mechtopia

I am selling my electric van

It is with sadness that I offer it for sale. My daily commutes are coming to and end, and I'd like to upgrade to another ev with a little more range.

If your daily commute is 40 miles or less, then this could be ideal for you. I charge it overnight at economy 7 rates, and it's ready to do up to 55 miles the next day, depending on how you drive. If you drive at a constant 30mph, the range is about 55 miles, if you drive 50-60mph, the range is about 35 miles.

More information here: http://www.mechtopia.org.uk/citroen_berlingo_electrique_e500_ev_electric_vehicle_for_sale/

Posted at 03:17PM Jul 12, 2010 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

TB4000: the dawn of a golden era of free energy production

A recent production...

Posted at 02:47PM Jun 03, 2010 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

The answer to last week's close up picture of the week

OK, perhaps it was a month ago now :)

The answer is: (drum roll please..) a dishwasher tablet!

Posted at 02:42PM Jun 03, 2010 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

Revealed: The ultimate fate for Dr Who

There has been a lot of talk about how the new Dr Who, played by Matt Smith is the youngest Dr Who ever, the previous record being held by Peter Davidson in the early 1980's. It does seem, however, that the trend has been for the Doctor to get younger. Where will this ultimately lead? I spent 5 minutes googling for the answer, and I didn't find one, so I did my own analysis.

Age by Regeneration

As you can see from the graph below, the Doctor will become a foetus on the 28th incarnation.

Regeneration by year

So when will the 28th Regeneration take place? The graph below shows that this will happen around 2090.

So there you have it: the Doctor will become a foetus around 2090.

Posted at 08:03PM Feb 28, 2010 by ohp in General  |  Comments[3]

Fajita seasoning recipe

I like fajitas, but the packets of fajita seasoning have a fair amount of salt in them. I've analysed the contents of packets I've used, and come up with a blend of spices that allows you to substitute the salt content for a salt substitute

I think I'm missing a few things - I can't get powdered lime or lemon, and I haven't included oregano, which is used in some packets, as well as artificial flavours. However, I don't think it lacks much because of those omissions

I've made quite a lot - this recipe makes about 150g, or 30-40 portions of fajita mix. Most fajita seasoning packs have 30 grammes, which are good for 5-8 portions.

• 50g mild chilli powder
• 25g salt substitute
• 15g onion powder or granules
• 15g sugar
• 13g cumin powder
• 12g garlic powder
• 6g cinnamon
• 5g nutmeg
• 5g cayenne
• 4g coriander

Posted at 09:42PM Dec 24, 2009 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

What's the big attraction of big name brands?

It's always puzzled me why people are attracted to wearing clothes emblazoned with logos. I've created a T shirt for people like that.

Posted at 03:27PM Dec 09, 2009 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

Referrer Spam: what do you do?

Back in the early noughties, web traffic was increasing to the point where you had to create summaries of the traffic for analysis. Enter the web stats package.

One thing I noticed at the time was that many web stats packages published their referrers, and that many of the people had (often unintentionally) made their stats public.

Google had become the biggest web search engine on the planet, and this posed some ideas. What if you searched for web stats pages on google, then created a link to that page. you would instantly register a link back to your own site. In fact, why bother with a link? What if you just faked the referrer? you could push your link to the top of their referral chart very quickly with an automated script, and google would register another link to your site, increasing the pagerank.

No matter how appealing the idea, google was already by then battling against underhand techniques, and although at the time I was sure I was the first person to think of the idea (something which, in hindsight is ridiculous) I figured that any new underhand techniques would be factored in to the indexing algorithm, and would come back to bite you on the rear.

I'd forgotten completely about my underhand scheme until the 8th of this month, when I examined my logs to find that I was the victim of this technique; every 50 minutes a host was requesting the root document from my web server, with a referring url that on inspection, did not contain a link to my site. I considered my options. Do I:

1. Ignore it?
2. Block the IP address on the firewall?
3. Install a comprehensive web threat management layer to filter out such requests?
4. Put an exclusion rule for that referrer in the module that generates the referrers?
5. Write a snotty email to the admin contact for the whois entry on the source IP, and cc in the admin contact for the referrer domain?
6. Create a rewrite rule that directs requests from that specific IP to a range of large downloads, in an effort to swamp their broadband connection, or crash the script?
7. Create a script that spams their domain with a referrer of wwww.stopspammingmysite.com?

What would you do? answers on a postcard please. Next week I'll tell you what I did, and what happened.

Posted at 11:44PM Nov 18, 2009 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

I have a confession to make...

It's true. I've tried to hide it all of these years, but the truth will out: I was a competitor on Robot wars.

Sporting a terrible goatee beard, I presented a robot that was eliminated in the first round.

Posted at 11:15PM Nov 06, 2009 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

Dr Perry Orford: Futurologist

A few years back, I created a blog for a ficticious futurologist. At the time there seemed to be a trend for people to make fantastical claims about the future that didn't stand up to scrutiny, and I felt that they were ripe for parody. It was very low key at the time, and I only really promoted it amongst my friends.

If you read the last blog post, made a few years back, you'll notice that Dr Orford predicted the widespread use of augmented reality :-)

You can read up on Mr Orford's blog here

Posted at 12:03PM Oct 29, 2009 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

DLP: The end of the rainbow?

It's generally acknowledged that DLP projectors have the edge over LCD in many respects, with great colour reproduction, great contrast ratios and the ability to project 3D movies with shutter glasses, but there's one thing I believe that is preventing many DLP projectors from winning all the awards, and that is the colour wheel.

The colour wheel is a way of processing all of the colour information with a single light path (LCD projectors, for example, need to create a separate beam of light for each colour, then recombine them) by spinning a coloured wheel - this projects each colour rapidly in sequence.

Having one path means you only need one DLP chip, and this lowers costs, but it has two side effects: The first is the sound of the colour wheel : LCD projectors have been engineered to produce virtually no noise in use, but DLP projectors have two sources of noise to get rid of - both the fan, and the colour wheel. The second issue is one that affects me personally, and that's the rainbow effect. Despite the fact that the colour may be switching hundreds of times a second, this is still slow enough for many people to detect rainbows as their eyes flit around their scene. This is not only annoying, it gives me a headache after around 15 minutes of viewing.

Even if you don't suffer from this yourself, it might affect one of your friends.

Three chip DLP projectors use a chip for each colour, combining the best of both worlds. Unfortunately they're still very expensive. Only when this happens might it might usher in the end of the LCD projector.

Posted at 01:56PM Oct 26, 2009 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

Using pendulum dowsing to fix computers

I created this video last year.

I currently have another three videos on the pipeline, I'll keep you posted!

Posted at 08:18PM Oct 25, 2009 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

My T-Shirt site

Everyone and their dog is selling T shirts. There are a number of sites that allow you to design them online, and then set up shop in a matter of minutes.

You can purchase these T shirts at unteeshirt.spreadshirt.net

Bandwagontastic!

Posted at 11:44AM Oct 09, 2009 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

A New Blog

Well, After years of half-hearted attempts, and posting to other people's blogs, and anonymous blogs, and forums, I thought I'd stick it all in one place. I don't plan on regurgitating other people's stuff... this should hopefully all be original material.

Posted at 02:21PM Sep 27, 2009 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

Sony DCR-HC90 and the sony accessory connector

Welcome to my web page about the sony accessory connector on the DCRHC90, which sony call the "Active Interface Shoe". I intend to update it as I get more information about it, and what accessories are available.

Many of sony's new products have ditched many external connectors for a new kind of accessory hot shoe. This web page contains information about the shoe on the sony HC-90, which may also apply to other models.

One of the main criticisms made of this shoe is that it is a proprietary sony standard. Sony has also removed standard connectors from their cameras so that people have to use the acessory shoe. Sadly, sony don't supply accessories for this shoe that allow the user to connect standard devices, such as microphones.

There are a number of accessories that are available:

• ECMHQP1 / ECM-HQP1 - Surround sound microphone
• ECMHGZ1 / ECM-HGZ1 - Gun zoom microphone
• HVLHFL1 / HVL-HFL1 - Video flash light
• HVLHL1 / HVL-HL1 - Video light

The connector (camera)

On the HC90, the accessory shoe is concealed beneath a rotating flap. There is a plastic cover that slides back to reveal a row of connectors.

The connector (accessory)

I have an ECM-HGZ1 gun zoom microphone. It's about as long as the camera, and sits about an inch and a half (4cm or so) from the accesory shoe.

The mic has three settings, off (equivalent to removing it) zoom(mixes camera mic with gun mic in proportion to the zoom of the camera) and gun(camera mic disabled)

I'm currently hunting for a microphone wind shield for this gun mic. I've bought a cheap normal windshield for this microphone. It's around a pound from maplin, here in the UK. It doesn't cover the entire length of the microphone, so I'm still hunting for a gun mic shield. I guess I'll probably find one on the net at som point.

I believe that this shoe is also used on these models:

• DCR-DVD203
• DCR-DVD403
• DCR-DVD92
• DCR-HC42e
• DCR-HC42
• DCR-HC90e
• DCR-HC90
• DCR-PC1000
• DCR-PC55/B
• DCR-PC55/R
• DCR-PC55/S
• DCR-PC55/W

Stop Press!

Sony ECM-HW1 wireless mic

As soon as I found out about these, I bought one.

Pictures and a review will be coming soon. Suffice to say that it is bluetooth based, although the two units are tied together (you can't use another bluetooth device with it) the mic module is the size of a small MP3 player (it'd have been lovely to have a microphone jack on the mic module- grrrr).

There's also a monitor jack on the reciever module, so you can listen to what the module is transmitting.

Miscellaneous pictures of the sony dcr-hc90e

Alternatives

These camcorders have a microphone jack, and are vagely in the same price band, although you'll have to check the specifications to see how well they suit your requirements

• Panasonic PV-GS150
• Panasonic PV-GS250
• Panasonic PV-GS400
• Sony DCR-HC85
• Sony DCR-PC350

Other Stuff

If you're filming by the sea, or in a dusty environment, I'd reccomend getting a 30mm filter for the front. I bought one from my local Jessops. it's sold as a UV filter, but as normal glass filters UV, I can't imagine this makes much of a difference. It cost about 6 pounds.

Front Page

Posted at 01:00AM Jan 01, 2009 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

Java Robotics API

UPDATE: I have since found that the phidgets servo controller board has its own API, so have not proceeded with this project. More information about phidgets can be found at http://www.phidgets.com

This is a project to write a java API for the robotica servo controller board.

Installing the software

This describes how to install the setup from scratch for a linux PC. I chose linux as it can have a low hardware requirement. For example, this project was developed on a toshiba 110CS

• Install Linux
• Install the java sdk. I used 1.4.2
• Install RXTX. this is a javax.comm implementation for linux

Downloads

Downloads will appear here

Links

• debian
• Sun's Java site
• RXTX

Posted at 02:00AM Jan 01, 2008 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]