2012 oxfam GPS Tracker

Currently trialling a SPOT tracker.

Cameron Braid has risen to the challenge and produced a great page.  This is the best to use.
http://oxfambulators.javonix.com/

TWITTER
The walkers now have a twitter account
@SerialHillers

The spot track page is here but you only get the most recent 50 data points.:-


http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0rjxprHfx3hoVbQxjKOnE7bs1c2LhNMLQ

It appears that SPOT uses the Globalstar LEO constellation of satellites.  The wikipedia pager is here.  Those who followed the trailwalkers last year may recall that there were times when we lost comms.  The tracker we used then communicated via the Telstra GSM (remember that technology) network.  I guess there are bits of the park it does not cover.  We will see how we go with Spot and Globalstar.  I wonder if the trees will get in the way.

30-5-2012 8:00am UPDATE
It - The web page referenced above - does not seem to display on my Android Phone.
I wonder if there is a spot tracker app?That can display the location of a spot tracker?
Ah Camerons page has rendered this problem obsolete.

If you find this intreresting, feel free to leave a comment.  Let me know who is following the tailwalkers.

Church Baptism Flashpoint we got the lot

We had a baptism this morning in Church.  The "baby" was slightly older and maybe that was what made it better.  This kid can do high five and smile, and walk and wot not.  After he had had the water and sign of the cross he called out "I want more" which I am sure is theologically correct.

As it was Pentecost Sunday, we sang a song and incited the kids to disrupt the congregation with tongues of fire.  Then the kids and some parents went to Flashpoint.

At Flashpoint we made Oxygen from Hydrogen Peroxide and Potassium Permanganate.  The metphore being that the oxygen is needed for life as it is to keep a flame burning.  Likewise Gods Spirit. 

Even after a patch is blown out you can put it into the oxygen atmosphere and it wil glow then catch fire.  So we receive the holy spirit / have a conversion experience or whatever and then drift away from God then Gods spirit can re light us like the oxygen relights the match.  Wasn't that nice.

Grammer Community In Concert

Marcus and Megan both performed at the BG.
Megan had spent the day strolling in the hills again and was a tad late home.  At 6pm, I went and picked up Ian who with Megan was performing in the BGS community Choir.  As we arrived at South Bank, the traffic was stopped.  We were late and this was not good.  U turn.  Try another way.  Stopped again.  megan and Ian got out and continued on foot.  We retreated and parked at the convention centre and walked form there.  Luckilly arriving just before the doors opened.

It was a long concert but Jemma and Dan behaved really well even though they were dog tired.

There were fun bits too
:)

Forgot to shave?

Alistair Paige

Fergus (Bass Clarinet) to left of Marcus (Basson)

Ian and Megan

Chris makes a Cell

Chris has a homework assignment to make a cell. This is kinesthetic learning.

To add - a picture of the finished cell.  I wonder if there is an extension cxhallenge to make something bigger.  Thoughts of Frankenstein or Rocky Horror.

P1 Ice Skating

Friday night and Megan had a music commitment.  This had been known about for ages and I was asked to help out with the Priority One "P1" youth group.  This is a youth group at our church just for grade 7 kids.  It was more than a coincidence that my night happened to be Ice Skating.  Chris & Jemma along with their friends Callan, Liam &

Ollie & Ashley collected the money and ticked off names.  They did a fantastic job.  These days one has to have lists of contact phone numbers and they were really good and any kids not on the list, they wrote on and got their parents phone numbers.  In the end we totalled 33 people.

 Some of our group.  (I think or maybe they just happy to pose for strange old men with big cameras)

Liam was the consumate gentleman.  He is a great sketer and Jemma was a hall hugger.  He would take her hand and help her balance.

Row Row Row your boat

row row row your boat gently down the stream
merrilly merrilly life is but a dream.
Stop Stop 
Check the boat
 Check the Boat 
Check the Boat 
Stop Stop

What tha

So reacting to the apparant sounds of urgency.  Perhaps it was the tone of voice or perhaps just providence. We unanimously stopped rowing and immediatly raised our hands somewhat with blades in the water
and the boat come to a shuddering halt and we, well those toward the back of the boat turn to face John (who's name may have been changed to protect the guilty).  Looking past John we see the issue that was of such concern to him.  A dirty great rock is about ... well lets say 1m from the front of the boat.

Well after our hearts stop over beating from the shock not the physical effgort, we quickly backed up, turned right or was it left.  Who can tell when you are facing backward and rowed off away from that rock lest someone see us.

I think a revelation has occurred to all of us that indeed the designers of rowing boats have perhaps made an error in that we are all facing the wrong way.

Bush Dance Fundraiser

We had a great bush dance last night.  Great music, absolutely supurb hamburgers, catching up with friends.  But as a fund raiser .... well lets just say that the effort per dollar raito was quite high.

For some reason it seems to me that bush dances do not draw people.  This is not the first time that I have been involved in groups where it has been decided to run a bush dance as a fund raiser and the only people that turn up are those involved and a few close friends.  In fact I can not recall a successful bush dance fund raiser.

Mind you there are plenty of excuses.
One friend said to me that [her husband] did not want to come"
"The kids don't like dancing"
another person when to great lengths at church to absolve her guilt by telling some story about having to translate Spanish to English or some such irrelevancy.  Yet another

Marcus had invited some friends but they too managed to come up with excuses of their own.  One girl apparently had to have a ballet lesson.  On a Saturday night - wtf.  "They all found that they had to watch paint dry".  Marcus kindly managed to raise himeself from his death bed after exhausting himself on computer games and support his family.

It seems to me that as a generalisation, bush dances are great fun and 'work' but that the group has to already exist.  A church group, a school group, a social club or in the case of the very successful and fun dance we did at the Uni, a group thrown together in the pursuit of higher learning.

I wonder if it comes down to a time / place / expectation question.  For some reasons, bushdances do not engender that desire to attend.

The Washington Post ran an interesting experiment in 2007.  They got a world famous violinist - Joshua Bell to "busk" at the subway.  This fellow had receintly filled auditoriums at $100 per head and yet no one stopped to lsiten and after an hour of busking he had only raised $US32.  You can read the full story here.


Is the solution advertising?  Do we somehow need to create that aura or expectation that would cause people to get off their bums and come to the dance and then in a fund raising context, would the effort be worth it or are there better activities that generate more dollars per hour of effort.

There are some fund raising activites that do seem to have traction.
Trivia nights for example.  We ran one last year and people at work have asked will there be one this year.  Other have reported similar enthusiasm by people to attend trivia nights for other fund raising causes.

Wine - This lot sold over 70 cases of wine at just under a hundred dollars a case.  I wonder how many people one has to "sell" a bush dance to at $5 a pop to bring in the same profit?




Massi operating the mixer.  Dan seems to be in agreeance with whatever he is doing.

The absolute best hamburgers

Drafty

The next three posts are somewhat drafty.

more to be added soon

Chris Rugby intro at BGS

Chris is going to have a go at Rugby.  Today we went via Indooroopilly shopping town to buy him some boots and a mouth guard.  It was kind of funny walking along the side of the oval watching him and the other kids play.  It messes with your mind when the teacher (Mr Cochraine)  leading the show was at BGS when I was there back in the seventies.

Church - Sunday 20-May-20122 23rd Psalm - Blended Worship

We had, for me, a great church service.  Megan was the worship leader.  Paul lead the singing and it is great to have a male voice leading.  For me the highlight was the sermon by Chris Shey.  It was based on psalm 23.  Psalm 23 is one of those well known readings that just grab me.  Why I wonder.  Even wiyhin the ancient rural context of the Bible it seems to resonate with us.
We start noting that wheras the Lords Prayer is corporate:  Our Father ....,
Psalm 23 is personal: The Lord is my shepherd  

Chris had gone through the reading and highligthed some of the reasons that it resonates with us.  The promises that God makes, the personal challenges for us and the rewards of living in the love of God.



The Lord is my shepherd;
Identity

Realy dodgy Jaycar DI box

jaycar.com.au  catalogue number  AA0402  Direct Injection Box.  $25.

A DI box (Direct Injection) is a box that is used to connect things other than microphones to the mixer in a PA system.  Mixers traditionally have a balanced input.  Many other things - DVD players, lap top computers, electric piano / keyboards even guitars have unbalanced connections.  A balanced input allows you to have a long run of cable and minimises the pick up of noise.  The old wire line phone, remember them? uses a balanced connection to the telephone exchange.

Later last year I bought four of these DI boxes from Jaycar.  (Two then one then one and no receipts kept of course) Blow me over if three seemed to have stop working.  The only one that is still working is connected to the electric piano at Church.  Divine intervention maybe.

In need of DO boxes tonight at the bush dance, I figured I had better take a look. 

On the outside these are pretty rugged and look good.  The cover not shown here extends past the connectors by about 10mm and so protects them from being kicked or bashing against other gear.  There is an attenuator switch to lower large signals and a switch to allow the ground line to be connected & disconnected from the box its self.



Inside it was pretty obvious what the problem was.  The transformer which is a pretty heavy is sitting high off the board and had caused the pads on the PCB to break away.  Presumably when dropped at some time.  Mind you it should have been glued or sat down hard on the PCB. 





The plan was to scrape away some of the green stuff and then bend the pins over.

In the process I discover that it seems that pretty much all the pads have a crack where the pad connects to the track and where the green stuff ends.

Sort of fixed.  I noticed that when I solder, there is a crackling sound.  I suspect that the copper is delaminating under heat.  I also had to track down and fix the same type of disconnected solder pad - track connection where the 6.5mm connector is soldered on.  I think these are just too dodgy to use unless every track is backed up with a piece of wire.  Too much effort.

Dismantle Repair irecord Pro PMR-200

Presented with a iRecord Pro PMR-200 that had had a 12V plug pack inadvertantly connected in place of the +5V plug pack supplied with the unit.  The owner had detected the smell of smoke and that is of course not a good thing.

The PMR-200 injests analogue video and writes AVI files directly to a USB stick that the user plugs into the side of the unit.

Two screws one under each of the two feet at the back of the unit.

Then gently open & unplug the fan with a pair of tweezers.

Check out the heat sink.  The FPGA that does all the work must get hot.

This is all the parts.  Note the shorter screws hold the PCB and heat sink.  The longer screws hold the two halves of the cover together,

A measurement using the multimeter set to the diode (beep) setting across the input showed about 0.4V drop & a beep both ways round.  This indicated something has gone short circuit.

A sniff of the board confirms a burnt smell.  Visual inspection shows D9 to be discoloured.  D9 is to the left just below the big black thing which is the DC power input connector.

D9 is connected directly across the DC power input and my guess it is a Zener diode with a switch on voltage about 5.5V or so.  If you plug in a supply with more than 5.5V (In this case 12V) then the Zener switches on and shorts out the input.  And so long as it stays shorted then it protects the rest of the circuit.

Connected to a current limited lab power supply.  Set to +5V with current limit on.  Increased current limit and the voltage increased slightly and the current increased a lot.  Switched off.  Touched D9 and it was hot.

Removed D9.

Re connected the +5V.  No current drawn even with the current limit switched off.

Pressed the ON button.  The front panel lights came on.

There may be hope of a full recovery.  But for continued protection, we need to find out what D9 is and buy a replacement.

Turns out it is probably a Vishay SMAJ6.0A Bidirectional TVS (Transient Voltage Supressor).  The Vishay data sheet shows the  SMAJ6.0A Bidirectional TVS has code "WG" printed on it.

I did not have any of these but I did have SMAJ5.0A Uni directional (case code "AE").  So I put one of these in being careful of course with the uni directional one, to get it in the right way round.  The PSU is centre positive and the markings on the PCB are wrong.  But with the bidirectional unit, that is irrelevant.

Powered it up with it's original (+5V) plug pack and the lights come on.

Everybodys happy.

GOMA Mothers Day

Up Early and off to the shops to pick up some sliced ham and bread. Back home, Megan had twarted any attempts to bring her breakfast in bed by getting up early. Any mother will tell you that breakfast in bed is litterally what it is when your small child brings burnt offerings and pours them between the sheets. We packed some back packs with the makings of a picnic including some lovely quiches that Megan whipped up.

Parked at Dutton Park.
Walked across the Bridge to UQ.

At UQ, sat at the Ferry Terminal.
On Saturday, I had looked up the Ferry times.  Upon establishing that a ferry was due about every 15 to 20 minutes, I did not bother with time tables.  Chris may look disconnected but for me every 15 minutes is the way it should be.

Upon arrival at South Bank, we discovered a herb garden.  Picked some mint to have with Tomatoe (which we had brought as part of lunch).

Then we walked to GOMA and had a picnic there.

To suppliment the picnic, Marcus was dispatched to buy some takeaway coffees.  Having finished my lunch with sign of Marcus, I went in search of him and discovered him making his way back with the two coffees which turned out to be quite good tasting.  Sometime later, I decided on a second coffee and made my way to the coffee shop.  I placed my  order and figured I would time them.  Turns out my phone did not have a stop watch function.  I guess I took about 5 minutes to discover that and then to find and down load a stop watch App from the google android play store thingo what a dumb name.  From the point the stop watch was active it was another 5 minutes and 50 seconds.  So I guess all up 10 minutes to make a take away coffee.  Now do not for one minute even consider that they were busy.  This was like 3pm and the place was less than half full.  Nor was there a shortage of staff.  In fact there were plenty of staff to ask me if I wanted to place an order and each one was politely informed that I was awaiting a takeaway coffee.  Basically this is a good reason why government should not do... well anything actually.

Inside a wool tree inside GOMA.

GOMA is the "Gallery Of Modern Art" and a great place to visit.  For free no less.  Well prepaid by us tax payers.

I got into trouble with this photo because I had my flash on.  I figured take an arty photo.  Make art from art for arts sake?.  Anyway the flash caused officialdom to intervene.

Now this was a bit of a downer.  Not only was no one in attendance, when some patrons took up positions on the stools, said officials decened and put a stop to that.  So much for interactivity.  And me with my creditcard at the ready.

Looks so tempting to walk through but oh no little notice on the floor that I missed and once again those officials materialised.

 GOMA and the art gallery too incidentilly always have great hands on stuff for kids.  Here they are making birds.

 Chris about to deposit his bird on its perch

Jemma making a bird