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Gong fail
Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:40:47 GMT
Moir Lockhead, occasional
Electricals
Sat, 24 May 2008 21:41:18 GMT
We went to maplin this afternoon, mostly to spend the maplin vouchers that my former co-works gave me when I left (thanks).
Among a miscelleny of toys, I bought a readers digest guide to home electrical installation (on the same shelf as the dummies guide but thinner and with bigger pictures) and some light switches to replace the broken one in our hall and the stupid dimmer in our bedroom. Having judiciously read and re-read the section on the correct wiring of one-way and two-way light sockets (and the paragraph about how it's mostly illegal to re-wire your house nowadays) I turned off the electricity at the mains, and unscrewed the broken switch frontpiece in our hallway. The hallway switch has one two-way switch for the upstairs landing (because you often want to turn the lights off upstairs before you spend a night sleeping on the sofa..*) and a one-way switch for the downstairs light, according to the wiring guide I, I should find a single two-core and earth (for the downstairs light) and a single three-core and earth for the upstairs light (the upstairs and downstairs lights are on seperate circuits). Instead I find two two-core and earths with the live wired together from the first two core to the common of the second swtich with a bit of old-looking wire and both earths hanging around inside the switch box with no sheilding,*, neither of the two-way wires have red tape (which, according to my book should indicate the spare live for the two-way). This means that if the downstairs light is on the downstairs circuit, they have bridged the two circuits inside the switch box * I don't know for sure if this is a bad thing but my limited spidey-sense about electronics seems to suggest that it might be, at the very least because the fuse blowing on one side will still leave at least one part of the circuit live. I suppose that I should be greatful that they didn' try to use the earth wire as the spare (which is connected to the earth pad in the box upstairs, but not actually to the earth...). After a bit of fiddling I set everything up exactly as it was, and after some finger crossing and praying it seems to work again. Will try to find out which circuit the hall light is on and wire it properly if it is seperate, either way I suspect its fair to say that "having the electrics looked at properly" will probably have to go onto the big list of things to do for the house.... * I mean, why would they do that!?!?! Things & Stuff
Thu, 22 May 2008 22:32:29 GMT
We have a new shower curtain, now the whole house smells of inflatable beach toys. The new shower curtain has a map of the world on it which doesn't include Belize.
I went to a logic seminar this afternoon, It included Linear Logic in the title; I'm interested in Linear Logic but I didn't understand much of the talk/discussion, It seemed to revolve around an argument about game semantics for proof and Category Theory which I also don't understand. On conference
Wed, 14 May 2008 15:54:22 GMT
Good things about being on conference
Was something of a relief to discover that I was not the last person in the group who went to my first conference in 2002 in Lyon to graduate. Moving House
Tue, 06 May 2008 14:56:43 GMT
Thanks to everybody who helped us move on Saturday/Sunday much appreciated! We will endeavor to re-buy your friendship with dinner/booze at some point.
Some things we have learned from our new house so far:
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