Arcoarena

I’ve recently finished reading a series of good books and here’s a brief summary

Fragrant Harbour (sorry can’t remember the author at the moment) follows the stories of several people and how they end up in Hong Kong. The stories span around a century in the colony. It’s well written and kept me entertained throughout. The only flaw I felt was that I was required to remember a seemingly unimportant piece of information from the beginning of the book for the end to make sense. A very good book though.

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson – the one that was recently made into a film. It’s about Joe Simpson and his climbing partners struggle up and down a mountain. The story is quite remarkable as a little way down from the summit Joe breaks his leg, a little later his partner Simon is forced to cut the rope Joe is hanging from and leave him believing he’s dead. Quite a remarkable story of survival. I’d say it was more of a book for climbers as he uses some climbing jargon and talks quite a lot about morraines/other glacial and ice features. I liked it though as it manages to convey some of what it feels like to be in that sort of situation

and finally

Enigma by Robert Harris – I’ve already read and talked about one of his other books, Pompeii and Enigma is much in the same vein. The book follows a man called Tom Jericho who is part of the cryptanalyst team at Bletchly Park where the German messages were decyphered. The story’s interesting and much like Pompeii the historical information is amazingly detailed and (as far as I know) accurate. I didn’t feel the book was as good as Pompeii but that could just be me. If you’re interested in the code breaking during the war this is quite a good novel to read for a feeling of what it was like to be there at the time

So in summary – all three books were good. Whilst I enjoyed Touching the Void I wouldn’t unreservedly reccommend it to everyone unlike the other two. Told you it would be brief. All I have to do now is find something else to read now

I went on a course a while ago in which I learnt that what you seen on your oscilloscope screen in not necessarily representative of the signal you’re trying to measure

Part two of this lesson in real-world electronics is this…..

I’ve got this board where one of the signals coming from a clock buffer is being distorted. Removing the series resistor that sits next to the output of the buffer makes the signal look nice and clean with sharp edges and everything. So it’s not the input to the circuit. I’ve just lifted the legs of the clock pins the trace is leading to and……it still looks the same. Conclusion the trace is causing the problem.

This is where the simulation comes in. From the layout file the PCB guys designed I can extract the data for that trace and use a tool to simulate the trace with lossy microstrips in place of the tracks on the physical board.

The lesson is that you get out what you put into these kind of simulations. Try as we might we can’t get the trace to represent what we see in the real world (not without entering stupid values anyway – the kind of problem we would have noticed already if that is what is happening). I’m stumped. I can’t think of anything big we’ve forgotton but the simulations don’t match real life.

Simulation is obviously a useful tool when you don’t have a physical piece of hardware infront of you for some reason – e.g. it hasn’t been designed yet. But hopefully today has demonstrated that it isn’t the gospel truth – just another useful tool that has to be used carefully – much like a circular saw.

Well so much going on.

It was nice to see everyone at the Comus dinner and a pity I had to leave to catch the train but oh well. Same time next year?

In other (not entirely unrelated) news I’m going to help with the get in for these people on the 6th. Sadly they hire in technical help so I might not get a chance to do any lighting design unless I look elsewhere. I also still haven’t really worked out if it’s possible to keep up the event lighting thing.

Finally. My board (the first I’ve ever designed) is in Malaysia at the moment having the final chip fitted to it before being shipped back to the UK to test. I’m simulating the code to go on it at the moment, which is a very useful excercise as I’ve found several mistakes already.

I think that’s all for now. ’till later

Well a Radio 3 producer has resigned due to the BBC’s decision to broadcast Jerry Springer the Opera. He cites blasphamy as his reeson. He also says

“One of the arguments used before the broadcast was that the stage show had not been attacked for blasphemy.

“My answer, after watching the show, is that anyone likely to pursue a case for blasphemy would not have remained in the theatre long enough to witness it.”

And of course that naturally doesn’t apply to TV does it. I myself find it very difficult to change the channel using the gigantic, monsterous, cumbersome piece of plastic that is a remote control. Obviously that’s the only reason I watched such ‘deviant’ behaviour.

I admit there might be a few arguments for the ‘well it shouldn’t have been shown on TV’ despite it’s run in the West End, but not being able to stop watching it shouldn’t be one of them

He apparently worked on a program called ‘Between the Ears’ – make up your own punchline.

I watched ‘Jerry Springer the Opera’ on Saturday night, partly because of the publicity (cleverly disguised as news) and partly because I was interested.

I quite liked it. I’m not sure I’d give it rave reviews but it was very enjoyable and funny. I think the think that I disliked the most was the fact that it was an opera rather than a musical so sometimes words were difficult to understand. Having said this I actually also like the fact that it’s an opera and it would have been far worse as a musical. There’s Double Think for you (almost).

In other news most of Cumbria is under water. Andrea really chose the wrong week to visit her family. No electricity, no water (supply, far to much of the other type of water). Added to which she had to change 5 times and take both trains and buses to get home and still ended up 45 minutes drive from her house. It’s almost funny. I shall have to mock later.

From D@n’s News:

…..I get an e-mail telling me someone has crashed / written off one of the minibuses – typical! – NNH Rest in Peace

Sniff….Cue dewey-eyed recollection of driving to Guildford and back about a million times last summer….ahhh. Happy times.

When I actually get round to owning a car I shall have a special lever that will recreate that ’special’ sound NNH made that weekend. Setting aside driving round Goodwood in an E-Type Jag, it was the most fun I’ve had in a motor vehicle.