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Stay back! 2006 January 20 12:29

Posted by diamond in : Random , 1 comment so far

Yesterday, when i brought the car to a stop while in heavy traffic on an incline and pull the handbrake lever, there was a loud snapping noise as the handbrake lever flew up with little resistance. Good bye handbrake cable. Damn. I quickly stepped on the brake pedal and all was fine. Taking off again was a different matter. I needed to do a hill-start, without the assistance of a handbrake to stop me rolling backwards.

Right on cue a girl in a nissan micra pulls up _right_ behind me. There couldn’t have been more than 1′ between her car and mine. Gah. Even in normal circumstances that’s far too close. Not having a handbrake made it more.. ‘exciting’. I managed to get the car moving without rolling back through very quick swapping from brake to accelerator, but it was close. So, we inch forward another car length and have to stop again. True to form micra driver fails to keep proper distance. Rinse and repeat at least 2 more times before i’m finally able to get the hell away from her. Moron.

We happy poor 2006 January 19 21:10

Posted by diamond in : Cycling, Random , 2 comments

Today i purchased:

Which makes a total of €995. Well it was nice having money while it lasted ,-)

*Update*
Turns out i forgot something:

New total: €1040

Battery life 2006 January 18 11:04

Posted by diamond in : Random , add a comment

The nokia 6020 that i got last week lasted 7 days on it’s first charge. This impresses me. The old 6310i could do a little over double that, but no modern nokia (colour screen, camera etc) has had good (>5 days) battery life in ages, that i’m aware of anyway.

My inspiron 9300 on the other hand only _barely_ managed 2 hours. Damn 17″ power sucking screen. Ah well.

I want it to go away

Posted by diamond in : Random , 4 comments

I have an infection in both eyes, eczema on both eyelids, and in addition i have an infection in the skin on my right eyelid. And it’s getting worse. Today i could open my right eye about 1/3rd of the way in the morning. Over the course of the day the application of moisturiser has helped, but the skin is still very swollen, irritable and stretched. What’s also worrying me is the fact that it’s spreading. It’s now on the side of the eye socket on my right eye -/ I took the liberty of taking a very bad photo. Note that it’s much worse looking in real life, especially when you look closely and can see how the entire surface of the eyelid has swollen until the skin has seperated everywhere into tiny islands of pink in a sea of red. Not fun.

This is really pissing me off. I spend 1/3rd of the time applying moisturiser to it (approx every 20 minutes), 1/3rd not being able to see because the infection has covered my eye’s surface in gunk, and 1/3rd not being able to see because it’s watering so much tears are streaming down my face. Reading is frequently extremely difficult, and only possible with a lot of squinting and straining to focus, which really can’t be good for my eyes -/ That said, try spending a day where you don’t have to look at stuff much. Certainly none of my days fall into that category.

I rang my gp’s practise today to see if my blood test results had returned. The secretary got my gp to ring back at lunchtime, and she discussed stuff with me. Some results have some back, things like iron levels (apparently spot on. good news for once -) and antibodies (in the ‘high-normal’ range, which is expected seeing as i was on antibiotics, and could well indicate an alergic reaction). The allergy tests so specific substances may not come back for up to 4 weeks, so i’ll be waiting a while. I told her about the situation and she said to book an appointment with a dermatologist asap. She’s written a prescription for more antibiotics and a referral letter that i have to call in to collect tomorrow. Yet again i’m amazed at how competent and easy to deal with this gp is. It makes things a bit more bearable.

So, i now have an appointment with a consultant for the 9th of feburary, cost €150. I’m just glad bupa are going to cover 50% of the costs. I’m really not happy about the though of having to wait another 3 weeks before i can see the dermatologist, but hey, at least i’m not on public healthcare where the waiting period is just about long enough for me to go away and qualify as a dermatologist and just treat myself. 6-7 years waiting list is just insane.

In better news, went out for dinner with dan, margret and jd tonight, to the Market Square Brasserie. It was fantastic. I stuffed myself with tiger prawns for starter, blackened salmon for main course, and sticky toffee pudding for desert. Tastes like happy -)

Death to microchip 2006 January 17 0:30

Posted by diamond in : Random, Work , add a comment

Today i started trying to figure out how to work with one of these. At first glance, it looks like it will be straight forward. It comes with 2 cds, chock-full of documentation, and one of which purports to have 7 tutorials “for users new to PICmicro® microcontroller units“. Uh huh.

So, you open up the docs, and start reading through the first tutorial, “Switch Debouncing”. The first section introduces the problem of switch bouncing and why it’s necessary to correct it. Fine. It’s stuff i’ve covered in college, but that should just make it easier to understand what’s going on. The next section starts talking about algorithm design and the various methods you can implement to do debouncing. Um, ok. Seems a little ott for what’s supposed to be your first introduction to code, but ok. Next section: running the demos provided. Huh? Aren’t we even going to look at the code first? *shrug* Next section.. wait, there _is_ no next section. That’s the end of the tutorial. You look through the provided C and assembly code, and while both are recognisable as such, you can instantly tell that without detailed knowledge of the chip and the language extensions it uses it’s meaningless to you. GAH!

Ok you say, there are 2 cds of documentation here, it’ll be somewhere else in them. You spend an hour or two looking through numerious pdfs. You find circuit diagrams for the chip you have, you find timing diagrams for the chip you have, you find circuit diagrams for the programmer you got with the kit, and on and on and on. You open up the development environment and look at the help files. Wait! There’s a tutorial section! You gleefully run through the first tutorial… Oh. All it does is introduce how to compile, run and debug code. Nothing about actually writing the code in the first place. *cries*

Cue cjb with a link to a free online book that does _exactly_ what you’re looking for. Wahey for cjb!

In less dramatic news, me eyes are getting worse again. I’m waiting for the blood tests to come back from the hospital before i go back to my gp. Looks like i’ll be seeing a dermatologist after all. This is really beginning to piss me off.

*Update*
Model railway with web control! Oh the fun -)