Electro-ramblings

• Kionix unveils Tri-Axis accelerometer


• Few disagreements on 4G licensing, says Qualcomm


• Canada's No.1 semiconductor company to be formed in May

An Engineer in Wonderland has a new home. You can find this particular entry here. If you wish to leave a comment, please do that on the new blog.

An Engineer in Wonderland has a new home. You can find this particular entry here. If you wish to leave a comment, please do that on the new blog.

The first thing I learned was that there is so much more to the job than I thought there would be, so hats off to anyone who gives up their time, usually for free, to do this stuff.

The second thing I learned was that everyone who had already had a go at officiating has stories of school events where angry parents have marched up to them to either argue about, or even corrupt, a judgement.

An Engineer in Wonderland has a new home. You can find this particular entry here. If you wish to leave a comment, please do that on the new blog.

Turns out that Her Majesty's subjects have broken yet another land speed record - this time the wind powered one - in a rather nice looking vehicle.

From the press release:

On the morning of March 26th, on the dry Lake Ivanpah, the Ecotricity Greenbird driven by British engineer, Richard Jenkins smashed the world land speed record for wind powered vehicles.

The Greenbird clocked 126.1 mph (202.9 km/h), eclipsing the old, American held, record of 116 mph , set by Bob Schumacher in the Iron Duck in March 1999 at the same location.

It also looks like the same team is going to try it on ice.

Good luck gentlefolk

'Alice'

Ps, there is a bit more information here.

Respond below, or to alice@electronicsweekly.com

An Engineer in Wonderland has a new home. You can find this particular entry here. If you wish to leave a comment, please do that on the new blog.

I was playing I Spy the other night and failed to guess that A stood for Air.

I protested that you can't see air.

But it was pointed out that heat haze and twinkling stars are a result of refractive index variations, so therefore you can see air.

Which got me pondering, as G for Glass is probably legitimate in I Spy.

So now I can cannot decide, in any scientifically defendable way, whether A for Air is cheating or not.

Or maybe I am not supposed to take I Spy so seriously.

'Alice' - a pedant who suffers in a world of inexactitude

Reply below, or to alice@electronicsweekly.com

An Engineer in Wonderland has a new home. You can find this particular entry here. If you wish to leave a comment, please do that on the new blog.

So I decided to put some lower gears on my bicycle.

The buying process was complex enough
- it turns out that it is easy to get it wrong:

An Engineer in Wonderland has a new home. You can find this particular entry here. If you wish to leave a comment, please do that on the new blog.

On More or Less - a programme about numbers - it drew my attention to a book on sustainable energy by David MacKay, a Cambridge professor who said he wanted to get to the bottom of the world's energy balance, and did, and he wrote it all down.

The book is called 'Sustainable Energy - without the hot air', and can be bought in paper form or, most generously on the part of MacKay, downloaded for free as a .pdf.

This is one of two 5MW deep water wind turbines constructed by Talisman Energy (UK)

An Engineer in Wonderland has a new home. You can find this particular entry here. If you wish to leave a comment, please do that on the new blog.

Now it turns out they can be a little bit compound, and incorporate reflective focussing.