INSOMNIACS DREAM. (02/09/12)

I woke at around three this  morning after a couple of hours sleep. I tried to get back to the land of nod but was kept awake by a couple of Tawny Owls. I gave up the fruitless pursuit of a pleasant dream, got dressed, had a coffee and went out to see if I could find the owls. I could hear them close by but never spotted so much as an owl feather.

As dawn arrived I started taking pictures.

      Arrived back home and messed about with them.

I don’t know why, I have plenty to do. Arduino, cooking my supper, clothes washing, tomorrow I have to go to the bank, Tuesday I’m supposed to be cooking for three days, I ought to check the kitchen out. Forget the latter I’ll just hope and pray it isn’t too busy when I get to work.  It will be fine, the kitchen porters will know where everything is. I’ll just have to do a crash course in Lithuanian.

The Arduino continues to dominate my life…..I did promise myself to follow the easy tutorials. I know, they are just too easy peasy…….I can jump several steps……OH! No I Can’t!

I wired up a row of eight LEDs and started writing my own programme….programmes are called Sketches when one is using an Arduino. I suspect it is to reduce the fear factor that I feel when asked to mess with anything from a Blog template to a Psion. I don’t have the latter anymore so forget I mentioned it.

It has worked…. I am fearless. I wired them all up. Very neatly, I clipped their wires. I then wanted to make them come on one at a time and when the last one lit for them all to come on, then go off. Nothing happened. I’d forgotten to put the curly brackets in. I’d also been a little cavalier over my placement of semi colons. I have learnt that if one is good then two are not necessarily better. Shouting or any form of emphasis is not appreciated by micro processors. Eventually, around tennish last night, I downloaded some similar code and got the bulbs to light up in a random sort of sequence…..Light up! I could have cooked a steak on them. Ballast resistors were required. I thought that their inclusion was just a bit of icing on the circuit board. fiddly wee things they are to install but necessary.

Things were much better with them. I used 560 Ohm ones cos I have more of them. One is still a bit bright but as I have given up and reduced the series of bulbs to three I ditched the bright one……it was probably made on a Friday afternoon.

I still have one hell of a way to go before I build anything useful but it keeps me happy and as there is little time to sleep I no longer suffer from insomnia.

The cooking? I’ll have a quick rake through the larder when I get in, get a chalk board and write up a few Chef’s Specials. Now that is Cavalier.

Almost forgot here is the Arduino all lit up………………..

Well nearly all. I caught it mid sequence. I should have wired in a camera trigger….that is many moons away.

It’s time for bed as Zebedee used to say.

Enjoy the week to come.