An unfun sleepless night. Caused by my brain still working when my body wasn’t interested. It’s surprising what goes through my mind when I’m trying to sleep, usually about twenty work related threads. It does mean I get quite a lot of work done, well the theory of it at least, but it also means I’m fairly knackered in the morning. Took the dog to daycare at 6:15.

So today was mostly about springs and air again. First was setting up an anti-roll bar, that was fairly straight forward. Then it was on to aerodynamic wings, which turned out to be more straightforward than I thought it would be. Basically for a simple wing you just have the area the angle and a couple of coefficients, one for drag and one for down force. You then just multiply that by the square of the air velocity and the air’s mass and you’re done. Well you’re done in so far as you have a force, you then apply it at the wing attachment point. Doing something not really physics related tomorrow, which will make a change.

The cleaners came, they were hear for about an hour an ten minutes, I’m sure I pay for more than that. They didn’t do a very good job. I’ve sent an email, they will get their marching orders as I haven’t had a reply. I’ll give him to the weekend.

Picked up dog.

Did some more Japanese, almost at the end of unit five now. Diluted the new wine kit, just waiting for it to come up to temperature now which will be tomorrow probably, then I’ll get it going.

Started off the day thinking it was a Monday, meaning it was pretty slow going. Anyway, sorted out an issue which I then found out actually wasn’t so ended up reverting it. Then implemented rolling resistance, which is basically just a coefficient of the downward force. So the harder something is forced into the ground the more resistance it gives.

Took the dog out for a run as it was really nice weather, still very cold, but the sun was out. It’s the first time we’ve done that in months. It was fun but she does slow me down quite a lot, but will give it ago again if the weather is nice.

Then came back to do aerodynamic drag. Now this is quite interesting, aerodynamic drag is the force an object is subjected to when its travelling at a velocity. The faster the object, the more the drag. The drag can build up and be a very important force as it’s actually the square of the velocity multiplied by a coefficient. So rolling resistance is important up to a certain velocity and then aerodynamic drag takes over. So what is this magic force? Well it’s actually the weight of air. So what’s the weight of air? Well first a distinction, weight and mass are not the same thing. Weight is actually mass under the force of gravity, so w=mg where m is the mass and g is the gravity. Gravity is normally taken as 9.8 or 10 for simplicity, it’s an acceleration so it’s units are meters per second per second or ms^-2. So anyway, back to air, what’s it’s mass? Well this actually depends on air density or how close the particles are together and this depends on temperature. So air at about 15 degrees centigrade is about 1.2 kilograms per meter cubed, which when you think about it is quite heavy. So no wonder when you drive a Volvo at 100Mph the aerodynamic drag is quite a force to be reckoned with.

Did another Japanese lesson, it’s getting very tricky and got a bit tired towards the end.

Got up, which wasn’t quite a big a challenge as it normally is on a Saturday, not sure why. Walked the dog. Took her to the vet, her weight is coming down nicely now. Tried to find people in so I could do some more re-checks. Only managed one fairly old cat (the owner answered the phone, not the cat).

Did the shopping. Went into town, failed to buy anything. Went to mothers, via the cat check. Delivered to her, two bottles of wine, an electric blanket and a dressing gown. Obtained, five empty bottles of wine, some spicy nuts, some bake shake stuff and a fruit cake. a fair exchange is no robbery.

Came back and did the accounts. I had a statement from one of the long term investments from Sun Life. In thirteen years I’ve made an average of 1.7% a year. In today’s markets that’s actually probably quite good. Going back all those years though it probably isn’t. Anyway I’ll give it another thirteen and see if they improve.

Bath and curry time (in that order, but not at the same time). Sarah’s tomorrow, so take the dog out first thing.

Working heavily in two areas I really don’t like, physics and maths. Which is surprising as I’m pretty good at both physics and maths. Spent the day basically trying to find out why a flat object travelling a couple of centimetres above a completely flat surface was randomly bouncing in the air. It turns out after god knows how many hours they are touching, this is because the physics library we are using has a margin of 4cm’s. This means any two surfaces which are within 8cm’s of each other are actually randomly touching. Great. Managed to sort some of it, but it’s going to be a real pain I just know it.

Went for a run again. Picked up the dog from doggy daycare, she is now asleep on the couch next to me. I’ve been doing research into springs, exciting evening for sure. Did a little bit of Japanese but didn’t get beyond writing down the new words on flashcards. I’m owed time again so will do a session tomorrow morning.

Today I fixed a couple of issues I was having yesterday. Actually I fixed something I had spent several hours on yesterday in about five minutes this morning. As usual though, you fix one problem and another one come along. I hope that one takes five minutes tomorrow morning. It’s to do with constraints, they just aren’t working how I want. I don’t really want to use them at all but looks like I will have to.

Finally went out for a run, which is the first time in almost a month due to the worlds longest cold. That, thankfully has now almost vanished. Jamie still has some sort of sinus infection.

I did some more Japanese, finished unit 4, so 6 units to go before we set off. Well that’s the plan anyway.

So this morning started off rather oddly. Sir Terry was on Radio 2 and I was drifting in and out of conciousness. He had a few girls on called I think, ‘The Sugar Girls’. They were very good. One of them played the Ukulele. Now here is the strange thing, they were on the radio. So what appeared in my mind? Well, one girl with a ukulele and another with a giant hand puppet. Not sure why there were only two at this stage. They then performed their song in the corridor of a pub, while the safe door kept getting in their way. Also it descended into a cartoon style where this rabbit was being tossed up a tree by various animals until you saw a baby balanced on a branch. As I said, my mind works in mysterious ways.

Anyway, I fed this mind a couple of cups of coffee to kick start it into some kind of normality. I then had breakfast and got up. Proceeded to make a rather bad job of sanding the dining room door frame. Time was cracking on as we had a dinner date with Jamie’s dad. Jamie gave the dog a disappointing walk and I tidied up.

We went to Jamie’s dads. Actually we went via the ring road rather than through Downend, which reminded me why I have a VXR rather than a Fiesta, it really is one of the last bastions of speed left in Bristol, I think it’s perfectly natural to be doing 70MPH in second gear. I never broke the speed limit once, but I was doing 0-70 in around 6.5 seconds, it was fun.

Anyway, at Jamie’s dads, Jamie spent the bulk of his time connected to a phone and talking to his sister. It’s no wonder I say I wouldn’t go on holiday with her to Japan, I’d feel like a very disconnected third wheel, I’d have to kill her.

His step mum was talking to me about a very dull CD she had on from ‘Munford and Sons’, I was dying for her to ask me what sort of music I liked, so I could reply, ‘Well I’ve just bought the new Huduken CD but I think after touring with Pendulum I think they sound too similar and much prefer it when they were more grime influenced’…but she didn’t.

We had beef, it was very nice.

His grandad was there, who is always good value. He didn’t disappoint. I think we are now both members of UKIP.

Came home, had a bath and watched the grand prix. Racing was dull, but controversy was high, so good fun.

Short week this week, good I can get some more DIY in.