Author Archives: adq

Now, this sounds both cool and scary: it comes with four types of Uranium ore, a Geiger counter, and a booklet on “prospecting for Uranium”. There’s Uranium in them thar hills! Just noticed the text on the box: “Exciting! Safe!”.. ish! Its not quite as scary as the descrption of an X ray tube inContinue reading “Gilbert U238 Atomic Energy Lab Kit (1950s)”

My friend Colin was round last night for a tech session… among other things, we looked at my Python PicKit source, and between us, we finally figured out how the hell JTAG works from the hardware interface upwards. All this hardware interfacing has made me think about digging out the FPGA kit I have inContinue reading “Geektalk”

I’ve recently upgraded my media box PC to a new funky shiny one. During the course of this, I upgraded the BIOS on the new motherboard, and it decided to fail halfway through. Result: Brick!! However, I didn’t let that stop me. The manual described a special “debug port” on the BIOS. Closer examination revealedContinue reading “Motherboard SPI bios recovery”

Near the end of the pierOriginally uploaded by adq_uk I decided to go for a walk to Granton Harbour today, as it seemed to be quite sunny. However, as I got further along this pier, the wind got stronger and stronger; about 3/4 of the way, I could feel it starting to lift me withContinue reading “Granton harbour”

Look at the size of this crab; it can crack coconuts in its claws!

I have finally ordered upgrades to my media/windowsgamey machine. Soon it shall be a quad core 4gb monster! Not ordered a new GFX card yet, but I will once more research has occurred. I’m going to reorganise the flat network so the video is stored on the media box (as opposed to my central server).Continue reading “Upgrade”

Just run across this Magnet shop on the web – not looked in detail yet, but sounds like a useful place!

wheee.jpgOriginally uploaded by adq_uk Pictures from the Snow on Sunday night

cabler.pngOriginally uploaded by adq_uk Some photos from the docks etc Note: remember to clean lenses once in a while, or loads of image editing to remove crap needed!!

Nicola’s out tonight so I’m at home amusing myself with films and things. I upgraded my flat asterisk VOIP server to 1.6.x (from 1.2.x): now the VOIP client on my Nokia E51 mobile works perfectly with it (the phone VOIP stack tended to crash with 1.2.x). So: I’ve set the E51 to transparently register itselfContinue reading “Tum te tum”