Blowing in the wind

It used to be the case that on 'recycling day', as I walk to work on a windy day, I'd see lots of bags of recyleable materials blowing down the streets, onto the fields and generally causing more problems than putting them in landfill. After quitely grumbling about them for a year or so, I'm really pleased that the council has replaced them with good strong plastic boxes with lids for sorting and separating the recycling.

After a few weeks of using the boxes, I can say that they are excellent and far better then the old system. Horray!

All we need now is to switch from a 2-weekly landfill rubbish collection to a 3-weekly one, with recycling collected every week and I'll start to feel like recycling is really important.

It would be good too if it became cheaper for businesses to recycle than to landfill....

On another note, Elvington (and nearby) residents, have a look at this fantastic opportunity: Alpha in Elvington.

New Blog on Embedded Timing

At work, we're launching a new blog on on-target timing analysis.

Topics will include anything related to embedded software verification, timing analysis, software optimization or other topics that come up from time to time.

You might even find an article or two written my me on there.

http://www.RapitaSystems.com/blog

New computer

After months of looking for a new phone to replace my much loved miniature Panasonic mobile phone, I have finally made a choice. I started looking for something small that makes phone calls and ended up buying a new computer that also has communication facilities.

I thought of getting an iPhone, but the impracticality of programming it freely would probably drive away the last remnants of my technical background. My new computer is Android based so it should be properly programmable!

So, I'm getting used to my nice new HTC Desire. The device came wrapped in plastic bearing a warning me to remove it from my pants before sitting down. Not a good start!

Anyway, I've got the essentials working (wifi, ssh, http, smtp, radio 4), and a few non-essentials (social networking) but I've still not actually made a phonecall. That's probably for advanced users only. 

If only I could find the command line I might be totally comfortable using it. 

Still no HTML

Many years ago, there were some standards set out for the language of the web: "HTML".

The idea is simple: if you define the language then everyone who writes it and everyone who reads it will understand each other. 

There were several good tools (mostly released free of charge) written to at least check that the HTML that you write is at least syntactically correct. That is, in non-technical language, when computers talk to each other, the computers use the same words and sentence structures so that they can understand each other.

So, why then in 2010 do big banks, with their massive budgets still skip the simplest of requirements+tests on their on-line banking and not stick to the standards, littering their HTML with obvious errors that are apparent on any browser (except perhaps the one that the web programmer happened to use)?

Doggy Bag

There's a lovely little bit of woodland near my office, with a footpath through it. I make a point of waking through it when going to and from the office - a bit of piece and quiet between the fast pace at work and home.

Lots of other people walk through that strip of Eden too; it's a regular for people walking dogs or simply taking a short-cut.

Unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of plastic bags in it...nothing too unusual about that perhaps, but these plastic bags are full of dog poo!

Why oh why does [at least one of] the regular dog walkers "scoop" and then leave the plastic bag of dejecta on the path? It's not like there isn't a suitable bin at the end of the footpath, only 30 metres away from the growing pile!

What possible reason can there be for it? If you're man enough to do the hard bit and pick it up, surely you can carry it?

Collatz Conjecture

Today was a very low productivity day in the IT industry. 

All around the world, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians and every other kind of geek simultaneously stopped work in a flawed attempt to prove one of the most confusing, troubling, and hard problems - the Collatz Conjecture - all because of a cartoon on the internet.

I was going to end with an estimate of the number of hours spent (twice as many as yesterday and third as much as tomorrow, blah blah blah), but quite frankly, I felt lonely.

Stone age banking

For some reason, you can't do payments or transfers from our business Euro account using internet banking.

"Well, it would have been really useful...it's on the feedback form that we gave you years ago."

...

"At least we can do telephone banking..."

"err, actually that won't work either."

"Well, then I suppose we'll have to continue walking two directors/signatories down to the bank at lunchtime...Can I have the form to fill in in our office, so that we don't have do deal with all the account details down the details at the counter? Hey we might even be able to get all the signatures done in the office too!

"You don't have a form for that? I see.

"Oh and you've changed your policy. If we want to do that then we have to go into the main branch in York...I see.

"So, we've got all that money in our account and cannot get it out without driving two directors into the city?"

"You could always write a letter to the bank asking them to make a payment for you. That should work."

Anyone else feel like we're going backwards CBSH?

Milk of kindness gone stale

In the communal fridge at work, there is an unopened bottle of milk with a "use by" date of 2 weeks ago. Attached to the bottle is a note "Sorry, one of my visitors used your milk by mistake so I replaced it".

What a kind caring place we work in.

It's just a pity that they didn't write which company's milk they were replacing. No one has dared to touch the new bottle in case it wasn't their milk.

It tickled me, that's all.

Bells and bees

This afternoon, I spent a happy few hours cleaning a belfry. It's a very tiny tower, only about 3 or 4 square metres. There are four floors including the ground floor. I only managed to clean the ringing room (first floor) today, and a little bit of tidy up of the clock chamber (2nd floor). It was really quire filthy. I feel like I've vacuum cleaned away hundreds of years of cobwebs, sandstone dust and bees...

Most of the mess happened to be thousands upon thousands of dead bees. Apparently, some years they swarm into the top of the tower, live there for a bit then die during the winter. I'm not looking forward doing any maintenance in the bell chamber (top floor) during the summer.

So, now we have a belfry that people can go in without overalls. So, what's the next step? Ringable bells?

Smell Gas?

I've reported four (suspected) gas leaks in the road/pavement recently.  

It's quite easy to report them (after you have plucked up the courage to ring the "Gas Emergency Services" on a number ending in 999). What if they weren't really gas leaks...I hope there's no such charge as "wasting gasboard's time".

Outside, gas disperses so easily that the smell is quite faint. I wasn't sure if the smell was gas, or just a pretty flower or exhaust fumes.

I saw that they did dig up the road in at least one of the places I reported it, but that's the only feedback I got. It would be nice if they would give me a ring or write to just say "you were right, they were really gas leaks, oh and thanks". The lack of response makes me wonder if my nose is imagining things.

All four leaks were in busy streets and must have been passed by thousands of people. I've been noticing a faint smell of gas for months myself before reporting it.

If the gas companies really do care about gas leaks, there are two simple things they could do:

1. In their marketing for the gas "emergency" number, make it clear that you can call this number to report a leak, even if you don't think it's a life threatening emergency. 
2. Tell the people that report the leaks whether or not the leak was confirmed. Just tell me whether the smell was real or my imagination!

This is of course in contrast to Yorkshire water who did phone me up after reporting a water leak to confirm that it was a leak and thank me for reporting it.

Social Network

I have never tweeted, yet I have stacked up 40 followers. When you can't be bothered to even log in to block/delete the ones that are spam/pron ..it is time to close the account. I'm sure that the 37 won't miss me.

I log into facebook about once a month. I feel out of the loop.

I still use RSS lots; I keep up with some good blogs that way.

I might write here more frequently. A timely resolution.

Any the bathroom is about finished. Only the floor to tidy up and the hallway wall to fix.

Down tools

As we prepare for an influx of relatives this weekend on account of a first birthday party, I've taken the drastic step of tidying away the tools, screws and general mess from the bathroom and hallway.

It's not that the work is finished (still....) but that it's harder to cover up for the fact in it's taking so long when the walk from the bedroom to the shower in the morning is a bit like playing Indiana Jones.

Anyway, we're nearly there. The remaining jobs are:

• sort out the ceiling, which is the original artex supplemented with a splattering of tile adhesive
• get the grout off the floor, which stuck to the non-polished tiles....doh
• fit the extractor fan
• fit mirror, toilet roll holder etc
• perhaps fit a new cupboard to make more storage space.

Have I forgotten anything? 

I took the old bath to the tip today. It went into the landfill skip. I felt so guilty. I'd tried leaving on the drive (no one stole it, although they took the sink) and advertising on freecycle (no replies).

What else can you do with an old acrylic/fibreglass bath?

Nearly there

I didn't do any work on the bathroom tonight. Instead, I seem to be addicted to failblog.org. I sit here laughing at page after page of people getting things wrong in the stupidest ways possible. 

I suppose the fact that I could be finished with this long overdue project in a few evenings,  if only I could face getting the tile cutter out again to do that one last bit of tiling, is something of a FAIL.

Darkness

Today was the first day of the year when I actually had to get up when it was still dark. On the upside, I suppose I'm making efficient use of the available daylight. But I didn't mind the darkness because I used the new shower for the first time!

Why wait so long after fitting it? Because there seems to be a shortage of shower curtain rails. Would you believe it!

I looked in B&Q - the only suitable one (i.e with brackets, rather then the weak-looking friction-fit job) was £60, which was more than I wanted to pay and it didn't look that good anyway because it looked like the curtain would fall off the hooks. I looked in Screwfix, they had exactly the same one as B&Q at £25. (Yes less than half the price - B&Q is so expensive for such things) but were out of stock. In fact they had no stock available for any that I liked. Even ebay had nothing, for once. 

Finally I found one on the internet, which arrived yesterday and was fitted immediately.

Also last night, I tackled the problem in the sink. After being away for a couple of days on a trip, it was not a pleasant job. Wearing latex gloves I tackled the smelly mess.

The problem was of my own making (in two senses of the word). Having been bitten once trying to reuse an old waste trap, I made sure that I bought a new one for the sink. Knowing that space was tight, I bought a nice tidy compact trap.

However, last week, when fitting the front of the sink unit is on, it became clear that there would not be enough room even for this trap: the semi recessed sink sits so that the waste hole is so close to the front of the unit. So I tempted fate and put the old trap on the sink, which was a simple U-bend in the form of a P-trap.

Of course, it was a bad idea.

When I fitted it, it dripped slightly, so I ended up over tightening it onto the waste. This, in itself caused no problems, but when I want to remove it, of course it was stuck tight. Turning harder (which is pretty hard because you cannot really get a spanner to it once the sink is fitted into the unit) just managed to unseat the waste unit itself.

In fact, the trap was stuck so tight that I had to resort to a saw to remove it. 90 minutes later and I had the waste and trap out. 10 minutes after that I had the waste re-seated and sealed, and a new P-trap fitted.

With a sigh of relief, I soaked the few tools that I had used in bleach - I really don't want any chance of a repeat of the events of last weekend.

Sinking issues

I learned two things over the weekend. 

1. At 3am Sunday morning, I learned that the toilet is close enough to the sink to provide a possible solution to simultaneously dealing with both symptoms of Gastroenteritis.

2. At 3:15am Sunday morning, I learned that the possible solution above isn't actually a very good one.

The sink is now out of order.

Apart from the illness delaying work, it's quite a setback to the bathroom progress because it looks like I'll have to remove the sink again.

Shower!

Well, the shower manufacturer don't really want to know that they've got the labels on the pipes wrong. They even suggested that it would be hard to prove that I hadn't swapped the labels round after. A very sympathetic guy from customer support suggested that I ask my customer if they would mind if I fit it upside down...I said that I don't think that the idea would go down well.

For reference, here is the unit with the stickers the wrong way round.

Midas 200 with wrong labels

I decided to tackle the problem from the hallway, rather than taking down any tiles.

Here is the quite neat "before" shot.

And here it is "after", not looking nearly so good.

Pipes the right way round.

The little U in the hot pipe is because the pipe is quite rigidly fixed at the bottom and I didn't want the expansion to stress the also-rigid, push-fit shower fitting. I'm not sure how effective it will be, but it's probably quite effective at reducing the flow rate in the shower.

Soldering those pipes was tricky: the plastic shower fitting is fixed to the wall (screwed from the front, under the tiles). The pipes are rigidly fixed somewhere (especially the hot). So you have to assemble the pipes and solder in-situ, it would be impossible to solder and then insert them into the shower fitting. It looks like I didn't melt the plastic, somehow.

And here's the end result - it actually works. If only I had a shower curtain....

Shower!

Incidentally, someone stole the old sink, radiator and a broken toastie machine from outside my house on Monday. Now all I need to do is get rid of the old bath.

Back to front ARGH aka Public service.

You may recall the effort spent plumbing the shower fitting in the wall. You may also recall the effort tiling it. The finish is now complete, grouted and sealed. It looks great.

Unfortunately....well, see below.

From: Ian Broster
To: Aqualisa Technical Support
Date: Saturday 19 September 2009

I have just fitted a Midas 200 - but it 
does not adjust temperature correctly.

I have double checked that the inlet pipes 
match the makings on the tap (i.e. the left
one closest to the output pipe is cold).

Please can you confirm that the markings on
the shower unit are correct?

Regards
Ian

And the reply

From: Aqualisa Technical Support
To: Ian Broster
Date: Monday 21st September

Dear Ian Broster,

Thank you for your e-mail.
This does sound as though the stickers on 
the valve may be on the wrong way around, 
if you look at the front of the valve with 
the outlet on the bottom left, the hot 
connection should then enter in the rear 
on the left as you look at it.

...

There have been so many opportunities to get this right! When I first did the plumbing, I noticed that the pipes were the other way round to the old shower, a different model from the same company. So, I did a quick check.

I searched in the documentation and installation guide for confirmation, but it only refers to the "markings" on the valve. It does not say which is the right way!

I even searched the internet to see if anyone else could confirm which way round, but I could not find anything relevant.

So, thinking 'how can anyone get two really important stickers the wrong way on a production line!' I went ahead. Damn.

So, in case any one else happens to have this shower, and are not sure which way round they go...then now you know.

In Hot Water

With the cold weather approaching, there is a certain pressure to get the heated towel rail fitted. It's not that we need cosy warm towels that urgently, but that when I moved the radiator pipes, I didn't bother to refill the central heating system again, thinking that I'd save some time (and inhibitor solution) by leaving it turned off until the hot towel rail was properly fitted. This means that we have had no heating. During the summer months, of course, we didn't notice.

Anyway, after spending a long time drilling a few holes in the tiles (and probably ruining a nice masonry drill bit in the process - how can it take 10 minutes a hole to drill through 9mm of rather fragile ceramic?), we have a nice new heated towel rail (and a cosy warm house too).

I never thought I would liken drilling breeze block to drilling into soft cheese until I tried drilling through a breeze block wall with tiles in front of it; the contrast is spectacular. With some irony, the next day some new proper tile drill bits arrived for me in the post. I'm sure that they turn my tiles into cheese too.

Almost Done Tiling

It's been a long time since the last update. Since then I've been tiling. And that's about it. Tiling for weekends and every evening for over 2 weeks. I have fitted over 300kg of tiles to the walls (I really hope they're strong enough).

Perhaps I'm just not a fast tiler. Perhaps I can blame it on the huge tiles. Perhaps I can claim that I had to buy a few extra tools (which is certainly true).

In any case, I really have almost done tiling. It only remains to tile around the extractor fan (I'm waiting for a 110mm diamond hole saw to arrive) and a tiny bit of boxing to make and tile.

I've grumbled about large tiles but now that I'm at the end, it doesn't seem so bad. The large tiles generate quite a lot of wastage, however. There were 35kg of offcuts, 12%, counting only the bits that I bothered to save (the larger bits that might conceivably be used somewhere else).

I only broke one tile (actually, not broke it as much as somehow cutting it in mirror image).

The one upside of the large tiles is that the grouting was easy, completed in only a few hours. It's looking good. Finally. Pictures will come when the tiling no longer almost done.

Still Tiling

Yes, the tiling is going very slowly. Did I mention how awkward it is to work with huge tiles?

I'm averaging about 5 tiles in an evening (3 hours) at the moment, mostly because each tile needs to be cut into so many pieces.

Anyway, here are some photos.

Around the bath

You'll notice around the bath, there is a row about 10cm high. This is perhaps unusual, the typical advice being to make the row above the bath just less than a full tile. Again, this a the problem of large tiles. It is important to get the border at the right height (not too close to the sill, not hitting the sink, etc.) and the large tiles don't leave much room for manoeuvre. There were no options that hit all requirements, but the best option was having a thin row above the bath.

Here's a bit of carefully constructed boxing that's about 70% of the size of the previous boxing but holds the same pipes.

Boxing

And finally, an example of an awkward tile, yet to do, that needs to be cut around the door.

Tiling Around the door.

Despite an appeal on facebook, I failed to find someone with a 110-120mm diamond hole saw to lend me so that I can cut the extractor fan vent. Although they're not expensive for a tool (about £10-£15), as I'm only going to drill one hole with it, it's an expensive hole! Once the rest of the bathroom is in a better state, I'm going try a tungsten carbide jigsaw blade instead.