Children In Need Jean (by sarah)

I knitted the bandage - it was supposed to be red bobbles on white but was a nightmare to knit and hasn't come out exactly how I imagined but Jean is over the moon with it and as a first attempt at bobbles I think it's great 🙂

Poor Hydro-Puss (by sarah)

We are currently awaiting info from the vet having approved an operation to wire Hydrogen jaw up and to remove maggots from her feet.

As some of you know she has been missing for 3 weeks now and we have been searching high and low for her. Today - the day Alaric took the car in to have the brakes fixed Barbara turns up and says she's found what might be Hydrogen at the top of the road.

She helped me get her out of the boot. The little thing was so light and smelt odd and it appeared to me that half her face was missing - but not in a fresh way - in a sort of healed kind of way.

I put her in the bathroom meaning to feed her and clean her up she seemed so happy to be home but then I thought about it and wondered how I was going to get to the vets as Barbara had left saying let her know if she needed taking to the vets but that it wasn't an emergancy.

Inge the lady who comes to do the garden came and asked me if she could take us to the vet - and I said yes but realised I couldn't go. Even if I asked another parent to get Jean from school we had left the car seat in our car which is in a garage being fixed.

She my poor little cat who was so happy to see me and obviously needing help - I bundled into a box (the cat basket) and handed to some else to be taken to the scariest place for cats with the knowledge that I will likely not be hearing that meow again - but I had to because either way the vet is who can help her.

My poor little cat - I still remember us getting the two girls - http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/2006/07/07/kittens/.

It’s All NaNo’s Eve (by sarah)

It be that time of year again when all the nut balls come out of hiding! That's right it's NaNoWriMo time again - at the witching hour on this All Hallows Eve a bizar and eclectic ritual will take place - writers will begin typing, scrawling or dictating in ernest in the hope that this year they will make that word goal. That they will be the Nanoer of the finished first draft - I put it to all fellow nanofanatics new and old - lets get writing the madness has begun.

For those of you who are interested I'm 5affy on the forum (that's Saffy but with a five instead of the ess). Or @TheMonsterBlogs on Twitter and the blog I will be blogging upon is Purple Monster - and of course I'll be doing the picture book ideas as well which can be found on Orange Monster.

Jeany is also joining me in this this year! (She has the last two years - first with dictating stuff to me and then last year with her Nano note book in which she stuck stickers, wrote stuff, drew pictures and made collages from mags.)

Hall effect sensors (by alaric)

At the Bristol Hackspace this evening, I powered up a Hall sensor.

The Allegro A1321 takes a 5v supply and outputs 2.5v - plus or minus 5mV per gauss of magnetic field in the sensor.

It turned out that small magnets don't produce many gauss, so I added a 741 op-amp with a gain of about 100 to get more useful output voltage deflection!

Here's the experimental setup:

WIth no nearby magnets, we read about 3v:

But with a very nearby magnet, we get a large deflection, which drops as we get the magnet many cm away, but is still significant:

Clearly we still get significant readings a good distance away, and the nonlinearity isn't too bad; it doesn't max out with the magnet very close but still varies many cm away.

For my next trick I'll make a few of this circuit on some veroboard and hook the outputs up to an AVR with several ADCs that I have lying around, and try comparing the results to measure position (and maybe orientation?) of a magnetic probe...

Monster Painting (by sarah)

This is what I have spent my child free morning on :/

Click on the images if you want to see them larger.

They are for a Halloween art exhibit at Center Arts.