Insomnia (by alaric)

There's something about the combination of having spent many weeks in a row without more than the odd half-hour here and there to myself (time when I get to do whatever I like, rather than merely choosing which of the list of things I need to get done urgently I will do next, or just having no choice at all), and knowing I need to get up even earlier the next morning than usual (to dive straight into a long day of scheduled activities), that makes it very, very, hard for me to sleep.

So, although I got to bed in good time for somebody who has to wake up at six o'clock, I have given up laying there staring at the ceiling, and come down to eat some more food (I get the munchies past midnight), read my book without disturbing Sarah with my bedside light, and potter on my laptop. I need to be up in five hours, so hopefully emptying my brain of whirling thoughts will enable me to sleep.

There's lots of things I want to do. Even though it's something I need to get done by a deadline, I'm actually enthusiastic about continuing the project I was working on today; making an enclosure for our chickens. This is necessary for us to be able to go away from the house for more than one night, which is something we want to do over Christmas; thus the deadline.

Three of the edges of the enclosure will be built onto existing walls or woodwork, but one of them needs to cut across some ground, so I've dug a trench across said bit of ground, laid an old concrete lintel and some concrete blocks in the trench after levelling the base with ballast, and then mixed and rammed concrete around them. When I next get to work on it, I'll mix up a large batch of concrete and use it to level the surface neatly (and then ram any left-overs into remaining gaps) to just below the level of the soil, then lay a row of engineering bricks (frog down) on a mortar bed on top of that in order to make a foundation that I can screw a wooden batten to. With that done, and some battens screwed into the tops of existing walls that don't already have woodwork on, I'll be able to build the frame of the enclosure (including a door), then attach fox-proof mesh to it, and our chickens will have a new home they can run around in safely.

Thinking about how I'm going to lay the next batch of concrete in a nice level run, working around the fact that I only have a short spirit level by placing a long piece of wood in there and levelling it with wedges and then using it as a reference to level the concrete to, has been one of the things running around in my head this evening.

Another has been the next steps from last Friday, when I had a fascinating meeting with a bunch of interesting people in the information security world. You see, I've always been interested in the foundation technologies upon which we build software, such as storage management, distributed computing, parallel computing, programming languages, operating systems, standard libraries, fault tolerance, and security. I was lucky enough to find a way into the world of database development a few years ago, which (with a move to a company that produces software to run SQL queries across a cluster) has broadened to cover storage management, distribution, parallelism, AND programming languages. So imagine my delight when said company starts to develop the security features in the product, and I can get involved in that; and even more when (through old contacts) I'm invited to the inaugural meeting of a prestigious group of peopled interested in security. That landed me an invite to the second meeting (chaired by an actual Lord, and held in the House of Lords!), the highlight of which was of course getting to talk to the participants after the presentations. I found out about the Global Identity Foundation, who are working pn standardising the kind of pseudonymous identity framework I have previous pined for; I'm going to see if I can find a way to get more involved in that. But I need to do a lot of reading-up on the organisations and people involved in this stuff, and figuring out how I can contribute to it with my time and money restrictions.

I'd really like to have some quiet time to work on my secret fiction project, too. And I want to investigate Ugarit bugs. Some bugs in the Chicken Scheme system have been found and fixed lately, so I need to re-test all these bugs to see if any of the more mysterious ones were artefacts of that. I'm in a bit of a vicious circle with that; the longer it is since I've been tinkering with the Ugarit internals, the longer it'll take me to get back into it, and the more nervous I feel about doing so. I think I might need to pick off some lighter bit of work with good rewards (adding a new feature, say) and handle that first, to get back into the swing of things. Either way, I'll need a good solid day to dig into it all again; trying to assemble that from sporadic hours just won't cut it.

I'm still mulling over issues in the design of ARGON. Right now I'm reading a book on handling updates to logical databases - adding new facts to them, and handling the conflicts when the new facts contradict older ones, in order to produce a new state of the database where the new fact is now true, but no contradictions remain. I need to work this out to settle on a final semantics for CARBON, which will be required to implement distributed storage of knowledge within TUNGSTEN. I need a semantics that can converge towards a consensus on the final state of the system, despite interruptions in internal network connectivity within the cluster causing updates to arrive in different orders in different places; doing that efficiently is, well, easier said than done.

I really want to finish rebuilding my furnace, which I hoped to get done this Summer, but I'm still assembling the structural supports for it. I've made a mould to cast shaped refractory bricks for the lining of the furnace, but I've yet to mix up the heatproof insulating material the bricks need to be made out of and start casting the bricks, as I still need to work out how I'll form the tuyere.

I want to get Ethernet cabled to my workshop, because currently I don't have a proper place for working on my laptop; I have to do it on the sofa in the lounge to be within range of the wifi, which isn't very ergonomic, doesn't give me access to my external screens, and is prone to interruption by children. I find it very motivating to be in "my space", too; the computer desk in the workshop is all set up the way I like it. And just for fun, I'd like to rig the workshop with computer-controlled sensors and gizmos (that kind of thing is a childhood dream of mine...).

This past year, I've tried booking two weekend days a month for my projects, in our shared calendar. This worked well at the start of the year, with projects such as the workshop ladder and eaves proceeding well, but it started to falter around the Summer when we got really busy with festivals and the like. I started having to fit half-days in around other things, which meant spending too much time getting started and clearing up compared to actually getting things done, so my morale faltered; and with so much other stuff on, I've been increasingly inclined to spend my free time just relaxing rather than getting anything done. On a couple of occasions I've tried taking a week off work to pursue my projects, but I then feel guilty about it and start allocating days to spending more time with the children or tidying the house, and before I know it, five days off becomes one day of actual project work. I need to stop feeling guilty about taking time to do the things I enjoy, because if I don't, I'll be too tired and miserable to do a good job of the things I should be doing! And rather than booking my monthly project days around other stuff that's going on, next year I'm going to mark out my two days each month in advance, and then move them elsewhere in the month if Sarah needs me to do something on that particular day, to decrease the chance of ending up having to scrape together half-days around the month (or to skip project days entirely, as I ended up doing last month). I feel awful about saying I'm going to spend days doing what I feel like doing rather than the things the rest of my family need me to drive them to, but if I don't, I think I'm going to fall apart!

Now... off and on I've spent forty minutes writing this blog post. So with my whirling thoughts dumped out, I'm going to go back to bed and see if I can sleep this time around. Wish me luck!

Ada Lovelace Day 2013 (by sarah)

Ada Lovelace Day is a celebration of women in technology and science - it was started a few years ago by the lovely Suw, and me and Al have taken part in it every year so far! One day we might even make it to London for some of the talks and things that happen (this year they even had Neil Gaiman though we saw him at the weekend anyway but still!) - sadly (or happily) I have college this week so that was another year of no Ada events boo hiss.

This year we have chosen the designer of... Sugru!

Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh - she is an extra special inspiration to me, as not only has she had the idea for and then developed and sold sugru, a funky silicon rubber you can fix things or improve things with, but she shows that art and science together can drive innovation to make the world better! (I've already blogged about that here).

The story goes that she had the idea whilst doing her MA in design production in London, the first attempts were smelly and ugly and then they weren't but they didn't stick to enough things. She knew what she wanted it to do and she teamed up with scientists but didn't just hand the job over.

Alaric told me about the sugru before you could actually buy the stuff - I was sad as I was being told that I was never going to achieve anything being a scientific artist or artistic scientist, his words were something like, 'but there's this new stuff that's amazing sort of like air dry putty but is still flexible and strong and stuff and it was invented by an artist who knew wanted a substance that didn't exist for her designs so she went and learnt about the chemistry of rubber and silicon!'

The story of sugru and the company built up around it is fascinating and can be found here.

It is not just about the sugru or the science behind it - it is about determination and following your dream, of keeping going even when it looks like you are set to fail. They have run out of money and risen from the ashes. Their mottos are 'The Future Needs Fixing' and 'Hack Things Better' which goes straight back to Jane's core idea - she didn't want to keep buying new things all the time - she wanted to fix the broken things or upgrade what she already had. This is perfect for upcyclers and reusing recyclers like me and Alaric and as it turns out many many other people.

She has given the world a new way to make things, to fix things! It is technology and engineering, it is art and science and it is wonderful.

The word sugru means to play - it is a corruption of an irish word and we have taken it at its base meaning - so far we have made/fixed:

Purely arty objects:

My first sugru project of a flower and metal bracelet

Little creatures for the visually impaired and blind to touch and explore

Fixed things:

knives with manky split handles

Broken mugs that have sentimental value as our little ones have decorated them

The sink - in several ways!

Made things better:

My crutches needed a bit of handle alteration to stop my little finger going numb when I used them

Little feet on phones and lap tops to stop them over heating

Decorations for boring welly slippers (this came out of a failed project to fix shoes with the stuff)

Improved the hooks in the kitchen so things don't fall off anymore

Embedded electronics into head dresses

Embedded magnets onto things like our phones so they are easily mountable in the car

And these are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head!

It has been to the poles, to the desert, under the sea and even in space!

So thankyou Jane for being an inspiration and our Ada Lovelace Day hero of 2013 🙂

Chasing Allotments and Organising Sheds (by sarah)

That horrible sinking feeling when you realise you now have a kitchen full of animal feed sacks and there is no room left in the cupboard under the stairs and you've been thinking this stuff should all be in the shed for a while for ages and it needs to be sorted so the table you bought for a fiver from the school for potting up and mushroom growing can be put in said shed (sounds far more exciting and illegal than what I actually mean!).

So we turfed things and sorted them and took some camping bits out to put in the cupboard under the stairs which were also sorting at the same time and some animal cage bits which are going in the eves of the house with the fish tank etc... and we put hooks in the sheds beams to hang the camping chairs, strimmer and jet washer etc... Found the grate of wine bottles I''ve been looking for to bottle my nettle wine and dandiion wine up in and a couple more demijohns to go on the shelves we built for the purpose in the kitchen etc...

Mary thought it was great - it was her house apparently!

Then we headed off to the Allotments Country Show in the hope of nabbing someone about the fact that I am now not even receiving email responses from the council about how long it is going to take to get one - I go blackberrying along there I can see the empty plots! I found a lady who said she would pass my details on after a long talk about making chutney and pickled things with me and Alaric so fingers crossed.

The weather was a bit pants by this point but Jean and Mary had a great time even though they didn't get to go on any rides - Jean went in her roller blades she picked up last year in a charity shop for like £2! She only fell over once and had her shoes in her rucksack which she changed into after seeing the zumba but by then it was too late to join in!

Mary was most pleased with her balloon dog - in pink as always - it is currently her favourite colour! I worry that people think I am one of those parents that makes their little girls wear pink!

And then I resisted adopting another bunny from the Windmill rescue people - the girls spent ages stroking a lovely little grey thing - Jean was concerned it wasn't walking and was informed that it is disabled with a twisted back paw - at the collected 'awww' from me and Jean Alaric took us by the arms and lead us away!

Apart from all that I cleared out and sorted the top shelf of the 'treats' cupboard (where all the cake making etc supplies are) and placed the chutneys and jams I've been making on there - so yeah guess what everyones getting for christmas! Something home made/grown anyway 😉

Egg-cited! (by sarah)

So we settled the chickens in by virtual of basically leaving them alone then this morning I rushed down to have a look at them, we weren't egg-specting any eggs due to the stress they had been through due to the relocation yesterday etc... But there they where two eggs!

Which I boiled for the girls breakfast - I did soft boiled for Jeany ie three minute dunk in boiling water and then opened straight away where as Mary got a hard boiled egg ie I just took longer about getting it out and knocking the top off!

They both seemed to love the breakfast which is a relief as we find it hard to get Mary to eat much at all 🙂

Jean is now obsessed with the chickens laying eggs - she reckons she can hear when they have done it :/ I think she is just after more egg! Alaric pointed out to her that these eggs will be from the food and stuff they were fed as battery hens and that later ones will be more tasty 🙂

Alaric said the whole thing has been worth it just for the look of glee on my face when I opened the nest box and found the eggs! I am afraid that I am washing them - I know many people say you shouldn't but really just nooooo!

We checked them again around lunch time (due to Jean's pleas that another egg had been laid), there was one more egg 🙂 But no more when I went to check them in the evening and make sure they were all in the hen house for the night. This time the stupid one had worked it out themselves so there was no chicken to have to lift up the ramp - I did however have an escaped chicken when I took the water feeder for a clean and refill. The conversation:

Jean: Mummy you let a chicken out

Me: I know trying to sneak up and catch it

Jean: Mummy that's the wrong way the chicken run is over there

Me: I know

Jean: Oh I thought chickens couldn't fly but they can!

Me: ducking from said chicken I know

Jean: Mu...meee you really aren't very good at this are you

Me: Not helping Jean! chicken walks back into the run

They are supposed to be getting used to the run for a couple of days before being shown the outside world - the others are all scared of the outside - not this one! It is the same on that thinks it is a boy and bosses the others around and it was the only one to escape from the lidless boxes when we were treating them for red mite and it was the first one up the ramp when we introduced them to the run - I think we have Chicken Genius here - it is the one called Felix! Though we have been calling it The Bossy One if I am honest!

First full day with chickens = success, I even tied a lettuce up for them to peak at - they don't seem to have noticed it yet though 🙁

Al’s legs – an update (by sarah)

Ok so though the nasty halo rash thing cleared up with the antibiotics the bits on Alaric's legs are still red and sore lumps that itch. Our drs surgery seems to have stopped giving out appointments at the moment and insists you phone up in the morning and talk to someone - I think they are supposed to be phone appointments except they aren't scheduled either and you have to sit there for a couple of hours awaiting their phone back unable to do much incase you miss the call :/ Then they tell you to come to the surgery and prescribe stuff - or at least that has so far been our experience.

Anyway so Al ended up seeing the Dr with them again apparently they are not currently infected but could become so if they remain the way they are as you can't help but scratch etc.. They are the way they are as Al is still having an allergic reaction to them :/

So he has tablets and cream and we wait ten days to see if they go down basically.