CorneliusMurphy.ca

These entries are archived on this page because the home page is getting a little slow to load.

19 Dec 09
The two links below are video footage of the kids doing kid stuff. They're password protected. Email me if you want the password. I have no problem giving it out, but I don't want web-robots and wierdos to be able to see them.

Adam Doing Gingerbread Cookies

Kids' Xmas Concert

A quick note about Vimeo: You probably haven't heard about Vimeo. It's like a mini-YouTube where they host your videos for you. Vimeo, however, has a much more "clean" aspect to it: no vulgarity and general moral decrepitude allowed, and all videos get reviewed. Also, it's really HD centric, so I can upload high definition footage and you can see it. Note, however, that the best way to view it is as follows:

• Fill up the buffer: Quickly click the "play" triangle to start playing and then again to pause it. Then, while you're paused, the buffer fills up in the background and in a few moments (or minutes, if you jet for a coffee) you can come back and watch the footage without any hiccups.
• Expand the entire screen by clicking the "four-corner-arrows" icon.
• Ensure "scaling" is turned off, so you see the video in the original aspect ration and NOT expanded to fill the dimensions of your screen. (My vids won't be changed if you have a 15.4" screen because they're scaled for that in the first place, so this tip might not change anything when you view my vids.)

Vimeo is a fun site, and draws a range of contributors with some serious creativity. If I ever get a few moments to surf, I might choose to browse Vimeo and mindlessly view some interesting footage.

17 Dec 09
Tommy's daily biggest number: eighty-six-ninety-hundred. Used as in "How many M&M's did you take, Tommy?" Answer: "Eight-six-ninety-hundred." Tomorrow, it'll be entirely different. I love that!

Today was our office Xmas lunch. It was an odd choice, Vietnamese, but welcomed almost by all. It turned out to be a case of "you can't please all of the people all of the time" blended with what I think is probably not a new extension, but I'll coin it anyway: "...but those you can't please, you're better off without."

Picked up the turkey bird - an 8.77 kg monster - just about 20 lbs. Ok, not a monster, but big enough. Beth's been looking at cooking schools to send me to because I've asked to have that as a Christmas present. There's an Indian restaurant in town that offers cooking classes in their cuisine and that would be fun, but really, Thai would be where I want to start. I adore strong Thai curries and fragrant rices. Actually, I adore home fries and I haven't mastered that yet. Do you think there's a bit of a disconnect going on here? I sometimes wonder about myself...

15 Dec 09
I'm a bit miserable from not having much sleep. I recognized it, and thankfully was able to prevent myself from inventing a convenient excuse to get mad at Beth. I could tell I was irrationally peevish by becoming cranky at her answering the phone. How lame can a guy get? So I think I'll spend a few minutes putting some pics of the kids on the site. Beth says it's what people really want when they come to visit the site, and I think - for at least some part - she's right. So here are a few of the whippets clowning around and such. Enjoy.

Oh, and these pics are fairly low quality mix-downs for the web so they load faster. If you want one in high quality, I'll email it to you if you drop me a line.

14 Dec 09
Ah.... Snowblowing!! What a tonic for the soul. Just me, my snowblower, and the cold, deep evening. I've been out hacking at my driveway twice now, both times I'd consider "training runs." Really, not much more than about 3 or 4 inches was down and it was fluffy, not heavy, so I kept reminding myself that the passersby would be casting judgement on me without the knowledge that I was merely honing my manly snow removal skills. Normally, I'd be far too much a he-man to come out and attack a mere 4 inch snowfall. No, I'd be the type to wait until at least 18 inches fell, and even then I'd be that kind of Heracles which would wait until the grader ploughed us in and only true heroics could get the van out in time for work to start. Normally. But you see, even Heracles practiced mucking out the stables before he took on the Hydra, so I hold my head high. Rather, maybe, I feel a pang of pity that the judgment casters didn't sense the true mettle of the unassuming earthshaker they passed, thinking me just a whisp of a nutter, blowing at 3 inches, lurching to a halt every two feet, and not holding a line, but swaying randomly up and down the driveway. Ah. Sometimes I nauseate myself.

How about a pic of Adam and daddy, at bathtime yesterday evening, suitably cropped for respectable internet consumption. Is this guy going to be a bruiser, or what!?!

and of course, if I put a pic up of one, then I'm karmically out of balance until I put up a pic of the rest of them, so how about a nice pumpkin carving moment just prior to Hallowe'en this last October!

07 Dec 09
Snowfall! At last!! I've been waiting months to get my snowblower ready for a break-in session. On the way home, there was a car in the ditch and emergency crews on Bankfield trying to direct traffic; it was rush hour. When I got home, Tommy was chomping at the bit to get harnessed and out the starting gate. In a few moments, he was dressed in snow pants and parka and out the door, begging for his shovel. I had stowed the three kids shovels, gray, pink, and gray, just inside the garage door, so all was set. Gillian and Hughie were after him in short order and they set to shovelling the driveway. There was about 1 inch of snow, but that's enough for 4 year olds, and pretty soon, the driveway was a plate of gray spaghetti, curly 12" wide shovel streaks slithering everywhere. I had to shout at the boys as they'd push snow too close to the road as cars and trucks passed by. Gillian made a snow angel on the back yard patio and insisted I admire it. I did. It was wonderful!

30 Nov 09
Gillian made a picture I feel like showing off. Here it it, and if you click on it, you'll be able to see it in finer detail. I wrote, in pen, the things she explained when I asked her what all the parts were. Sorry my writing is such scrawl.

30 Nov 09
The new garage door opener is in!! It was fun putting it in and now that I hear how quiet it is, I'm pleased that it went on sale. When we bought the house, one of the GDO's was broken - gear case cracked right open. So I went on the hunt for a new one and discovered that they're more expensive than I like. But this weekend, at Canadian Tire, the Genie model called Exelerator, a screw-drive version with some whistles and bells, went on sale. Regular $350 - overpriced, yes - it was available for $200, so I picked one up on my way home from work on Friday. By Saturday evening, it was installed and, with Tommy helping me on the controls, it was tested too. After playing with it for a few minutes one thing was immediately obvious: it is damn quiet and reasonably intelligent. Plus, it has two sockets for very bright bulbs and the controls are abundant and useful. Beth went out today and picked up another one for the other side as it sounds like it's on its last legs, and lacks the safety aparatus: IR beam for reversing in case of blockage. With a brood like ours, that's required. Maybe I'll put it up next weekend.

7 Nov 09
My dad and brother drove up from Mississauga yesterday in a van full of furniture they weren't using anymore and it was like Christmas come early! We spent the morning off-loading, choosing, and carrying in the pieces Beth and I could agree on. The improvement in several rooms was dramatic and welcome. In quiet moments (if I'm ever updating this page it's because I have a quiet moment) I reflect on how lucky we are to have folks as dedicated and selfless as ours. Both sides of our families, Beth's and mine, have helped us immeasurably in these past few year and I hope they never have cause to feel we take that for granted.

24 Oct 09
We're moved in!! Ottawa is now home and we're eating and sleeping in new digs. Not that the Delta wasn't a fine hotel, but after a week, it was getting tired. If you asked the kids, it was getting unbearable. Waterslides are fun, but not for a whole week.
On Tuesday, the movers pulled up with a massive semi-trailer loaded with 24,000 lbs of our belongings (!!!) and the swampers spent all day carting it into our house. The following day, the unpackers showed up and ripped into the boxes, leaving behind what might have seemed a debris field from an interstellar colonization ship accident. Tools, dishes, bits of wood, furniture, foodstuffs, etc, etc. littered the house, but didn't fill it. The house is huge compared to our Edmonton home.
Ach! I'd write more, but Tommy's here and wants to write his puppy's name:

 
There! Sweater Puppy's name in Thomas' typing! 
Kids abound, time to sign off.

18 Oct 09
Lack of well established routine causes things to go awry. Yesterday morning, we received our "his and hers" cellphones via UPS and less than 20 hours later, I'd launched myself down the waterslide with it in my swim trunks pocket. Toast, I believed, but I was lucky. Today, after a day of drying out, it came back to life and functions well. Also luckily, I was able to call Rogers back to cancel the costly replacement. The waterslide was a real source of amusement yesterday. In addition to me soaking the cell, I took the kids for an hour-long romp on the thing and they squealed with delight for 55 minutes. At noon, however, the lady running the show closed it down, with a reopening time of 4:00 pm, and that really cooled the kids off. As I was toweling off Tommy and Gillian, Hughie made a break for it, heading up the curly-whirly staircase for a final slide down the big blue rocket. The little devil ignored my stern growlings to stop and shouts to halt and all the rest of it and headed up anyway. Launching himself down a waterslide sans running water, though, proved to be a "not so smart" thing to do. The friction had him hollering in no time. I think he got down about 20 feet. At that point, he must have realized that something was terribly wrong with the contraption, and the volume of his crying brought the lady running. She must have seen this kind of thing before because she vaulted up the slide out-end-first as I went topside and dangled a towel to the poor tyke. For some reason, he didn't cotton on to the "grip the towel" thing, prefering to try to claw his way up the glossy plastic trough. The lady snatched him up and in a jiffy, he was un-troughed. He wasn't very happy, and I realized that my boys learn just the same way I always did. Payback's a ...

16 Oct 09
Again, it's not really the 16th. I'm typing this late into the 15th, way late... What a day. The loaders were left to their devices loading the remainder of our garage this morning because we had to catch the plane. I have no idea if they cleaned out the garage. Maybe they left my lathe behind, or a huge pile of garbage, or a hundred little blocks of wood I'd meant to throw away or burn years ago. Oh well. We then dropped off the Camry to Adam and Jess, who promised to take good care of it while we were gone, and it was off to the airport. The kids were fantastic on the flight. Hughie discovered that he could wriggle his way underneath the seat in front of him and into the foot space of the passenger in front of him. Thankfully, this proved to be Tommy, so no harm done. Gillian was as good as gold, proving that Gravol is a travelling parent's best friend.

Man, I'm bagged. I'm going to finish this off tomorrow...

13 Oct 09
Packing day! Oh mama! Well, it's not quite packing day yet - that's tomorrow morning - but it's still mayhem here. We shuttled kids and cargo from this side of the galaxy to the other a few times, put paid to a bottle of my neighbor's fine homemade wine, sampled wares from a friend's kitchen, packed for eight, and dealt with a flat tire. It's been a day.

10 Oct 09
The movers dropped off a gent called Chuck at 9:30 in the morning, and after a brief introduction, he got to work packing our garage. All by himself, he packed and packed, wrapping and boxing stuff in the silence of our cold, snow strewn garage. At about 5 pm, he came out and said he'd been on the Mike phone to his crew and that one of the guys, the driver who'd dropped him off, had collapsed so his pals would be late collecting him. I drove him to MacDonalds and got him a bite to eat, and when he got back, he started up with the packing again. An hour later, he came in ashen-faced saying he'd heard over the Mike that his pal had actually dropped dead. We had him in for a while and some consoling converstation ensued: a wife, 4 daughters, a grandchild, and him a fit 47 years old. Wow! An hour later his crew had picked him up in stunned silence, the boss-man explaining that on Tuesday, the entire company would show up as jobs across the city finished up, because the lady who'd estimate the move had massively underestimated just how much stuff we have. He said it should have been a 3 day pack job, not just one with a single pre-pack date. Oh well.

09 Oct 09
Mortgage paper signing day! Whoa! That single hour in the lawyer's office was like riding the spinny-blue roller coaster in Galaxyland. When I'd thought we'd finished signing for the Potter property, I asked the gent if we could get on and finish the Edmonton property in quick style. He and Beth both laughed; we'd done those papers right before the Potter papers and I didn't have a clue! Like having my head pressed in a vise.

27 Sep 09
Last night, Beth and I were honoured with a Going-Away Party at the Jefferson Armouries! What a great send-off! Our close friend, Deb Hockett, doubtless with a healthy dose of help from her hubby, David, set the whole thing up and it was a blast. To all who came out, to a person, the people we have shared our most memorable occasions with, I send a huge THANK YOU!! It was so special to be surrounded with people I genuinely think of as extraordinary. You folks have, every one of you, been "glass-half-full" people, and I can't tell you how glad I am that you tolerate my company!

25 Sep 09
It occurs to me that Josh and I have developed a reasonably "usable" set of development skills. We can design circuits using a variety of components to do all sorts of sensing, processing, and communications tasks. We can design printed circuit boards to make those circuits "hard" - rather than a collection of breadboarded wires. We can do surface mounting of components to maximize our use of PCB space. We have developed skills in enclosure design enabling us to select and adapt project enclosures for many different short run applications. We have practiced coming up with testing techniques which run from direct instrument probing with common tools like counters and oscilloscopes to constucting complicated jigs supported by custom built electronic measuring gear. (For instance, we built a pendulum and bowling-ball ramp complete with delayed multi-strobed-exposure high speed photography aparatus to measure various velocities.)
I write this because I need to beat back discouragement. A project we've been working on (the Curling Stone Speedometer or Speedtrap)is coming along too slowly for our liking because life gets in the way: family, job, other stuff... So the gizmo we've been slaving away trying to get to market is crawling its way there, clawing its way there. And it's a shame, because at first, we were so enthusiastic about getting it going and making it work. It seemed like it would just take off and have a life of its own. But that didn't happen. No white knight company rode in and said "wow! what a product! and people are lining up to buy it?!? Let us buy the license from you!" Nope, we're still trying to get the perfect product: inexpensive, functional, easily producible, etc. But it's so hard... With a bit of luck, a company in Ontario will be able to offer us a good price for the manufacture of the system, but it's going to be hard. They have to make a profit too, and unless they have some tricks up their sleeve (entirely probably, really) that we couldn't come up with, then it's going to be hard to keep the price down.
For a larger run of this product, I had wanted to design and fabricate an injection molded plastic enclosure, but the cost is very steep, at first. And I have no skill in this field and the price of admission is steep! Maybe later...

18 Sep 09
My laptop's hdd crashed today, right after I checked my email at about 8:30 am. Consequently, I'm bereft of my contact lists, account login details, emails, programming code, course notes, etc. for the past 2 or 3 months. I did some backing up with my terabyte external hdd, but not as often as I suppose I should have. This is always the case with individuals who don't have policy to force themselves to back up. At least I haven't lost EVERYTHING. However, this affair is leaving me feeling a bit vulnerable. Many of my life's most valuable things are stored digitally: the video of the kids growing up, my wedding, audio of the boys laughing, emails from people I wanted to keep. The list is endless. I think I'll have to put a policy in place. I can't afford to lose this stuff. And right now, it resides in one place only: the terabyte hdd sitting 14 inches from my right cheek, perched atop this boat anchor desktop computer, resurrected from the boneyard by the sudden death of his younger, but less resilient, pal.

14 Sep 09
Round Two of our Edmonton House Sale began this evening with a call from our agent saying the fellow who'd toured our home this afternoon was placing an offer. It went back and forth a few times until I dug in my heels and stood firm. So again, we put showings and such on hold while an inspection is arranged and the buyer looks to secure financing. If all goes well, the sale will be finalized on Saturday, with closing on 28 October. That's not bad, really, as a sale at any reasonable date is good for our own financing of the Potter Drive home we bought last week. I had to laugh, because I was right in the middle of making a batch of oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies with the boys (yes, Adam too). The noise was ear-splitting, and I had to tell my agent that I'd phone her back after I'd rounded up them up and penned them downstairs. But I phoned back in a few minutes and managed to finish off more of the delicate bits of the cookie fabrication while we haggled over the final price. What fun!

I have to laugh: Beth and I just discovered one of the things which we overlooked in our examination of our new house in Manotick - no front closet!! Can you believe we'd completely overlooked this detail? I guess we can count on a whole bevvy of new "discoveries" when we finally get moved in.

Ok, neat video on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/3514904 Every engineer's Little Red Ridinghood!(Remember to enlarge it to full screen, turn scaling off, and ensure you see it in HD.)

9 Sep 09
Beth and I are currently in Ottawa on our House Hunting Trip. Today we trailed around after house and septic system inspectors, crawling through attics and digging holes in our back yard. It was a long day because we had to be tuned in throughout, but we needed to make sure all went well and the results were proper reflections of the conditions of the property. It appears as though there were no major problems to worry about, so that's a relief. This evening, until about 8 pm, we went through mortgage paperwork, pouring over details in payback options and comparing many different interest schemes. Anyway, if the pottable water analysis comes back OK, and we are good with the inspection reports after a review this evening, we'll waive the conditions sometime tomorrow afternoon. After that, we'll see about registering the kids in school, and other prep-work which will be important for when we make our move down here. Curious about what the place looks like? Have a look at some pics of the place used to advertise it on the House Pic Page

Sometime back in Aug 2009
Ottawa bound! We should arrive in Ottawa mid October 2009 and I'll be working in radio maintenance project management. Yeah!! Just up my alley. I toured Ottawa just last week and it was beautiful. It's going to be fun skating the Rideau Canal in winter. Hopefully, Napean will cough up a great house at a fantastic price... Keep your fingers crossed!

This video made me feel good: http://vimeo.com/3156959 after hours and hours of soul-less electrical engineering (going over basic MOSFET transistor design theory for a final on Friday. Ugh.)

I really need a new oscilloscope. I'd like a Tek 2465A because it's a solid scope, but in a pinch, I think it might be ok to go with some sort of digital scope like a TDS210. The only thing I like about the digital scope is that it allows me to capture and display triggered events, where the analog scope is a bit lacking in this department.

My new lathe is beautiful!! A pal recently sold me his metal lathe, a Busy Bee model exactly like the Grizzly G4000 you'll see here. I haven't had the time to get it flying yet, but soon, when things slow down a bit, I'm going to spin it up and get some little practice projects off the drawing board and onto reality.

My 4th year EE Capstone project presentation is finally finished. We presented on Saturday, 28 March, 20009, and it went well. Soon, I'll put it up on the site, but I'm actively pursuing "marketization" of the idea in partnership with my brother and my friend Josh, so it's a big "wait out" on that for now...

Injection molded plastic is interesting stuff. It seems that molds required to make parts run from between $1000 USD to over $10K. Home-style bench top models of injection molding machines do exist, but are limited to producing small parts, and will obviously require vast amounts of practice and production/set-up time. In other words, it ain't gonna happen! However, the time I've spent looking it over hasn't been wasted. If I need to get parts made, then I have at least a mildly informed idea on how to start. One site in particular was useful: Dragonjewel Inc. Another site has a gizmo which looks fun, reminding me of an ammo reloading station I once sold: http://www.injectionmolder.net/

My EE451 PCB is a low noise amplifier circuit which was supposed to operate nicely at 1.65 Ghz, but didn't. Instead, it weighed in at around 1.48 GHz, rather low. We designed it on Ansoft simulation software, and laid it out in Eagle. Matching was done using caps and coils on both sides, but I was hoping to do a stub. Sadly, stubs didn't fly in our class. I calculated one out anyway and ran the simulation in Ansoft, but it was a flop. I'm obviously missing something, and I think it's familiarity with Ansoft. Attach:ee451pcb1.png Δ Attach:ee451pcb2.png Δ Attach:ee451pcb3.png Δ