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If you have read some of my other blog posts you will know that I managed to write a novel by accident, impressive I know. Death in the Anechoic Chamber my first short story that has just been published in Harvey Duckman Presents… Volume 7, was definitely planned and no accident but just as enjoyable. However, the reason it was planned was because of that first accident and my participation in a writing group.
It’s unusual for our home Wi-Fi system to have been set up to cope with multiple people working or studying from home and for our increased use of the internet for streaming services. The good news is that you don’t have to put up with poor Wi-Fi connectivity anymore. There are lots of things you can do to improve the situation and I’m going to talk about the top 5 that sorted out my Wi-Fi issues.
Ah, a sci-fi book about a coder set in the near future. Normally that is a sentence that makes me a bit twitchy. As a coder myself I get a bit sick of the poor way that we are represented on TV and in books: hoodie wearing beings with questionable personal hygiene and social skills tapping away on their laptops in a darkened room. Ok, the hoodie bit might be correct, but most coders have at least one, if not three, external screens that are in use at the same time. I’m very glad to say that Bitcoin Hurricane by Kate Baucherel came as an excellent diversion from the norm and had me captivated from the beginning. Clearly written by someone that actually understands the basis for the world they have created and that the use of external screens for coding is paramount.
This blog post has grown out of a talk I did for the group SME Force For Good on the 27th of November. The group runs informative and fascinating talks on alternate Friday mornings, with a round of networking afterwards. If you have a small business and want to get involved then check out the Facebook group and come along to the next meeting.
I grew up during the 1980s in a mining village in Barnsley where the village hall was used to teach the boys how to box and the girls how to dance. Never the other way round – yes, Billy Elliot could have been set in Barnsley. I don’t understand why it wasn’t socially acceptable for boys to learn to dance or girls to box in the 1980s, but it really concerns me that in 2020 things are basically the same.
I remember my first week at university for many good reasons, but the one relevant here is that is that I signed up to be a member of the Institute of Physics (IOP). The IOP is the professional body for physicists in the UK, and if you are a physicist then you should be a member. Well, I was and still am a physicist, so I joined up and have never left! For my £16 I got 4 years student membership to the IOP, a monthly magazine and a paper diary (remember those?). I was very excited about getting a magazine dedicated to physics, I hadn’t dreamed that anything like that existed during my previous 18 years and the diary turned out to be the best paper diary I ever owned. To put the diary into context if you get enough members together at the IOP you will still find someone reminiscing about the diary.
This blog post is going to look at how to improve your video and audio set up with Zoom for teaching dancing/fitness online. There are a few things you can do, but they do all require additional purchases. I have linked some of the items I use to record my online tech learning courses as they are the ones I’ve tried and tested. I spent yesterday re-modelling our spare room into what is now called the ‘activities’ room. We removed the bed, put lights up added external speakers an external monitor etc so there is a good place for me to go and do my dance classes that are moving online.
The pending isolation requirements means that very soon classes will not be able to be attended in person, so they have to be cancelled or move online. This is not an easy thing to do remotely, there is much more complexity than just moving your regular Monday meeting online. So, using my day job skills, I’ve worked out the best way to teach dancing over an online conferencing platform. This blog post will go through the basic set up that will work with little to no extra equipment. I will follow this up with another post that shows you and your students how to download Zoom. I will also follow with another post which covers some optional extras to improve the quality of your sound, video and set up if you want to take the extra steps.
Another August, another Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Our families, extended families and friends have a great tradition of meeting up each year at the fringe. This year was no disappointment. I love going to the theatre and seeing musicals, tap and ballet dance. I also love going to see science or Sci-Fi shows. With the range of amazing shows on clearly the fringe is the place for me!
This year I managed to go to see shows covering data science, wolverine, coding, tap dance, interdimensionality, maths, classic Sci-Fi, parallel universes and computer games to list just the main categories. Not a bad haul. I also experienced torrential rain, freezing temperatures, impressive thunder and blistering heat. Just your traditional Edinburgh experience! If you're going to the fringe and want my top picks, then read on.
So last year on the 31st of October I decided to join in NaNoWriMo as a spur of the moment thing that I thought would be fun. We were travelling around New Zealand at the time and, having just completed Inktober, I felt like another month challenge was just the thing for me on this trip. If you don’t know about NaNoWriMo it stands for National Novel Writing Month and to ‘win’ you have to write 50,000 words of a book during November. It can be any kind of fictional book, or if you are a NaNo Rebel you can do non-fiction! Talk about last minute, NaNoWriMo starts on the 1st of November every year, so I started with nothing planned out except a title and just saw where things took me.
Back in 2001 the term ‘Data Science’ was first used in a publication by William Cleveland; fast forward to 2012 the Harvard Business Review hails data science as being ‘the sexiest job of the 21st Century’; fast forward to today and every business wants to employ data scientists. What is this thing called data science, where has it come from, and why is it so popular? Read on and I will reveal all.
I remember when I first came across a latte, and it was life changing. I had never been a fan of coffee, and I still don’t like freeze dried coffee, but then I met the real stuff and I’ve been hooked since. One day at Uni we wandered into Sally’s, part of the food court at the University of Sheffield, and the course of my life was forever changed.
It wasn’t just the lovely coffee I liked; it was the display of physics in front of me. The foam floating on the layer of coffee, floating on the layer of milk. The reason that you can create layers in your coffee is all down to density, there is a slight difference in the density of the coffee and of the milk, and again to the milk foam. This means if they are properly prepared the layers will float on top of each other.
Professional registration is a really important tool in your arsenal. In some industries chartership is mandatory for you to hold down your job, then the decision as to whether or not to apply is straight forward. However, in some industries it is optional and then the excuses can build.
There are many different levels of professional registration available now, and I think it is really important to hold the correct one at all points in your career. It is a standout ‘badge’ that shows a specific level of competence in your professional field. So, read on and see if you agree with me.
Welcome to part 3 of the satellite dish teardown. Today we will be looking at the receiver of the satellite dish that has spent the last 10 or so years being an ornament on my house. This will include looking at how the unit was sealed, the key components of the circuit board and the layout of the circuit board. If you want to read part 1 where we look at the dish installation as a whole or part 2 where we look at the feed horn please have a look at: https://swamphen.co.uk/new-blog/2019/6/24/satellite-dish-teardown and https://swamphen.co.uk/new-blog/2019/7/1/satellite-dish-feed-horn-teardown
So, this weekend was a perfectly normal weekend at the home of Swamphen Enterprises. It was one of those weekends spent sorting out all those things in the house you never quite get round to doing. One of these was deal with the satellite dish that the previous owner had left attached to the wall, but with the cable cut. This satellite dish has been acting as a decoration for the last 10 or so years, and it was time for this to end. You will be familiar with this dish, as it starred as one of my #AntennaInTheWild tweets and in my reflector blog post about how a perforated dish can act as a solid piece of metal: https://swamphen.co.uk/new-blog/2019/6/10/when-a-grid-becomes-a-solid. Having removed it from its long-held position, it was only fair to do a teardown of it!
Saturday was a double first for me, I created my first video game and took part in my first game jam! Thanks #flickgame16, I had a great time and can’t wait for next year. To play swamphen’s antenna choice you can either go to my twitter account (@swamphenents) and click on the link there or go to https://www.flickgame.org/play.html?p=1ef758c74f66bf544265f24e9ae76011
How can a grid act as a reflector? Doesn’t make much sense when you think of it, but when we are talking about electromagnetic radiation, they definitely can. Probably the most common example you see is in satellite TV offset reflector antennas, but you also see it in radio telescopes. The dish is not made from a solid structure, it’s a mesh or has holes in it, and yet it can easily reflect the electromagnetic radiation to the receiver at the focal point of the parabaloid. There are other structures that you can make that are not solid metal, but act as a radio frequency mirror.
Quite a few people have asked me why I called my company Swamphen Enterprises. In reality, the main reason is that the name makes me smile! But is this good enough reason to use it as your company name?
I’m going to discuss a few ideas that can help you choose your company name and get something that you like and that is fit for purpose.
