Cold Steel

I want to feel the cold steel slice through my flesh or maybe breaking bones is the way to go

Shitty day again

Man I had a bad day today, I was ready to punch someone while I was out shopping, not anyone in particular just the guy who didnt use his indicator, or the bitch that ran in to my wife with the trolley and didnt say sorry, she didnt even look up at me when I followed her and said with a slightly raised voice, "It would be nice if you apologised to my wife when you you hit her with a trolley". Bitch.

Or maybe it was the people that kept pushing me aside as I walked the shops.

Cant even punch anything as I did that on saturday and broke my hand.

Ive been bad foe a few days, I was high this morning, last night was a low, this arfo was a low but the chuff has made me feel a bit better, I wish that A. the drug companies get out of bed and make a drug that doesnt make me feel like shit or B. the law decrims mull, or legalize it for medical use.

FUM

Its official, I am the worlds leading Fuck Up Master. Everything I touch turns to shit, electronics, cars, relationships.. It doesnt matter, if has anything to do with me then it is fucked up from the start. I am sure If I went to the city with me pension check I could get a gun and a bullet or two and In an istant nobody has to put up with my shit anymore. The world would be such a better place.

Been Depressed

Havent been doing much lately, I blew the motor in the RD it was good while it lasted. I managed to get my paws on an 81 XJ650 that I am working on. I would like to have it on the road for the stone run in Febuary but I dont think it will happen. I will see wha happens.

Been feeling down the last few weeks, i cant put a finger on whats causing it, doesnt help i have missed meds :( need to do better with the meds

Been Slack

Well I haven't blogged in a while, been depressed on and off for a bit now and am finding it hard to really get motivated most days, I need to start blogging more and am going to try and do a post to my different blog's every day or so, lets hope this is the start of me being motivated.

Trip our 3 legged cat came home last night after being away for 2 days, he was hobbling along on 2 legs, he may have broken another leg, he is off at the vet being checked out, just waiting for the phone call to let us know the xray results. He is a tough old bugger though managing to drag himself home on two legs.

Halfway ?

Well I turned 35 yesterday, I have a pretty drab life and realise I need to make some changes If I am going to get anywhere in life, I am upsetting Jo-anne by not going to church, I guess I just dont feel up to it both physically and mentally. I had 2 teeth pulled the other day and now have a third that is hurting me :(

Lets make a list of the things I need to change

• Give up the weed
• Going back to church
• Spend more time with the family

"Mark your a programmer you just dont know it"

When I was about 12 years old my stepfather brought a commodore 64 computer, the particular model was an SX64 as shown in the photo, it was one of the first "portable" computers.. I started to learn to program it in BASIC which was built in as the "operating system"

I spent over two weeks copying the data for an animated sprite from a magazine in to my computer after school only to find out it didn't work. This was first attempt at "programming" something if you call typing code from a magazine in to a computer programming !

The next month's issue had an addendum, the code had an error in it, so after digging up the cassette that had my saved copy on I went to work and fixed it, and much to my amazement it worked..

It was a learning experience, the article broke down each step and explained how it worked, remember this was all new back when computers where new especially home pc's. By just typing it in I could understand the flow of the program, and how it branched I learn t what the commands where and I also now understand how to define data in a table and then access it with a sub routine rather then having to rewrite it for the next frame of the animation.

And something I found out was that I have a skill that is slowly being lost, tight coding. Want more overhead today you just increase the system specs on the side of the box, need 2 gig to install not a problem. Well with single sided 5 1/4 inch floppy discs and 64KB yes that KB of memory you couldn't afford to leave comments in your code, or space it out with unnecessary white space to make it easier to read when debugging it was all hardcore baby.....

From there I got really involved with XT'x and C64's at my school and spent many a lunchtime in the computer lab. By the time I left home at 16 I had 3 commodores, 8 drives, and AT with VGA screen (256 colors at 640x480) and a 40MB hard drive, it was state of the art and cost me $2000.

From there I didn't do much with coding, I had friends that got in to programming in machine code on the C64 but I liked the hardware more.. It wasn't until the late 90's that I got in to IRC when I started coding again, this time it was for mIRC and I started by just doing single line alias commands and stuff like that. Later I downloaded looksharp (a custom distro of mIRC) and started to have a look at the scripts in it and how they worked, from there I then modified them to do different things.

Up until last week I didn't call myself a programmer, not in anyway shape or form, I have always maintained that I am a Hardware tech..End of story. It was while at a friends place last week (tyabblemons) that I saw him playing with mIRC and his bot, I was having a look and was telling him about how I used to play with scripting in the 90's. and also did some basic but that I wasn't a programmer.

He disagreed with me saying that if I had skills programming, even in BASIC and mIRC and if I understood operators like if then else etc then I could program, So I went home and started playing and showed him a few bits of mIRC code and he still maintained that my skills are competent and I just don't know the command structure of modern programming languages. All I need to do is change my BASIC skills in to something else.

So first thing I am doing is writing a bot for my channel, no cut and pasted code from other websites or scripts, This will be entirely done from scratch. I don't know if I can do it.. but I am going to try as both tyabblemons and his brother (waspmk3) have been telling me for over a week now that "Yes Mark, you are a programmer you just haven't realized it yet.." so maybe at heart I really am.

Off to Bed

Well it is about 430 and I have taken 2 antihistamine's and am going to try to drown sleep again and to top it all off as I cant sleep I am starting to feel depressed :( but I did a cool wallpaper, show you all later

Cant Sleep and Quitting Durries

Its 4 am I have tried to sleep for the last hour or so to no avail, I have a bad head cold and I feel really bad, both physically and I also feel bad emotionally as I said I would go to church today but I really am feeling so sick and exhausted.

I have just given up cigarettes about 4 weeks ago and when I gave up I got really sick with pneumonia (dictionary.com)

It really scared me there, I was so sick that i went to walk from the house to the shed, less then 5 meters (about 5 yards) and I had to sit down in the shed, it felt like a car was parked on my chest, it was painful and I was really short of breath, thats when i knew I was sick..

The Docs at the Hospital put me on two different broad spectrum antibiotics, I was on a total of 9 tablets a day, not including my normal ones (6-8 a day), and I hate pills but I took every last one of the antibiotics like a good boy, It scared me enough to never go back to smoking cigarettes

Jo-anne and I took the boys to the ward Spring fair, there were games to have a go at and everyone how took part then used the won tickets to purchase fairy floss (cotton candy) popcorn, as well as donated items in a little auction, all donated by the members of the ward. It was a great day but the sun was taking its toll on Blossy, Brodie was having a bad "Aspi" day and I have a head cold, all in all just another "normal" week in our household

I havent posted for a while but now I have a plugin for firefox that lets me post a lot quicker I might actually post a bit more often to all of my blogs.

Blast from the past.

I bought a late 1960's early 1970's Dartronic 415 Oscilliscope on ebay for $19.98 It is a hybrid containg both Valves (tubes) and very early metal can and glass transistors as well as point to point wiring with circuit boards. It's in a very sorry state as it has been sitting on the floor in a shed with no side panels on it and has been exposed to some moisture at some point in its life.

I have not even turned it on, as it contains 5 very large wax paper electrolytic capcitors. These have a tendency to leak and fail over time and 40+ years is certainly enough time for that.

Man it was a nightmare IDing some of the valves. I had to put a lot of them in the freezer as the condensation sticks to the glass better where the ink was, doesnt always work but worth a try. Some of them I had to compare physcially with other valves looking for a match.

As my next door neighbour said to me last night "your in for a world of hurt"


My plan of attack is to try and restore it to working condition to become one of the centre pieces for the old valve workshop I am setting up, all the "modern" stuff will be hidden in cupboards with all vintage valve test equipment out on the bench. I really would like the old valve test gear to be functional not just static display items.

Anyway back to the scope, and a list of things that I need to do, that I already know of, as well as the things I have already done last night.

1. Clean out the "live" bugs, leaves, webs and assorted other things from the shed. (done)

2. Clean off rust and repaint in grey hammer tone (original colour)

3. Identify and replace all the wax paper caps.

4. Resolder all the conections as I have had two wires break off already.

5. Check all the voltage outputs from the transformer and identify the Hight tension (250 volts+) and also the heater filiment voltage which should be 6.3v

6. Check all the voltages at the sockets of the valves with them removed and make sure they are within the range for the valve.

7. ID valves (done)

8. Check all the valves for short circuits (means I will have to build a valve short circuit tester)

9. Get a clear perpex cover made for the sides and top to "show off" the valves

10. Remove and scan front panel ready for painting with silver paint (original coulour) not hammer tone.

11. Have silk screen's made for the red and black writing on the face plate as some of it is fading so I will touch it up in paintshop first.

12. Relabel all the valves as the writing is coming off them.

13. Add white LED to internal chassis to light up the inside (not to much as I want to see the heaters glowing in the valves)

Its going to be a long term project but so far it has all been going pretty well and it appears that only one valve has leaked as all the other ones have nice bright silver "get"