This is a freshly delivered vector network analyser. It is worth a lot of money — several multiples of $100,000. It has Windows XP installed on it; all of Windows XP; even Minesweeper. The nasty problem with this sort of device is that the power button can stop working because Windows has crashed.

There is one more release of my deskbar calculator out there. The major features of this release are that 1/8 finally equals 0.125 (use 1 // 8 if you want the old integer arithmetic) and that I’ve bundled everything in a tarball so you get some documentation and the test script. Barring embarrassing bugs or…

Dear Mum and Dad, you will not become grandparents before August 2007 at the earliest (unless Morag is keeping a really big secret). In other words the fertility treatment has started rolling. Cushla will be starting IUI treatment soon and, assuming it works at all, there will be several cycles until they get the hormone…

During 2004 and 2005 Cushla did several opinion pieces for National Radio’s “Sunday Supplement” program. She has finally put the scripts for these pieces online. The topics are Being Kiwi, Anorexia, Right to Die and A Real Scientist Talks about Science. This last piece was never broadcast since it was only half-complete when Sunday Supplement…

Yet another release of the deskbar calculator plug-in. This release owes a lot to the ideas of Arne Caspari. From the user’s perspective the major addition is that it now supports converting numbers to and from hexadecimal, binary and octal (e.g. 0x123d, 0b10011, 0234, hex(34), bin(42), oct(23) are all recognised). The internals have been almost…

There is yet another new version of the deskbar applet calculator available. Now you can use basic mathematical functions like sin, sqrt, and abs. You can also enter numbers in hexadecimal, although the answer will always be in base 10. It still doesn’t handle complex numbers, and probably never will. If you do something silly,…

There is a new version with some minor tweaks. Firstly you can now use “scientific notation” numbers like 1e6, secondly it doesn’t crash if you select the result from the list. Instead it copies the result to the clipboard (spot the undiscoverable UI). Everyone who’s been having trouble installing it needs to change the name…

Ever wanted to calculate something quickly, but pulling up the calculator just seemed to take too long. Then this deskbar applet extension is for you. Very simple, but effective. Just type a simple equation into the deskbar box and the answer will pop up. It supports basic arithmetic operations and bitwise operators (it is python…

There are really only two components on a motherboard that fail due to old-age: fans and capacitors. Fortunately these are also the two components that are convenient to replace. After a recent spate of motherboard capacitor problems amongst my co-workers, I thought I’d post some useful tips about repairing them. Symptoms Unless you are regularly…

On Thursday I found it necessary to synchronise my watch to the atomic clock so I could work on the data logging software. This doesn’t worry me nearly as much as it should.