All posts by Alistair Lattimore

About Alistair Lattimore

My name is Alistair Lattimore, I'm in my very early 30's and live on the sunny Gold Coast in Australia. I married my high school sweet heart & we've been together for longer than I can remember. Claire and I started our family in September 2008 when Hugo was born and added a gorgeous little girl named Evie in May 2010. You can find me online in the typical hangouts, Google+, Twitter & facebook. .

Nano Quadrotors

Videos

In January 2010 I wrote about an amazing radio controlled four rotor helicopter known known as the Parrot AR.Drone, which utilised the iPhone gyroscope, touch screen and built in wifi to produce the most amazing flying toy I’d seen at the time.

Two years have passed and now the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania with development by KMel Robotics have miniturised the same basic concept to produce nano quadrotor helicopters.

As you’ll see in the video, a lot has changed and they possess some amazing built in technology, such as being able to right themselves when thrown into the air, along with clever algorithms to control moving between obstacles, flying in formation and much more.

I think this is absolutely mind blowing, least of which because they’d make an amazing toy but mainly because it represents a huge leap forward in robots and sensing, a lot like the self driving cars that Google have developed.

Amazing.

Dusty

Hardware

Intel CPU & Heat Sink Clogged With DustI got home from work and Hugo met me in the garage like normal and he says to me:

I’m grumpy!

After checking with Claire about why he might be grumpy, it turned out it was because the computer kept freezing when he was trying to watch one of his favourite shows via ABC 4 Kids.

Claire tells me that it did it a few times and that at some point, the computer was giving her a temperature warning – which I haven’t seen since the days of overclocking CPU’s.

A quick investigation shows that the fan & heat sink for the CPU are covered in dust. The photo probably doesn’t do it justice but the heat sink is completely filled in with dust and the fan blades are coated as well.

I clean everything up with a small stiff bristle paint brush, which Claire graciously let me use and we’re back in business. Claire walks past the computer and on the way to the bedroom tells me that the computer is making a weird humming sound.

Further investigation shows that it isn’t anything usual except that the CPU fan can actually spin properly now as it isn’t being restricted by the dust between it and the heat sink and the additional weight of it caked on the underside of the fan blades.

2011 Blogging Statistics

Blogging

At the beginning of 2011, I wrote about how my 2010 blogging efforts and in keeping with that trend – below are my 2011 blogging statistics.

POSTS AVG. POST LENGTH TOTAL POST LENGTH COMMENTS AVG. COMMENTS
2004 1 478 487 0 0.0
2005 82 1949 159835 511 12.9
2006 103 1837 189259 865 4.5
2007 127 1977 251150 229 1.3
2008 68 1597 108623 78 0.8
2009 77 2114 162804 104 0.9
2010 81 2147 173969 105 1.4
2011 58 1737 100779 144 1.5

In 2009 I had aimed for between seven and eight posts per month, which I didn’t quite make and in 2010 I thought if I had pushed myself I could average slightly over eight and break through the magic 100 posts per year marker but I still haven’t managed it yet. While my number of posts is down, along with my average post length – I am happy that the number of comments has increased slightly over previous years.

For those that are interested in doing the same, I’ve made the blogging statistics SQL script available for you to use.

30 Day Report: Drink 2 Litres Of Water Daily

Life

For the month of November, I attempted my first 30 day challenge and it was to drink 2 litres of water daily.

I didn’t think it would have been that hard to drink 2 litres of water each day but I found it to be quite a lot of water to consume during a normal day.

What I did find was that it was really easily to consume the water in days that I attended the gym, where in some instances I’d do over three litres in a day but then over a weekend I’d do a bit less than 2 litres.

Over the course of the month I averaged 1.95 litres per day, so I didn’t reach the challenge goal. However, given that it was such a massive increase from my close to zero daily water intake, I’m actually going to chock it up as a success.

One thing that it didn’t seem to slow down was my coffee intake and I mentioned to Claire that might be one of my next challenges – no coffee or caffeine for a month, yowzer!

31st Birthday

Life

Wholly schmolly, I’m now officially 31!

My birthday started with with Claire, Hugo & Evie greeting me in bed. Hugo ran into the room and wished me happy birthday for the first time, which is more than a little bit special.

Claire found some beautiful paper and ribbon to wrap my presents in, it was a shame to unwrap them really but you’re forced to on your birthday – hehe. I was incredibly spoiled for presents from the family this year & received:

  • a brown denim pair of shorts & a pair of nice shirts
  • Steve Jobs biography
  • Mission Impossible 3 & The Social Network on DVD
  • Lindt chocolates
  • iPhone dock

After presents it seemed reasonable to bring our weekend ritual of McDonald’s for breakfast forward a day, which while Hugo doesn’t understand days of the week yet – he was more than happy about.

Unlike virtually every other year, we broke tradition and didn’t visit Hogs Breath Cafe for lunch and instead made our way down to a new, local cafe called Luv-A-Coffee not to far from our place. Sterle, Lorraine & Jean joined us for lunch which was great, especially since Sterle was feeling under the weather. I’d only been there once before for morning tea but the coffee & cake was delicious. Lunch certainly didn’t disappoint, I had a ‘small’ serving of spaghetti bolognaise and it was more than I needed for lunch.

After lunch we rolled our way back to our place, enjoyed a chocolate cake that Claire made and Hugo decorated with purple sprinkles & fire fighting candles to top if off. The cake was really nice, Hugo & Evie certainly enjoyed it yesterday and today.

For the afternoon we stayed at home, watched Robots on DVD which is one of Hugo’s favourites at the moment and mucked around at home. Late last night I ventured out to the movies with Shea to see Tower Heist featuring Eddie Murphy & Ben Stiller which was a good watch.

A quick thank you to all my family, extended family & work colleagues for calling or sending me an SMS and also to everyone that dropped me a line on instant messenger and facebook as well – well wishes on your birthday are fantastic.

Onward and upward, 32 next year!