructions these can be found in the Google Earth user guide http://earth.google.com/intl/en/userguide/v4/ug_imageoverlays.html#creating
Tip - for global charts like those I was showing it's easier to use the Location tab and enter 90N, 90S, 179E, 180W in the appropriate boxes.

Overlaying RSS feeds
As most feeds don't have geo-location information for each item, some processing is required. Fortunately there are at least two free services that can do this work for us. The easiest to use is the GeoNames RSS to GeoRSS Converter. Here's an example, showing the form of the URL required to present the Web2forDev blog on Google Earth
http://ws.geonames.org/rssToGeoRSS?type=kml&feedUrl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/Web2fordev

Clicking on that URL might not launch Google Earth, so instead use the Network link... option in the Add menu of Google Earth. It may also be necessary to "ignore errors" when the feed is read. So it's easy, but not yet ready for prime time, so I prefer to use Yahoo! Pipes, and I'll write about that in a future post.

Back from Rome

2007-09-29T11:34:00.000+01:00

I'm home now, had a long lie in, unpacked my bags, felt I should try and write something about the last week, realised I still felt quite tired so decided to read other folks posts. Thankfully others aren't as lazy as me so there are two reviews of my presentation out there already! Thanks guys!

http://blog.web2fordev.net/2007/09/27/climate-change-mashup/

http://ictlogy.net/20070927-web2fordev-2007-xi-spatial-knowledge-sharing/

Map mashups the easy way

2007-08-21T19:39:00.000+01:00

On the Wemapr website I'm gathering together the resources I'll need for my presentation at Web2forDev so it was great to see on the LatLong blog that Google have made adding maps to web pages even easier. See
Google LatLong: YouTube-style Embeddable Maps for the details and a video tutorial.

View Larger Map

Curiously almost as soon as I'd posted it this entry was copied and the language "mashed" to drive traffic to a blogger hosted porn site. I'm not sure how long it will stay up, but Google on "wemapr" and you might see it listed.

Catching up

2007-08-02T10:22:00.000+01:00

I'm not at work this week, yippee! It's great to not have to go into Exeter every day* - not that I don't love my colleagues (just in case they're reading). I've not gone away, just using the time to chill out and, more usefully, catch up with stuff I've either neglected or just got behind with. My personal email inbox has grown far bigger than my work one - that can't be a good thing.

Now is not the best time to report on Wepoco progress. Things are happening but it's still quite political, so I'll do the link thing.

There has been a mention in the newspaper Il Manifesto. http://chipsandsalsa.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/tutti-i-luoghi-del-nuovo-attivismo-da-network/
I've submitted details of the Wepoco "mashup" to ProgrammableWeb.

As I shall be giving a talk at web2fordev I've been keeping one eye on what others are saying about web 2.0 and the like. Are you looking for answers? Here's a quote that caught my attention.

"Web 2.0 flips the information delivery model upside down — it's now about global access, and information at your fingertips, aggregated from sources that you don't even necessarily know about, or care where they exist. Based on a set of search criteria, information in all its rich forms — media, video, audio, images, documents, text — all will be assembled together in context and delivered to users and applications for real-time experience. "

http://opinion.zdnet.co.uk/comment/0,1000002138,39288093,00.htm

Oh dear, surely this is just a poor expression of the "semantic web" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web not at all what I though web 2.0 was about - wikipedia being one example of the web2.0 phenomenon, social networks (MySpace, LinkedIn, etc), blogs, and mashups being others.

Anyway, I'll save my further thoughts on that for the conference. My "are you looking for answers?" line reminds me of something I read today. This time it's a quote that reads "there may be 10,000 civilisations capable of communicating with us". It's from the Radio Times, an article about Adam Hart-Davis's new TV series. My thoughts are - sure, and there might be none. It's not that I don't believe that there might be planets elsewhere with living creatures, or that some of those creatures might be able to do remarkable things such as fly, it just that I don't see why they should be capable of communicating with us, after all what possible evolutionary benefit might that have? Anyone with pets or livestock knows it can be damned hard communicating face to face with non-human species on our own planet, and in almost all cases impossible at any distance.

Clearly intelligent communication is not something that is easily achieved between species. The fault though can't be with other species, it must be with our own. After all, we appear to be not just slightly smarter than other species on our own planet, but a lot a smarter. That doesn't make sense if being smart was a survival thing. After all, antelope don't run ten times faster than cheetahs. So with no obvious next smartest predator (or prey) the best thing I can suggest for why humans are so smart is that it looks good, like a peacock's tail. Which sort of explains why women like men with a sense of humour and why women make good interviewers when you're looking to hire smart folks.

So I'm left thinking that SETI probably shouldn't be scanning the universe for prime numbers, or whatever they think they might find, but they need to be looking for a joke - and perhaps also consider what sort of alien would be looking for a human date!

*every day - note the space, it matters!

Development 2.0

2007-06-18T20:31:00.000+01:00

A little while ago Wepoco got a mention in an article in FreePint http://www.freepint.com/issues/240507.htm#feature

I keep meaning to write something about that article since it does seem that something quite significant is starting to happen and Wepoco seems to have drifted into its orbit. Trouble is I'm not really sure what to write. So instead, in true Web 2.0 style I'll just rely on links, tags and the opportunity to edit this post later.

Here's something else on Development 2.0 http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/discover-culture/development-2-0-can-the-web-save-the-world

And here's the Web2fordev blog I only discovered today http://blog.web2fordev.net/

Reading this http://www.e-agriculture.org/102.html makes me think I should plan to be in Rome in late September.

Oh, and as a reminder to myself here are some scattered thoughts for a possible article.

Low cost IT - what happens when the computer costs less than the electricity it uses? (expect this to happen within 10 years!)
The bottom of the pyramid as a service provider (monitoring the state of our planet).
Why do we always have to wait (yet another) generation? (the curse of formal education).

unreasonable acts and impossible things

2007-06-03T12:52:00.000+01:00

Continued from unreasonable-acts-and-impossible-things part 1.

Part 2. Impossible.

The Google folks had very sensibly chosen to start their Developer Day 2007 at midday (registration from 11am), this meant I was able to buy a cheap(ish) rail ticket getting me into Paddington at 11:20am. I think it was about 11:55 when I walked through the door of the Brewery, and perhaps because it was so close to the kick-off I didn't have to queue for my pass and goody bag. I was a little disappointed that my pass just had my name on it, since when I registered I'd given myself the title Technical Wizard. Oh well, maybe next time.

I'll not attempt to summarise the talks, since others will surely do a better job, and many of them are available on youtube - see http://code.google.com/events/developerday/

Anyway, being one of the last to arrive I sat at the back of the hall only vaguely aware of computer graphics being shown on a screen at the front of the hall as loud music played. Soon the keynote began with Chris DiBona talking about Google's relationships with open source and Ed Parsons talking about mapping and the like - all good stuff. Then it was back downstairs for the free lunch.

The first session after lunch was more about open source. It's good to see Google regarding both the use and contribution to open source projects as strategic activities. The next session was Peter Birch's "Google Earth and the GeoWeb". Early in this presentation was a demonstration of a time line of buildings in London. It's well worth a look, see http://earth.google.com/showcase/. This answered one of the questions I had about support for time and animation. Another of the Wepoco team had suggested that I make the Google developers aware that in meteorology we use at least five different sorts of time. What he meant was that unlike events that have happened, events that are forecasts to happen have several time parameters associated with them, such as when the forecast is for, when it was produced, when it is valid, the cut off time for observations used for the forecasts, and others I forget right now. After the talk I walked up to the front to ask Peter about using time in different ways but as I passed the screen at the front I was stunned to see the graphics being shown between sessions included the Wepoco website - shouldn't that be impossible? How many websites are there in the world? How could any selection, random or otherwise include http://www.wepoco.com/ ? The site has almost no traffic and pretty much only provides information of use to people who don't yet have access to the Internet! But there it was - an impossible thing! It completely threw me, I had no idea what it meant. I'm not sure even now, three days later, I know what it means, but it didn't half make Alberto excited when I told him the next day - once he had decided I wasn't making it up. Helped greatly by Google's blog search which revealed - http://weblogs.java.net/blog/arungupta/archive/2007/05/google_develope_1.html

It's probably good for Google that I went to the Developer Day alone, otherwise I suspect they might have had to deal with a bunch of drunk Wepocoists when the free beer arrived in the evening.

So now let's see if this bit of unplanned publicity can help Wepoco escape from the tar pit. I do hope so.

(19/06/2007) The Google Developer Day mashup video is now on youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=-GeU3Rp7wnY

unreasonable acts and impossible things

2007-06-02T18:43:00.000+01:00

Part 1. Unreasonable.

There's a programme on the TV here in the UK called Grumpy Old Men, it's supposed to be funny and sometimes it is, a bit. I have a few problems with it though, these men aren't old, heck most are little older than me, and that isn't old - believe me! More importantly they're not grumpy, they're perhaps slightly intolerant (esp. of fools) and wonderfully unreasonable.

As George Bernard Shaw apparently said - "Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men."

One of those grumpy old men is Bob Geldoff for f**k's sake - so what do you expect?

Now I make no personal claim to have made any great progress in anything but I do want progress to happen - with a passion. So like very many people who work in IT, rather than doing the reasonable thing with the money I earn, like buying expensive toys and exotic holidays, I write software to give away, experiment with stuff, and generally try to disrupt the very "ecosystem" that pays my wages. (OK, so I buy toys and take holidays too - sometimes).

Unreasonable behaviour can of course irritate others, it's not the purpose, but with so many reasonable people about the eventual conflict is inevitable. Maybe one day I'll figure my own way of dealing with this, but for now I simply draw on the lessons of great unreasonable folks of the recent past - Forty-Second Boyd and Grace Hopper are wonderful examples from the US military.

So what's this blog post all about? Yes, I know, I'm drifting. Trouble is that for the last 4 months the Wepoco project http://www.wepoco.com/ has been moving far too slowly as the team tries to find a way of integrating dreams of a low-cost hi-tech distributed delivery of weather services to millions of poor farmers with the reality of a bureaucratic network of state controlled weather services. So when I got a chance to spend a day immersed in geeky wonderfulness there really wasn't any contest. So on Thursday 31st May 2007 off I went to London for the Google Developer Day.

The Wepoco website uses Google Maps. It was pretty much my first attempt at AJAX programming and I'm quite proud of it. What's there today is no longer just my work, other members of the team have contributed the graphics and server-side code and helped in various ways. The website is far from perfect and has all sorts of problems that we're working on as time permits - but most importantly it's been a great way of learning what is possible on the Web in 2007. We've also found out things that aren't possible. For example it's hard to created printed documents from the web graphics, there's no easy way of showing animated maps and it hardly works on a slow dial-up line in Nekemte. This gave me several questions that I hoped I might be able to put to the Google team in London and, perhaps, they might even like to help with the project. I'd heard about Googlers having 20% of time for open source projects.

(to be continued....)

Official Google Blog: New team members for Google.org

2007-04-13T23:42:00.000+01:00

It seems that Larry Brilliant and his team at Google.org have identified many of the same issues as Wepoco.com over the last 12 months.

"We live in very complicated times. Global health, poverty, and climate are inextricably interrelated, and it is the poor of the world who bear the heaviest burden. " Official Google Blog: New team members for Google.org

I say - seek complexity! It's not the same as mess, it's in studying and working with complex systems that we often find simple and powerful solutions. The climate system is complicated, mobile phones are complicated, even Google Maps is quite complicated; but applying knowledge of these and other things will change the world for the better. I'm sure of it.

Wepoco news

2007-03-26T20:13:00.000+01:00

I've written a short piece about the recent trip to Nekemte in Ethiopia for the Exeter-Ethiopia Link March 2007 newsletter. It's on their website at http://www.exeterethiopialink.org/

Also Google Maps and Google Earth now has high resolution imagery of Nekemte. I'll try and put together a virtual guide to the places Carlo and I visted.

Nokia N800

2007-02-04T09:50:00.000Z

Here are my first impressions of the new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet (from Nokia, Finland). I've owned the old 770 tablet for 12 months, so this is a quick comparison with that gadget.

New features.

Webcam. Popping it out starts the video phone application, which is a nice touch.
Stereo speakers. Better, and louder than the mono speaker 770. Makes the N800 a very useable portable Internet radio.
Built in stand. Compliments the above two features.
Two SD memory slots. No longer restricted to a single RS-MMC slot. I added a cheap (£20) 1GB SD card immediately.
Faster processor and more RAM (128MB cf 64MB) makes browsing the web much faster and less likely to result in a browser crash. Everything seems more responsive.
Audio player has support for Real Audio streams, so it's easy to use the N800 with BBC radio streams - on the 770 this required the video player and was more fiddly.
Headphones (well bud things) with microphone, so don't have to use the built in one.
Headphone (and power) socket on short side rather than on long side, so it's easier to use headphones with the gadget in a pocket.

Dislikes.

No hard cover. This is a shame, as I rather liked the way closing the cover switched the 770 off - except when I wanted it to stay on :-(
The power and zoom/volume butoons on the top are now tiny and look cheap, which is a very odd change. The buttons on the 770 look, and work, much better.

Overall I'd say that the N800 is probably worth owning if you want a small gadget to surf the web via wi-fi. Of course this is what both the 770 and N800 were designed for, but the 770 seemed to struggle at times with many web sites. Don't let the size and shape fool you, this isn't an advanced personal organiser, it comes with no suitable software, though you might find something useable to download - see http://downloads.maemo.org/

Ethiopia trip

2007-02-03T20:16:00.000Z

The first Wepoco field trip was a great success. Carlo and I travelled to Nekempte in Oromia, Ethiopia to investigate the possibility of a pilot project to establish the benefits of advanced climate and weather information to subsistence farming. I'll post a link to the trip report on my blog soon, but for now here are some of the photographs.

Ethiopia January 2007

Wepoco mobile

2006-12-02T15:04:00.000Z

Although plans are still evolving the Wepoco project aims to get essential weather and climate information to even the most remote farmers. These days the Internet reaches some pretty remote places, but the coverage is nothing like that for mobile telephone networks. So a mobile strategy is an important part of the project.

A while back the BBC had this report on WAP (mobile phone Internet use) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4795255.stm and just this week Google's Deep Nishar indicated that more mobile products are on the way from Google - see http://news.com.com/Googles+ambitions+going+mobile/2008-1039_3-6138755.html

So what might mobile Wepoco look like? Well at present the web pages use the Google Maps API so it could look something like this http://www.techweb.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=160700001

As mobile phone displays improve then something like the view I get with my Nokia 770 would be possible. At first though I think something more modest is in order, SMS perhaps.

GoogleMapping Africa

2006-11-14T19:05:00.000Z

Google Maps http://maps.google.com/ now has African towns and roads, though the towns of Ethiopia don't yet show at the resolutions I'd like for the Wepoco project www.wepoco.com
(but you can't have everything). Added to which those cunning Google programmers have added another feature I've been wanting in order to expand site specific weather forecasts to more countries - http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com/2006/11/marker-manager.html
It seems I might have a busy weekend coming up if I'm going to make the most of all this.

On management

2006-11-03T18:38:00.000Z

Here are some links to useful management resources for folks who manage technical suff. I've copied these (slightly edited) from the old website.

The Quality Gurus Information from the dti.

Communicating Sequential Processes Communicating Sequential Processes, or CSP, is a language for describing patterns of interaction...

Strategy Survival Guide A guide from the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit

A Futurist's Toolbox Methodologies in Futures Work

Analyzing resources and capabilities

Developing Organisation Culture for Strategic Advantage An organisation born of Hofstede's work on corporate culture

Practical UML Abstract: This tutorial provides a quick introduction to the Unified Modeling Language™

Agile Modeling Agile Modeling (AM) is a practice-based methodology for effective modeling and documentation of software-based systems.

The Handy Guide to the Gurus of Management Charles Handy's BBC World Service series.

my new blog

2006-10-01T19:41:00.000+01:00

Welcome to Michael Saunby's blog. This blog probably won't say much about me, but will hopefully become a reasonably easy way to find stuff that I've done or am doing. So it's yet another project, and like most others will probably never be complete, it will evolve.

The latest project I've got involved with is Wepoco.

Other projects include writing software for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. See http://mike.saunby.googlepages.com for more details.