The Book of Ashes

Fun with electronics (the horse head project) 11:29AM

I have my prototype horse head working, well kind of. Its not mounted on the horse head yet, but thats irrelevant, rather it sits on a naked and open circuit board. It is overly sensitive and so only works in total darkness, otherwise it is always on, triggered by the lights in the room. In darkness it works sweet but has a range of about 1 metre, quite impractical. What I'm talking about here is a simple circuit that flashes an LED everytime you point a remote at it and press (ANY) button. By replacing the LED with a super bright LED it works up to a range of almost 2 meters. Problems here. A filter needs to be applied to the recieving IR diode. This can only cut down on the amount of IR light it recieves though so its range will be further shortened. I may need to use the IR diode on a transister as a trigger for the LED. This means increasing the complexity of the circuit somewhat and my meager electronics skills will be stretched to their limits... Still lots of fun.

Advice for the day from Tyler Durden...

""Stop trying to control the world. Sit back and let things happen.""

""You're not your job. You're not your family, and you're not who you tell yourself. You're not your name. You're not your problems. You're not your age. You are not your hopes. You will not be saved. We are all going to die, someday.""

Ok so thats paraphrasing somewhat. Give me a few more viewings of Fight Club and I'll be reciting word for word and trust me it has some good words...

""What you have to understand, is your father was your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out and dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God? What you have to consider is the possibility that God doesn't like you. Could be, God hates you. This is not the worst thing that could happen.""

""The most visionary of all are those who have evaluated religion for its merits and then rejected it for its fallacies. For it is they that have had a taste of the chains religion binds us by but have now escaped to tell the tale. You can only be truely free if you understand what you are free off..."

The weekend, of food parcels... 12:59PM

So Saturday was a little slow. In the mind that is. I went out for a catch up coffee with Lee and a wonder through town. Lee has a job now so won't be able to hang out with him during working hours so much. After that I hung around home and watched Fight Club. Thomas came home looking pretty seedy.

Later that night we went out to my cousins 21st. It was pretty cool but the result of the rugby sucked. Came home around 1am and was sober driver so not drunk. Tried to catch up with Dan but he didn't answer so went to bed.

Sunday I slept in then went for a wonder up the hill to visit my cousin for her 8th birthday. We played in park a bit then had to leave as Thomas was catching the bus back to Palmy soon. Gave Eddie a call and he was happy to have recieved the food parcel I sent down to him. Including the little dudes with their heads bitten off... Hey Kate when you get your package it has a little packet of ""dudes"" in it. They are little jelly baby like men and I sent off your package the same time as Eddies so you got a packet of dudes as well. I hate how you have to write whats in the package on the front when sending overseas. It kind of ruins the idea of a surprise present. With packages I am always economical and get a package just a little too small and cram everything into it. Then I have to some how close the package to be able to send it.

Anyway back to Sunday. It was very windy. Very Wellington like. I got home and lay on the couch in the sun reading. Lee gave me a call so I went round and helped him install his sound card and got divX working for him. He has a very nice guitar. Came home and cooked tea for myself then watched the matrix. Simon came round for a while to return my gloves and hat and Dan came home breifly before going out again to see Katrina. She is going away for a while this Wednesday so they are getting as much time together as possible before then.

Today I have not much to do. A little shopping. A little tidying. A little research. Its pretty much a nothing day. I really want to go skiing..