Blue Toung Lizard

This Blue tongue wandered past my office door today. Its nice to see some wildlife around.

Ive got some good news and some bad news

Bad news first. The ute is dieing with the 'Earth Fault' on the controller pretty much daily this week. After running faultlessly for over a week.

The good news is that I may be isolating the problem to a connector in the drive.

Time will tell.

A New Look At An Old Design The Prehistoric Alignment Of World Wonders

This is fascinating reading! at least for those that enjoy geography, math & history.
Ancient civilizations were way smarter than we give them credit for!
I wonder how this fits with biblical timelines and history. Presumably post Noah (2400BC) / Tower of Babel (2300BC)
"Great circles are straight lines that go all the way around the center of the earth. The equator is a great circle. Meridians of longitude that cross over the north and south poles are also great circles. For every location on a great circle, it's antipodal location is also on the circle. Other than the equator itself, any great circle crosses the equator at two antipodal locations, 180° apart. Other than the equator and meridians of longitude that run due north and south, any great circle reaches it's maximum latitudes at two locations that are 90° of longitude east and west of the two locations where the great circle crosses the equator.

Easter Island, Nazca, Ollantaytambo, Paratoari, Tassili n'Ajjer and Giza are all aligned on a single great circle. Additional ancient sites that are located within one tenth of one degree of this great circle include Petra; Perseopolis; Khajuraho; Pyay, Sukothai and Anatom Island.

Near Ollantaytambo, Machupicchu and Cuzco are within one quarter of a degree. The Oracle at Siwa in the western Egyptian desert is within one quarter of a degree. In the Indus Valley, Mohenjo Daro and Ganweriwala are within one quarter of a degree. The ancient Sumerian city of Ur and Angkor temples in Cambodia and Thailand are within one degree of the great circle. The Angkor temple at Preah Vihear is within one quarter of a degree."

The Improbable Research Awards

Research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK

Ig Nobel Prize

Tesla ride

Here is a pic of me in the Tesla Roadster a couple of weeks ago.

0-100km/hr in 3.8s :)

Orange cable bad / Clear cable good.

I swapped the motor cable in my ute last weekend on the advice of a few people with a lot of experience dealing with variable frequency drives. The ute has been running for a week trouble free so I am hoping that the new cable has solved the intermittent "Earth Fault" error that was happening.

I originally wanted this kind of cable but was unable to locate any at the wholesalers. I found what I needed only after asking to look through their supplier catalogs.

The cable is distributed by Bambach Wires & Cables. From TLE the part number is BAM45903CRS in case anyone is looking for some. The construction is 3 x 10mm^2 3 phase, with 3 earths ~2mm^2 and a foil and braided shield.

Make sure the cable is terminated correctly at the motor using a metal gland that contacts the braid and as per the VFD manufacturer's instructions at the drive.

As the fault was very intermittent, I will be satisfied this has solved the problem if I don't experience this problem for another 2 weeks.

Here is a photo of the cable.

Back to square one

After installing a spare current sense board in the ute's speed controller, it tripped with an earth fault again on Sunday.

Might have to get hold of another motor for testing.

Walking to work does me good, except when there is a massive dust storm over Sydney!

Hopefully the ute is fixed

The speed controller has been stopping with an "earth fault" intermittently with increasing regularity.

After talking to the Danfoss service guy, thanks Gavin, I installed a similar current sense board as this is where the problem seemed to be. The ute ran fine for about a week.

Last week I took the original board and soldered in a resistor array that was in a socket and re soldered the current sensors then replaced the board into the ute.

I have been driving for about 5 days, so far without fault. Lets hope that is the end of the problems!

How to use a Blackberry without a Blackberry service

http://bb.anworm.com/Home/english

This allows you to use the normal data service without subscribing to the often expensive blackberry services (BES/BIS) offered by telcos.

If you load google sync, gMail, gMaps etc it woulks perfectly for personal use.

This Servcei book entry creates a CMIME and BrowserConfig service book entry that uses the data channel instead of BES.

Birds on a Wire

Very clever