richard

Lowestoft Wind Generator

Ness Point windmill, from the mic position

Windmill in 15mph wind 1 min 10s

Some subjects you know are going to be a challenge. A wind generator, not surprisingly, needs wind and this was recorded in a 15-17mph northeasterly wind. That’s not the sort of weather made for easy sound recording!

This recording was taken about 100m from the generator at Lowestoft. The sound probably impacts about 500m away at this location next to the sea. This generator is sensitively sited in a really ugly industrial part of town next to a gasometer, and is visually reasonably well shielded from the town.

A gull turned up later and made a nice counterpoint to the blades

recorded 19 Feb 2006

Minidisc hacking

I used a Hi-MD to trawl for the Robin’s first song of the year. Set it off at 9pm, recording from the mic. Trouble is that it split the file into one group with a bazillion tracks – about 1500. Must have tripped a new track each time the audio dipped below the meter indication and came back. This isn’t useful. There must be a way to can that other than editing all the marks out. I’d really like to not do that again.

Set me thinking to how to record the Wolves Wood sounds later in the year. What’s needed is a remote timed start. Could set all the controls to manually record and pause, then hit the go button on the remote using a timer/alarm clock module etc. Let’s see what’s inside the remote.

The worst part is the plug, which is not only Sony proprietary and nonstandard. The pitch of the pins isn’t on a 0.1” grid.

MD remote plug - nothing is standard here — MD remote plug – nothing is standard here

That’s just what you don’t need. Having said that, a stick remote sucks without display, and LCD remotes are on Ebay for about £23. So I could stump up for a remote upgrade and get this one to donate it’s plug to the cause.

Other than that this is a pretty straightforward resistive ladder job – the play/pause button is a 330 ohm resistor across two of the pins. The resistor values used in Sony Minidisc remotesare documented hereWhat I need now is an alarm clock module but Maplin doesn’t seem to do them anymore. Which could be loads of pain using a PIC. Or maybe a 4017 clocked in with a 4060 set to output one hour intervals. On second thoughts the James-Bond-esqueness of the PIC and LED display might be too much to resist 🙂

IEE CEng interview

Travelled down by train for this, slated for 12:15. It really was about time I sorted this CEng lark. I have been an AMIEE ever since my BBC days in Designs in 1987, when they supported the accreditation route for their design staff. I need to shape up or ship out. Lots of paperwork, and the final hurdle of an interview.

Getting Chartered status is a lot easier to do working for a big company where there are other C Eng colleagues who can do the whole sponsoring and seconding lark rather than after moving on, where it will all get a bit more difficult.

The IEE had the air of a gentleman’s club. The wood panelling.and centrepiece of a mahogany bust of Lord Kelvin.

When you measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it, but when you cannot express it in numbers your knowledge about is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.

Ah, the raffish headiness of Enlightenment certainty. I liked it – tickled me. The two retired old boys who did the interview were of the same kind – now , one ex BT and one ex Cable & Wireless. The interview seemed to go okay – hope it did, as I’m all out of ideas how to press my case under SARTOR3 where I practically have to have a PhD. Only get to find out end of Jan.

ed – it went fine