A silicon wafer about 20cm in diameter containing hundreds of individual integrated circuits, before they are cut apart. The rainbow colours are because there are very thin layers of silicon which the light can penetrate and be reflected from the layers below, just like an oil film on water.

I’m not sure why – maybe it’s Engineering Week or something – but engineering as a career was the topic of discussion on Life Matters on Radio National this morning. I’ve got to hand it to Natasha Mitchell, she has a degree in engineering so she’s qualified to speak. I wish I knew what branch of engineering:

• Mechanical
• Civil
• Structural
• Mining
• Petroleum
• Electrical
• Control and telemetry (SCADA)
• Electronic
• Communications
• Computer
• Information Technology
• Aeronautical
• Biomedical
• Aerospace
• Nanotechnology
• Chemical
• Process
• Manufacturing
• HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning)
• Highway

As they said in the interview, all people can think about when you mention engineering is train drivers and mechanics. As shown above, it’s a huge field and if you can’t find a niche in one of those, you must be brain dead.

But my line, electronics, is especially the future proof way of job security. (I don’t have a degree, but I have a three year full time Technical College Diploma.)

Software design of an integrated circuit on a PC. As you can see, this is Windows software. You could do this yourself at home.

Look at all the jobs and professions that are either disappearing or being taken over by computers and automation. Even journalists are now a disappearing breed, replaced by software that can write reports!. Anything in finance is also under threat.

Electronics engineering is future proof. When you’re the person who designs the systems that automate the world, and you’re the only people who know how they work, you’re in job security plus.

Electronics is FASCINATING. There must be few other vocations where your job can also be your hobby. I loved my work and I was proud to call my self an electronics technician. And I had job security in spades. I never feared being laid off, as many were at Channel 7. Sure, I was offered voluntary redundancy and I took it, but it wasn’t because the work disappeared. They just wanted to get rid of older people and staff numbers in general. The poor guys remaining just had to take on my former workload. The work hadn’t gone away, it wasn’t made redundant.

The depressing thing was listening to the engineers being interviewed this morning. Of four people including the host, all had engineering degrees, three of them were women, one woman had a PhD, one woman was a Reserve Bank board member and the one bloke was a professor of engineering. All of them were lamenting the low level of interest in engineering as a career in Australia, the poor standard of maths teaching in schools, the low level of computer programming being taught in schools and that all the Asian countries are bursting with talent in these fields. We are going to be left way behind – we already are! As well, there’s no interest in investing in new technology in Australia. How can there be when the Coalition government is actively discouraging it.

I can’t see things changing. This country is being left behind, anyone with any drive has to go overseas and the expertise we need depends on migrants, often from Asian countries. No hope, I’m afraid.

Integrated circuits (microchips) on a silicon wafer about 20cm in diameter, before being cut up and separated. Each individual IC would be smaller than your little fingernail. They are too small to be picked up except by little suction devices.

World Health Organisation

“The former UN chief, Kofi Annan, has said Australia is a ‘free-rider’ on other countries’ efforts.”

“The economic benefits for a country from tackling climate change easily outweigh the costs, according to a study that seeks to highlight the incentives for individual nations to take urgent action to cut emissions.

“Countries stand to gain more than they would lose in economic terms from almost all of the actions needed to meet an agreed global warming limit of no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, according to the paper published by two research institutes at the London School of Economics.

“It is the latest research to underscore the apparent economic gains from limiting emissions, which include new jobs and improved health, even before the benefits of preventing dangerous climate change are taken into account.”  [The Guardian 13/7/15]

For goodness sake, taking action to mitigate climate change is a winner. Australia could be a leader – we have all the scientific and engineering expertise.

But ignoring climate change or actively sabotaging efforts to control emissions of CO2 will have harmful effects so bad that they will be irreversible and will damage the country and the world in hugely costly respects. It will not be possible to fix the problems. Already, we are being warned that sea level rise is occurring much faster than we expected. Good luck if you live on a canal side home in Mandurah.

What is so hard to understand about this?

The answer is money, as it always is. Top level executives of coal, oil and gas, mining, CO2 emitting companies are being paid huge salaries, in the millions of dollars, and they are dedicated to seeing their companies continue to produce their massive profits. Those massive profits go in dividends to shareholders. Who are the shareholders? Most of them are very wealthy people who would shout blue murder if there was any change. The remainder are owned by superannuation funds, and that’s you.

The only way any change is going to happen is if ordinary shareholders, that is members of super funds, demand action. That is, that super funds must divest from the CO2/polluting industries. This is the “Keep it in the ground” movement, where prominent people are demanding that major companies and educational institutions divest their shareholdings from the bad industries. This is the only way we’re going to make any progress in this. It only started about six months ago but it’s starting to have some effect. Read The Guardian to learn more.

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On Friday night I was running late and I thought I’d buy a Chinese takeaway for once. It would be more than three years since I did this. Why? It’s full of fat, fried this and that, white rice, all the things I’m not supposed to be eating. And I don’t.

Anyway, I ordered sezchuan squid and wontons. Total cost $22. It was bloody awful. A barbecue sauce flavoured mess of sliced celery and capsicum with chewy squid. The wontons were just folds of rice pastry, with no filling at all! Just deep fried. I threw them out. I could only eat about 1/3 of the squid and that went out too. What a waste of money on awfully cooked food. Never again from that place (Quinns).

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I was listening to ABC News Radio this morning and the interviewer was talking to a woman in Bali about the ash cloud preventing flights. First, she asked the woman to say when the ash cloud would move away – how could she predict that with any accuracy? Then she asked the woman to say how long the volcano would continue erupting and when it might stop. What??!! What a dumb question. No-one can answer that question. Dumb questions.

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Trouble sleeping in recent months. No problem getting to sleep, but I wake after about two hours and can’t get back to sleep. Sometimes I lie there for the whole remainder of the night without getting back to the land of nod, and feel terrible as a result.

So I take valerian to help. Up to now I was taking 1.2g tablets and I think they helped. But not enough, so I switched to a new brand, Blackmores 2g tablets. Wow, they really work, too well actually. I wake about 4.30am for a pee but I get straight back to sleep and don’t wake until 8 or 9am. Then I feel a bit hung over, lasting most of the day.

So it’s a puzzle – do I take the lower dose and suffer waking periods, with lots of daytime sleeping to catch up, or do I take the higher dose and wake late, feeling I’ve slept well, but losing the morning due to late waking and a hangover?

I might buy a fresh bottle of the lower dose tablets in case the existing 100 tablet bottle has lost its effectiveness – I’ve had it more than a year, I’d guess.

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Hah! I’ve been increasingly frustrated by my Logitech remote controller seeming to be low on battery charge. Constantly resetting itself and failing to control. So I figure it needs charging up. I put it on charge via the USB connector for many hours.

Each time, no good, it won’t hold charge. Bah! So this morning I thought I’d have a look at the battery. Duh! It uses two AA alkaline batteries. Replace them and bingo – it goes again. I call myself a tech? Duh.

This is what Tony Abbott wants to see for decades ahead. Why? Because they pay very, very well.

“A directive banning the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) from investing in existing wind technology will also apply to small-scale solar projects, a move that will effectively throttle the industry, the Australian Solar Council said.” [The Guardian, Sunday 12/7/15]

This is almost unbelievable. Our federal government, not content with just denying climate change and global warming, is actively sabotaging any efforts by Australian government agencies to invest in new technologies. All on the whim of one man, that lunatic Abbott.

This is so serious that this government must be actively opposed. We must take action!

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The above is the result of nearly two days’ work! What an effort it takes to cut, edit, add music, render to web video (.mp4, several times allowing for mistakes), wait an hour for it to upload, learn how to embed it here and finally see the result. This is too hard. All this for 56 seconds worth.

Anyway, it’s in Full HD so if you want to see that, click on the HD symbol bottom right. Cheers.

BTW: this was shot on a stills camera, the Sony RX10. Superb HD video. Love it. AND — it was edited in Proshow Producer, a slide show program, not a dedicated video editing program. Another stills oriented application being used for video. How things are changing.

XK Jag

I continue to be amazed at how words turn up. Yesterday I was talking to someone who used to work and live in China. We were talking about their heavy drinking and he mentioned their favourite drink called baijiu, like rice vodka.

From The Guardian this morning: “Sorghum from these [NSW] plains is in high demand in China. It’s used to produce a popular traditional white liquor called baijiu.”

I’ve never heard this word before, yet it turns up twice in two days.

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I also learnt that if you want to change the colour of a car, there’s no need to get it repainted, just get it “wrapped”. It’s a PVC based film that’s applied over the original paint and as long as the paint’s in good condition, it’s as good as a respray. It’s mainly used for advertising and signwriting on cars, vans and buses but it’s also good for a full “paint” job, and cheaper.

But when I looked it up this morning, I found that it only lasts 3-5 years. If you leave it longer, it’s hard to get off and will pull the original paint with it. It also looks as if the range of colours is limited.

I’m interested because if I buy a Mercedes, I don’t want a silver one, which most of them are. I’d like to be able to change the colour. However, I don’t think this would be the way after all.

The person who told me this has a 4-5 year old second hand Jaguar XK in his garage. See above.

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He has a serious auto-immune disease which means he’s a permanent semi-invalid and he’s decided to use his remaining time (he’s 54) and money to do what he wants. He wanted a dream car? He bought it. Yeaaaahhh.

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This vile government continues its attack on Bill Shorten and unions, while completely ignoring that its own people and Liberal Party branch organisations have consorted with known Mafia criminals in Australia! They have accepted donations from these people and a former Immigration minister in the Howard government approved a visa for a known Mafia figure.

These Mafia tentacles even extend to Perth Liberal circles. What utter hypocrisy for Liberal/Conservative voters to be criticising the ALP.

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A news report a few days ago reported the tragic deaths of some NZ children due to carbon monoxide poisoning from a car exhaust. I was struck by the names:  Pio Scarlet Jetejura Raukete;  Teuruaa Junior George;  and Telyzshaun Gordon Ricardo Nelder Kruz George.

Wow. It makes Charles Philip Arthur George (Windsor — Prince Charles) seem tame by comparison.

No, not literally. But I feel as if I was hit by a succession of blows from lunchtime on.

• I received an email from a “friend” which was a stupid American redneck “joke”, but with Bill Shorten’s name inserted in a highly derogatory way. I guess after all this time he still hasn’t realised that I’m a committed Labor person. I don’t think he’s up to the job of lecturing me about stupid. I was upset. I’ve drafted a reply, but … if I send it, relations will be strained. Damn. I’m upset. I’ve never sent anything comparable to him.
• I went to MacDonalds for lunch (and left without buying because my favourite wrap is discontinued), and was very slowly easing out of the parking area onto the side street. One car went slowly past me and stopped, so I eased forward. The traffic slowly moved so I went forward at well below walking pace. Next thing – BLAAAARRRRRRRP! A woman driver on my right who had just arrived didn’t think I should be allowed out so she leant on her horn. I could see it was a woman. Bloody hell!!!
• I went on to Hungry Jacks and turned into the parking lane in front of all the fast food shops. There was a big delivery truck parked in the lane blocking cars coming toward me. I was slowly easing past them but another woman driver (yes) in a 4WD decided she would pull out and come past the truck, leaving me with nowhere to go. I waited for her to reverse but she wasn’t going to, coming towards me on my side of the road, forcing me to reverse, which was difficult as there was a queue of cars behind me. I had no choice, she was going through and too bad about me. Bloody hell!!!

All these in quick succession left me feeling shell shocked. Bloody inconsiderate damned people.

Hmmm, my quite expensive Skagen watch has stopped. I assume the battery has died, but it’s only just over a year old and batteries should last longer than that in my experience, so it’s a bit disappointing. However, I’ve been noticing condensation on the inside of the glass, which is definitely not good. I haven’t been wearing it on my 100m deep sea dives (;-) . The only thing is, I don’t take it off when I wash my hands so it gets a little bit wet then. That shouldn’t bother a modern watch. I’m not sure how long the warranty is – I’d better check before opening it up.

Meanwhile, I’ll use one of my eight or so other watches. I have watches going back 30 years and many (all!) of them are quite nice. None of them was very expensive – this one at about $349 was my most extravagant. I like a nice watch and I’m always on the lookout.

PS: huh, it failed around 5pm yesterday, but now it’s 08:15am and it’s started working again. I hope it’s not an intermittent fault. They’re the hardest to nail.

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The car saga continues. I’m quite specific about what I want now. First choice a CL500, this one –

Second choice an SL500:

Third choice a CLK500 or CLK350:

The top first choice, the blue CL500 is on the Gold Coast, 2003 model, $39K, 118,000Km, a 5.5L AMG with supercharger. Everything’s right about it, but I worry it’s been thrashed. Why? Supercharger on a high performance 5.5L V8! And 2003 is a bit old. Probably worrying about nothing.

The next choice, the SL500 is outstanding but it’s done 145,000Km and is priced at $48,880 which is way above what I want to pay. Really nice car, though. It’s a convertible, but a hard top so my security worries don’t apply.

Finally, I thought the CLK was going to be a good compromise, but I’ve gone off them. The styling doesn’t grab me the way the other two do.

To make a deal I’d have to go to either Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane and I’m not sure I’ve got the stamina to do it these days. Very tired all the time. Lots of daytime sleeping. Diabetes? My blood sugar is quite well controlled – avg. 10. Leukemia? How would I know? Could be. Obesity? Definitely could be, and I’m having some success in reducing my weight. I’ve dropped around 8Kg from a year ago, but to do it I’m practically starving myself and I can’t seem to get any lower. Damn! It’s a vicious circle – I need more exercise, but I’m too tired to exercise.

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My position on same sex marriage? I don’t really care, it’s none of my business what other people do. That’s the point: it’s their business, no-one else’s! So kids might be affected by having two parents of the same sex? Kids are adaptable, and the effects would be far worse if the hetero parents were the bogan neanderthals we see so often who don’t know how to raise kids anyway. I cringe at some of the abuse parents shout at their kids in shopping centres. Poor kids. No wonder they grow up with development problems, and they’ve been raised in a hetero household.

Herr Abetz says it’s the thin edge of the wedge and will lead to brothers marrying sisters and utter rubbish like that. Shut up, Herr Obersturmfuhrer Abetz. It’s none of your business!

Barnaby “Bugger off” Joyce says we’ll be looked down on by our Asian neighbours. Barney, they don’t care about a trivial thing like that! You think they take any notice of silly Australian news things like that? Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, we can take the high moral ground very easily when it comes to capital punishment and corruption. I don’t think we have anything to worry about in that regard. So Barnaby, shut the f..k up and bugger off. Mind your own business.

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When the ABC Q&A furore arose, I thought the ABC had just made a mistake by including that guy in the audience without knowing he was going to speak up and ask that question. It was a simple mistake, I thought, and they shouldn’t be crapped on.

But I realised that it wasn’t a simple mistake. The producers asked him to be in the audience and they supplied him with the question! It wasn’t spontaneous – the producers told the Muslim guy what to say and ask. That’s completely different and I think the ABC deserves a lot of the criticism it’s received. That was wrong.

But the government’s response has been way over the line. It’s obvious that they are taking the opportunity to try to damage the ABC, as they always do. It’s good to see the polling that shows that the ABC is held in high regard and the government are seen as in the wrong. Good.

It is so disheartening that the government attacks the ABC simply on the basis that they don’t like the criticism and aggressive interviewing they receive, but they utterly, completely ignore the vast output of the ABC on radio and TV that is top quality and adds so much to life in this country. Abbott and company neither know nor care about The Science Show and similar programs that are so rich in information. Yet all the budget cuts are damaging these small programs and the ABC’s news coverage. I condemn this awful government.

Look at that! It’s just a fraction (1/16th, part of a 4×4 folded A1 sized) print in a railways magazine I bought yesterday. It’s an enormously detailed map of London’s railways, including the Underground, and even showing obsolete decommissioned lines. Each of those single orange lines above is actually a pair of rails, so if the drawing were even bigger, the detail would be even more fantastic. Whoever did this drawing, it’s a masterpiece. I wish I could show more but the page is enormous. I love it.

Now I’ll be able to base my layout plan on real tracks, not just my imagination, or some magazine layout.

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I’ve been meaning to write about this for a long time and I’ve seen so many examples of language lunacy lately that I think I need to speak up. There’s a list of things that are getting my goat (odd expression, isn’t it?). Here goes:

1. I listen to a lot of talkback radio and I’m driven mad (yeah, I’m round the twist) by people who can’t seem to help themselves saying, “Hi John (or George, or Fred…), how are you?” Everyone says “How are you?” For goodness sake, the announcer has said a hundred times already that he’s fine, but the next caller will still say, “How are you?” and the next, and the next.

Can’t people control what they say? Is it impossible for them to just say, “Hello Fred, in my opinion …” and stop wasting our time by requiring the announcer to tell us for the hundredth time that he’s well. Many times the callers won’t continue unless the announcer responds. They wait in silence until prompted to speak. Why must they wait? The announcer has already greeted them, they know they’re on-air, but they need to be prompted to continue. Crazy.

2. Need I say it? Iconic. It is the world’s fastest spreading cliche word. It’s a world wide epidemic. For goodness sake, an icon is a physical object. You can’t call an idea or concept iconic – they have no physical reality. You can’t say it’s “an iconic concept”. I even saw some video editing software called iconic.

It’s got so bad that i’ve started counting the number of instances of seeing ‘iconic” per day. I’ve even just read an article in an up market newspaper where iconic is used twice in the same paragraph. STOP!

3. Y’know, it’s pretty bad, y’know, where people, y’know, aren’t even y’know, aware that they’re saying, y’know, yknow?

This has also become a worldwide pestilence, but nowhere as bad as in Australia and nowhere as bad here as in sport. Listen to a sportsman speaking next time on the radio or TV and count the number of times he says “y’know”. It’s reached the stage where it’s no longer two separate words, or words run together, it’s now “yknow” with the y almost vestigial.

I listen a lot to the BBC in the early hours and even they are using these words, y’know and iconic now. It’s hopeless.

4. Phenomena. One phenomenon, two or more phenomena. Yet phenomena, the plural word, is used as the singular even by people I’d thought were good speakers. And politicians. You can’t say “This is a new phenomena.” I can’t and won’t, anyway. I know how to speak.

More to come.

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I watched the first episode of The Bletchley Girls on ABC1 last night. Actually, this is the third time through, but it’s a bit better than the average TV series these days. I’ve also just finished reading the novel Enigma, by Robert Harris. It’s based on the same place, Bletchley Park, during WW2.

It reminded me that I watched the movie The Imitation Game a couple of weeks ago too. It’s based on the book of the same name (by a Cambridge academic whose name I’ve forgotten), the biography of Alan Turing.

If you want to see the movie, I strongly recommend that you see it first before reading the book. The movie is a Hollywood hyped up travesty of the book. It’s a joke. The book is hard going at times (well, most of the time, actually), but very, very rewarding, very well written and full of detail. I was never tempted to abandon it. The movie is a single TV episode by comparison.

Then last week I watched The Theory of Everything, the movie of Stephen Hawking’s life. It’s based on the book Travelling to Infinity by his former wife Jane Hawking.

Once again, although I agree the acting was terrific, the movie was a cartoon compared to the book. It’s not inaccurate but it glosses over 75% of the book’s contents. Not even close. If you want to read the book, see the movie first and gain so much more when you read the book.

Originally I had a picture of our wonderful PM in his almost naked mode, wearing his mini swimmers, but it ws so offensive that I couldn’t bear to look at it. This is better.

The Honourable Lord Sir Anthony Rabbott VD CV AC DC MGB MGTC VC and 43 bars (of Moonee Ponds) is currently totally out of step on at least three fronts.

1. He and his henchmen, his partners in crime, are spending at least $80m of our money on a royal commission into “union corruption”. This is nothing more than an attempt to generate terrible headlines for unions and the ALP.

Union corruption? There is not a week goes by without news of corruption, fraud, financial mismanagement, embezzlement, insider trading, theft – name anything you like – in Australian management and business. Business is notorious for corruption, heavy handed tactics, exploitation of workers, price fixing and collusion, once again, anything you can think of.

No need to take my word for it. Look at what’s been happening in Coles and Woolworths with their pressure on suppliers designed to force the weaker ones to knuckle under or go out of business. Look at the news with regard to the large company John Holland in Perth. Allegedly, they have simply stopped paying their subcontractors. It’s so bad that one of them committed suicide last week! This is one of the companies we are supposed to trust, to have the interests of the workers at heart. Oh yeah?

In today’s news, the CEO and the CFO of a large pharmaceutical company knowingly cooked the books to disguise the financial trouble their firm is in. The ACCC has prosecuted. Good on ’em.

So – union corruption Tony? How about a royal commission into big business, eh? Oh, we had one of those, the Costigan royal commission in the 1980s, and it backfired spectacularly. So let’s do it again, eh? HYPOCRITE.

2. Our esteemed “Climate change is crap” PM is way out of step with his own committees. The Climate Change Authority has just released a report saying that Australia has to set a goal to reduce our emissions by around 30% by 2025 http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jul/02/australia-must-cut-carbon-emissions-by-30-by-2025-says-climate-change-authority. The commission is headed by Bernie Fraser, former head of treasury and a hugely respected bloke.

In the same week the Australian Defence Force says climate change is second only to terrorism as a threat to Australia.

But our Tones doesn’t like low emission industries or alternative energy schemes, he likes COAL. Nice, dirty, smoky, environment destroying, open cut coal mines. CO2 belching coal fired power stations, yeah. Manly things like that, that’s what Tones understands. He doesn’t get this science stuff. Too hard. Idiot.

3. He’s way out of step with the public on same sex marriage and even opposed to his own sister on it. But he’s dug his heels in and he ain’t budging, even though he likes  to wear those gay-boy budgie smugglers to show off his manly equipment. What a tool.

I could go on. There’s no end to this idiot’s lunacy. If you vote Liberal-National, you must be a fool.