I have struggled for years to find a good way to mount the flow meter on my pimped Gaggia Baby Class. Eventually, when I bought an old Gaggia Baby Twin, I had a look a the metal bracket Gaggia uses and that immediately gave me an idea. An old PC expansion card blanking plate, bent over, a notch filed on the end and a cable tie. A little bit of silicone glue for stability and viola! Continue reading
I recently got (and fixed) a broken Baby Twin off ebay. I want to experiment with the extra boiler. Anyway, it turns out the Twin talks to its front panel using a TWI based protocol. Here are my notes (which I made in an ASCII editor – enjoy the ASCII graphics and sorry about the scroll bar at the bottom): Continue reading
The way we arrange the furniture in our lives (both the literal and the non-literal) communicates so much about who we are and who we aspire to be. And it sets the background scenery to our story. If the arrangement of the furniture is at odds with our goals, this can frustrate or even prevent us attaining our goals. One cannot physically relax in a living room without comfortable chairs. Equally, an untidy desk can be an impediment to work. Less literally, a cluttered calendar has no space for a new departure in life (e.g. deciding to pray regularly) – something has to move out to make space.
So it interests me immensely how we arrange the furniture in our church buildings. We should sometimes stop and ask what our furniture says about our understanding of who we are and who God is calling us to be.
As vicar of Greenside Parish, I have been exploring with my church the idea of adopting a church rule of life. Recently, we began to look at some potential wording for such a rule as a way of exploring the idea. Whether we will ever adopt this wording or even something similar to it remains to be seen. For now, it is just an exploration.
The words we have been considering are below. Continue reading
It's passing strange...
- although why I think it strange, I can not penetrate -
- maybe all my "normal" is but surface shadow, dim reflection -
- perhaps what I call "strange" is ocean deep -
It's passing strange - and ocean deep - that vast conceits...
...can only be expressed in drops of salted water.
Hot, large and urgent
or slow, gentle caress.
Falling and bursting on hard ground
or flung in myriad spray from blinking lashes
or rivulets upon the face.
If I say words out loud, say "This creation astounds",
my barren sounds congeal into flat, dull, tasteless mass
(tofu words)
But if I weep the words,
the cataracts of worlds pour forth
in delirium of rapturous delight
If I say "This creation is broken",
the dull monotone tugs at mired feet, sinking in ennui
(damp words)
But if I weep the words,
my running heart is torn from heaving breast
and I strain in passioned yearning for the resolution of ages
If I say "The Lord is risen",
not much rises above my bleating
(spent words)
But if I weep the words,
a fresh cosmos burst forth
and the founding stars laugh and dance
If I say "My friend is dead",
I convey, in open prose, a matter of fact about molecules at rest
(inert words)
But, if I weep the words,
each glittering tear cradles within its liquid shell
the world of worlds
the tale of tales
Teaming abundance.
Desolate despair.
Highest praise.
And today I weep.
Supermarket retailer Sainsbury’s has announced that they are abandoning the Fairtrade standard for their teas and introducing a new Sainbury’s “Fairly Traded” mark. This is an act of war against Fairtrade. You think I’m exaggerating? I wish I were. Continue reading
A little idea suddenly occurred to me whilst stripping the coffee machine’s brewhead to replace the gasket. Why not try to reduce the backflush that happens after a brew so that less gunk ends up refluxing into the brewhead? Continue reading
Home Secretary Amber Rudd is reported today to be in favour of giving intelligence services access to encrypted communications so there will be “no place for terrorists to hide”. This proposal demonstrates deep ignorance both about how modern encryption algorithms work and about how best to respond to terrorism. One would expect an MP to be better informed. That, at least, is the charitable interpretation of Ms Rudd’s comments. The uncharitable interpretation is rather dark and sinister.
My heart goes out to the family and friends of those killed yesterday in London and to those injured. And when I think, especially, that my own son was right there in Westminster just last week on a school trip, the depth and awfulness of the tragic, meaningless, senseless loss of life is simply too much to bear. By any reckoning, the personal situation here is just too bad for words and even our prayers can be nothing other than groans deeper than words.
The personal situation is awful. But I want to comment, also, on the national situation. Nationally, tragedy happens all the time. Tragedy happens so often that the vast majority of it is not reported in the press – it is just too normal. Car accidents, heart attacks, suicides and, even, silly-seeming things like falling down the stairs claim thousands of people every year (just the latter claiming an average of almost 2 a day in 2011, according the the Guardian).
[Update: in my rev 2 PID controller board, I am going to move the logic below onto the PCB. But for any controller which was not designed with this in mind, including the disc thermostats, the design below should work. As long as the controller can handle double the current through its switching circuit.]
Some time back, I pondered whether it might be possible to increase the boiler power of my Gaggia Baby Class so it heats up more quickly. I subsequently carried out the plan and love it. Here is what I did…