Hanging on the BlockChain

There has been much discussion (and some excitement) in our house recently about the BlockChain.

Interest is also growing in large financial institutions, and companies are beginning to invest in research & development to ensure that they don't get left behind.

So will the BlockChain change our lives, or is it a techno dead-end?

GPS: extracting Tracks from XML files with Gambas

You would have to be crazy to write your own XML editor when there are so many available, right?

Well, when opening the XML file from my Garmin eTrex in a variety of editors, my low power Linux laptop grinds to a halt.

As I only need to extract individual Tracks from the eTrex file, I decided to write my own program.

BirdBox 2016: sexing blue tits

In England, if you put up a bird box with a small entrance hole, the most likely species to make use of it is the blue tit.

So how do you tell male from female? Chances are you won't be able to.

But blue tits don't seem to have a problem picking a mate of the opposite sex. How do they do that?

My Camray is choking

Our Camray central heating boiler developed a fault about 18 months ago.

Despite our boilerman spending a few hours trying to fix it earlier this year, the annoying little problem has persisted.

However, it looks like my efforts last Friday afternoon may finally have made the boiler behave itself.

GPS Data Visualisation

I must admit that I haven't used my Garmin eTrex 10 GPS that much this year.

Now that the weather has improved, we tend to take our Pentax cameras out when wondering around this green and pleasant land. So have little time to fiddle with a gps, entering waypoints, looking for geochaches or whatever.

However, even with the eTrex just turned on, it records data every 10 seconds, including latitude, longitude and elevation.

More on "Broadband Speeds & other Mysteries"

Back in June I posted about my Broadband Speeds & Other Mysteries and then upgraded my contract from 7Mbps to 17Mbps.

I have continued to automatically monitor download speed and occasionally done a few manual checks.

It looks like there has been an improvement in service, but not exactly what I was expecting.

Email, and other dangers

We recently had a spate of emails arrive at work, some claiming to be from RBS and some from Santander.

My curiosity got the better of me, so I saved the attached Word document, brought it home, and studied it on a Linux machine.

It turned out to be rather easy to pull apart, but rather difficult to piece together and understand.

The FG-100 DDS Function Generator

I needed a stable sine wave oscillator that I could use for a couple of projects.

After a quick search on the net I found I could buy a multi-function generator via Amazon for only £27 post free.

A couple of weeks later the FG-100 arrived, with absolutely no documentation. Fortunately it is very easy to drive.

Bat Detector Overhaul: Portable Field Unit

Sooner or later I'm going to have to accept that the bats are not coming to me, so I need to get out and find them!

I could do that now just using the hand-held bat detector. But I'm thinking it would be nice to test the whole automatic design illustrated in an earlier post.

So I've put together a rough outline schematic and started collecting bits & pieces.