Water wheel Art Fashion in Brunei

Forecourt Fountain in Gadong Brunei

Spent a few days in Brunei just now.  Invensys has longstanding customers and installations there.

 

The hotel forecourt in Gadong had an interesting water feature. Curious I went out into the early morning sunshine and was attracted to it's design combination of Arabic and Asian ideas.

 

Soon, there came a young lady dressed in a kind of brightly colored neon Arabic dress who was carefully cleaning around the outside of the fountain. Curious to see the dynamics of the fountain, I leaned over the edge to try to rotate the chrome plated water wheels on the sides of the dry glass columns.

 

"Does this fountain have water in it sometimes ?" I asked, kind of worried that I was probably not supposed to be messing around with the little water wheels, and maybe it was guests like me that broke it in the first place.

 

"I don't know.. but how are you Sir?", she said, smiling and happy conversing with a strange guy in a suit and tie, balanced on the parapet of the obviously dry water feature.

 

"Clearly a maintenance issue" I thought. "At least the wheels still turn !" I said.

 

"Yes, It was nice talking to you !" she said.  "Hope to see you again !"

 

Next time I must wear some brightly colored neon shirt and jump in !

 

 

 



More thoughts on the Hyperloop

Dear Hyperpassengers,



Static Electricity Demonstration in a Tube

Enjoyed reading the Hyperloop Alpha document on the slow old train yesterday. I had a few extra thoughts about some features not yet documented.

Static Electricity
The tube pressure is like stratospherically low.  About 1/1000th outside air pressure.  Such a low pressure would result in a extremely hyper dry air inside the tubes, since it is also significantly lower than the vapour pressure of water at that same temperature.  The pods in the hyperloop will carry us forward at sub-sonic .98 Mach speeds in a near vacuum. The electrodynamics and impact of the ultra-dry air inside the tube are not represented in the Alpha document so far. Look forward to gold plated pods which would conduct well enough to reduce the static effects transferred to the inside of the pods.  Love those electric fields in the lab, but you would not want the trip to be too hair raising.

The Sydney Canberra Aeolian Hyper Boomer Loop - Perfect Timing

Dear Bloggers,

Rail and Telegraph : The Overland Telegraph Australia originally joined 1872

I'm excited by news of Elon Musk's Hyperloop, the 'Air' tube building on the inspiration of the Medhurst Aeolian Engine from early 1800s. Political and Economic roadblocks [can you have a roadblock for a Hyperloop ?] could easily be circumvented if Elon brought the idea through to Australia. What better place to try an Aeolian solution than a high speed link between Sydney and Canberra ?

Perhaps you've been reading the naysayer's commentary, or otherwise following it on twitter. My suggestion is to follow @mollywood 's great CNET article on that topic. There is a right time for an idea as well, the drive technology has to be right, the need, the public readiness for change and the materials technology has to be economic.  When all these factors line up, then you can see the right things happening.  I'll admit Right of Way can be costly, but this should not be a problem in Australia between Sydney and Canberra at least.

A Tale of Two Genius

2 genii speak key notes at automation events next month.

Whether you get your 'Spurs' on for the  Foxboro Triconex Global User Conference, San Antonio, or swing with the 'Saints' down at the ISA Sales and Marketing Conference in New Orleans. You just can't decide ? Never mind !.  Come to both events. Two great industrial automation events in one week. It's tough but it can be done.  Automation, once the province of enlightened engineers and university research bodies, now extends to professionals and amateurs in myriads of plants and small enterprises world wide. We've all become part of a global community alike through the ubiquity of the Internet.  We all can share information, ideas, translations and comment on progress of ideas daily.  Social networking has allowed people like myself in far flung corners of the world to connect and interact immediately with nearly anyone who can speak the language.  So how then do user groups and conferences play out in relation to their new online world ?

Lawbreaking - In a P.E.R.F.E.C.T. way !



In 2009 The DARPA Red Balloon Challenge made headlines, but I didn't take a lot of notice at the time.  I didn't see any red balloons either.

However...

In Oct 2012 : MilitaryAerospace' Editor John Keller reported on the  advent of PERFECT.

The DARPA Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) last week awarded a $6.3 million contract to SRI International in Princeton, N.J.; and an $8.7 million contract to Reservoir Labs Inc. in New York for the Power Efficiency Revolution For Embedded Computing Technologies (PERFECT) program, which seeks to overcome power efficiency barriers that limit the capabilities of military embedded systems.

Englebart and Bose As We Might Think and hear Mr Mouse..

As we might think of them...

This last month, July 2013 saw the passing of two great American electrical engineers of our mum's and dad's generation. We read obits. about Amar Bose and Doug Engelbart, both pioneers of the development of new technology for our next industrial information revolution.