Nihongo wa, chotto wakarimasu yo

Woken up at 8AM by Mr Virgin Media. He had gastric flu and all the charisma of a table. Changed my four year old box for a new HD one. No HD channels though, that took a phone call to India later in the day. When I spoke to the guy ‘Richard’, he rebooted the box remotely, I said I’d be impressed if he could open the curtains, he replied that he didn’t know what a curtain was. Anyway, I now have Channel Five HD, it’s just a shame it shows nothing but shit.

Today I was working on more physics stuff. Ended up having to think about how to draw a cylinder. Fun fun. Went for a run, did more physics.

Finished off then did some more Japanese. I’m now at the end of unit 2, know 97 words and actually getting the hang of it. So providing you want to know how to say “The Dog’s key is inside Tokyo train station”, I’m your man. It’s not a cheap course mind you, a couple of hundred quid. But it seems to be working and I’m enjoying it.

More paint stripper arrived, that’s my weekend sorted.

Anyway, torture porn night. Haven’t had one of those in a while.

And then I felt pretty wiped out

Didn’t sleep very well last night. Not overly sure why, but I was woken up by the dog at about 3AM when she suddenly ran down stairs, visited her box then came back upstairs again. Got up at 6:20, then found out why the dog ran downstairs….the wall had collapsed. Well, not the wall exactly but where the paint stripper was. It had all fallen off and crashed through the dog cage and the back of the wine fridge. Dog was delivered to day care. I went back to bed and was completely shattered. I ended up taking the morning off as I was no use to anyone, especially anything physics related. So I got up after lunch and had breakfast. I then got on with work, which now was actually quite painless. Before I knew it it was time to pick the dog up again. Came back, did a bit more work and then did another Japanese lesson. I think it’s all beginning to sink in. I need to work more on my flash cards and vocabulary, but it is indeed getting there. Added the last lot of finings to the Red and then finished off the Chardonnay. Had a bath. Now relaxing for a bit. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have a bit more energy.

I’m sure Conor Maynard is stalking me

Today I was working on collision, which isn’t the most exciting task in the world. Mind you I made a pretty good job of it as it’s almost finished and I scheduled a week for it.

Went for a run. It’s fucking cold. Ordered some more paint stripper. Is it odd that I’ve ordered 40Kg of paint stripper and 40Kg of dog food. Lets not get them mixed up, mind you sticking the dog’s Cherios to the wall would be quite a challenge.

Did some more Japanese lessons. They replied pretty quickly to an email I sent them to say that the words in the video didn’t match up to the words in the word list. They even corrected it. Now I suppose they can justify their £120 or what ever it is for the course. Mind you I feel I know considerably more about that language now than I ever did before, especially things like particles, which just don’t really exist in English.

Almost finished the Shiraz, added the first part of the finings, need to add the second part tomorrow and then it’ll be ready to bottle in a couple of days.

Watched a lot of crap telly. Last thing I watched was Graham Norton, who had Conor Maynard on. This kid seems to be haunting me in every form of media I switch on. I’m sure the talentless little shit lives in Radio One, every Saturday morning the chirpy little fuck is there. Sure thing though, in a couple of years he’ll be playing Butlins next to Chesney Hawkes and Dollar. David ‘burger’ Van Day….I really must go along to one of those one day.

Anyway, more collision type fun tomorrow, after Sasha goes to day care.

Computational fluid dynamics, nah

Today I was working on physics type stuff again. Actually I had two issues, the first was how to combine inertia’s, that is, if you have a rotational velocity that’s then geared to another rotational velocity, what’s the total inertia only taking the first velocity into account? I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader. The second was modelling a turbo charger. Now I have a large sample that takes into account the air pressure, temperature, chamber size, density of air and turbine dynamics. Basically it uses full computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to model a turbo charger. This is rather complicated. So what’s a turbo charger after all? Well its a turbine powered by an exhaust which drives a compressor, the output of this forces air back into the engine. So a couple of things to take into account, a turbo is basically a big wheel, this has mass and a radius so has an inertia. Inertia is rather useful as it gives a ‘willingness’ or rather lack of it, to change direction. This means it takes a while for it to spin up and spin down again. So if you drive the wheel from the potential energy of the engine (which is quite handy as when it’s not under load the potential energy is quite low, when under load it’s greater, thanks to inertia again). So if you tap off this energy then make a deduction from it based on the square of the wheel velocity (most things that offer resistance are squared, air resistance for example), use that to drive the wheel. Then use the wheel velocity to add to the torque of the engine. You then have a fairly good turbo model which has lag and boost and acts pretty much how a turbo should. And no fluids are involved.

Apart from that I walked the dog and went to Body Combat. That was fun. My paint stripper appears to have done its job. Unfortunately I still have half the room to do. Did some more Japanese. Watched ‘Celebrity Wedding Planner’ with Harry from TOWIE. He’s cute but I think I’d have to gag him.

20 litres of paint stripper and 26 bottles of wine later

I actually got up vaguely early for a Sunday, well up by 10 anyway. So started on the mass paint stripping. By 7PM I had got through 20 litres of paint stripper, done one and a half walls and turned my finger nail yellow. Everything is now wrapped up in cling film, hopefully it will all dry properly and the pain will come off. I reckon I need another hundred quids worth of the stuff to finish it off.

After my epic stripping I started sterilizing wine bottles. Then bottled the Chardonnay. Managed to get 26 bottles out of it. So that’s now sat in the garage. There’s a little bit left in the bottom of the barrel for a few odd glasses, one of which I’m about to have now with a nice bath before the curry arrives.

The Chardonnay looks to be a success

An oddly busy day, yet oddly not a great deal done. So got up after studying pizza recipes. Had to do a house check for a cat. So walked the dog and weighed her, the diet is working. Then did the shopping, time was rapidly creeping on. Dived back, ate some toast and then shot out again. Did the home check, then popped into ToolStation to pick up a few bits. Then went round mothers and listened to her talk about herself. She said she may go up a ladder tomorrow to fix her roof felt, so there’s a good probability that we can kill her off yet.

Came back and sterilised a load of kit. Syphoned off the Chardonnay and gave it a quick taste. It’s very good, very drinkable, but need to let it mature a while yet. Also started to clear the red, that’s looking good to. Not sure which one to do next, may be a Pinot? Anyway, did the accounts. Now time for a shower and then I’m making my own pizza, this could be interesting….

I’ve managed to create energy, or a math error

So today I was pretty much flat out on physics calcs. Had an interesting one to do with inertia and gearing. If you have an object that’s rotating it has an inertia on an axis, now if that goes through a gear, say 2:1 the output object is now moving twice the speed. If they both have the same mass then they would have the same inertia at the same velocity, so if the second one is twice the velocity then it should be twice the inertia, so the inertia of the whole thing is three times the original (1+2). However that’s wrong. If you work out the energy produced (which is quite handy as the energy calc uses inertia) then I’ve actually managed to prove Einstein wrong and create about twice as much energy as I put in. I think my math may be wrong.

My paint stripper has arrived. Lots and lots of it. But no doubt not enough.

Walked the dog. Did Body Pump, played with inertia. Now late, now time for a bath.

Sony introduce Playstation 4, or a PC as it’s known

So yesterday started far too early as normal with taking the dog to day care. Mind you I consider it just a bit of sleep distraction as I’m soon back in bed. Still working on physics stuff, again, can’t really say too much but things are coming together now. Cleaners arrived, made a hell of a racket. I picked up the dog and then went out for a run. Came back and did some more Japanese. Then it was the Sony conference which I watched the streaming of. They announced the ‘Playstation 4’, which is basically an 8 core PC with unified memory and a powerful GPU. This will certainly make developers happy with no weird SPU’s to deal with. Streaming processors were an interesting if slightly crap idea. Every man and his dog (well except mine) knows how to code for x86. So there’s definitely a smaller learning curve. Watched shite telly then went to bed.

Today was very much like yesterday, similar sort of work, but almost coming to the end of this section now. Just some tidying up to do and add a couple of features. Went out running, it’s Jamie’s turn to walk the dog. My paint stripper hasn’t arrived, which is slightly annoying as I do want to get on with that on Sunday, so hopefully will turn up tomorrow. Spent the evening doing another Japanese lesson, it is getting a lot harder now and I’m only on unit two of ten. But I have all my flash cards and I’m sticking at it. Practice makes perfect, well at least acceptable anyway.

Right it’s torture porn night, I still have that film to get through that I’ve had for a month now. So shower, salad and porn.

My paint stripper arrived

Today I was back on the joys of physics. Actually I was doing engine integration. Now here’s the fun thing, you have an engine that produces a given torque at a given rpm. That rpm then goes through the drive train to the wheels. The wheels then have a re-active torque that’s applied back through the drive train to the engine. This is called integration. Now I have the engine on full throttle, I then apply the opposite torque load to the output. The revs come down, until the load applied equals the max torque of the engine. Then if the torque increases the whole model collapses and the engine dies. I think I may be taking this a bit too far.

My paint stripper samples arrived. I painted a few square inches of one, it stank the whole house out, even when I left the patio door open for three hours. The other one is like porridge. You spread it on and then put cling film over the top. Anyway, after several hours the stinky one managed to remove the top layer of paint, but the porridge one did indeed take the lot off. So I’ve covered a bigger area with it and covered it in cling-film. Will test tomorrow and see how much of it I need.

Finished everything late. Did the Japanese bonus materials for chapter one, will move on tomorrow.

So Coulomb has a friction theorem

Started the day late. It’s a Monday after all. Really bad gas. I think it’s caused by too many currants. Today I’ve been mainly working on physics again, simulating friction transfers. Now there’s a lovely equation to get your head around on a Monday morning.

Walked the dog very late in the afternoon. Had lunch. Did more friction shit. Went to the gym and did Body Combat, was fun. Came back and stuck to things. Sorted out Jamie’s passport application. Now I’m somewhat tired. Still have to add something to wine vat. Oh and I have a ‘onesie’ to try on.