Author: Sleepypete

I’ve been quoted on a news report !

True, it’s a bit of a minority website but it’s one I trust (most of the time) and one that continues to make me chuckle.

Here’s the article : “El Reg mulls entering Robot Wars arena“. I won’t quote any of it apart from my comment because of, you know, copyright and syndication issues but … here’s what I sent that sparked it : “Anyone else hoping that SPB turn their talents to making an all conquering, all destroying, punyhuman enslaving Vulturebot?”

The comment is of course, tailored for the particular brand of gallows humour that is a trademark of that site. I’d never dream of making an all conquering, all destroying, punyhuman enslaving Vulturebot.

Nope. It would be a Dragonbot.

Got you worried for a sec there.

I’d love to do a Dragonbot, designed to crush, burn, macerate and otherwise do Very Nasty Things to other robots.

Hang on a minute – there’s a bit of missing context. I was a huge fan of a series called Robot Wars, which ran for a good few series on BBC (we won’t talk about the Channel 5 seasons). Contestants would run machines of destruction in the arena, with house robots and various traps to liven things up if the robots became boring. It was spectacular, fun, unpredictable, celebrated robot building creativity, a great series to watch and follow. I definitely miss it. The series is coming back later this year, with shooting happening in March.

So when El Reg ran the story, I had to add in that comment with a hope that the architects of PARIS* and LOHAN** would be able to turn their talents to something more destructive. They’re a good mob.

*Paper Aeroplane Released Into Space – a record setter that flew back down from the edge of space.
**Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator – a 3d printed unmanned aircraft that will (when the regulatory people sort themselves out) float up to the edge of space on a balloon before setting off a rocket. Wonder how high it will get.

The March shooting is a little too soon for a good robot to be developed but let’s have a look at what it would need :

Communications – you have to be able to control the beast and this is in what you could call a “hostile” environment. Things like a wireless video sender that goes to snow when the microwave is used, interference can happen anywhere from anything, even if the thing causing the interference is only distantly related to what it’s supposed to be doing. The Robot Wars arena tends to have all sorts of motors, switching things making electrical noise, plus there’s the distance from where the Robot Master stands and the robot itself. Oh and the little matter of making sure the aerial doesn’t fall off.

Moving – sounds simple doesn’t it, just take a remote control car and use that ? Maybe. Wheels are more reliable because tracks tend to fall off easy but you have to protect the wheels under armour, which can mean the robot beaches. Yep. Wheels, plus I’d design a special motor control system for things like : Turn in place, traction control, boost for pushing. This has certain … issues though, due to the way motors work, if you’re not careful the motors can blow up the rest of the electronics when the robot stops suddenly.

Structure – the best weapon is no good if it only works once. So for the robot design, the robot has to keep its basic shape after being whacked several dozen times. If the frame distorts, it’ll jam up the wheels and the weaponry.

Armour – this includes protecting from bashy weapons as well as the flipper bots which were getting very common. Sloped sides have always worked well, their aim is to divert rather than absorb. Skirts are aimed at not allowing the flipper to get underneath where it can do its work. The last consideration with the armour is that it has to allow weaponry …

Ahhh – the good bit …

Sadly, the robot wars people aren’t allowed to make robots like that. No guns, no grenades, no tasers, no flamethrowers. Boo hiss. (I wouldn’t enter a robot like those anyway, those tracks are way too exposed and the weaponry would have trouble attacking a low slung bot).

Weaponry …

Flippers – effective but boring. These are designed to get the enemybot out of the ring, or on its back where it can’t fight.
Hammers – good looking but ineffective. The problem is that the hammer either mistimes or glances off doing little damage. There is little to make the hammer or Pointy Thing pierce the enemy bot.
Saws – similar to hammers, unless you can corner an enemy bot
Piercing claws – there was a stunning robot called Razer, which was too unreliable to be a true winner. But when it did work … it would tear chunks off any other robot. Leverage + something little = huge damage potential from sheer pressure.

And then you have the king of anti robot weaponry – the kinetic disc. The theory of this is that you spin up a heavy disc to 1000 rpm or so, with the disc having lots of kinetic energy. You then ram another robot. And all that kinetic energy goes into the other robot as pure Damage Potential. Oh and because Newton’s Laws are cruel, there’s an equal shock going back into the other robot.

The best disc robot was Hypnodisc (more at the wiki link). This one was in a class of its own for sheer destructive potential but … tended to lose out to the flipperbots. The bits that made it go weren’t too great (definite improvement potential!) but that disc was a masterpiece … It was a kinetic disc … that was a little special. It had weights that went from the inside to the outside. This made it start off light (so it could be spun up again quicker), with the weights making it heavy (with more kinetic energy damage potential) when they went to the outside of the disc.

The Dragonbot would likely be another variant on Hypnodisc. I think I would design it to be flippable, with larger wheels able to operate the robot inverted. The disc itself would be mostly inside Dragonbot.

Wait – this doesn’t sound like a fitting type of robot to be called Dragon does it. It’s more a Bite Yer Ankles And Chew Em Off bot.

Need flamethrowers !!!!

And more excuses to use the Mad Scientist tag.

Thank you !

I hope you win too. (Especially as you're on Powerball and I'm on UK National Lotto so we win different jackpots – haha)

We can but dream.

Wish you luck! I had the thoughts when I was purchasing the ticket for the massive Powerball jackpot. As I read in thelotter review there were numerous winners. But unfortunately my dreams are still to be made true, maybe the next time!

It seems like we’re losing too many titans at the moment.

Wait … that’s wrong.

If we lose just one titan of the par of David Bowie or Alan Rickman, it’s too much. To lose both inside a week, definitely a massive loss. And that’s not forgetting the others who have left us this year and at the end of last.

I don’t usually mention things like this here, because I prefer to try and keep it to happier subjects. Plus you get to hear way more about it in the general media. This should be different. But I did want to bring out the Twibute Dwagons :

The original line was “By Grabthar’s Hammer, you shall be avenged” and it was from a rather good film called Galaxy Quest. I’d recommend seeing it if you haven’t already. Alan Rickman stole the show yet again playing a character that owed a little to Spock.

But he wasn’t just about Galaxy Quest. He was in so many more films where his excellence in acting, including being able to master different characters (which is a failing in many actors, their characters are written as them) and stealing the show every time. I heard that his part in Robin Of Sherwood (the Costner movie) got watered down a bit because he was just so darn good. (And the movie was supposed to be about Robin, not the Sheriff).

And there are many more too.

Then there’s David Bowie :

A little more work went into that Twibute Dwagon. (I feel a little cheap sometimes posting those – the words are mine but it takes so little time to do them now that it feels like I’m not putting enough effort in).

I wasn’t a fan of all of David Bowie’s work, like I will adore everything that certain other bands have done. But you cannot deny that he was a brilliant genius, flawed by not quite living in the same world as the rest of us. He just saw things different ways. And it was utterly amazing.

And it came out in songs like Starman, Heroes, Golden Years, Life On Mars … need I go on ? You know them all. I really have to see Labyrinth again. It’s been a while since I saw that film but I do remember his portrayal of the Goblin King to be utterly compelling.

And then there’s Lemmy too !

Too many gone this year already.

And other bad news too, like finding out that a friend had been diagnosed with breast cancer. I hope she gets through it. She’s a tough little lady so I bet she’ll be around for a good long while.

I don’t quite know how to end this one … Except that your life is yours. Live it how you see fit. But live it. Don’t miss out. We are not infinite, we need to take advantage of all the time that is given to us.

Nah.

Not me, at least not lately. Although I have been in the game (so to speak) lately with the added interest we’ve had here with the big prize up for grabs with lots of roll overs.

But the thought was – what would you do if you won the lottery ? Here’s what I think I’d do. (And this will dive off at a tangent half way through !)

I’d pay my debts. I don’t have many, my student debt was cleared a long time ago. But I do have a mortgage and finance on the car. I’d clear those. But I don’t think I owe anything to anyone else.

Saying that though, I’d help out some very close friends. That’s … extremely close friends. I think I can count who that would be on one hand. Let’s see … (and I’m not saying who they are !) Ok, maybe I’d need a finger or two (or a thumb!) on the other hand as well.

But that’s not really money. Money isn’t the fix all for everything. Money can get you companionship of a certain kind but would I want that ? No. There’s a song with the line “The best things in life are free” (and then it says “I want money” – haha). Back to that in a bit. Companionship should be about the person, not their car or how much is in their wallet.

Money and doing things for people in that way would depend on how much you won. If you won a few million, that might be where you might look into paying off a few people’s mortgages. If they would want you to do that. That’s an odd thing to say isn’t it ? I can say that all I have, I have earned through my own means. I’ve worked for it. It’s mine. Wholly mine. If someone came along and paid off my mortgage, yeah, I’d appreciate it. But it would no longer be wholly mine. I would feel an obligation.

Think about that for a bit – it’s one thing working for what you have, it’s another thing to get it the easy way. Not much about my life has been “easy”, although I did get a good start from family.

But if you’re giving someone an opportunity that benefits you both, that’s so much better than doing something like “Hey ! I just won all this money, have some and go buy a house/flat.” That’s a charitable act, it isn’t including them in your life. Some people really don’t like being charities. I don’t think I do.

Back to me – it would be great if I won enough that I no longer needed to work. I’m kinda bored of what I’m working at currently, it’s a bit too far distant from the techie stuff I like doing. (I’m working on a solution and I get involved with the techie stuff where I can at the moment). But I would need to be doing something, keeping my brain busy, keeping myself active with goals.

Because I like to have goals. I go stale without them. What I am curious about is the possibility of making the gaming videos. Cos I love gaming and I’ve been enjoying watching the gaming videos for a few years now while I’ve been away from the gaming due to lack of energy after work in the evenings. I think I could do a decent job with the gaming videos, although I’ve observed a few people’s output declining drastically lately (Yogscast have really gone off, only Hannah’s stuff is worth watching at the moment).

Perhaps not gaming … which gets me to …

Where would I live ?

Bricks and mortar property hasn’t appealed to me for a while now. The new houses seem to be very small, poor quality on the fitting out and the sites have issues with the builders (this impression coming from multiple people). Houses built on the cheap for profit, not for quality. No, I wouldn’t want to move from here to a new house. The neighbourhood isn’t bad here but I do live very close to shops where the workers abuse our road as their car park. And we’re in for another year of mayhem due to poorly conceived roadworks.

Not sure where else around Bristol I’d want to live actually.

Nope – I still have that crazy idea of living on a narrowboat …

Yep, I’d have to change my habits with regards storage of all the stuff I should have thrown out a while ago but a narrowboat (preferably a widebeam) has that potential to be very high quality in its fitting out and cosy too. Oh and if the neighbourhood doesn’t take your fancy, you can just move to another marina.

But I wouldn’t want to do it on my own. My narrowboat would be built with a companion in mind. Even down to things like fittings on the taps. (That matters to some people and I can completely understand). I’d want it to be her place as much as mine.

And a ship’s cat or pooch would be good too. I’ve missed having pooch snuggles.

I think I’ve rambled enough – targets if I win the lottery big :

Move on to a narrowboat;
Make that narrowboat a mini techie palace;
Put enough kit in to make it understated cosiness;
Interesting toys inside – you saw the Smart Meter post, lots more potential for geeking out with various equipment you could fill a boat with;
Having someone to enjoy it with.

Maybe I’d go off cruising around the country (this is limited by the size of the barge, many canals around Birmingham where they all link up are restricted to the narrower narrowboats). Maybe I’d stay in one place to support what the companion was getting up to. That place would be chosen according to what’s convenient for them (My number one choice is the Gloucester and Sharpness canal for access to Worcester for watching cricket in the summer!)

One thing is good, I’m much closer to having my health back. This is another thing about work, we have a very dessicated atmosphere which doesn’t do my outsides much good. It dries out my skin such that it starts breaking up again (it has a chance to recover over the weekend). Being out of that atmosphere would do me good. That’s just my outsides though, I’d like to regain my energy on the inside too.

On people – I’d like to escape the crush of humanity that seems all the more pressing these days. Whether that be on the roads with the collapse in driving standards, or having to stand your ground while walking or be bounced out of the way by people who do not leave enough space. I wouldn’t want to be on my own completely (I need contact with people to keep me out of lonely depression) but I would want to select those who I interact with.

Internet – is all about interaction. But I’d like it to be those who I interact with and on my terms. I do have that addiction to staying in touch though, I go slightly mad(der?) if I’m deprived of that connection to the world. Internet is difficult on a boat – but not an impossible problem considering that mobile broadband access is becoming more widespread.

So yeah ! Win the lottery before May, pay off the debts, sort the house out, head off to Crick Boat Show (end of May) and spend lots on a boat. Live happily ever after.

Sounds like a plan !

[lol] Ah, worth it then….. [grin]

Yep.

New toy.

And with a bit more research :
Cooker takes more power than both kettle and electric heater.
Microwave eats up even more.

Conclusion – it is cheaper to make a cuppa than it is to prepare a sachet of popcorn.

New toy, eh?

You know me.

Get my hands on something techie and I will want to investigate what it can do. And that goes for various bits and pieces of kit :

Seeing how the pooters behave when I ask them to do stuff.
This isn’t particularly geeky or non-sensible, problems tend to happen with pooters when you load them up. When the processor or graphics or memory is busy and things get hot (unless it’s Windows, then expect problems at all times). When you’re asking them to use parts of them that don’t often get used. My pooter isn’t actually exercising all of the bits of it that would have made it more powerful than supercomputers of 15 or so years ago. But I do want to know that it won’t fail when I’m in a game or something similar. So I exercise it to see how it will do.

When I build a new one, I’ll also run the various (free!) benchmarks on it to make sure it’s at about the same level as similar machines. I don’t want it to be the best (this involves much tweaking for 0.5% better speed), I just want to be sure I’ve not ended up with something going half the speed it should be.

Enough of that !

Except to say that when you do buy stuff, when you part with cash :

Make sure there’s nothing at a similar price that would do the job way better. (And stay doing the job after the cheap stuff breaks!)
Make sure what you bought does what it says on the tin. (VW diesel people will facepalm at this).

Oh and check stuff out to see what it can actually do for you. Use as much of your bits and pieces as you want to but make sure you’re not missing out.

So me with the iPad, I’m using it for iOS games (currently Astronest has my attention), I occasionally use it for Facebook and Twitter and Messaging when I’m not doing those on phone, laptop or desktop. I haven’t written a blog post on it yet (proper keyboards are better) but I am pondering developing scribbledrawing skills with it. I’ve also been using it for reading Kindle and Applestore books (shop around, Kindle/Apple can be cheaper than paper books). Reflecting back, I’m glad I bought it.

Oh and it has Siri too, which I’ve disabled. (If you haven’t already, ask Siri what is zero divided by zero)

The latest gadget I’ve been geeking over is the smart meter smart meter thing. (And the next one will probably be a combi boiler that I suspect I will get fitted at Easter). It has a real time monitor for how much power is being used. And it’s quite quick too.

I’ve been looking at it perhaps a little too much, seeing how the power requirements change with the various bits and pieces that I have. Let’s see what I can remember :

Resting state – about 4p/hour.
This is with the pooter doing sums on the processor but not the graphics card (no sums available at the moment). It’s with the lowest level of stuff on that I have. So telly’s off, music off, fridge on, all the other stuff you keep on as a baseline like alarm clocks, ovens, microwaves in their resting state. 4p/hour seems ok. Wonder what it would drop to if I stopped the pooter from doing sums.

Music and telly – up to about 7p/hour.
This is how I’m like most of the time. Modern tellies don’t actually take much power. I have a surround sound amp, so there’s lots of individual power amplifiers in there which consume the electricity. But not as much as :

Electric heater on – adds on about 17p/hour.
Although that’s when it’s running. The instantaneous readout will jump up when the heater is heating and fall back to 7p/hour when it’s having a break.

Kettle – adds on a whopping 35p/hour.
Crikey – that’s a lot isn’t it ? But bear in mind that the kettle isn’t actually going to be on for long.

There’s a bunch of confusing units for energy, which all come from pretty much the same source. Pure energy is measured in Joules, with Joules/second being the unit of power, otherwise known as the Watt which you’ll be familiar with. That’s then turned into another unit for energy consumption, the kWh. I.e. how many 1000s of Watts have been used in an hour. It’s just Joules by another name.

The thing to remember though with Energy use is that it’s the kWh or Joules which matter. Yep, the kettle uses 5 times the power of everything else but it’s only on for a very short time, so it consumes far less energy overall.

And it makes a nice cuppa.

It does help having things like energy saving stuff, if only because it means far less changing of light bulbs. (Haha – I rarely change my living room light bulb now, it used to blow far too often with old tungsten bulbs). But don’t begrudge that occasional cuppa for the energy it’ll consume. In the big scheme of things, it’s not using that much and you get a good cuppa out of it.

(I’m still kicking out this cold and some thick soothing hot chocolate is going down extremely well at the moment.)

Watch out for nasties. Having that heater going and keeping warm will hopefully keep you healthy :-).

And …

Cya !

(Hopefully this is a better post than the ones I’ve come out with lately – it’s not just the cold, latent depression has been getting me down too)

Think I need ’em.

This is going to be one of those “How did your day go dear ?” posts where the person asking the question instantly regrets having asked it …

Phew ! Found a thumbnail pic which was better than what I nearly used :

It has been that kind of a week so far since coming back into work. Work’s been fine, it’s just :

Bugs;
Recovering from bugs;
Really unhappy ankles from breaking in new shoes;
Super unhappy legs that are complaining at me for walking them around;
(the muscles think they’re being overworked – it’s a symptom of bugs)
Silly day today.

I had to take a day off work today to support a visit from the electric people who wanted to switch me over to smart meters. Good idea for them, totally ambivalent to it from my point of view.

So today was pretty much wasted due to waiting for someone who turned up at about 4pm in a window of 12pm to 6pm. And I needed to be around. I wouldn’t even have been able to do ballcock fixing because with me up in the attic doing that, I’d never hear the guy tapping on the door. (B+Q didn’t appear to want to sell me what I needed anyway, still need parts).

Ok – stress.

These bugs have been way more noticeable this week than last. Perhaps because when I was being lazy, I wasn’t pushing for strength that wasn’t there cos of the bugs. Back at work tomorrow again and I have two secret weapons … Coffee and Mini Eggs !

Yep. A fix for anything.

Including disasters happening at the same time as the meters were being changed …

Disaster number 2 is easier – I need to stop procrastinating and get the boiler man in ! It won’t relight after the pilot light was extinguished for the meter change. Urg. It’s done this before, I suspect the thermocouple that tells the boiler that it’s safe to light (not overheated) has burned up again. Had that boiler for a while.

Disaster number 1 is fixed but it’ll get me talking about PC bits and pieces. Tonight’s disaster was the power supply to my desktop going *pop* almost as soon as it was turned back on. It was a Corsair CX600 (600W capacity, decent for budget, good make) that was 4 years and a couple of months old. I don’t think it was being particularly stressed. My desktop now has three hard discs and just one moderate power graphics card. Yet the power supply goes bang anyway.

When stuff goes Bang inside a PC, it can be tough to figure out what. The first thing to do is see if anything twitches, anything at all. That means fans trying to start up, lights on the mainboard, things like that. In this case, it was stone dead. (I was also able to test it on an older PC which made noises and shone lights with its own supply).

I’ve had to buy another Corsair supply (a 750W which may support a second graphics card if I ever do that) because that’s all PC World have but they’re definitely off the recommended list now*. When there’s equally high quality competition, you can afford to blacklist certain suppliers if they let you down. And a power supply should not go bang after just over 4 years.

*(a day later and a correction – I’d still buy a Corsair supply, this one failed gracefully. I’ve had 2.5** power supplies fail including the Corsair. A no name one went *pop* and took down several other components with it. The protection circuits in the Corsair apparently kept the other bits in my desktop ok. Thumbs up)
**(the 0.5 was where a fan failed and stuck. These things happen … I resurrected that supply … but would definitely not recommend opening up a power supply to fix it unless you know the big dangers of electrocution that it exposes you to.)

I’m also blacklisting Roccat. I bought a new mouse from them sometime last year to replace one which was wearing out. I think this one is failing already … the middle mouse button (the wheel) seems to be loosening up, I suspect I’ll be mouse shopping again this year.

The last of the current blacklist is Saitek, these people make flightsticks. Trouble is, their quality has declined severely over recent years. That seems to be the way, a company gets a great reputation and then trades on it for years after while quality declines. I used a Fly.5 from Saitek, which inherited the unwanted yaw problem too many people suffer (It turns hard right when you want to go straight). Other people complain about buttons falling off and throttles failing. The Fly.5 was also very difficult to handle precisely around the middle.

Yep. Today has been way tougher than it should have been. But …

Desktop PC is now resurrected with a new power supply;
A few regiments of the Dust Bunny army have been exiled from said desktop PC;
Boilerman visit was overdue anyway;
I have Mini Eggs.

PS It’s always a wise idea to start up a PC somewhere accessible before closing it all up. Guess who had to pull it out of its hole again in order to put in a power lead that had come out …