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Saturday, August 24, 2019

Murwillumbah regatta

Was feeling very drained fri night.
Looked up email and established we were expected at Murwillumbah rowing club at 7am for boat rigging. 

Google maps indicated 1.5hr driving so decided
4:00 rise. Hot steemy shower and coughed up half a lung of phlegm. 
Packed my bag. 
Fed cat. 
Drafted text to Megan to advise cat fed. 
5:05 departed Calston st. 
Swung past maccas and bought a coffee. 
Very pleasant drive to Murwillumbah via garden city. 
7:05 arrived. 

Only 3 Brigidine girls this time all in GR8. 

We had two of them Mela and rose rowed the yr9 double. 

Then we borrowed Caitlin from Kenmore and borrowed Seb from Kenmore to cox and we had a grade 8 quad. They rowed hard and well. 



Brigo 8




Yesterdays regatta hit the troops hard. Only 7 turned up. Gary and myself jumped in 2 and bow to make an 8. Caitlin Hockings coached us and it was a remarkably good row. 

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Fixing the Ero PM3 Displays

Centenary Rowing Club have lots of Concept 2 Ergos
recently one of the guys went through and checked the batteries.  Two controllers were stuffed.
I took them into work where they have sat.  Today being ekka Wednesday I came into do some work and figured all work and no play - so decided to look at them.

Took the backs off.  Used a power supply (3V) to connect directly to the PCBs and both booted OK.
So this means that the leaky batteries had not gotten onto the boards.
One contact completely eaten away.  I replaced with a pretty didgy wire contact.  Will see how that goes.  If it's unreliable then I will have to cut up some springy material.

Cleaned the other contacts with wet and dry.  Even then one of the contacts was high resistance.  Gave up and folded up a piece of brass shim and put it over the contacts that connect the two batteries. 














Feeling philosophical

4 am fast brain......

Many afternoons as I drive home from work the feeling of alone begins.

Thoughts of what to do for dinner and the evening. Things I have put off thinking about during the day.  Sadness creeps in as I drive.  Flicking through the radio channels.  Pondering the lack of traffic flow as we limp from one red light to another.  Symbolic of my life.

After 25 years of marriage - separated.

A girlfriend for a year and then - dumped.

Rejection is a debilitating powerless depressing thing to endure.

Maybe it's just that the feelings of the present are stronger than in the past.

Before marriage I had uni and then work and the optimism of youth. I had several circles of friends. Uni or work friends. Church and sailing club friends. Living in a share house. So there were always people around. Things to do and they were done with people.

But now I'm old. No longer the optimism of youth. The friends that were a part of my life during the marriage years on the whole are married themselves.  They are doing things as families.  I feel awkward / different.  To quote the song "they're all stayin home... ". 

The house is no longer a home.  Filled with memories.  It is a place to sleep and reheat the occasional microwave dinner but it's not a home.  The three kids in Brisbane are living with Megan along with the cat and the dog. 

There's just so much introspection that one can fit in an evening. I have spent too many days and nights pondering what did I do to ruin the marriage. many nights and days spent going over and over and over.  I learned with the gf that there are vastly different family dynamics. Behaviours and expectations in one family are seen in a different light in another. Good intentions in one context are divisive and judgemental when seen from another perspective. It's easier to stay in ones corner holding the old familiar and comforting views than it is to risk something unknown. To even consider another view point I had to accept I was wrong. I was right too but very wrong as well. Depending on the view point. Now the damage done I get back to considering rejection and self value. How to have some thing that I can feel good about. A marker of success. In both cases though I learned why guys do not share their feelings.  One overriding message I have learned is do not share feeling with lovers. Say nothing and just let everything flow through to the keeper. When it comes to feelings,find a therapist or have a beer with mates.

Given my track record in relationships has been a double fail plus! - I ponder what to do.

One option is business. How does one measure that. Profit? Turn over, technical innovation, happy staff, quality, happy customer. Challenged staff,



Posted this on Facebook

Life is like a see saw. Easy to be at one extreme hard to be balanced. You can do it on your own sitting or standing. Or you do it with two. You know to balance it you have to adjust positions. When you think it's close to balance, you lift your feet gently and test. Then catch it before it crashes. Wiggle forward or back. Ask the other person to move a bit maybe. Sometimes they are right at the end and only you can move or they are way too close to the middle and if they dont move back to have to move in close which makes it hard as it becomes twitchy. Then you tentatively lift your feet again. Fine adjustments by leaning in and out. Then you get bored and wiggle a bit. Or both try standing up and giggle and laugh as you try to balance. Then it crashes down again.

Monday, August 12, 2019

Where Dreams Begin

This whole Brigidine video thing began last year when Andrew Beiers asked me to do live video of a  similar but smaller artistic evening at the school.

https://thomsoneu.blogspot.com/2018/08/one-night-only-show.html

This year things seemed to get going slow and I was getting worried because time was moving and I do not do much of this anymore.  I was concerned that the piazza is a much larger venue than the school hall plus no built in screen.

Anyway the school asked CPC for a quote for them to do the video however the price was greater than the budget could support so it was back to the Frank option.

Further discussions and CPC said that they would bring their LED screen and a camera.  This was good news to me although I have to confesss I was somwhat skeptical about the screen.  I was imagining a somewhat grainy low resolution thing but it was one thing taken care of.

In the mean time, I got onto various friends to see what I could borrow.  I was figuring the CPC camera would be SDI and by the time I converted it to analogue, the delay would render it annoying for closeups.  The plan was to use the borrowed cameras as close up hand held etc. etc.

A couple of weeks before the production we had a site meeting with the school, CPC and myself and at that meeting CPC indicated that they would be be able to provide their OB van and cameras.  Boy did I breathe a sigh of relief.







Now I was imagining a high-ace van and the aforementioned grainy screen so when I arrived to assist setup on Thursday I was blown away to see the screen being set-up.  Bright, high resolution and crystal clear.

Back of the screen















The cameras were 4k.  For the uninitiated this is really good high resolution.













In order to ensure no delay the video is transmitted as uncompressed digital video on optical fibre.  The two white bits are the fibres and there are also 4 electrical contacts.  Only two here.  I assume they are for power.



Patch panel on the OB van






The school organised 4 camera operators plust caitlin that I had organised.  We put the 4 girls as two teams of two to operate the two close up cameras on dollys. One as the operator and one as a cable puller.








Nat from CPC


The camera with Nat ad Caitlin is up there in the middle somewhere























View Outlook Calendar in Google Calendar

atm I use google calendar.  At work we also have a shared google calendar but I have commitments that use a microsoft calendar and I would like to share those to my google calendar.


1.  Log into   office 365
https://outlook.office365.com/calendar/view/month
Choose Share
In the box that opens, enter my gmail email address and click share.  The system will send you an email.














2 In gmail, open the email that came from microsoft.
Don't bother clicking the "Accept and View calendar" - That just tries to add the calendar to the desktop version of outlook or something.
Open the attached file called Sharing_metadata.xml"
Find the line that starts with ICalUrl.  copy the vit starting with https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar 
right through to /reachcalendar.ics
don't copy the tags beyond that.  ie dont copy the
at the end for example.
























3 Google Calendar
Log into google with a web browser.
In google calendar, look on the left hand side for "Other Calendars"
Clack the + botton
Choose From URL
Paste the Ical URL copied from the text file.  Click add calendar.