Last night we held our final disastrous dinner of the year. This month's topic was the Kegworth air disaster when a passenger aircraft crashed into the M1 motorway just outside East Midlands airport.
Not long after takeoff, one of the engine fan blades failed, causing lots of vibrations. The pilots …
Today I attended a short introductory course on functional safety. The course mostly covered what we are expected to do to meet the the guidance for building and maintaining safety systems.
Personally, I think one of the main barriers to carrying out these tasks safely is the huge quantity of …
Aug, frosty mornings. The beautiful crisp air and sparkling ground. The sight of your breath as it condenses in front of you and of course the thick layer of frost and ice left on the car windscreen.
Of course it is frustrating to go outside and find your car all …
I ended up alone the n the house for about an hour this morning. Rather than rushing around in an attempt to get some housework done, u took the time to relax and read.
I had a long list of articles that I had wanted to get around to reading …
When a control loop is placed in manual, the output is fixed. It doesn't change any more, it stays where it was or where the operator sets it. As a result, the process can change significantly, the measurement or PV (Process Value) can go much higher or lower than where …
I spent my day off work attempting to rebuild a web server. As usual with these things, my initial estimate for duration was significantly off. Lots of silly problems and unexpected errors to get past.
In the end, I got to a stage where Ihad to decide if I was …
We got an amazon dot.
Sure enough, Alexa could not understand either of us when we said elevel no matter how we pronounced it.
I am still not back on my bike yet, but there is one extra thing that is encouraging me to do so this week:
When cycling, I don't have to bother de-icing the car!
I couple of weeks ago, u arrived at work to overhear one of the managers on the phone saying:
...I have talked to (my manager) about Alistair Marshall...
Of course, the first thing I think is "uh oh, what have I done to upset him?". I then thought of another …
After yesterday's post, though more about the different services to commemorate the end of the first world war. I knew that the day was called Armistice Day, yet it had never occurred to me to ask what armistice actually meant.
It means the end of fighting. Not necessarily lasting peace …
On Remembrance Sunday, what are we actually remembering? Are we remembering the horrors of war? The huge destruction of lives and families? The horrors that those that survived had to live with.
Or have we started to remember something else? Have we started to instead remember a romanticised version of …
A fellow chemical engineer told me that there are only two things about electricity that a chemical engineer needs to know:
Anything else is a problem for an electrical engineer.
While I do enjoy learning about other disciplines, I generally agree with …
I had to stay home and look after my youngest kid who was not able to go to nursery today. I suspected that I would not get much work done, probably just an hour during nap time.
I got much more than that. For some reason, I was left to …
I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to fix a graphic. Most of the day felt like a waste as I tried different settings and menus, but I didn't manage to fix the problem. Then, just as I was about to leave, I found a set of pdf manuals …
For the last couple of weeks, I have experienced mild pain when walking about as a result of the accident. Today I also experienced mild pain, though it was different.
Yesterday was the first time I made it back to a circuits class in the gym and today's pain was …
For the last three years, we have attempted to make it along to the local fireworks display in calendar park. For one reason or another, we kept having to cancel. But this year everything worked great. The weather was mild and dry. The kids were excited to watch.
I sent an email today that I could come to regret. I am in the process of modifying lots of graphics as part of a project. I thought that it would be a good opportunity to correct any errors in the graphics while I was at it.
The problem is …
On Friday I sorted my car insurance out for the next year. Rather than pay the renewal, I shopped around and ended up saving about £50.
Tonight my wife filled out the form that would let her become a British citizen. The application fee is over £1200.
It will take …
Alarms are the control system's was of shouting at the operator. If saying "STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND LOOK AT THIS". The problem is that it takes time for the operator to stop what they were doing, look at the alarm. Then look at what else is going on …
I had the day off work and the kids were in nursery, so we took the opportunity to go to Ikea mid-week sans-kids. I was somewhat surprised when I got out of the car:
Apparently the IKEA just outside Edinburgh opened 20 years ago. Of …
After yesterday's frustration, I went back to the project again this morning. This time I actually made progress. At least until lunchtime.
Unfortunately something went wrong with the remote connection and I was kicked off during lunch. This means that I could not commit my changes. At some point tonight …
Last week I spent a whole day updating a graphic to make it compatible with a planned upgrade. Unfortunately I forgot to save the file in the correct location. At midnight a script synchronised all the documents and overwrote my work.
I only found out late this morning when I …
The headline of a BBC news article I spotted at lunchtime read: Homicide numbers in Scotland show slight rise
The sub heading read:
A total of 61 people were killed across the country last year - up 2% on the previous 12 months.
Why on earth would you bother putting a …
As we were getting ready to leave for work, Denise commented that it is almost like the authorities have declared "Ok, you lot messed up last time you had to get used to going to work in the dark. Try it again".
I certainly wish we could properly do over …
In a podcast that I have just listed to, someone said:
Take every opportunity to be a little less stupid.
I love the phrase. It is a brilliant motto. Be mindful each day to find out what you don't know, and do something about it. Keep searching for more things …
This post explains different types of alarm that can be used on a control system.
These are the simplest type of alarm. The control system measures something such as pressure, temperature, level or flow, and compares it with the alarm value. If the measured number is …
Sometimes you wake up and just feel rubbish. I have wanted nothing more than to curl up and feel sorry for myself.
Luckily I am an adult with adulty things that get in the way of just lying around. Things like looking after the kids and doing household chores. Fulfilling …
After Tuesday's crash, I was told to keep moving. I attended yoga as normal both on Tuesday and today.
I am not sure if the exercises are helping with my recovery, but they are very good at letting me know what bits of my body hurts.
For the last two days I have had an annoying notification stuck on my phone. I expect that it was supposed to self dismiss after a couple of hours, but it didn't and wouldn't let me do it.
I eventually got fed up and did a quick search online. The …
I was involved in a crash this morning. As I was cycling to the shops, a slight detour on my way to work, I was turning right at a roundabout. As the person on the roundabout, I am supposed to have right of way. But you only truly have right …
I attempted to get on with some deep work today, trying to get my head around some concepts and work out what the best way to approach a certain problem is. I don't manage to get very far. Despite several attempts to focus on the problem, my brain wasn't having …
I normally enjoy listening to the Proclaimers, but there was a point when they were played recently and I really wish that they weren't on.
Everyone else was enjoying the song, but I was driving. All I wanted to do was tap my foot to the music, but that would …
Alarms are a common feature of all control systems. They are a way of letting the control system shout "HEY, STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND LOOK AT THIS" to the operator.
They are set off when a reading such as s temperature or a level, goes beyond the range …
The theme of this week can be summed up with a couple of XKCD comics: Repairs and Success.
Each day was a different project. Each day I started with full enthusiasm to fix or improve something. Each day I regretted it by mid morning. Luckily I did manage to get …
Question from the one of the kids:
What is a channel?
We were discussing putting on cbeebies radio.
Mum (to me) Could you line up BBC sounds
Kid But I want to listen to cbeebies radio
Mum it's ok, cbeebies radio is a channel on BBC sounds
Kid what is …
Some of my colleagues were discussing how to make golf more interesting. After all, as Mark Twain probably didn't say:
Golf is a Good Walk Spoiled
The improvement came in the form of speeding it up. How fast can you get around the course. Hit the ball and chase after …
I have just started a new coding project and I am in one of the worst phases. Before starting, I was full of ideas and enthusiasm. I could envision the finished product. I could imagine all the extra bells and whistles that could get added.
And then I started to …
This evening, I was at a meeting in Edinburgh, around the are I spent a lot of time as a student. As I passed a shop, I instantly remembered walking to it the night after I moved into my flat in second year. I remembered the heavy rain that didn't …
I have just finished reading Running With The Kenyans by Adharanand Finn. The book is an account of an amateur runner's experience of spending six months living in Kenya in the town that many world class endurance runners live and train. The book examines what factors contribute to the Kenyan's …
I do not think that we covered override control loops while at university, the first time I came across them was in the sugar factory. Yet they are used a lot and are incredibly useful. I don't understand why they aren't covered in introductory control classes.
Override control can come …
The next Disastrous Dinner will be held in Glasgow in two weeks time! It is a bit last minute this month, but signups are available on the IChemE website
The topic will be the Bakkan fields oil disaster 2008, by Christopher Laughlan. The talk will focus on the actions of …
I have been listening to audiobooks from the library using an app on my phone. It is great. There are lots of books available for free. Unlike reading a book (either ebook or paper), I don’t get tired and need a rest.
The downside is that I can find …
The job I spent most of today required a fair amount of focus. It wasn't a particularly difficult task, but took quite a while and was pretty repetitive.
I had lots of errors on lots of files, and I just had to work my way through each one fixing them …
Last night I attended a "networking mixer" by the Edinburgh University ChemEng Society. A selection of alumni were invited along to give some short talks about the companies they work for, what their career has been like and advise for those that are looking to get a placement or graduate …
There is a great XKCD comic, is it worth the time, that displays the maximum amount of time you can spend on a project before the payback is more than 5 years, depending on how often you do it, and how much time you save each time you do it …
We have now been asked by two seperate people what our youngest son wants for his birthday (later this month) and more widely, what everyone in the family wants for Christmas. In previous years, I have always had a fairly extensive ‘I want’ list. A list of things that I …
Most control loops try to keep whatever is measured at a value set by the operator (SetPoint, SP). Sometimes the operator lets something else decide the setpoint. This is called cascade.
In most cases this means two control loops work together. The output of the first decides the setpoint of …
I am currently reading Running With The Kenyans by Adharanand Finn. I won't say much just now, I intend to write a longer writeup once I have finished. But for now I want to capture a quote from the book that I think is brilliantly accurate:
Running is like getting …
One of our bedtime stories involves a mermaid. This prompted the question "what is a mermaid?"
We thought that the answer is easy: half person, half fish. But then our son told us that he thought that we were wrong. He thought that they were half person and half whale …
Today I hosted a presentation by Alfa Laval at Grangemouth covering a couple of their compact heat exchangers. What follows are my rough notes from the talk.
I went into the presentation with a little bit of experience of alfa laval exchangers, several were used in the sugar factories that …
