Articles
How to add better comments into SQL server
26 April 2016 RaspberryPi
Whilst I'm firmly in the 'Tried and Test' camp for most things in life and I may only be new to SQL programming but there are just sometimes when I have to buck the mainstream trend and do it my way.
One of these occasions is comments in SQL, the widely adopted way would be to use the prescribed double dash -- or the widely adopted across multiple more »
How to connect a photoresistor or light dependant resistor to an ESP8266-12E
1 January 2016 RaspberryPi
Having purchased my first Raspberry Pi a couple of years ago now I've still not got round to implementing some Internet of Things (IoT). The trouble was that I wasn't really convinced it was suitable for the job as I wanted something able to be battery operated to work in remote situations as the power draw was just too great.
I liked the idea of more »
Write letters that create impact - use a personal letterhead
27 November 2015 Misc
Like most people nowdays in the modern technology filled society I rarely feel the need to write a letter, but on the rare occasion I do I want it to look professional.
It came as a suprise to me that none of my peers shared the same passion as a quick poll showed that nobody had their own personal letterhead.
As I mentioned before my snail mail more »
Musing of the day 20-Nov-2015
20 November 2015 Misc
I'm currently in Ghent for the famous 6 day race at the velodrome. The atmosphere is awesome the best inner circle is packed with beer drinking spectators enjoying the spectacle and dancing to the music the DJ is pumping out in time to the racing.
All this beer drinking has its downside though, every toilet in Belgium seems to be chargeable, even more »
Best way to optimise images and pictures to display on the web
19 November 2015 RaspberryPi
Conscious that hosting a website from a home internet connection from the Raspberry Pi may lead to slower load time than you'd want I've been working on speeding up its response.
I've always been focused on server speed throughout its whole development in a bid to speed up load times. I think I've got it cracked – but the only thing I'm more »
Musing of the day 15-Nov-2015
15 November 2015 Misc
Another 'never thought I'd say it' musing of the day, it turns out I actually found a legitimate use for facebook!
It's not that I'm against faffing on the internet - hell I'm probably one of the worst proponents, it is just beyond me why you'd want to depress yourself by endlessly scrolling through facebook as the numerous studies have proven. more »
TF2 Extreme Wet Lubricant
11 November 2015 Cycle
TF2 Extreme Wet Lubricant
Reviewed by Martin Childs
Weldite, 75ml £3.49/ 125ml £5.79 (£46 per litre)
Seriously sticky, but too much goop?
I thought I was on a winner here, an extreme wet lube with TF2 for extra slipperiness at an OK price.
Well I was just plain wrong! This stuff does live up to it's extreme moniker but it more »
How to create real time graphs of CPU temperature on a Raspberry Pi
3 November 2015 RaspberryPi
Probably heavily linked with my inner analyst, for a while now I've wanted to create some real-time graphing of some of my raspberry pi stats. I've had a couple of stabs at it but getting it to actually work has eluded me until now.
The below example guides you through how to plot your CPU temp as a graph to an image file, the code is in my github more »
The ultimate travel wine glass
26 October 2015 Misc
It was whilst perusing my local Quality Save where I happened upon an old skool jam jar for sale that my mind caught upon something but I couldn't quite figure it out....
The mason jar in question was a heavy old thing which had an integrated drinking handle, it was this that provoked my attention - I am regularly in the need of on-the-go drinking more »
Custom sprocket ratios for 9 speed Campagnolo 12-26
8 October 2015 Cycle
One of the great thing Campagnolo pays particular attention to that other manufacturers often overlook is gear ratios.
A regular rider might only notice jumps between sprockets when they are excessive such as on super wide blocks, the reason for this is that we automatically compensate for a non optimal cadence by slowing down or speeding up. The more »
How to reset the default cell formatting in an Excel spreadsheet
30 September 2015 Excel
One of the more irritating things you can come across in someones elses spreadsheet (on the basis that I've never managed to reproduce it myself) is when somehow the default style has been changed to spit out a daft format of 00:00:00 for seemingly any number.
This is especially apparant of you are a regular user of the clear formats function. It more »
Removing tissue residue on clothes from washing machine with asprin
17 September 2015 Misc
We've all done it, left a tissue or some paper in a pocket of an item of clothing and then washed it only to find all of your favourite black clothes come out covered in white flecks.
Even after you've washed it again the problem persists. The timing is probably unfortunate as well - it annoyingly happened to my faithful Tour de France T-shirt more »
Musing of the Day 9-Sep-2015
9 September 2015 Misc
I think that my work colleagues have finally worked me out!
Yesterday I was quetly working away at my desk when I felt a sneeze coming on. Sure enough it arrived and was promptly followed by the usual exchange of excusses and blessing. After which I remarked about my satisfaction of the preceeding event - it was one of those sneezes that you more »
How to make and set up a twitter bot on your own server / Raspberry Pi
12 July 2015 RaspberryPi
As a follow up from my ealier post introducing my twitter bot I thought I'd tell you how I did it and how to set one up on you own RaspberryPi or other Linux server.
How it works
It's not that tricky when you think it through, it is just hooking a few existing processes together to create your working bot. The only real tricky part for me was that more »
Best case for Canon Legria HF M506 camcorder
4 July 2015 Misc
So I got myself a new bit of tech a couple of months back, a new camcorder, primarily for our upcoming safari. This thing is genius, 50 times zoom, HD recording and a cracking optical image stabilisation.
I've been putting it through it's paces in the mean time on bird watching trips with Ali and it has been a brilliant tool for post trip analysis more »
An enhanced name manager for Microsoft Excel
26 June 2015 Excel
Named ranges are one of those marmite things in Excel, either you use them or you don't. I sit between the two camps and my utilisation depends on two things:
Firstly who the end user will be and whether they'll need to interact with them.
The other is a timesaving thing - their use will depend on if it will save me time over the long run.
My more »
Malaga to Manchester flight GPX tracklog - aborted landing
18 June 2015 Misc
This flight was a cracker, made extra special not only for the fact it was the first I was able to fully record on my GPX logger for later analysis - but for the added drama of the flight.
First off the skies that day were a bit congested so we had to do an extra loop over Warrington whist we were waiting, but next there was great excitement.
As more »
Extract a Surname from a string in Excel
10 June 2015 Excel
There comes a point in every Excel users workflow that they've got to work with a list of names. Usually the data you get is in the wrong format, or you have to compare two dataset of different formats. This can be frustrating but here is a quick guide of how to manipulate them.
This tutorial is based around extracting the surname / family name more »
The blog has now reached 50 posts!
2 June 2015 RaspberryPi
Well, I didn't think I had it in me to write so much, I'm generally not a person with much to say (this is a lot for me!).
My general interest in all things tech had always since the early days compelled me to want to make my own website, trouble is you actually need to have some content to put on it.
After a while toiling I'd decided that I'd more »
Amsterdam Schiphol to Manchester flight GPX tracklog
25 May 2015 Misc
My next blog entry from a string of flight inspired posts is another flight GPX tracklog.
This time from my weekend city break in Amsterdam. I initially thought this info might be a bit unique and interesting, but in the search to find some of the other flight details I came across Flightaware.com. It has some great info there, including to my more »
The childs.be twitterbot is alive
17 May 2015 RaspberryPi
My latest project is now live, the @childs_be twitterbot is a go.
The original idea was to have the pi tweet pictures from the barrelcam, at regular intervals. I had that running quite quickly and my attentions turned to adding functionality.
I came up with being able to tweet the server's uptime and cpu temperature, but it seemed a bit lame more »
Free water at Manchester Airport Terminal 3
9 May 2015 Misc
Another bug bear here, one of several about Manchester Airport! The biggest issue with them is pickups - the sheer cheek of charging for you to go and collect your friends and familys from the termial is bordering on criminal.
Not content with charging an arm and a leg for airlines to use the airport they impose additional pain of 'just' more »
The secrets of Alex Dowsett's hour record bike
2 May 2015 Cycle
Had an awesome time watching Alex Dowsett's excellent showing at todays world hour record attempt.
First off some stats about the bike:
Canyon Speedmax WHR custom built with track drop outs;
114inch gearing (55x11)
Continental Tempo 22mm tubulars (13-15bar pressure)
Campagnolo Pista disc wheels
Weight 7.71kg
He had a total of four frames more »
Manchester to Paris Charles de Gaulle flight GPX tracklog
1 May 2015 Misc
I don't fly that often so it took me a while to perfect the technique of logging my aeroplane journeys, but I've now cracked it and am getting good results so long as I've got a window seat.
Back in the early days of my Windows mobile powered HTC phones I had GPS available to me but unfortunately this was so early on in the smartphone era that use more »
Display your server uptime on your website
23 April 2015 RaspberryPi
If you host your own server and website like myself, you'll probably want to distplay your current uptime somewhere on your site. You are in luck, it is easy....
It uses the Linux command uptime and strips the unecessary gubbins from the output string:
$ uptime
This results contains some useful info including number of users logged on and more »
How to log your own IP
4 April 2015 RaspberryPi
Call me paranoid but ever since the antics of ACS:Law in the noughties I've been logging my IP address, it is not because I'm am an illegal downloader, my intrigue came about from the thought of how you would prove that you didn't if I was wrongly accused.
Stay with me here, but think of the things that can go wrong in the chain of collecting more »
How to display Flickr images on your own website
28 March 2015 RaspberryPi
I've struggled for a long time trying to find a way to elegantly and simply display my flickr photos on my site. Up 'til now I've had to stick with slideshow apps from other websites like flickriver.
This is until I found this blueimp Gallery when I was looking for some lightbox coding for my website. I didn't end up using the blueimp lightbox more »
How to add a copyright tag to your photos quickly
20 March 2015 Misc
One of the first things I do in my photography workflow is to add a copyright to it.
My favourite and easy way of doing this is with a simple self created drag and drop file. It uses Exiftool which if you haven't heard of before is a massively useful command line tool for working with the meta data of your photos.
In an upcoming post I'll be more »
Slow cooker goulash
12 March 2015 Recipes
Slow Cooker Goulash Recipe
By Martin Childs
Authentic tasting, easy and tweakable from a soup to a hearty main meal.
My first experience of this popular Hungarian dish was during a trip to Budapest to visit a friend. We we stopped for a bite to eat having visited the Royal Palace.
I'm a fan of sampling the local cuisine when we are more »
How to make a Shimano disc brake bleed spacer block
4 March 2015 Cycle
The official bleed spacer is both really expensive to buy for what it is and hard to come by.
Have a look at Shimano tech docs site, here you can see the official tech sheet detailing bleeding spacer you need. You may get lucky at your local bike shop, if you ask nicely they may have one to spare. If you want to save a few pounds and make one more »
Creating hyperlinks in Excel that are relative & actually work
25 February 2015 Excel
If you've ever tried to create a hyperlinks in excel you'll know what a pain they are.
The hyperlink tool on the Insert ribbon is quite useful, but it is a pain to create a lot of them. The big problem however is that they are not relative - if you add more columns or rows suddenly your hyperlink is pointing to the wrong place.
You could use the more »
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