Fusion power! (by alaric)

Cheap affordable fusion may be on the horizon...

I've spoken in the past of the wonders of the Fusor, but recent developments in the field have occurred; Robert W. Bussard, of Bussard ramjet fame, has recently claimed that he has a design for a fusor that overcomes the obstacles to power generation, with the output power rising with the fifth power of the radius of the device.

He's just looking for a few hundred million dollars to build a prototype.

Here's hoping somebody pays up, and that it works!

Blog Sections (by alaric)

For those of you who read this blog to see how the family's doing, my computing / electronics posts are probably a bit irrelevant. And for tecchies, all the personal family stuff probably gets in the way of the bits you find interesting.

So I just thought I'd make sure everybody realised that the 'Categories' section on the right has links to separate sections of the site for Alaric (and my subtopics), Jean, Sarah, and The Family (which is about things that affect us as a whole, such as our domestic arrangements). Clicking on a section link takes you to what's basically a sub-blog only showing things in that section, with its own RSS feed and everything.

Enjoy!

Father’s Day! (by alaric)

Yesterday was Father's Day in the United Kingdom.

Now, Jean doesn't know this since she only just approaching ten month's old, but (perhaps due to recovering from illness) she was very affectionate today and always seemed to want me to pick her up and hold her, then was all fun and happy when I did. So I felt very loved 😉

Disturbing dream (by alaric)

Last night, I dreampt I was having a heart attack - horrid pains in my left arm, then I was taken to a hospital and wired into monitors and had a drip inserted, again into my left arm - then I woke up to find that I'd fallen asleep with my left arm bent into an uncomfortable position and it was in agony!

It always fascinates me, how the human mind manages to weave external stimuli into our dreams like that. The classic case is when somebody is shouting at you to wake up or an alarm clock goes off, and your brain weaves it into your dream for a few seconds before you come round...

My weekend (by alaric)

Friday night - worked until about 10pm, getting things done that were meant to be done for Friday.

Then helped pack and prepare to go into London, a 3 hour drive. Sarah's choir reunion starts at 9:45am tomorrow.

Not sure what time we set off, but I remember leaving a service station at about 3am after stopping for a nap because I was starting to nod at the wheel, but I had barely fallen asleep when I was awoken by Sarah's parents ringing her on her mobile, and found my leg had gone dead from trying to sleep curled up on the driver's seat.

I slept in at Sarah's parent's place, but then had to get up in order to go and buy some baby milk powder for Jean, since there was none there. The little nearby chemist turned out to be shut so I walked back and took the van to a large supermarket, braved the Saturday morning queues, and then brought it back. I spent some time fruitlessly trying to fix Sarah's mother's computer which had come down with Microsoft Windows Goes Very Slowly disease, but there were no obviously out of place malware processes running, and it's slow right from the very earliest stages of booting. Then I managed to grab a couple of hours to myself to do some shopping (a shiny thing to put across the windscreen of the van when parked to prevent it from becoming a solar oven, and part of a wedding anniversary present for my wife), and to go for a walk, before picking up Sarah's brother and going to the choir concert that evening. Then to bed.

Then up early Sunday to pack all of our stuff away and go on a delivery mission of various things to various people as we crossed London back towards home, then get home, do work that needs to be done by Monday, then to bed, now at 1:30am. To be up about 7:30am tomorrow morning to take Jean to nursery, then for a conference call to start the next week of work.

Zzzzzz.....