Friday, February 25, 2005
Pond Volumes
OK - Here's my good deed for the day.
Here's the visual basic code to calculate the volume of water in a pond in the shape of a frustrum (ie a truncated rectangular pyramid)
This example the user can choose between any of 3 pond sizes using the PondNum variable. The PondHeight is the only other input variable.
The Pond Dimensions for each pond are defined inside of the function and can be tweaked to your specific application.
Our application, we need to determine the volume of liquor from a height reading on a daily basis for 3 different ponds.
If you want the function to be useable in all of your workbooks, you will need to define it as Public. This is easy. Just put the word "Public" in front of "Function" in the first line"
Enjoy :D
Here's the visual basic code to calculate the volume of water in a pond in the shape of a frustrum (ie a truncated rectangular pyramid)
This example the user can choose between any of 3 pond sizes using the PondNum variable. The PondHeight is the only other input variable.
The Pond Dimensions for each pond are defined inside of the function and can be tweaked to your specific application.
Our application, we need to determine the volume of liquor from a height reading on a daily basis for 3 different ponds.
If you want the function to be useable in all of your workbooks, you will need to define it as Public. This is easy. Just put the word "Public" in front of "Function" in the first line"
Enjoy :D
Function PondVol(LiquorHeight As Single, PondNum As Integer) As Single
'Constant Definitions
'BL = Base Length
'BW = Base Width
'TL = Top Length (at height H)
'TW = Top Width (at height H)
'H = Distance from base to the top surface of the pond measured vertically.
Const Pond1BL = 13, Pond1BW = 17.5, Pond1TL = 33.5, Pond1TW = 38, Pond1H = 4.1
Const Pond2BL = 14.19, Pond2BW = 13.95, Pond2TL = 38.25, Pond2TW = 38.01, Pond2H = 4.81
Const Pond3BL = 26.75, Pond3BW = 14, Pond3TL = 50.75, Pond3TW = 38, Pond3H = 4.8
'Area Calculations
Pond1BA = Pond1BL * Pond1BW
Pond2BA = Pond2BL * Pond2BW
Pond3BA = Pond3BL * Pond3BW
'Calculation of "Chunk" for to allow for Tangent Calculation.
'The Chunk is half of the difference between the top length and bottom length
Pond1LC = (Pond1TL - Pond1BL) / 2
Pond1WC = (Pond1TW - Pond1BW) / 2
Pond2LC = (Pond2TL - Pond2BL) / 2
Pond2WC = (Pond2TW - Pond2BW) / 2
Pond3LC = (Pond3TL - Pond3BL) / 2
Pond3WC = (Pond3TW - Pond3BW) / 2
'Calculate Pond Height depending upon Pond Number
Select Case PondNum
Case 1
Pond1HL = 2 * (LiquorHeight * Pond1LC / Pond1H) + Pond1BL
Pond1HW = 2 * (LiquorHeight * Pond1WC / Pond1H) + Pond1BW
Pond1HA = Pond1HL * Pond1HW
PondVol = LiquorHeight * (Pond1BA + Pond1HA + Sqr(Pond1BA * Pond1HA)) / 3
'PondHeight
Case 2
Pond2HL = 2 * (LiquorHeight * Pond2LC / Pond2H) + Pond2BL
Pond2HW = 2 * (LiquorHeight * Pond2WC / Pond2H) + Pond2BW
Pond2HA = Pond2HL * Pond2HW
PondVol = LiquorHeight * (Pond2BA + Pond2HA + Sqr(Pond2BA * Pond2HA)) / 3
Case 3
Pond3HL = 2 * (LiquorHeight * Pond3LC / Pond3H) + Pond3BL
Pond3HW = 2 * (LiquorHeight * Pond3WC / Pond3H) + Pond3BW
Pond3HA = Pond3HL * Pond3HW
PondVol = LiquorHeight * (Pond3BA + Pond3HA + Sqr(Pond3BA * Pond3HA)) / 3
Case Else
PondVol = 0
End Select
End Function
Thursday, February 24, 2005
What happens when the power goes out...
Yesterday was one of the dullest, most miserable days, I have experienced in a long, long time. It started well, but as soon as I arrived at work, we were advised that the power was out. "No problem" I thought, I have a laptop and can keep working. Unfortunately, however, the document I needed resided on the server that was down, so that wasn't an option.
We waited most of the morning for an insulator to arrive from the nearest city (over 1 hour away) and most of that time was spent reviewing the current site works in the rain, and knee deep in mud. Trudging endlessly around the mining site feeling cold and wet, while not actually being able to do anything productive was a stifling feeling.
To make matters worse, being out in the rain, I was away from my phone, and hence didn't send any messages to my gorgeous girl. I think she felt neglected, and now I feel bad about it. It's frustrating, because I've been trying my hardest to keep in contact.
Being in Mongolia was a nightmare, because not only would my mobile not work, but I didn't have any decent internet connectivity, which meant that I was essentially isolated from everybody, except for the Mongolians with whom I was locking horns.
Turkey has been better, and I've learnt from my last trip here, that calling Jodie in the Turkish evenings is not the easiest way to stay in contact, because it's very late in Australia, and she does actually need some sleep. Instead I try to call her in the mornings, on my way to work. It's about midday in Australia when I'm leaving for work. I've only managed to get through once though, which has been disappointing.
While the Turkish telephone infrastructure is herculean compared to it's Mongolian counterpart, international connections are still a bit of a hit and miss affair. Compounded with this, is that Jodie is at work, so it can be a bit of a hit and miss affair to get in touch with her, even if my call gets through. Unfortunately she takes this lack of contact as a sign that I'm not thinking of her, or that I'm avoiding her or something.
I find it difficult to balance all of the demands on my time, and it's something that I need to continue to work on. It's more important now than it has ever been in my life, because my actions have the power to profoundly affect some one I care so deeply about. The fact is, that my mood and feelings springs directly from hers. If she is feeling sad, or down, then I also feel that way. Not necessarily because I've shared the feeling or the event that has triggered her feelings, but because I feel that I've failed in someway from protecting her from feeling bad, or worse still, that my actions may have caused it.
Fortunately she is generally a happy soul, so I'm blessed with being able to magnify her feelings of happiness and joy, but still, the sadder days are the ones that seem to affect me more. Perhaps I should concentrate on enjoying the happy times that we share.
The book that I've just finished reading tells the reader that if you "expect" good things, then good things will come. It's not so much about positive thinking and using your mind, but more that if you aim for good things, then you naturally start doing things, and acting in ways that help those good things to happen. It talks about adjusting your frame of reference, or the way that you view something in order to frame the subject in a positive way.
An example is how you view your weigh. Often we think to ourselves "I'm too fat", or "I'm overweight" or "I wish I was thinner", but what we should probably be thinking is how we can do something about it. We should say "What can I do to loose weight?" or "Exercising more will help me reduce my weight"
Suddenly we've changed the context of the idea from one of a statement that is negative and makes us feel bad, to a statement that is positive and calling for change, or at the least, a question to invigorate our brains.
The book incidentally is Retire Rich, Retire Young, by Robert Kiyosaki, and he didn't quite frame the premise in the same way that I did above. I though long and hard about what Kiyosaki was trying to say in this book. Looking between the self-indulgent memory trip and advertising speil, Kiyosaki has unwittingly managed to bury a very valuable message by using a range of poor examples bizarre conclusions.
Kiyosaki has a unique way of viewing the world, and many of the words he uses makes sense to him, but I find a range of his examples and word choices uncomfortable. Kiyosaki goes on about changing your context and using "fast words". His examples of fast words are not something that I would call fast, but perhaps would to my mind be called positive or smart. The message about changing your context or your viewpoint is valuable, but the examples that he uses are simplistic and not well thought out, IMHO.
The never-ending advertising detracts from an otherwise very powerful message. This is in fact the second time that I've read this book, and the first reading was an extremely positive experience for me. This time around, however, the same powerful feelings were absent. Perhaps I've fallen out of the Rich Dad mania mind set, and decided upon my own route of self-development. I'm not really sure.
I still think that this book is a good read, and what underlies Kiyosaki's commentry can be applied to many facets of life, which is why I used the example above.
In my thoughts today has been my relationship with Jodie, and how much I want us to be happy together. It occured to me that instead of me simply wishing that Jodie were happy and content, that instead, I should frame the premise as "what can I do to expand the love and happiness between us?" I'm not sure that I have all the answers to that (in fact, I hope that I don't, because the discovery of the answers is one of the things that propels a relationship), but part of my mind is certainly focussed on it. I have some ideas of things that I have the power to change, and I will try to put these into action.
As mentioned in a book (who's title escapes me at the moment) the idea of building an emotional bank account is an important element to a relationship. To be loved and trusted, one must ensure that he demonstrates that he/she can be trusted, and is worthy of love. One thing that the book failed to mention is that it is possible for others to make withdrawals from your emotional bank account. If you've been burned by love before, then you should be able to appreciate how your past experiences can affect your current feelings. What is does highlight, however, (and one point that I found particularly poignant) was that it's important to continue making deposits into this emotional bank account, even after the trust and love has formed.
You need to continue to show your lover that he/she is special to you. Taking your partner for granted begins to make withdrawals from the emotional bank account, until all of the feelings are spent.
Thinking in monetary terms, it is important to deposit more into your bank account than you withdraw, to ensure your ongoing prosperity. Similarly, it is important to deposit more into your emotional bank account to ensure ongoing happiness, trust and love in your relationship. I have a goal to be prosperous both financially, and in my relationship with Jodie.
To continue on from where I started this entry, today has been a much more successful day. I managed to fix a problem in a spreadsheet I'm working on, and also managed to get an instrument working, despite the correct wiring diagram being absent from the manual. Even the weather has improved, from the deep, thick fog of this morning, to a very pleasant and sunny day.
My mood has also improved since I received a message from the love of my life, informing me that she was well, despite us having had little contact in the last few days. I truly hope that I manage to get in contact with her tomorrow morning. Her voice is always invigorating to my soul.
Random Link for the day
10 Steps for Boosting Creativity
We waited most of the morning for an insulator to arrive from the nearest city (over 1 hour away) and most of that time was spent reviewing the current site works in the rain, and knee deep in mud. Trudging endlessly around the mining site feeling cold and wet, while not actually being able to do anything productive was a stifling feeling.
To make matters worse, being out in the rain, I was away from my phone, and hence didn't send any messages to my gorgeous girl. I think she felt neglected, and now I feel bad about it. It's frustrating, because I've been trying my hardest to keep in contact.
Being in Mongolia was a nightmare, because not only would my mobile not work, but I didn't have any decent internet connectivity, which meant that I was essentially isolated from everybody, except for the Mongolians with whom I was locking horns.
Turkey has been better, and I've learnt from my last trip here, that calling Jodie in the Turkish evenings is not the easiest way to stay in contact, because it's very late in Australia, and she does actually need some sleep. Instead I try to call her in the mornings, on my way to work. It's about midday in Australia when I'm leaving for work. I've only managed to get through once though, which has been disappointing.
While the Turkish telephone infrastructure is herculean compared to it's Mongolian counterpart, international connections are still a bit of a hit and miss affair. Compounded with this, is that Jodie is at work, so it can be a bit of a hit and miss affair to get in touch with her, even if my call gets through. Unfortunately she takes this lack of contact as a sign that I'm not thinking of her, or that I'm avoiding her or something.
I find it difficult to balance all of the demands on my time, and it's something that I need to continue to work on. It's more important now than it has ever been in my life, because my actions have the power to profoundly affect some one I care so deeply about. The fact is, that my mood and feelings springs directly from hers. If she is feeling sad, or down, then I also feel that way. Not necessarily because I've shared the feeling or the event that has triggered her feelings, but because I feel that I've failed in someway from protecting her from feeling bad, or worse still, that my actions may have caused it.
Fortunately she is generally a happy soul, so I'm blessed with being able to magnify her feelings of happiness and joy, but still, the sadder days are the ones that seem to affect me more. Perhaps I should concentrate on enjoying the happy times that we share.
The book that I've just finished reading tells the reader that if you "expect" good things, then good things will come. It's not so much about positive thinking and using your mind, but more that if you aim for good things, then you naturally start doing things, and acting in ways that help those good things to happen. It talks about adjusting your frame of reference, or the way that you view something in order to frame the subject in a positive way.
An example is how you view your weigh. Often we think to ourselves "I'm too fat", or "I'm overweight" or "I wish I was thinner", but what we should probably be thinking is how we can do something about it. We should say "What can I do to loose weight?" or "Exercising more will help me reduce my weight"
Suddenly we've changed the context of the idea from one of a statement that is negative and makes us feel bad, to a statement that is positive and calling for change, or at the least, a question to invigorate our brains.
The book incidentally is Retire Rich, Retire Young, by Robert Kiyosaki, and he didn't quite frame the premise in the same way that I did above. I though long and hard about what Kiyosaki was trying to say in this book. Looking between the self-indulgent memory trip and advertising speil, Kiyosaki has unwittingly managed to bury a very valuable message by using a range of poor examples bizarre conclusions.
Kiyosaki has a unique way of viewing the world, and many of the words he uses makes sense to him, but I find a range of his examples and word choices uncomfortable. Kiyosaki goes on about changing your context and using "fast words". His examples of fast words are not something that I would call fast, but perhaps would to my mind be called positive or smart. The message about changing your context or your viewpoint is valuable, but the examples that he uses are simplistic and not well thought out, IMHO.
The never-ending advertising detracts from an otherwise very powerful message. This is in fact the second time that I've read this book, and the first reading was an extremely positive experience for me. This time around, however, the same powerful feelings were absent. Perhaps I've fallen out of the Rich Dad mania mind set, and decided upon my own route of self-development. I'm not really sure.
I still think that this book is a good read, and what underlies Kiyosaki's commentry can be applied to many facets of life, which is why I used the example above.
In my thoughts today has been my relationship with Jodie, and how much I want us to be happy together. It occured to me that instead of me simply wishing that Jodie were happy and content, that instead, I should frame the premise as "what can I do to expand the love and happiness between us?" I'm not sure that I have all the answers to that (in fact, I hope that I don't, because the discovery of the answers is one of the things that propels a relationship), but part of my mind is certainly focussed on it. I have some ideas of things that I have the power to change, and I will try to put these into action.
As mentioned in a book (who's title escapes me at the moment) the idea of building an emotional bank account is an important element to a relationship. To be loved and trusted, one must ensure that he demonstrates that he/she can be trusted, and is worthy of love. One thing that the book failed to mention is that it is possible for others to make withdrawals from your emotional bank account. If you've been burned by love before, then you should be able to appreciate how your past experiences can affect your current feelings. What is does highlight, however, (and one point that I found particularly poignant) was that it's important to continue making deposits into this emotional bank account, even after the trust and love has formed.
You need to continue to show your lover that he/she is special to you. Taking your partner for granted begins to make withdrawals from the emotional bank account, until all of the feelings are spent.
Thinking in monetary terms, it is important to deposit more into your bank account than you withdraw, to ensure your ongoing prosperity. Similarly, it is important to deposit more into your emotional bank account to ensure ongoing happiness, trust and love in your relationship. I have a goal to be prosperous both financially, and in my relationship with Jodie.
To continue on from where I started this entry, today has been a much more successful day. I managed to fix a problem in a spreadsheet I'm working on, and also managed to get an instrument working, despite the correct wiring diagram being absent from the manual. Even the weather has improved, from the deep, thick fog of this morning, to a very pleasant and sunny day.
My mood has also improved since I received a message from the love of my life, informing me that she was well, despite us having had little contact in the last few days. I truly hope that I manage to get in contact with her tomorrow morning. Her voice is always invigorating to my soul.
Random Link for the day
10 Steps for Boosting Creativity
The Array - Chapter 4 - Hidden Tomes
The phone on the wall beside Jensen suddenly shattered the meditative hum of the electrical lifeblood of the control centre. Jensen, having verified that the amplifier was in a ready state quickly locked the cabinet and turned his attention to the telephone that was impatiently summoning him.
"Hello"
"Jensen, what's the status?"
"I've just finished the checks and the main trunk contactor is fried. It looks like the breaker shut down before the amp was damaged. It's sitting there waiting for a signal."
"Well, that's something I guess. Get yourself back over here. We need to get out and find out if there's a problem with the cable."
"OK, Give me a minute to lock up."
Jensen double checked the cabinets to ensure that they locked and left the control centre through the same door that he entered by. Pausing on the top step, he turned and locked the door, before ambling back across the courtyard to the main office.
Again he used his security key to open the locked door and wound his way through the maze of control cabinets to his control terminal. He glanced up to Charles desk on the elevated platform and noted Charles hunched over the light table, presumably studying the maps.
Jensen walked around the shoulder high partition that separated his space from the small stairway that led to Charles desk, and the drawing cabinets, and mounted the steps. Turning to his left at the top of the stairs Jensen approached the light table from the opposite side to where Charles stood, silhouetted by the wall of plan cabinets.
Charles glanced up from his studies and motioned for Jensen to check the map. "The main trunk runs along the Francis Street here", motioning to the map.
As Jensen leant across the table to see the indicated crossing, his thigh activated the push button that controlled the light table. Suddenly the fluorescent tubes inside the table leapt to life and illuminated the drawings from below with a slightly purplish light. The paper below Charles fingers suddenly danced with iridescent hieroglyphs as the slight ultraviolet light from the fluorescent tubes activated a hitherto hidden fluorescent ink on the surface of the paper.
Charles' jaw dropped, as though some demon from the past had suddenly leapt from the page and seized hold of it. Immediately he was silenced as his attention was drawn from the red line that bisected the page, to the hazy yellow glow emanating from the page.
The fluorescent tubes only gave off a small amount of near UV light, so the lines and lettering hidden on the page remained elusive, and illegible, but the sheer mass of lines on the page made an impressive display nonetheless.
Jensen was the first to break the silence.
"That's new" was all that he could manage as he stood mesmerized by the discovery.
"Yeah" was the only reply that Charles could manage, equally baffled by the emergence of a hidden drawing. "We'd better take a closer look at this," he continued after allowing the silence to linger a little longer.
Shaking off the shroud of mystery that had suddenly descended on the room, Charles refocused on the problems at hand. "Later, though," he eventually added. "We've got to find out why we lost the main trunk first."
"OK" agreed Jensen, as he reluctantly reached down to reset the power switch to the table. Delaying, in case the miracle before him was a fleeting, once off occurrence, he finally worked up the courage to kill the lights, and the hidden text vanished, leaving the streetscape of the surrounding city naked on the page.
Charles and Jensen glanced into each others eyes, silently acknowledging that this event that they had just witnessed was to stay a privately shared experience, at least for now.
Again they looked down at the drawing, and Charles continued. "Follow the cable's path out of the city and do a quick recon. Look for anything obvious. I'll set up a pulse on the cable under the control centre and you can follow it with the hand held cable locator. Do a check at each of the manholes along the route to check for continuity. Hopefully we can narrow down the problem to a short section of the cable."
Jensen, still shrouded in disbelief, absently acknowledged the request, and like a zombie turned and collected his car keys from his desk, as he headed across the floor to the large wooden cupboard that contained the maintenance kit.
"Hello"
"Jensen, what's the status?"
"I've just finished the checks and the main trunk contactor is fried. It looks like the breaker shut down before the amp was damaged. It's sitting there waiting for a signal."
"Well, that's something I guess. Get yourself back over here. We need to get out and find out if there's a problem with the cable."
"OK, Give me a minute to lock up."
Jensen double checked the cabinets to ensure that they locked and left the control centre through the same door that he entered by. Pausing on the top step, he turned and locked the door, before ambling back across the courtyard to the main office.
Again he used his security key to open the locked door and wound his way through the maze of control cabinets to his control terminal. He glanced up to Charles desk on the elevated platform and noted Charles hunched over the light table, presumably studying the maps.
Jensen walked around the shoulder high partition that separated his space from the small stairway that led to Charles desk, and the drawing cabinets, and mounted the steps. Turning to his left at the top of the stairs Jensen approached the light table from the opposite side to where Charles stood, silhouetted by the wall of plan cabinets.
Charles glanced up from his studies and motioned for Jensen to check the map. "The main trunk runs along the Francis Street here", motioning to the map.
As Jensen leant across the table to see the indicated crossing, his thigh activated the push button that controlled the light table. Suddenly the fluorescent tubes inside the table leapt to life and illuminated the drawings from below with a slightly purplish light. The paper below Charles fingers suddenly danced with iridescent hieroglyphs as the slight ultraviolet light from the fluorescent tubes activated a hitherto hidden fluorescent ink on the surface of the paper.
Charles' jaw dropped, as though some demon from the past had suddenly leapt from the page and seized hold of it. Immediately he was silenced as his attention was drawn from the red line that bisected the page, to the hazy yellow glow emanating from the page.
The fluorescent tubes only gave off a small amount of near UV light, so the lines and lettering hidden on the page remained elusive, and illegible, but the sheer mass of lines on the page made an impressive display nonetheless.
Jensen was the first to break the silence.
"That's new" was all that he could manage as he stood mesmerized by the discovery.
"Yeah" was the only reply that Charles could manage, equally baffled by the emergence of a hidden drawing. "We'd better take a closer look at this," he continued after allowing the silence to linger a little longer.
Shaking off the shroud of mystery that had suddenly descended on the room, Charles refocused on the problems at hand. "Later, though," he eventually added. "We've got to find out why we lost the main trunk first."
"OK" agreed Jensen, as he reluctantly reached down to reset the power switch to the table. Delaying, in case the miracle before him was a fleeting, once off occurrence, he finally worked up the courage to kill the lights, and the hidden text vanished, leaving the streetscape of the surrounding city naked on the page.
Charles and Jensen glanced into each others eyes, silently acknowledging that this event that they had just witnessed was to stay a privately shared experience, at least for now.
Again they looked down at the drawing, and Charles continued. "Follow the cable's path out of the city and do a quick recon. Look for anything obvious. I'll set up a pulse on the cable under the control centre and you can follow it with the hand held cable locator. Do a check at each of the manholes along the route to check for continuity. Hopefully we can narrow down the problem to a short section of the cable."
Jensen, still shrouded in disbelief, absently acknowledged the request, and like a zombie turned and collected his car keys from his desk, as he headed across the floor to the large wooden cupboard that contained the maintenance kit.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
The Array - Chapter 3 - Paperwork
[Listening to: The Lost Planet - Planisphere - Gatecrasher Global Sound System: Latitude (Disc 1) (6:23)]
Charles was quickly loosing his cool, both physically and emotionally. A sweat had formed on his forehead and upper lip, and his blue cotton shirt had sweat stains under the arms. Having Jensen reporting every procedure to him, like a child of eight wasn't helping his anxious state. His absence to the control centre at least stopped the background noise and allowed Charles to concentrate on locating the drawings.
Suddenly Charles exclaimed "Allright! I found one". Some small measure of relief as he'd uncovered one of the two drawings, though what the schematic of the buss amplification system was doing in the middle of a pile of Mechanical Drawings for the trussing structure for the incoming feed was a bit of a mystery. "Hopefully it's not an indication of the filing system he'll find on the electronic version of the drawings" he thought to himself.
Shifting the drawings from in front of the schematic to the front set of plan cabinet hooks, Charles proceeded to activated the release mechanism that allowed the interlocking jaws to come apart far enough to remove the drawing. He carefully extracted his treasure and laid it on the light table that was acting as a temporary emergency centre for the drawings.
Charles turned back to the cabinet in search of the other drawing, that showed the physical location of the data trunk in relation to the streets in the surrounding suburbs. Either the magnified version showing just Trunk A or the overview showing all of the trunks would suffice.
This one should be the easier of the two to find, as all of the overlaying streets are printed in green and go to the edge of the pages, making them easy to distinguish from the other drawings. Armed with this information, Charles no longer had to examine the drawing identifier in the right corner and paged his way through the cabinet's like a veteran bank teller, counting notes.
Charles' felt as though some of the weight had been lifted from his shoulders as he continued his search at more than triple his previous speed. Finishing plan cabinet four (labeled Control Centre Mechanicals, despite containing the Mechanical Drawings that hid his schematic, and a set of feed bus electrical schematics) Charles closed the cabinet with a muffled clang, and eased the lock open on plan cabinet five.
The top door wouldn't open easily as it should, and a quick examination soon found that one of the hinges had been damaged in the move. Crouching slightly, Charles put his shoulder under the lip of the top lid, and pushed up with his legs. The hinge screamed in protest as Charles forced the lid open. With this pushed up at an obtuse angle, Charles released the catch to allow the front portion of the cabinet fall open to the browsing notch, with the claws still locked together.
Only five or six drawings in, the green lines that Charles was eagerly awaiting began to appear at the edge. There seemed to be a large number of similar drawings grouped together, more than he recalled being present, but never mind, the drawing with the bold red line emblazoned across it's diagonal was now glaring at him from the intestines of the plan cabinet.
Opening the claws, Charles released the cabinet's prey, and laid it on top of the schematic. The red line of the trunk's path from the building in which Charles now stood contrasting startlingly like a deep cut on pale flesh. Quickly tracing the artery of the buss from the building, Charles was somewhat relieved to see that it followed the roadwork of the city for the most part, only passing under the railway station and a shopping mall on it's 28km journey to the splitting station.
"Jensen" called out Charles absently while his focus was still on the page.
"Jensen?" he repeated as he looked up.
Charles recalled Jensen muttering something about doing some checks a while back, and focused his energies on recalling the location. Something about breakers…
"He must be in the Control Centre," he thought.
Reaching for the beige internal phone he dialed 311, the control centre extension.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Back in Turkey
[Listening to: Track 01 - Orb - Cydonia (4:18)]
Travelling has been tiresome this time around. The bitterly cold temperature of a Mongolian Winter coupled with the somewhat frosty reception I received there left me feeling a little down. Currently I'm in Turkey after 26 hours on aeroplanes and only 4 hours sleep. My body feels shattered. I'm looking forward to getting some sleep tonight, and hopefully I can be a little more productive tomorrow.
The weather here is is really quite pleasant. Lots of rain (yes, rain, not that cold stingy snow stuff) and the temperatures are above zero. Very much like Perth winter temperatures, though quite a bit wetter. I'm getting to play with Mud again.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to be doing this time around while I'm here. The stuff I thought I'd be working on might be difficult with the staff that I'm supposed to be working with being in Chile. There's heaps of work that I can do, and so I guess I'll get stuck into that. The first thing will probably be making some major changes to the metallurgical accounting spreadsheet, which is the precise thing that caused me so much grief in Mongolia, so I'm not really relishing the thought of getting into that.
Actually I'm not really relishing the idea of doing anything right at the moment, but 12 hours of sleep will cure that.
I talked to by dearly beloved yesterday from Berlin Airport. It was so good to hear her voice. I really could just have fallen asleep in her arms if she'd been with me. I must have sounded all tired and subdued or something with how I was feeling. I wish that I'd been home, and even now am feeling somewhat homesick.
I'm wondering how I'll be able to cope with being in China on an extended basis, if our company decides to post me there as the regional representative. I think it will be tough, though it will almost certainly be an invaluable learning opportunity.
In any case, I guess I'd better get on with some work.
I'll post another chapter of The Array tomorrow. It's a bit slow moving at the moment, though the intrigue will start to build shortly. If anyone has any suggestions or spots any continuity or grammatical errors, please use the comments to let me know. It will need some serious revision at some stage, and I'm sure that there will be some continuity issues at some stage, even though I'm trying to be pretty meticulous with my planning and outline document.
I've still got quite a bit of research that needs to be done on some of the main plot, but I'll get into that soon.
Anyway, hopefully I'll be a bit more cogent tomorrow after I've had some sleep.
Till then.
Pleasant dreams :P
The Array - Chapter 2 - Short Circuit
Dish 5 - Phase Loss 21:20:18
Dish 6 - Phase Loss 21:20:18
Dish 49 - Carrier Sync Loss 21:20:18
Data Buss A - Undervoltage 21:20:18
…
Jensen's already loose handwriting style was becoming more chaotic by the second as fatigue set into his wrist and lower arm. Four pages of alarm logs from a single incident and still two more control sections to clear.
More worrying though was that the main trunk 'ready' light had not lit up again, indicating that this was a little more than a glitch in the system. After transcribing each page of alarms the system takes a second or two to acknowledge them across the various processors on the distributed control system. The price paid for redundancy is a hit in performance, though it gives Jensen a moment to check the status of the main data buss in between pages.
Charles in the meantime was cursing his procrastination in calling the draftsmen back to re-organize the drawings into their proper order in the plan cabinets. Usually the drawings are kept in impeccable order with all of the electrical drawings grouped and ordered by number, as are the civils drawings, the general arrangement drawings and all of the vendor drawings.
A month back, Consolidated Drafting had been commissioned to convert the paper drawings to an electronic format. The cabinets had been removed for a week and returned like a deck of shuffled cards. This in itself wouldn't have been so much of a problem if the electronic format of the drawings had been delivered on schedule, but with experienced draftsmen being in high demand in the mining and construction industries at the moment left Consolidated Drafting more than a little shortstaffed.
This left Charles with the perplexing problem of locating the main buss civil and flow drawings in the mess that was left. It had entered Charles' mind that it would be easier finding a name in a yellow pages directory if it had been sorted by street number rather than surname.
Finally the last screen of alarms had been acknowledged and Jensen could move on from the archaic, and overly beauracratic nonsense of recording digital data in longhand when a $50 dot-matrix printer would do the job in under a minute.
His next task was to try to make some sense as to what happened. Why did we lose the entire feed? The simplest solution would be if the breaker tripped, but he didn't recall any overcurrent alarms in the logs. It was possible that heat could cause a trip though, and if a fan in the main power buss cabinets had stopped, then that could be a cause.
Unlikely as this scenario was, Jensen needed to be certain that a simple circuit breaker wasn't the cause of the shutdown tonight.
"I'm just going to check the buss breakers in the Control Centre. Can you keep an eye on the panel"
"If something goes down again, we'll be able to hear the screaming from central." Came the short reply from Charles. "Just find out where the problem is and hurry back. I've got a little bit of a paperwork crisis here."
Jensen, not wanting to push his luck any further than necessary was out exit like a shot, and across the yard to the featureless white building that appeared to be supported by the massive braids of wires that passed through the floor.
Jensen took the three steps to the door in a single bound and in the same motion had his security key into the lock. The blast of cold air from the air conditioners mussed his wavy brown hair as he pulled the door open.
Jensen strode down the passageway between the wall and the first row of electrical cabinets, reading the engraved identification tags as he went.
110 V Utility Buss
110 V Lighting Buss
110 V Filtered Buss C
110 V Filtered Buss B
110 V Filtered Buss A
Data Trunk D
Data Trunk C
Data Trunk B
Data Trunk A
That was the one he was after. Hurriedly, Jensen inserted Charles' cabinet key into the lock on the front panel. The door opened, indicating that the breaker had tripped. The locking mechanism would not have allowed the panel door to open if the breaker was armed. The smell of ozone and melted plastic greated Jensen as the grey panel door swung open.
He glanced up at the door and noted that the fan was still spinning. That ruled out the over-heating, though melted plastic normally indicated something a little more severe. Both the hot and the cold buss bars on both sides of the contactor showed scorch marks on the contactor housing, indicating a short circuit between these busses, somewhere after the contactor, or simply a catastrophic contactor breakdown. The main breaker for the buss had also tripped, which wasn't surprising.
The hot and the cold busses always carried an identical signal but flipped in amplitude. This allowed for better noise rejection along the 28km line to the splitting station. With signals as large as the ones being sent from the Information Defence Syndicate, if the two busses ever touched each other, then some serious current could flow.
Hopefully the shortcircuit hadn't made it back as far as the main amplifier, or damaged the phase lock circuits or signal mixer which used the amplified signals as their control signal.
It's these two circuits that usually allowed the signal to be transferred smoothly from one buss to another without any glitches in the system, but there needs to be a signal on both busses for the system to work. Why they don't just use this system to transfer the signal in case of phase loss or signal loss left Jensen bewildered, but then again, it was a government department. In anycase, the contactor looked toasted despite the fast lockdown by the circuit breaker, and would have to be replaced before the data trunk could be tested again.
Jensen picked up the receiver of the brown telephone hanging on the wall, and keyed in the number of electrical supervisor. While Jensen was qualified to replace electrical components, he'd rather leave the big equipment to that slightly crazy breed of electricians who lived on the adrenalin associated with working with big currents and high voltages.
The phone only rang twice when a young voice answered on the other end.
"Hello"
"Oh Hi Benjamin, it's Mr Jensen here from your dad's work. Could I please speak with your dad?"
"Dad - phone" emerged the distorted shout from the receiver at Jensen's ear just before a loud crack as Jack dropped the receiver onto the table at the other end.
In the 20 seconds or so that it took for Jack Fleming to pick up the receiver, the ringing in Jensen's left ear had reduced to an annoying tinnitus level.
"Yo" came the Australian accent from the other end.
"Hi Jack, it's Jensen here at the array feed. We've just lost the main data trunk, and the contactor looks fried. Any chance you getting one of your boys down here to replace it, so that we can test the trunk?"
"Struth. What didya do, get hit by lightnun or sumthun?"
"We're not sure yet, but Charles is running scared after a call from the president's office."
"Sounds serious. I'll pop over straight away. In the mean time, can you check the status of the amp for me. If the contactor's gone, then the surge may have made it back to the amp. Any light except red is good. If there's no light, then that's bad."
"I'm heading over there now. If there's a problem with the amp, I'll be waiting for you in the Control Centre, otherwise I'll be back in the control room helping Charles find the schematics for the data buss.
"No worries mate. Cya soon."
Dish 6 - Phase Loss 21:20:18
Dish 49 - Carrier Sync Loss 21:20:18
Data Buss A - Undervoltage 21:20:18
…
Jensen's already loose handwriting style was becoming more chaotic by the second as fatigue set into his wrist and lower arm. Four pages of alarm logs from a single incident and still two more control sections to clear.
More worrying though was that the main trunk 'ready' light had not lit up again, indicating that this was a little more than a glitch in the system. After transcribing each page of alarms the system takes a second or two to acknowledge them across the various processors on the distributed control system. The price paid for redundancy is a hit in performance, though it gives Jensen a moment to check the status of the main data buss in between pages.
Charles in the meantime was cursing his procrastination in calling the draftsmen back to re-organize the drawings into their proper order in the plan cabinets. Usually the drawings are kept in impeccable order with all of the electrical drawings grouped and ordered by number, as are the civils drawings, the general arrangement drawings and all of the vendor drawings.
A month back, Consolidated Drafting had been commissioned to convert the paper drawings to an electronic format. The cabinets had been removed for a week and returned like a deck of shuffled cards. This in itself wouldn't have been so much of a problem if the electronic format of the drawings had been delivered on schedule, but with experienced draftsmen being in high demand in the mining and construction industries at the moment left Consolidated Drafting more than a little shortstaffed.
This left Charles with the perplexing problem of locating the main buss civil and flow drawings in the mess that was left. It had entered Charles' mind that it would be easier finding a name in a yellow pages directory if it had been sorted by street number rather than surname.
Finally the last screen of alarms had been acknowledged and Jensen could move on from the archaic, and overly beauracratic nonsense of recording digital data in longhand when a $50 dot-matrix printer would do the job in under a minute.
His next task was to try to make some sense as to what happened. Why did we lose the entire feed? The simplest solution would be if the breaker tripped, but he didn't recall any overcurrent alarms in the logs. It was possible that heat could cause a trip though, and if a fan in the main power buss cabinets had stopped, then that could be a cause.
Unlikely as this scenario was, Jensen needed to be certain that a simple circuit breaker wasn't the cause of the shutdown tonight.
"I'm just going to check the buss breakers in the Control Centre. Can you keep an eye on the panel"
"If something goes down again, we'll be able to hear the screaming from central." Came the short reply from Charles. "Just find out where the problem is and hurry back. I've got a little bit of a paperwork crisis here."
Jensen, not wanting to push his luck any further than necessary was out exit like a shot, and across the yard to the featureless white building that appeared to be supported by the massive braids of wires that passed through the floor.
Jensen took the three steps to the door in a single bound and in the same motion had his security key into the lock. The blast of cold air from the air conditioners mussed his wavy brown hair as he pulled the door open.
Jensen strode down the passageway between the wall and the first row of electrical cabinets, reading the engraved identification tags as he went.
110 V Utility Buss
110 V Lighting Buss
110 V Filtered Buss C
110 V Filtered Buss B
110 V Filtered Buss A
Data Trunk D
Data Trunk C
Data Trunk B
Data Trunk A
That was the one he was after. Hurriedly, Jensen inserted Charles' cabinet key into the lock on the front panel. The door opened, indicating that the breaker had tripped. The locking mechanism would not have allowed the panel door to open if the breaker was armed. The smell of ozone and melted plastic greated Jensen as the grey panel door swung open.
He glanced up at the door and noted that the fan was still spinning. That ruled out the over-heating, though melted plastic normally indicated something a little more severe. Both the hot and the cold buss bars on both sides of the contactor showed scorch marks on the contactor housing, indicating a short circuit between these busses, somewhere after the contactor, or simply a catastrophic contactor breakdown. The main breaker for the buss had also tripped, which wasn't surprising.
The hot and the cold busses always carried an identical signal but flipped in amplitude. This allowed for better noise rejection along the 28km line to the splitting station. With signals as large as the ones being sent from the Information Defence Syndicate, if the two busses ever touched each other, then some serious current could flow.
Hopefully the shortcircuit hadn't made it back as far as the main amplifier, or damaged the phase lock circuits or signal mixer which used the amplified signals as their control signal.
It's these two circuits that usually allowed the signal to be transferred smoothly from one buss to another without any glitches in the system, but there needs to be a signal on both busses for the system to work. Why they don't just use this system to transfer the signal in case of phase loss or signal loss left Jensen bewildered, but then again, it was a government department. In anycase, the contactor looked toasted despite the fast lockdown by the circuit breaker, and would have to be replaced before the data trunk could be tested again.
Jensen picked up the receiver of the brown telephone hanging on the wall, and keyed in the number of electrical supervisor. While Jensen was qualified to replace electrical components, he'd rather leave the big equipment to that slightly crazy breed of electricians who lived on the adrenalin associated with working with big currents and high voltages.
The phone only rang twice when a young voice answered on the other end.
"Hello"
"Oh Hi Benjamin, it's Mr Jensen here from your dad's work. Could I please speak with your dad?"
"Dad - phone" emerged the distorted shout from the receiver at Jensen's ear just before a loud crack as Jack dropped the receiver onto the table at the other end.
In the 20 seconds or so that it took for Jack Fleming to pick up the receiver, the ringing in Jensen's left ear had reduced to an annoying tinnitus level.
"Yo" came the Australian accent from the other end.
"Hi Jack, it's Jensen here at the array feed. We've just lost the main data trunk, and the contactor looks fried. Any chance you getting one of your boys down here to replace it, so that we can test the trunk?"
"Struth. What didya do, get hit by lightnun or sumthun?"
"We're not sure yet, but Charles is running scared after a call from the president's office."
"Sounds serious. I'll pop over straight away. In the mean time, can you check the status of the amp for me. If the contactor's gone, then the surge may have made it back to the amp. Any light except red is good. If there's no light, then that's bad."
"I'm heading over there now. If there's a problem with the amp, I'll be waiting for you in the Control Centre, otherwise I'll be back in the control room helping Charles find the schematics for the data buss.
"No worries mate. Cya soon."
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
The Array - Chapter 1 - Breakdown in Communication
"Awwwe Shit!" proclaimed Andrew Jensen in a wide american drawl typical of a resident of the southern states. "The whole board's lit up like a christmas tree. It looks like the whole array has gone down. What should we do Chuck?"
Before Charles Delvin, Andrew's quiet estudious superior, could reply every telephone in the station began to ring, and the switchboard added it's luminosity to the already impressive display from the control panels surrounding Jensen's terminal.
Charles shouted over the sudden din of alarms and telephone ring tones, "Just get it back up again or heads are going to roll. For the whole array to be offline there must be a problem with main transmission trunk somewhere. It can't be the power because each transmitter has it's own triple redundant generators. Try routing the signal through the secondary trunks."
Charles was reaching for the most important of the incoming phone lines. The one with the rude red light impressing the anger of the man that Charles knew was on the other end when Jensen shot back "Have you got a cabinet key? I don't know where mine is!"
Diverting his right hand from it's journey to the rude phone, Charles snatched his set of cabinet keys off his belt loop where they had lived for every one of the twelve hours or every shift for the last 42 years he had worked with the Information Defence Syndicate, and lobbed them across the equipment loaded desks that seperated them. "Get that array back up, and then you are spending the next week redoing your induction. You know the importance of keeping your tools with you at all times."
Catching the keys in midflight, Jensen moved fluidly to unlock the impressive door to Cabinet 3B where the main signal routing switch was kept. Grabbing the heavy wooden handle from the door he inserted it into the switch mechanism and pulled down with a mighty heave as the 1 megawatt pre-amplified signal was re-routed to the secondary trunk. The satisfying thump of the switch re-energising immediately silenced half a dozen alarm sirens and blacked out all priority 1 alarms indicators leaving only the fetch and acknowledge alarm lights flashing on his board. A dim smell of ozone emanated from Cabinet 3B, a remnant of the arc created as the air was ionized when the switch contacts neared their physical caress.
"It was definately a problem with the primary trunk otherwise I wouldn't have been able to throw the switch" retorted Jensen as he turned his head back to his superior. Charles ignored the report focussing his attention on the white hot heat of anger from Ben Frankston, the presidential aide responsible for the Information Defence Syndicate program.
"Tell me this was an alarm fault Delvin!"
"Unfortunately it was an outage Sir." responded Charles "We lost the main trunk"
"Oh Christ! How much downtime did we have?"
"Twelve seconds sir. We switched over to the secondary trunks as quickly as we could, but it took a little time to open the cabinet and throw the switch"
"Twelve seconds is bad Delvin! Didn't we automate the trunk switch a couple of years back?"
"No. The contactor that the Powertrans guys brought with them couldn't handle the current, and their larger one was going to filter too much of the high frequency content of the signal. They were to report back to you, and I filed a report on the incident through the normal channels and heard nothing more about it."
"Well that report never made it to MY desk. I'm going to investigate this personally, and when I find out who lost that paperwork I'll nail him to the primary trunk. I dearly hope the blame doesn't rest with you Delvin."
"No sir"
"In the meantime, find out what happened to the primary trunk, and have a report to me in the morning. What's the status on the teriary and quarternary trunks?"
Puting his trembling hand over the receiver of the telephone, Charles focussed his attention back on the Jensen, who was in the process of acknowledging the fetch alarms and noting them down in the logs. "What's the current status of the Tertiary and Quarternary Trunks Jensen?"
"They were fine at last check" responded a nervous Jensen
"I don't care what they were 15 minutes ago - What is their status NOW?" Delvin enquired in an uncharacteristically raised voice.
Dropping his pen onto the logbook Jensen turned to the status panel on his left and examined the second row of displays. "Tertiary Trunk is reading OK, Quarternary is also Fine. The phone network reads as congested, but we can use the bypasses on the exchanges if we need to route the unamplified signal that way. The sat-link is up and the laser line to control station 2 is online."
Turning his attention back to the phone Charles relayed the information back to Commander Frankston.
"I'm not happy about this incident Delvin. You know how important this project is. We can't afford to have outages ever! I hope for all of our sakes that there are no ramifications from the break in transmission. I've got to go and talk to the monitoring stations now, though we won't know the effect of this for a few days when the data has returned from the sats. There is going to be fallout from this Delvin, make no mistake."
"Yes sir. I'll get cracking on finding the cause Sir."
"Bring it up to DC personally. I want you in my office with the report by oh nine hundred tomorrow."
"Yes Sir".
Before Charles Delvin, Andrew's quiet estudious superior, could reply every telephone in the station began to ring, and the switchboard added it's luminosity to the already impressive display from the control panels surrounding Jensen's terminal.
Charles shouted over the sudden din of alarms and telephone ring tones, "Just get it back up again or heads are going to roll. For the whole array to be offline there must be a problem with main transmission trunk somewhere. It can't be the power because each transmitter has it's own triple redundant generators. Try routing the signal through the secondary trunks."
Charles was reaching for the most important of the incoming phone lines. The one with the rude red light impressing the anger of the man that Charles knew was on the other end when Jensen shot back "Have you got a cabinet key? I don't know where mine is!"
Diverting his right hand from it's journey to the rude phone, Charles snatched his set of cabinet keys off his belt loop where they had lived for every one of the twelve hours or every shift for the last 42 years he had worked with the Information Defence Syndicate, and lobbed them across the equipment loaded desks that seperated them. "Get that array back up, and then you are spending the next week redoing your induction. You know the importance of keeping your tools with you at all times."
Catching the keys in midflight, Jensen moved fluidly to unlock the impressive door to Cabinet 3B where the main signal routing switch was kept. Grabbing the heavy wooden handle from the door he inserted it into the switch mechanism and pulled down with a mighty heave as the 1 megawatt pre-amplified signal was re-routed to the secondary trunk. The satisfying thump of the switch re-energising immediately silenced half a dozen alarm sirens and blacked out all priority 1 alarms indicators leaving only the fetch and acknowledge alarm lights flashing on his board. A dim smell of ozone emanated from Cabinet 3B, a remnant of the arc created as the air was ionized when the switch contacts neared their physical caress.
"It was definately a problem with the primary trunk otherwise I wouldn't have been able to throw the switch" retorted Jensen as he turned his head back to his superior. Charles ignored the report focussing his attention on the white hot heat of anger from Ben Frankston, the presidential aide responsible for the Information Defence Syndicate program.
"Tell me this was an alarm fault Delvin!"
"Unfortunately it was an outage Sir." responded Charles "We lost the main trunk"
"Oh Christ! How much downtime did we have?"
"Twelve seconds sir. We switched over to the secondary trunks as quickly as we could, but it took a little time to open the cabinet and throw the switch"
"Twelve seconds is bad Delvin! Didn't we automate the trunk switch a couple of years back?"
"No. The contactor that the Powertrans guys brought with them couldn't handle the current, and their larger one was going to filter too much of the high frequency content of the signal. They were to report back to you, and I filed a report on the incident through the normal channels and heard nothing more about it."
"Well that report never made it to MY desk. I'm going to investigate this personally, and when I find out who lost that paperwork I'll nail him to the primary trunk. I dearly hope the blame doesn't rest with you Delvin."
"No sir"
"In the meantime, find out what happened to the primary trunk, and have a report to me in the morning. What's the status on the teriary and quarternary trunks?"
Puting his trembling hand over the receiver of the telephone, Charles focussed his attention back on the Jensen, who was in the process of acknowledging the fetch alarms and noting them down in the logs. "What's the current status of the Tertiary and Quarternary Trunks Jensen?"
"They were fine at last check" responded a nervous Jensen
"I don't care what they were 15 minutes ago - What is their status NOW?" Delvin enquired in an uncharacteristically raised voice.
Dropping his pen onto the logbook Jensen turned to the status panel on his left and examined the second row of displays. "Tertiary Trunk is reading OK, Quarternary is also Fine. The phone network reads as congested, but we can use the bypasses on the exchanges if we need to route the unamplified signal that way. The sat-link is up and the laser line to control station 2 is online."
Turning his attention back to the phone Charles relayed the information back to Commander Frankston.
"I'm not happy about this incident Delvin. You know how important this project is. We can't afford to have outages ever! I hope for all of our sakes that there are no ramifications from the break in transmission. I've got to go and talk to the monitoring stations now, though we won't know the effect of this for a few days when the data has returned from the sats. There is going to be fallout from this Delvin, make no mistake."
"Yes sir. I'll get cracking on finding the cause Sir."
"Bring it up to DC personally. I want you in my office with the report by oh nine hundred tomorrow."
"Yes Sir".
Public Computers and Living on Aeroplanes
I did this huge great big blog entry at Singapore Airport and for some reason it didn't post, and got lost in the internet ether somewhere which if very very annoying. I'm going to try again with this post, to talk about what I was talking about 5 or 6 hours ago.
I feel like I've been living on Aeroplanes of late. The amount of travel that I've had to do over the last 6 months has been incredible. After this trip I'll have somewhere in the vicinity of 180,000 miles which has been accrued mainly in the last 6 months. I wonder if you can list your address as Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-400 or c/- the Silver Kris Lounge, Singapore Airport. It might be a bit tricky, because strictly speaking, once you are beyond immigration you are not actually resident in any country. You are a person of the world (or at least transit lounges).
Normally I'm actually looking forward to these business trips, but this time it's different. Maybe it's because I know all about the bitter welcome that the Mongolian weather is going to give me, or maybe it's because of the six weeks of long, hard days that I'll be doing when I get to Turkey. One thing is for certain though, this is no holiday.
I know that Jodie finds it difficult when I'm away. She puts on a brave face, but I know that she really misses me. I miss her madly as well, though it's difficult to put into words exactly what that absence means to me. It's not like an empty feeling, but more like I've left my right arm somewhere.
It was Valentines Day a couple of days ago, and I really, really enjoyed my Valentines day this year. I swear that Valentines Day was designed for people in relationships. If you are single, Valentines Day is depressing and lonely time, as you see all of your friends running around, poisoned by the sweet nectar of cupids arrow, and wondering why you aren't getting any.
I bought my beloved a large set of Rembrandt Soft Pastels as a gift. I got her the box of 150, though I've since learnt that there are 203 colours total, so I'll have to find out which colours are missing, and get these for her. There were no full boxes available in any case, the largest being the 150.
I also sent her a big bouquet of roses, which arrived at her work. She told me that she doesn't like these kind of surprises, but I think that she was secretly happy to be able to show off her flowers at work.
Jodie also sent me flowers to work, which I was so stoked about. I've never had anyone send me flowers before, and everyone at work was soooooo jealous. Only one other person got flowers this valentines, and that was from her ex, ex boyfriend. I'm not sure if she was more miffed that her ex seems keen to give things another go, or that her current boy didn't send her flowers.
It's a difficult things being a single ex boyfriend during Valentines. In my experience, if you were the dumpee, then the loneliness really does get to you, and you find yourself considering a whole bunch of silly "what-if" scenario's. And it's not as if you really feel like there's any chance of getting back together, but there's this kind of feeling of "well she fell for me once..." I think that's where my cow-orkers ex boyfriend is coming from.
They are quite good friends and I think that he's throwing the line out even though he's not expecting to get a bite. He can always pass it off as "just being a friend", but I think that there is some sort of ambition in the gesture, even if he's accepted that it's a pretty pointless gesture.
Anyway, despite the pain of others, I had a fantastic day. It's a nice feeling to be one of the have's on Valentine's day, rather than one of the have not's.
In other news I've finished the first song of my upcoming LOST album, and am well into the second song. This CD is being planned as a CD right from the start, rather than a collection of tracks or one great big long monster track that I chop into smaller parts, and I'm dedicated to releasing this album.
The music is ambient, uplifting electonica. Some have called it new age, but whatever it is, I'm actually pretty happy with how it's turning out. I've turned away from the sawtooth waves that is so generic in electronic music for this album, and have featured a bunch of more aesoteric instruments, such as Xylophone and Rhodes Piano. I've still coupled this with some full-on VAST programming and some very detailed KDFX programming to give it a synthetic feel, but using the new sample sources is like expanding a painter's pallette.
While there is a lot that you can do to shape a sawtooth wave, actually changing that wave is one more parameter in the ocean of parameters available to Kurzweil users. I'm particularly happy with the reverb programming that I've done on this last track. I think I'm finally getting the hang of reverbs. The kick drum is naturally a pretty big, ambient type kick, but with the KSP8 reverb the tail is fathomless. It's not muddy or bassy in a loud way, but the way the reverb decays makes the kick sound impossibly big, even though the frequency content is quite tightly controlled using EQ.
I'm really happy with what I've done with it.
I've had to stop work on my music while I'm away, and this has provided me with the opportunity to get my studio fixed up. I've got the Jupiter 8 in to have the keyscanning looked at and the filter retuned, I've also taken the K2600 in to have the mix out's repaired. Ond of the sides is silent and one of the op-amps or muting relays will need to be replaced. Not a huge job or one that stops me working, but it is annoying at gigs where I want to use the mix outs, and have a headphone feed.
The DP4+ is also in to see if the inputs can be fixed. Unfortunately it seems to be an exercise in futility to obtain some schematics for the inputs of the unit, so my tech's hands are somewhat tied.
I'm also taking the opportunity to repatch my studio, and will shortly order $1400 worth of high quality cables (despite being quoted $700 and then having the shop loose my order - Grrrrr!), and I'll also buy a Yamaha i88x and an ADAT card for my DMTi to allow me to have multi channel digital I/O connected to the K2600.
It will be a seriously sweet studio once it's all hooked up and running. I'll be able to patch anything, pretty much anywhere with either balanced cables, or digitally. I'll still need to get some good DI's to allow my unbalanced equipment to play nicely with everything else, but it's a small price to pay for massive improvement in quality that I'm experiencing.
I'm really looking forward to getting my teeth back into some music after the time spent programming ONYX for sonikmatter.com.
Well, I've got about 7 hours to kill, some of which will be spent on the start of my novelly thing, which is tentatively called "The Array". You'll be able to read it developing on this blog, though I'm not sure if I'll be able to publish one today, because I want to keep all of the text on my laptop, and I can't get an internet connection here at the Korean Airlines Lounge at Seoul Incheon Airport.
I'll see what happens.
I feel like I've been living on Aeroplanes of late. The amount of travel that I've had to do over the last 6 months has been incredible. After this trip I'll have somewhere in the vicinity of 180,000 miles which has been accrued mainly in the last 6 months. I wonder if you can list your address as Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-400 or c/- the Silver Kris Lounge, Singapore Airport. It might be a bit tricky, because strictly speaking, once you are beyond immigration you are not actually resident in any country. You are a person of the world (or at least transit lounges).
Normally I'm actually looking forward to these business trips, but this time it's different. Maybe it's because I know all about the bitter welcome that the Mongolian weather is going to give me, or maybe it's because of the six weeks of long, hard days that I'll be doing when I get to Turkey. One thing is for certain though, this is no holiday.
I know that Jodie finds it difficult when I'm away. She puts on a brave face, but I know that she really misses me. I miss her madly as well, though it's difficult to put into words exactly what that absence means to me. It's not like an empty feeling, but more like I've left my right arm somewhere.
It was Valentines Day a couple of days ago, and I really, really enjoyed my Valentines day this year. I swear that Valentines Day was designed for people in relationships. If you are single, Valentines Day is depressing and lonely time, as you see all of your friends running around, poisoned by the sweet nectar of cupids arrow, and wondering why you aren't getting any.
I bought my beloved a large set of Rembrandt Soft Pastels as a gift. I got her the box of 150, though I've since learnt that there are 203 colours total, so I'll have to find out which colours are missing, and get these for her. There were no full boxes available in any case, the largest being the 150.
I also sent her a big bouquet of roses, which arrived at her work. She told me that she doesn't like these kind of surprises, but I think that she was secretly happy to be able to show off her flowers at work.
Jodie also sent me flowers to work, which I was so stoked about. I've never had anyone send me flowers before, and everyone at work was soooooo jealous. Only one other person got flowers this valentines, and that was from her ex, ex boyfriend. I'm not sure if she was more miffed that her ex seems keen to give things another go, or that her current boy didn't send her flowers.
It's a difficult things being a single ex boyfriend during Valentines. In my experience, if you were the dumpee, then the loneliness really does get to you, and you find yourself considering a whole bunch of silly "what-if" scenario's. And it's not as if you really feel like there's any chance of getting back together, but there's this kind of feeling of "well she fell for me once..." I think that's where my cow-orkers ex boyfriend is coming from.
They are quite good friends and I think that he's throwing the line out even though he's not expecting to get a bite. He can always pass it off as "just being a friend", but I think that there is some sort of ambition in the gesture, even if he's accepted that it's a pretty pointless gesture.
Anyway, despite the pain of others, I had a fantastic day. It's a nice feeling to be one of the have's on Valentine's day, rather than one of the have not's.
In other news I've finished the first song of my upcoming LOST album, and am well into the second song. This CD is being planned as a CD right from the start, rather than a collection of tracks or one great big long monster track that I chop into smaller parts, and I'm dedicated to releasing this album.
The music is ambient, uplifting electonica. Some have called it new age, but whatever it is, I'm actually pretty happy with how it's turning out. I've turned away from the sawtooth waves that is so generic in electronic music for this album, and have featured a bunch of more aesoteric instruments, such as Xylophone and Rhodes Piano. I've still coupled this with some full-on VAST programming and some very detailed KDFX programming to give it a synthetic feel, but using the new sample sources is like expanding a painter's pallette.
While there is a lot that you can do to shape a sawtooth wave, actually changing that wave is one more parameter in the ocean of parameters available to Kurzweil users. I'm particularly happy with the reverb programming that I've done on this last track. I think I'm finally getting the hang of reverbs. The kick drum is naturally a pretty big, ambient type kick, but with the KSP8 reverb the tail is fathomless. It's not muddy or bassy in a loud way, but the way the reverb decays makes the kick sound impossibly big, even though the frequency content is quite tightly controlled using EQ.
I'm really happy with what I've done with it.
I've had to stop work on my music while I'm away, and this has provided me with the opportunity to get my studio fixed up. I've got the Jupiter 8 in to have the keyscanning looked at and the filter retuned, I've also taken the K2600 in to have the mix out's repaired. Ond of the sides is silent and one of the op-amps or muting relays will need to be replaced. Not a huge job or one that stops me working, but it is annoying at gigs where I want to use the mix outs, and have a headphone feed.
The DP4+ is also in to see if the inputs can be fixed. Unfortunately it seems to be an exercise in futility to obtain some schematics for the inputs of the unit, so my tech's hands are somewhat tied.
I'm also taking the opportunity to repatch my studio, and will shortly order $1400 worth of high quality cables (despite being quoted $700 and then having the shop loose my order - Grrrrr!), and I'll also buy a Yamaha i88x and an ADAT card for my DMTi to allow me to have multi channel digital I/O connected to the K2600.
It will be a seriously sweet studio once it's all hooked up and running. I'll be able to patch anything, pretty much anywhere with either balanced cables, or digitally. I'll still need to get some good DI's to allow my unbalanced equipment to play nicely with everything else, but it's a small price to pay for massive improvement in quality that I'm experiencing.
I'm really looking forward to getting my teeth back into some music after the time spent programming ONYX for sonikmatter.com.
Well, I've got about 7 hours to kill, some of which will be spent on the start of my novelly thing, which is tentatively called "The Array". You'll be able to read it developing on this blog, though I'm not sure if I'll be able to publish one today, because I want to keep all of the text on my laptop, and I can't get an internet connection here at the Korean Airlines Lounge at Seoul Incheon Airport.
I'll see what happens.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Databases and Wimmin Drivers
[Listening to: Signum - LOST - (4:32)]
Database design can be one of the most frustrating ways to earn a living. While my job doesn't specifically include this as one of my duties, the mere fact that I know about databases has ensured innumerable hours of pulling my hair out trying to make things work. The biggest problem with databases is getting data put into the right boxes, and making sure that those boxes adequately deal with exceptions to the rule.
For example, the current database that I'm developing is for tracking and invoicing time dedicated to projects to the clients. This is all well and good, but we have a range of rates depending on the position of the relevant person, the specific project, and the type of work. I've had to do some pretty serious hacks on one of Access's Time and Billing database to get this to work, but I've just discovered that if someone changes position, things get very murky.
And to top it off, of one the lovely young ladies at work just went and overwrote a whole bunch of records that I'd entered. Grrrrrrr.....
I even wrote out a procedure to specifically avoid that scenario, but apparently the 18 point Bold type on that particular point wasn't big enough. Grrrr.....
Anyway, no major harm done, it's all sorted out now.
In other news, I've finished the first track of my new album. Actually, I've nearly finished it. I've had a few suggestions about changing the ending, which I will fix. If you want to listen to it, click the following link Signum by LOST
Please post a comment if you have a listen to let me know what you think. If ya like it, tell me why, if you don't, it would be great to know why not, so that I can work on improving my techniques.
Well, it's time to go home, so I must leave you until next time.
TTFN
