Ballista, Warrior of Rome

Many years ago, one of my Christmas presents was a book called 'Ribbons of Time'. It had four or five rows for Science, Medicine, Politics, World, etc and a column for each year from 1492 to the date of publishing. It has always been one of my favourite reference books and a first call when I need some information about what happened on a specific date.

As I read the third volume of the 'Warrior of Rome' books written by Dr. Harry Sidebottom, which covered the period from 260 AD into 261 AD, I thought that I should have one for the period of these books. So I created it, but after I had finished the book, and made it public so that anyone who is reading these books or has an interest can add things. When the next book comes out ( Will I have to wait until next September?) I will add columns on a monthly basis for the period of the story. There will be a problem here as I think that they did not use the 12 months as we know them today in those times.

Here's the start:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aup29CJdvj4tdF93WEtfV3ZlMU5iTDBDSm9NaE5aN3c&hl=en

smart computer or what?

After my problems caused by my injudicious running of Computer Janitor that removed OpenOffice and I don't know what else, I have been having problems getting my old parallel printer reinstated. I have installed hplip, uninstalled it, installed an earlier version, and finally managed to do a manual install that gave me the capability of adding parallel devices. Then I had the problem that the program couldn't find any printers to install, even though the printer database was there. It wouldn't give me any printers to select. That's taken me a week of my free time.

Finally I gave up and from the Hplip pages, decided to install cups. Did that – apt-get install cups. And then to configure a printer via cups I had to browse to localhost:631, where I found the printer already existing. What the heck?

I went back to the hp-setup program and lo-and-behold, The printer showed up. It was there!

I wondered how to get back the capability of printing to a PDF, so googled that and then installed cups-pdf. Didn't bother with the remaining command to install this as a printer device, but went to the document where I was logging my notes, and vazoom- I had both printers, the Laserjet and the pdf.

Is this intelligent computing? Or just that computer janitor did not clean up everything when it deleted stuff?

I don't care. I have it back.

Timmy Harris

It's the kind of thing that every parent will hate. Just over two weeks ago I got a message from an old friend from university who is holidaying in Europe, to say that his son had been in an accident. Timmy is 22, had just finished 5 years of an engineering degree, and had fallen 6 metres from some scaffolding. Since then we have been getting updates on Timmy's condition from Gordy, and from Timmy's sister. Gordy has returned to Canada and is now in Victoria. Timmy has been kept in a coma and we wait everyday. Our prayers are with the family.

It once again shows how young men think they are superhuman and invulnerable, and in many cases they will get away with it. Alcohol was involved as this was after a university sponsored pub crawl.

I hope that nothing like this ever happens in my family. I feel worried enough about Gordy and his family. His daughter was at the bedside for most of the time as far as I know. What a thing for a young girl to go through.

We were looking forward to seeing Gordy again, but that is so trivial. Now we hope that Timmy recovers, and this keeps me awake at night.

Our prayers are with you all.

decluttering

Churchill – Complex Variables and Applications

Davis – Vector Analysis

Jordan & Balmain – Electromagnetic Waves and Radiating Systems

Lance – Intoduction to Microwaves

Burr-Brown – Operational Amplifiers

All books that I cherish from my university studies in 1970's, that have been on my bookshelf ever since. They are all going to be part of the decluttering of my life. I cherish them, but I haven't used them or their topics, for years. The other week I threw out my notes on these subjects that used these textbooks, and I must confess that I didn't understand them any more. I would have to start learning again from scratch if I wanted to do anything.

Life has moved on, I have moved into other pastimes and interests.

After university I was involved in circuit design using CMOS medium scale chips. Things like 4011, 4013, 4049 chips. I have a collection of these in my workshop, and even though it looks like somebody still is interested in them judging by their availability on ebay, they are for the bin.

And I was looking for a Power supply unit for a PC the other day, and have decided that all those 150 watt, 250 watt PC PSU's can also go. Those are a simple decision.

Reasons:

I'll never use them again.

If I need the information I'll look it up on the Internet.

When I die it will make life easier for my children to clear out the stuff.

I hope that getting rid of all this stuff doesn't make me a shallower person, with fewer interests.

On Having Grandchildren

Funny, I thought that I had written this.

I am now a grandfather. Have been for five months. My little grand-daughter has captured my heart. Luckily she only lives about 60 miles or an hour and a quarters drive away so we see her nearly every week. I wouldn't want it to be longer than that. My neighbors have their grandparents only about 15 minutes drive away, and they are always over, but they do do a lot of looking after their children.

I guess the thought behind this note is the fact that I emigrated from Canada back to England and then we had children, and the thought now about what this did to my parents, who only came to England every other year and missed so much of their grand-children's growing up. I would not like that. How it must have hurt them every time they had to leave, but I didn't think of that at the time.

Of course, having those children also made it difficult to go back to Canada for me so that they could be closer.

Grand-children are real treasures.

Academic view of student behaviour

First year - we tell you what to do.

Second year - We tell you what we want done

Third Year - (Placement) Someone else tells you what they want done, and if you are lucky, sends you on training courses.

Final year - You tell us what you are going to do, and we mark the process.

New Knee

I went to see the Doctor today, after that little upset with my knee collapsing on me a week or so ago. He says that he thinks it is time to have the knee replacement done. With any luck it will last 15 years, or until I am 78, and by then technology will have advanced. He is writing to the consultant that has to OK the procedure, who i will see in about a month. Then there is about 13 weeks to wait for the op. I came home quite pensive, wondering if I am doing the right thing. maybe I should have held on for a while longer. If I hadn't given up the glucosamine pills in January, would I be in this state now? I don't think the gel that I am using instead is as 'potent'.

Since then I have been working in the garden, becasue I am still very active. That's the sort of thing that makes me wonder if I should have it done or hold on. But then a twist in the wrong way, or putting that foot down heavily, and the pain shoots through my knee, and I am definitely up for it.

Of course, on the way home from the Doctors I stopped in at the bike shop and ordered a new seat post!. That says something.