Plastic Electric 'Blog

11:28 PM

Intermittent Ink

The other night, I washed my pen.

It's a fountain pen, nothing special, and it's served me well for a few years. But then, all of a sudden, it started to behave like it was running out of ink. The cartridge was still half full.

Being a lazy individual, I had never done the recommended thing of washing it through with water before.

I took it into the bathroom, and proceeded to rinse its parts. I was impressed with how clean and new the nib looked! And, also, I was surprised at how much ink had accumulated in the cap.

Then, with the cartridge back in, I had to do a lot of scribbling and flicking (something I've not done since school age) to get it to write with more than just water (but it did occur to me it could be a neat way to do invisible writing (whether or not it would be readable is another matter)).

Now that the water's cleared, and it's well and truly back to ink, I find that it's doing the same, beginning-to-run-out-of-ink thing that it was before.

Perhaps the new, washable black cartridges aren't so good. I'll go back to the permanent ones.

4:30 PM

It's amazing how much someone can write about their own vagina.

2:31 PM

Amazing, but True

(And also full of smug conceit.)

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

(That was taken from a page entitled AI koan.)

Yesterday afternoon, he phoned me again! This time, it was his printer. It had, as Canberrans seem want to say, died in the arse.

Back in his little office, he showed me the piece of paper that had jammed in the printer, and explained that the printer had done nothing since. Even the print heads hadn't centered themselves when the front cover was opened.

I pulled the power lead out the back (there is no on/off switch), and fiddled around for several seconds as I tried to plug it in again. Once it was back in, the printer worked.

He said that when he'd tried that himself earlier, it hadn't worked. I remembered the koan quoted above, but did not tell him it, because I did not want to seem a conceited smart-arse. Two miracles in one day were enough, I thought.

Instead, rather than be mystical and obscure, I decided to mention that it's a good idea to leave the power off for a count of ten (supposed to be ten seconds, but we're all impatient when computer stuff goes wrong, aren't we?). I explained that it can take several seconds for the circuits to settle down when power's disconnected, and ventured that that might've been why his attempt earlier hadn't succeeded. This made sense to him, and he was a damned sight more enlightened than he would've been if I'd just koaned at him.

11:57 AM

I Charge Shitloads for My Services

Another trip to solve computer problems, but this time he provided car transport ('cause I wasn't in the mood for walking).

On the phone, it sounded serious. The laptop had failed to wake from sleep (he never switches it off, which is good). There was, instead, a worrying message on the screen. I knew I was in for a long day ('cause I have to learn on the fly what to do).

I got there, and, with just two key presses, the problem was solved.

The scary message was just a simple menu offering two options, one of which was to resume the reawakening process. But, being a text menu, he had been completely thrown by it. The mouse, you see, was completely unresponsive, and the touch pad didn't work.

So, another very short visit, but this time one with a successful, satisfactory conclusion. Especially the bit about getting paid. Come to think of it, it must've worked out at something like, oh, £10 000 per hour? Pity it only took a few seconds.

1:05 AM

Vibrating Electrical Appliances

You know the thing about sitting on the corner of the washing machine during the fast spin cycle? Where does that come from? Did it first appear in a film? Or a book? Or what?

I've got an incling that there's some sort of quote, some character bemoaning her fella's crapness in bed by commenting about sitting on the corner of the washing machine instead. Or something.

Or am I just imagining that?

Or am I getting confused with some story about a woman who discovers orgasms that way? I'm sure there's a play, or something, about that.

Anyway, it's been bugging me.

12:54 AM

Wasted Time

Yesterday, I spent several seconds helping my computer illiterate person to remember that his new printer wouldn't work with his old computer. Fortunately, it was a convenient excuse to spend forty minutes walking. And I could always do with more exercise.

Today, I deleted lots of spam and other no longer needed emails. This is because I couldn't go online, as we were waiting for the vets' to phone to tell us about Tigger the cat.

Last week, Tigger went for a flu jab, and the vet there found an apparent irregularity with her heart beat. So, just to be on the safe side, Tigger went back there for an ECG this morning.

At half four this afternoon, my mother phoned to find out what the situation was. Tigger was ready to be collected, so off she went, and Tigger returned.

It turned out that Tigger never had the ECG, 'cause the vet (a different one) didn't know how to work the machine! But he did give Tigger (who was getting increasingly annoyed at being kept there all day, and then prodded about a lot) a thorough check-over. No problems! Well, no knew ones, anyway. Apparently, she's in incredibly good nick for such an old cat.

It was, I think, a nice thing that the vets didn't charge us anything.

12:35 PM

Hot and Sweaty

On Thursday, it was hot and humid. It was about 30C (about 86°F), but humid enough to make people feel wilty and ill.

Today, it's around about 32C (about 90°F), but not as humid as on Thursday, so it doesn't feel as hot. And it's a little breezier, and the breeze does feel nice.

I reckon the thing about humidity making it feel hotter is that it's all to do with sweat.

For liquid water to turn into vapour, it's got to get some extra energy. This is 'cause the water molecules have little electric charges in them, such that water molecules attract each other, a bit like magnets. To turn into a vapour, those molecules need to be moved apart from each other, with the forces of attraction being overcome. That takes energy.

Liquid water already has some energy available in the form of heat, but not enough for all of a quantity of water to just turn into vapour. Each bit of water that turns into vapour does so by taking some of the heat away from the rest of the water, and so the rest of the water cools down a bit.

That's how sweat works. As each bead of sweat loses a little bit of itself by evaporating, the remaining bead cools down a bit. Heat from our skin heats it up again, but our skin cools down a little bit as a result. Which is nice.

But this process of evaporation cuts both ways. If there's moisture in the air, in the form of vapour, it can condence into the beads of sweat. When it does this, it releases that extra energy into the bead of sweat, heating it up a little bit.

For us to get cooler, we need to sweat enough for evaporation to happen at a sufficiently higher rate than condensation. The more humid it is, the more we need to sweat.

But in order to sweat more, our skin needs to be at a higher temperature. And, as our skin is what tells us how hot or cold it is, our skin will tell us that it's hotter. So, I reckon, that is why greater humidity makes it feel hotter.

Yesterday, I looked round the shops for one of them humidity measuring things. What are they called, hygrometers? Hydrometers? I can't remember. I didn't find any, anyway.

2:54 AM

Brain on Overdrive

I also had a moment of revelation yesterday. Not in any spiritual or religious kind of sense. It was to do with functional programming languages, logic programming languages, and higher order attribute, two level grammars. I think I might have made an original discovery - but I've got to check first to see if it's already been published by someone else.

2:49 AM

Friendly Ghosts

Talking of cats and dreams, I am very occasionally visited by my other cats in dreams.

Such dreams don't usually consist of much. Or if they do, I just forget the rest of it, 'cause it's so nice to see Ben, or sometimes Lara, again. Ben's the one who usually visits, but their visits are few and far between.

It's nice, 'cause they're dead. Not in the dreams, though. Except they are. I know they're dead in the dreams, and that's how I know that they're visiting me, to say 'hello'. It's nice that they sometimes choose to visit. They seem quite happy.

2:43 AM

Cats and Dreams

After feeling a bit down and stuff yesterday, I had a dream.

Tigger the cat was at the bottom of the garden, but my mother was at this end of the garden. I was a little concerned that Tigger might venture beyond the garden without someone holding her lead (as she's twenty, and has occasional fits, we're very careful when she goes outside).

As we walked down the garden towards Tigger, we heard someone calling out, as if reacting to an intruder, from a neighbour's house. We rushed there, 'cause my mother knew the occupants from her home-helpery work.

The back wall of the house seemed to be somewhat lacking a, um, wall, so we could walk straight into the back room. In a middle room, which was separated from the back room by large, sliding patio doors, there was a very tall and rather skinny man, who was rapidly pacing up and down in a rather deranged and demented fashion. He seemed to be the intruder, yet was the one who was disturbed.

I slid the glass door shut, though it wouldn't close securely. It seemed to be hanging off the top rail, not slotted into the bottom of the frame.

I started waking up at that point, my dream beginning to feel like a nightmare.

The really odd thing is that as I lay awake, not feeling particularly disturbed at all, I started to get that nightmare feeling. I began to worry that I was going to have a seizure or something, that something was wrong with my brain and that I was in danger of triggering something adverse. It was a bit horrible!

I had to go downstairs and watch telly for a couple of hours while I recovered. Tigger joined me before curling up asleep on a nearby armchair, though I did notice that she seemed to be watching some of the adverts.

There were some nice documentary type things about cats - particularly big ones like lions and tigers.

I like cats.

4:41 AM

Actually, I just want to hide away from the world today.

4:15 AM

[Whatever title is appropriate.]

For some reason, I don't know why, I'm feeling rather down. Sort of sad. And a little tiny bit deranged. But only a little bit.

Maybe it's too much functional programming language stuff, and the like.

1:20 PM

Dream Interpretations

While offering an off-the-top-of-my-head interpretation of a dream, it occurred to me that dream interpretations may say more about the interpreters than about the dreams themselves. More specifically, it could well be a matter of saying more about an interpreter's perceptions of the individual who dreamed the dream than about the dream or the dreamer.

This gives me a thought: perhaps asking people to interpret your dreams could be a cunning way to find out about how they perceive you? Then again, I s'pose you could just ask them: 'How do you perceive me?'

1:31 AM

Tigger the Cat

Back in early 1983, there was a small, black kitten that used to visit from two doors down. Tigger was its name, and our two cats, Ben and Lara, probably had something to do with its interest in us. Not that Ben and Lara were entirely keen to have a visiting cat. But they were fairly tolerant of the intruder.

Eventually, Tigger's owners, who had got bored of the novelty of a kitten, said we may as well keep him. But he turned out to be a she. Still, the name 'Tigger' had stuck, and could easily be abbreviated to 'Tiggie' and 'Tigs'.

She also turned out to be quite deaf! Her ears were full of mite-ridden gunk, and her health was generally not too good. But it was soon apparent that her health was improving, mostly because the fur growing where she had been shaved for getting spaid was plainly of much higher quality than the surrounding stuff.

Due to her deafness, her meows were just squeaky mews, but once she discovered sound, she just kept on mewing! She would greet us, reply to us, practically have conversations with us. And attack our ankles as we tried to walk up and down the stairs.

Due to her bad start in life, there was always the expectation that she wouldn't live as long as the others. This was just reinforced by various episodes of ill-health along her life. These various illnesses, and the like, have included: a number of bouts of cystitis; thyroid tumours courtesy of Chernobyl; a broken leg; arthritis; a dislocated knee involving a torn tendon; partial blindness; a very slightly wobbly heart; and failing kidneys.

She should be dead by now.

Instead, on Thursday, we celebrated her twentieth birthday!