Arts
Painting Things
Around Easter in 2017 I got hold of Warlord Game’s skirmish game set in ancient Japan, Test of Honour, bit of a bolt from the blue really. Bought it as much to support my local [more…]
Hobbies
Engineering
Making A Ruby Laser – Part Three
More information on laser speckle can be found here: Speckle pattern A Mirror Alignment Tool The most important part of constructing a ruby laser (or any laser with external mirrors) are getting the mirrors alligned [more…]
Hobbies
The Fields Medal
“Rise above oneself and grasp the world” These are awarded every four years for advancement in the field of mathematics. There is an age limit of 40 on the recipients. It is a recognition of [more…]
Hobbies
Euler’s Totient Function
Euler’s totient function counts the number of positive integers up to that are relatively prime to , where is considered to be relatively prime to all . These numbers are called the totatives of . [more…]
Animals
Do You Like Chillies?
In the comments which nobody reads I often post photos of my parrots. In some photos I’ve posted they’re eating chillies. Some people have asked why I feed my birds hot chillies every day and [more…]
Engineering
Making A Ruby Laser – Part Two
(a ruby rod lit by two bright blue LEDs. Due to the IR filter in my camera the pink colour is actually red. What you are seeing is the absorption of the blue light and the [more…]
Arts
Postcard From the Brecon Beacons Visitor Centre
The Brecon Beacons Visitor Centre, known locally as the Mountain Centre, is not far from the village of Libanus as you drive up the A470 towards the town of Brecon. The drive up itself is [more…]
Hobbies
Solving Cryptic Crosswords – Some Hints
A Puffin asked in the comments recently if someone could do a post on this, as he had always been interested in having a go at them but didn’t know where to start. So here [more…]
Engineering
Making A Ruby Laser – Part One
Introduction For many years the Doc has had the desire to attempt the construction of a ruby laser. After six months of hard work, disappointment, late nights, lots of booze and a drained bank account [more…]