William Hector's Blog

Firstly the penultimate delivery arrived today which contained the drill bits, speaker and safety equipment (masks and gloves). Secondly whilst most of the construction and actually using it is happening on Saturday, I decided that it would be a good idea to start the drilling of the pipe today so we didn’t have to waste time Saturday.

The tube is 3m long and there are holes every 1cm with a 10cm margin either end, therefore 280 holes. We ordered both 0.5mm and 1mm drill bits, starting with the smallest. So my brother and I started by affixing a drill stand to a workbench and used some pieces of wood to support the tube whilst drilling.

The first problem was that because the drill bits were so thin, when the chuck was fully closed the bit could still slide in and out, luckily I used some electrical tape to pad out the bit thus enabling it to fit on.

Here are some construction pics (click for original image)

My brother marking the holes on masking tape (I gave up after 20)

Drill Setup

Close-up of the drill bit

My Brother doing some drilling

Me Drilling (The bit is so small and spinning so fast that you can’t actually see it in this shot, but it is there)

You may have noticed there is an absence of any gas fittings etc, a large delivery of about 60 items including all piping, jointed, fittings and regulators.

Also we’ve got some marshmallows to toast

For my latest project (first), my friend, Max, and I are building a Rubens’ tube, a big Rubens’ tube. We’re using a 3m long piece of galvanized steel, 8mm copper tubing, propane tank, etc. Everything is on order, so far the following things have arrived:

Steel Tube:

Propane Tank

And, just in case:

Fire Extinguisher

Latex Sheet – For Diaphragm

It is taking place this Saturday (22nd May). Watch my blog for the pictures and video.

I’ve recently moved this blog onto a new VPS server in the UK, to improve my editing speed of other sites and most peopel looking at my blog are in the uk, It’s not to slow for the US or anywhere else anyway.

The point is when I tried to upgrade wordpress, or any plugins I got this error: “PCLZIP_ERR_BAD_FORMAT (-10) : Invalid archive structure”

Some quick googling shows that normally the error is due to a problem with the http.php file makeing corrupt archives. I tried the new version but to no avail, I was then looking at the sourse to see if it used a function I forgot to enable for some reason and saw this line in /wp-admin/includes/file.php (which contains the extracting function):

&ini_set('memory_limit', '256M');

Now the server only has 256MB at the moment, which is enouge for my use; but this will cause the above error unless it is lowed, I set to 128M with no problems.

This morning when I tried to logon to msn messenger, I was greeted by a message telling me I had to upgrade; knowing It wouldn’t work I could only click ok.
It downloaded then installation failed due to me running XP x64.

So after a quick search I found this:

http://oss.netfarm.it/wlm.php

This allows you to just download the setup file from microsoft, run the above patch and it works.

For a very long time my broadband randomly cuts out, I think it always has. Only for a few seconds though as my modem reconnects. The problems is I then get a new IP. With a router it doesn’t care. However I’m using, and have been for the last year using Small Business Server 2003 as my router. When the external IP changes it needs to renew the ip. How this was getting annoying as it seems to be increasing lately. So I made a small program (this is an ugly hack)  to ping google every 2 seconds, if it fails 3 times in a row, it releases and renews the IP. I also decided to log every time it has to do this. I then plotted a graph, with some interesting results:

I’m still logging to see how this trend continues.

As I went to solder a new chip on I just ran my iron across the joints to check they were all joined. I then plugged it in and…

It worked. Getting info from the chip:

Connection

Gonna load up the standard program next to see if I can get some output.

I found another USB to UART chip and looked at the order and realised I had ordered two.

I’ll swap them out later and see if I can get some connectivity.

Here are the pictures for day 2; just he Power supply at the moment:

[View with PicLens]

Getting a new phone; and switching to vodafone. I like T-mobile but their 3G coverage is poor and, I’ve only even god 3.5G once.

Whilst vodafone have 3.5G in Devizes!

Getting an E71, I would prefer and E72 but that’s not out for 3-4 months.

Nokia E71

I have to wait for t-mobile to release my PAC code but they say their systems are down. I shoudl get it by the end of the week.

Now that’s 3 blog posts in the period of a few hours. You’ll never hear from me for weeks now ^^

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_jammer

UK beats USA:

• United Kingdom: illegal to use, but legal to own.

VS

• United States: illegal to operate, manufacture, import, or offer for sale, including advertising (Communications Act of 1934), with fines of up to $11,000 and imprisonment of up to one year.