aemay productions

Leaky Battery

Alistair — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:08:45 +0000

Tesco Value battery (technically, a 1.5V “cell”). Corroded torch I intended for emergency use. Leaking corrosive juices over the contents of the boot of my car. Interesting colours. Perhaps it overheated, or froze. The Duracell ones were OK. Ruined torch.

Please, I want to buy something from you.

Alistair — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:53:11 +0000

A good part of my professional life is spent trying to locate and buy electronic components, as it has been for the past 11 years. This usually involves googling what I want, and then despatching an email to the manufacturer, asking for further details or a quotation. Often I’m ready to buy parts there and then.

You’d think it would be easy. You’d think that you could just email them, get a quote, and then buy the parts. You’d think they’d be eager for your business. Wrong. About 50% of my RFI (requests for information) or RFQ (requests for quotation) don’t get fulfilled. This is what I see companies doing:

1. Putting the wrong email address on their website. One component manufacturer I asked for a quotation put a ’sales@….co.uk’ email address on their website. That email address, it transpired, went into a black hole, as they had only implemented the ‘.com’ email address.

2. Taking forever responding to a quote. The same manufacturer kept emailing back saying “we’re waiting for the factory to respond”. I’ve yet to receive a price – two weeks later.

3. On the phone, saying that someone from sales will call back later, as they’re at lunch. Then forget to call back.

4. Putting a broken search box on their website. About 50% of the time I can be holding the part from a manufacturer in my hand, yet their website will deny it exists. For example, entering “ABC-123-A” will get no hits, but “ABC123-A” will.

5. Like (4) but when I try to search for a product, I get 1261 results, including the one about a boring “global strategy for corporate social responsibility” and how they are sponsoring the local football club. I don’t care.

6. Having no information on their website AT ALL about products that they sell. That’s right – no “Products” link. A LCD manufacturer is doing this – I have one of their LCDs, but can find no data on it. Plenty of other stuff though – including a list of directors and their career history, corporate social responsibility (again) and suchlike.

7. For common stock items, not including any prices on their website. I always gravitate to websites that have prices next to the parts, as I don’t have to go through the boredom of obtaining a quote. It also indicates they’re not a ‘wheeler-dealer’ type outfit with special overly-complex pricing ‘deals’.

8. Having parts that don’t actually exist, or are never in stock. Some IC manufacturers are guilty of this.

I continue to be astonished at how difficult some companies make it to buy things from them.

Loyal customer? That’ll be 53% more, please.

Alistair — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:41:15 +0000

Usually, if you’re a long-term loyal customer of a business, they will do a lot to retain your custom. Supermarkets offer a discount in the form of loyalty points. Other on-line retailers to a similar thing.

I’ve noticed that insurance companies play the opposite tactic. They try and automatically renew your cover after a year, but with a hugely increased premium.

An example would be the AA. I received a letter telling me they would “simply collect £107.50″ from my credit card for the next year’s car vehicle break-down cover.

Except, the price on www.theaa.com is £70. And their competitor (the RAC) is £71.25.

The small print on the reverse side of the renewal letter breaks the £107.50 down into £85.50 insurance, and £22.00 for “arranging and administering your AA membership”. That’s right – £22.00 for not doing anything, plus £15.50 above the normal price for the insurance itself.

So, for being a loyal customer for over 12 years, never once calling them to a breakdown, they sneakily try and charge me £37.50 extra

Cheers for that, AA – and if you’re reading, that’s why I’m no longer your customer.

More Snow Animals

Alistair — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:46:34 +0000

Poor cold little animals in the garden. The squirrel unburied a frozen walnut from the hard, frozen compost of a plant-pot. The Starling’s haven’t emigrated, and they’re costing me about £1 a day in RSPB high-energy suet sprinkles (they won’t eat the cheaper variety). The ground-feeding blackbird has to rummage in the snow for food.

Snow

Alistair — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:00:23 +0000

I managed to take quite a lot of photos in the recent snow (18th to 20th December). These were taken around Knapwell and Hardwick/Comberton, Cambridgeshire. Most photos employed a Canon 17-40mm on a 5dMk2 body. Some used a Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6. I didn’t use a tripod – mostly because there is plenty of light on snowy days. Snow throwing and acrobatics courtesy of Robjn (who tolerated endless repeat takes due to my amateur fumblings with focus, aperture, iso, etc).

Tip: in some browsers, such as Safari, you can right-click on the image and open it in its own window – which allows you to view it at a higher resolution.

Snow Animals

Alistair — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 08:00:06 +0000

The recent snow caused a plethora of otherwise hidden birds to emerge, looking for food. Luckily for them I had stuffed by back garden with plenty.

Robin
Dunnock
Collared Dove
Male Blackbird
Male Chaffinch
Bluetit
Starlings

… all in the course of about 2 hours.

Spider Mites

Alistair — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:15:27 +0000

I went to open my recycling bin this afternoon, only to notice that it was covered in little crawling creatures. Each creature was about 0.5mm long, and a light fawn colour. At first I thought the bin had been covered with mould, sugar, or some other powder. Then I noticed the little particles could walk! I believe they are spider mites, or “Acari”.

If I touched the mites, a small ball would form at the tip of my finger. The ball would then roll very slowly down the swarm, gathering more mites as it rolled, and then fall onto the ground. They felt sticky and soft to the touch. I gathered some in a jam jar and took them to my lab for examination under a microscope. I don’t have a proper camera for my microscope, so I just pointed the camera down the eyepiece. It worked surprisingly well:

I also managed to video them:

Mites on bin (more, through microscope) from aemay on Vimeo.

Mites on bin (through microscope) from aemay on Vimeo.

Here they are on the bin. Click on full-screen to get a better view of them moving:

Mites on bin from aemay on Vimeo.

Brass Recording

Alistair — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:48:42 +0000

This weekend we recorded brass overdubs for Beth’s album. Andy conducting. Paul on Trumpet. John on Trombone. Jackie on Sax. Beth on Flute.
Four spot AKG C414 ULS (settings: flat, cardioid, -12dB attenuation) and two AKG C451B overheads, 88.2kss/s into a Mac. I used Logic 8 on this occasion, as Logic 9.0.0 is too buggy for reliable field use. The existing audio to be overdubbed onto was temporarily bounced to 2-track, to reduce processor load. I drove the musician headphones from Logic this time (rather than a mixing desk zero-latency sub-mix), allowing me to add a little bit of ‘large room’ reverb to instruments, which helped a lot with making the overdubbing feel natural.

RSPB Fowlmere

Alistair — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:00:00 +0000

Didn’t see any birds (except hundreds of crows, which weren’t strictly speaking on the RSPB estate!). Lots of nice berries, though. Especially deadly nightshade. I’ve never seen this in fruit before. The black berries look very sinister.

Summer on Wicken Fen

Alistair — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 19:40:06 +0000

Wicken Fen is a National Trust site that is mostly covered in sedge. The soil is typical fen soil: dark and peaty. There were lots of interesting plants and dragonflies. The latter were too ephemeral to photograph, though I did get a photo of a Sedge Warbler.

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