Random Writings

What happened to May? It seemed only a few moments ago that it began… Anyway, here’s a quick summary of what I’ve been up to in what seems to have been a very busy month…

Firstly, a trip to Hull to see off my brother and sister-in-law as they set off on their tandem bike tour of Europe. They’re ultimately aiming for Greece, and were last sighted in southern Germany! They have a sporadically-updated website too – daveandgill.co.uk.

Then I found out, at rather short notice, about the NERC Technology Forum conference. This happens every two years and brings together engineers and other technical staff (as distinct from scientists) from across the environmental science community. This year, it was held at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in the beautiful setting of their lab at Dunstaffnage, just north of Oban in western Scotland. The conference was interesting – and quite a few people showed an interest in my work – and the weather was unseasonably warm and sunny.

I’ve finished off Innocenti’s electrics, too. The split charge relay and controller went in two weeks ago, so now the domestic batteries will charge when the engine is running, and as a side benefit the system will also top up the engine start battery when using the generator and battery charger. Today I’ve been to B&Q with the bike and trailer and bought some timber and plywood to tidy up the wiring on the kitchen wall. I was expecting more funny looks riding back from B&Q with 2 metres of timber strapped onto the top of the trailer, but clearly the people of Cambridge are quite used to people doing crazy things on bikes…

So here we are – before and after:

Before!

After…

The new duct hides all the cables and also mounts the SmartGauge display on the wall below, so you can see the battery charge status (0-100%) or the battery voltage at the touch of a button. It also stops a howling gale blowing in from the engine bay through the hole in the bulkhead where the wires pass through!

Oh, and as the kitchen was properly tidy for the first time in, like, ever, I took some photos for posterity…

The PhD is progressing fairly well – I’ve just started working with Mike Warrington’s HF channel simulator so we’ll see how that goes, but I’d like to start getting some useful results in the next couple of months!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Narrowboat, PhD.