Thursday 05 Jun 2008 by Orphi the AweKid.

Heh. As somebody remarked the other day, “CAD has a story about a miscarrage, QC has somebody with a concussion, and XKCD has Black Hat Guy moping over lost love. Where can I get some honest-to-God humour?!”

But hey, I’m not complaining.

Posted in Random | Print | No Comments »

Wednesday 04 Jun 2008 by Orphi the AweKid.

Yesterday night I decided to try out my remote IR thermometer.

Ever wondered just how hot a frying pan is? Obviously this is an important question, so I immediately set to work answering it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Temperature | Print | 1 Comment »

Wednesday 04 Jun 2008 by Orphi the AweKid.

I cannot believe this…

I took my environment meter back to the shop last night because the light sensor doesn’t appear to work. I followed the manual to the letter, yet no matter what I do, I always get the reading “−0.02 Lux”. If I unplug the sensor, I still get that reading. If I put the sensor in the light, I get that reading. If I put it in the shade I get that reading.

Anyway, the guy in the shop played with it and got the same thing. He got a new one out of its box and get the same reading. (!) And then another shop assistent comes over and goes “that’s because you gotta take the cap off”. With that, she grabbed the sensor and pulled at the two tiny slits on the edges that I hadn’t even noticed. The entire top of the pod came off, revealing a transparent window onto the sensor!

I looked at the guy, the guy looked at me, and we’re both like “OMG, how could we be so stupid?” I LOLd. Very hard. Almost as hard as the two chav kids next to me.

I am astounded that the manual doesn’t mention the cover. There is no indication that there’s anything removable other than two tiny slits in the side. No markings on the pod, no mention in the manual. The guy in the shop even double-checked the manual and confirmed that there is no mention. WTH?

Posted in Science | Print | No Comments »

Tuesday 03 Jun 2008 by Orphi the AweKid.

Last night, I went to Maplin and I bought… a remote infrared thermometer!

Now I can find out the temparature of everything! Muhuhuhuh!!!

I also bought myself an environment meter. It measures temparatures. (Even somes with a metal probe.) It measures humidity. But most of all, it measures light. And sound.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Science | Print | 3 Comments »

Monday 02 Jun 2008 by Orphi the AweKid.

I was asked to set up some software for talking to one of our temparature loggers. When we connected up the second temparature logger, we made a small discovery: you can’t change COM port. The software lets you change it, but the change doesn’t actually take effect, and if you open up the options section, you’ll see it’s changed straight back to whatever it was before.

Well let me see now. How much do you want to bet that this is a security issue? I’ll bet where ever it is that this dinosour program stores its configuration settings is only writable by an administrator, which is why normal users can’t change the settings. *sigh*

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Work | Print | No Comments »

Monday 02 Jun 2008 by Orphi the AweKid.

Well, well! What a busy morning it is on the interwebs…

A while back in the XKCD forums, a number of people wondered what a stick figure giving birth would actually look like And now they know. (Actually, this was already shown shown a little while ago.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Random | Print | No Comments »

Sunday 01 Jun 2008 by Orphi the AweKid.

In an almost unprecedented move, I spent Saturday night in a pub.

(The famous Bull Inn, in fact.)

Yesterday was my dad’s birthday, so I decided to stroll over and give him the small gift I got. (I gave him a copy of FM8 and a MIDI controller for Christmas. The other day I heard him complaining that he doesn’t actually know how to play keyboard. So I bought a book which explains the matter.) I don’t think much of Amazon’s “gift wrapping”, but ho hum. He seemed to like the gift anyway…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Social | Print | 3 Comments »