Bill Farmer

Smart Meters

CALMU

Smart meters are not a new idea. I was a member of a project in the early 1980s which designed and rolled out a prototype smart meter which was far ahead of it’s time. The unit was called a CALMU (Credit and Load Management Unit). It was capable of recording electricity consumption with several tariffs, gas consumption, with a connection to a suitable gas meter and water use, with a connection to a suitable water meter. It had a remote display panel with a vacuum fluorescent display which could be mounted in a suitable position.

Mullard 5-20 Amplifier

Many years ago one of my brothers’ friends brought me a faulty military surplus valve amplifier which used 807 valves for the output. It appeared to have suffered a flashover which had destroyed much of the wiring and components inside the chassis, but the tagboards appeared to be reusable.

I had a copy of a Mullard amplifier book, Mullard Circuits for Audio Amplifiers at the time, which I subsequently lent so someone who never returned it. Just recently I found a copy online.

Handling Resizing in Windows

I have a windows app where I want the app window to maintain it’s aspect ratio when it is resized. Windows provides two mechanisms for this, the WM_SIZE message and the WM_SIZING message. The WM_SIZE message is sent when a window has been resized to allow child windows to be resized, the WM_SIZING message is sent while the user is resizing it to allow the size to be adjusted. The messages are handled in the WindowProc callback function.

Swift

Some years ago I wrote an OSX app in C using Carbon because my Hackintosh would only run OSX 10.4 (Tiger). The most difficult part was dealing with the Core Audio API.

I recently decided to port it to Swift to avoid having to attempt to learn Objective C. A derivation of C that sends selectors to targets using the syntax [target selector arguments...] I don’t want to know about.

Core Audio

Having translated the Core Audio part of the app to Swift, I discovered that part of it refused to work. The same code originally written in C works fine.

Boiled Beef and Carrots

This method can be used for any cut of beef but works very well for brisket or braising steak.

Ingredients

• Brisket joint
• 4-6 chopped onions
• 3-4 large carrots
• Olive oil
• Black pepper
• Bay leaves

Method

1. Place joint in large covered casserole or saucepan with a couple of bay leaves
2. Grind some black pepper over the joint and pour over some olive oil
3. Surround the meat with chopped onions and chopped carrots
4. Put on the lid and place in a slow oven for about 4-5 hours
5. Enjoy with roast potatoes, parsnips and green veg