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Tortoise Hibernation Unit

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Paul Kingtiger in Maker, Tortoise | Leave a comment

 

When I used to watch Blue Peter hibernation involved putting the tortoise in a cardboard box full of newspaper and putting that in the garage for 3 months. Looking at the program records a number of tortoises died in hibernation and knowing what we know now, that’s not surprising. There’s a lot more too it than putting the animal in a box and hoping for the best.

 

To successfully hibernate the tortoise needs an exact temperature range as well as regular checks. Higher than 10c at the tortoise will wake up and must promptly be removed (or starve). Below freezing will kill the tortoise. So with the weather being what it is a more precise method is needed than the box/garage.

A popular solution at the moment is to use a fridge set to the ideal temperature of 5c. Fridges, however are large and expensive and using the food fridge is not recommend for hygiene reasons. So I’ve decided to build a custom tortoise hibernation box using the Ar
duino microcontroller. Not only will this be able to control the temperature but with a network shield I’ll be able to have the system email me when the temp moves outside thresholds.

Tippy isn’t being hibernated this year, it’s best to own the animal for a year so you know it’s 100% healthy. So I have plenty of time to build and test the unit. My plan is to use a thermal couple to monitor the temperature with a Peltier/heat sink & Fan arrangement to cool the box to 5c.  A standard Ethernet shield will provide the email capability.

First task is to buy the hardware and search the internet community for existing projects that I can adapt to my needs.  I also have Jame, a professional physical computing nerd to help me out with the code.

 

This should be a fun little project with a real world application.

100 reasons to hate

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Paul Kingtiger in Personal | 2 Comments

Today I was forced by supply to buy a metal ruler marked only in inches.

Budget Truck Rental Review

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Paul Kingtiger in Personal | 1 Comment

Inspired by the Masala Zone in Camden review, I’d like to share with you all my experiance with Budget Truck Rental.

 

So, back on Thursday I booked a cargo van online with Budget Truck Rental.  After booking the Budget Truck Rental van for Sunday at a local location I gave my credit car details to reserve the Budget Truck Rental van.

Shortly afterwards I received my confirmation mail from Budget Truck Rental with the words Your truck is reserved!  Great, I thought, now on to planning the rest of the day and how I will use my Budget Truck Rental van.

Sunday morning was here and off I went to the local Budget Truck Rental location to pick up my van.  Only to be told by the man behind the desk, who wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about customer service, that the van wasn’t available.  He’d ‘tried to call me’, he said, ‘but the line was busy’.   Once again I’d fallen foul of my selective phone that stops voicemail working only when there’s bad news to be delivered!

 

Back home and onto customer services where I was told that they don’t gareentee the model of truck I order and in fact the Budget Truck Rental model I did order is being phased out.  Strange then that it’s still avalalble for selection on the website.  I’m not sure how many other businesses would get away with that:

“I’m sorry sir, but New York Mercedes doen’t guarantee which car you’ve just bought and in fact we don’t stock Mercedes models any more, we have a nice Chevy Aevo for you, have a nice day.”

 

So, goodbye Budget Truck Rental, I’ll take my business elsewhere from now on, to a rental company that actually ensures a truck is reserved when it’s sends me the confirmation email.  A company that understands that, if I’m renting a truck I probably have made plans to use it for that specific day.  Or at least a company that, if a truck isn’t available emails or calls me so that I don’t find out when I go to pick the truck up.

Twitter, nil point

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Paul Kingtiger in Personal | Leave a comment

Well it took me 3 days to get annoyed by Twitters 140 character limit. The basic idea was to have a mechanism for entering shorter posts on my blog. But 140 characters is just too short, also it turns out I was completely over engineering a solution because I can just make shorter posts directly into facebook and just separate them out via categories like I’ve been doing for the longer entries.

I’m still keeping twitter though because it is genuinely useful for following events, actors and other stuff that might want to serve up short but useful status information “I’m staring in a new Broadway play next month: PatrickStewart” or “Marvel Panel starting in ING Theater: NYCC”

Ironically I can’t easily announce this on Twitter ;)

Sleep No More

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Paul Kingtiger in Personal | 1 Comment

So Last night Mackenzie and I went to see Punchdrunk début in New York with Sleep no more, an interactive theatre performance based on MacBeth.  It was the same deal as Mask of Red Death that everyone seemed to go to in London.  Absolutely amazing performance set in a film noir 1930 hotel over 4 floors.  Sets included a taxidermy shop, graveyard, bedroom and a bar which wouldn’t have looked out of place in Slimelight.  Anyone in New York NEEDS to go and see this!

There was no acting as such with most of the performances being contemporary dance with actors heavily interacting with the sets with highlights including the angry sex dance around the bedroom set and the orgy set to a drum and bass track.  As a audience you have to wear a mask and cannot talk although you are very much encouraged to touch and play with the set, so it quickly becomes a very personal experience as you explore the show at your own pace.  The actors move around the 4 floors as they dance out various scenes in various locations and they also interact with the audience.  The soundtrack is  dark and loud and closely matches the performance although the actors themselves have no lines.  To be honest I couldn’t follow the plot at all, but that’s not really what it’s about.  It’s an experience that makes you feel part of the film or the dream rat,her than a viewer watching the stage.

When we were finally were guided out of the ‘theatre’ we ended where we began in a 1930s hotel bar complete with entertainment and where invited to stay for drinks.

I’ll say again if you’re in NY you have to go see this!  I’m planning to take Andy when she gets back from holiday and I’m toying with hiring a tux so I can dress up and really get into it.  I could go on and on about this but I don’t want to give away too much.  If you can, go see it.

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