Finished with Colour

Today I finished a book I started before the corona virus lockdown-
Colour by Victoria Finlay.
I enjoyed it very much. As I read the last chapters Indigo and Violet I was struck by how the author was freely travelling the world, something not possible today.

It is a large book (in a slipcase even), but what should I do with the book next. i am unlikely to read it again. I KNOW!- I will build a street library and give it away.

Ring your mum.

In the 1980s I did teletraffic design in regional Queensland- I decided the number of connections between and within telephone exchanges. This determined the number of calls that could be made at once.
For a small 90 line exchange this might be 4 internal calls, six outgoing calls and five incoming calls at one time.
The numbers were determined by measurements of the number of calls and mathematical analysis. The Erlang Loss formula which is recursive and probabilistic was the main tool. In the early days of personal computers I wrote a program to calculate the Erlang loss using the Pascal language.
I would be considering if a single telephone exchange should be able to make seven or eight outgoing calls at one time.

The units of measurement were Erlangs - One Erlang was one current call.

The busiest day of the year for phone calls was Mothers' Day. Everyone phoned their mum even though calls were expensive and if the network was congested they would try again.

Wi-Fi No Go

I figured out that I could make a free Wi-Fi hot spot with some unused components from around the house.
But with some research I found out that if I provided a free Wi-Fi point then I would need to provide additional security or risk security breaches for my home system and any users.
Security is serious - so no free Wi-Fi was implemented.

Mud pies

Today I made some mud then I squeezed it into the hollows of a couple of bricks.
I really enjoyed making the mud.

The project was to make a suitable nest site for the many solitary bees living around here. Some borrow into bare earth. So I placed the brick with the mud in a warm accessible spot.
Other bees make nests in crevices and hollow stems. The Northern side of the house is warm through the winter and many bees and spiders make a home between the planks.

Neon cuckoo bee on cucumber flower-

People will do anything to survive.

Virus lock down is a great time to read those books that are waiting on your shelf.
I have finished Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard (ISBN 0-575-03483-1) based on his boyhood experience of being confined in a Japanese Internment camp.
I had seen the movie but after reading the book I understood the meaning of some of the scenes.

Transistor hoard

Locked down in my home I have cleaned my workshop and cleaned my study.
I thought that I had never taken an inventory of my radios -
I found thirteen - all sorts from pocket sized to the AWA model for the outback (see photo).

In testing there was one that has poor AM reception but good FM reception - so my next project is to fix it.

Wrong way compass

 I have a wrong way compass - see the middle compass in the photo. Once it pointed to the north correctly but I suspect it suffered a severe knock.

The compass on the left has a bubble.

The compass on the right was previously posted  - it has wrong markings between south and west.

The middle compass is the easiest to use just remember the white end of the needle is north.