An interesting Huffington Post article that informs me of aspects of deafness that I never realised myself, despite being hard of hearing all my life, and follows on from the points made about hearing in my earlier article, which I will be updating with this learned information: Consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic – Part One. Read... Continue Reading →
An interesting article appeared in The Guardian that talks about how to help visually impaired people read data, The technique is called sonification, using sound to represent data: It reminded me of this video which shows data from the landing of the Huygen's probe on Titan in 2005: https://youtu.be/P7rVj_XbDnU You can find out more about... Continue Reading →
Impact on health I came to Spain for several reasons: to avoid a cold, wet, windy winter in the UK, recover from cancer treatment and, last but not least, visit my friends Manolo and Ana. The bonus is that they live in Malaga. Perfect. The plan was to stay here until April this year, when... Continue Reading →
Impact on communication I was two years old when I was taken to the local doctor's surgery after my parents noticed that I seemed to ignore them sometimes when they were speaking to me, particularly when I was not looking at them. The hearing test was very simple. I was put in a highchair and... Continue Reading →
I'm having a lot of fun in isolation, and one of the more unusual things I have been doing is that I bought a goat. You see, I've been helping a charity I support with their website to fix a few niggles, clean up the presentation, and improve search engine optimisation, as well as set... Continue Reading →
Day 27 of 84 I'm nearly a third of the way through self-isolation, fifty-seven days to go, as advised by my cancer team but I don't think I'll be truly safe until a vaccine or a reliable test for antibodies is made available to the general population. Experts say that a vaccine for COVID-19 will... Continue Reading →
I'm on day 10 of 84. Just short of 12% of the way through. Nearly 1/8th of the way through. Which sounds better? 50% sounds good for when I reach day 42 – I'll celebrate by visiting the other end of the caravan. I'm coping quite well, I think. I've always been a bit of a... Continue Reading →
Last Monday I was advised by the NHS that I am a high-risk patient and I should self-isolate for 12 weeks. This was confirmed by my cancer team – no surprises there. Thankfully I have neighbours who are food shopping for me. Notice from the NHS about self-isolation. I was supposed to return to the... Continue Reading →
Sadly, Okonomiyaki, my my lovely and ancient (>17 years old) cat probably had her back broken by a vehicle in the campsite today. Thankfully the vet was open despite the lockdown announced on Saturday and only 5 minutes walk away. After a very short examination it was decided that she should be put down because... Continue Reading →
Watching a sci-fi series on Netflix, Better Than Us, and as it's a Russian production I was surprised to hear one of the characters humming the melody to All Around My Hat. 🤨 It starts here:
Having the laptop connected to the ESP board via USB while it is charging pulls the voltage reading down, thus switching the relay off at high voltages. This means suboptimal charging opportunities while I experiment with the solar management system. A solution is to do away with the USB connection by utilising the WiFi capabilities... Continue Reading →
The controller keeps a record of how much power has been generated. I installed a solar power system while in the UK but I didn't bother connecting up the solar panel until I got to Spain where our local star actually makes an appearance. This is the system: The charge controller and breakers. The bare... Continue Reading →
The SSR-40 DD Solid State Relay So I've put the relay in place of the LED and connected it to the 12V supply for the peripheries and discovered a problem. Putting the ESP module into deep sleep switches the relay off – which is what you'd expect if you think about it. So, here's the original... Continue Reading →
It's not always like this. I went to Coín last Thursday to meet Manolo. I was a bit bored so I fancied a drive and what a drive it was! Coín is a smallish town nestled in a group of mountains about 200m above sea level. As I approached the brow of the last mountain... Continue Reading →
The relay should arrive by Monday, fingers crossed. It will go where the green LED is. In the meantime I continually have to keep an eye on the solar system, during which time I while away the hours reading, feeding the cat, browsing the web, and, my project for today, exploring ways of writing code... Continue Reading →
I am designing a system to optimise solar charging opportunities for: laptopphonebackup battery for phoneAA rechargeableshandvac This is facilitated with a NodeMCU micro-controller ESP8266 (ESP-12E module): This is so I don't have to keep an eye on the system during the day to prevent the leisure battery from being damaged. I am waiting for a... Continue Reading →
Caravan, with cat and solar panel.
Hi. My name is Okonomiyaki.
cat:caravan:code 