Cycling to work

OK, after way, way too long I actually fixed my bike. All that was wrong was a puncture, but after a couple of weeks of not getting round to it, I started feeling like maybe it was going to be more of a slog than it was, and then I was overtaken by Christmas and house moving.

And then yesterday it was a bit too snowy to want to cycle to work. But today I did, for the first time in way too long, and it was really nice.

The route is quite good, except for starting by having to cross Barnwell Road, and ending by having to do a U-Turn to go up the curvy cycle bridge.

There were a few patches of ice when I cut through the side of Midsummer Common, but I'm assuming entropy will take care of them.

Bike light statefulness resumed

I tried popping the battery a dozen times. Each time the light was on beforehand, it was on when the battery went back in. Each time it was off beforehand, it was off when the battery went back in, but came on when I pressed the button.

I tried leaving the batteries out for half an hour once in each state and it still resumed "on" or "off" as appropriate.

Now, that was very informal, so it's quite likely that I biased the test by seeing what I expected to see at some point. But it seems that it's deliberate, not (a) it defaults to always-on if the connection is interrupted (b) there's a residual signal without being deliberately designed that way (c) it's random, etc.

I agree that it makes sense that it's designed that a brief interruption in power doesn't turn the light off (or on) so if it's jolted you're not cycling in the dark. But I'm surprised that it can remember.

What's most likely? Is it plausible there's a capacitor acting as a single bit of persistent memory? Or powering a flip-flop (for 8 hours?). Or is something else a simpler implementation of one bit of non-volatile memory?

On trying to be less disorganised

When I was putting things in drawers and cupboards, in the new house, I realised that one reason my house had always been cluttered was that I didn't have a good system dealing with papers and other things, or for where to store stuff I regularly used.

That meant, if there was anything I used regularly (eg. keys, wallet, etc) or needed to reply to (eg. bills, other post), I couldn't put it in a drawer because if I did, it would get muddled up with all the rest of piles of clutter and get lost and never used.

That meant it always had to stay out, on the table or the sideboard, and then stayed there forever.

Now, I designated a drawer for "stuff I use every day" and "newly arrived post", on the understanding that if I stayed fairly up to date, it didn't matter if it was out of sight, it would get dealt with, and not need to stay haunting my forebrain with its presence in order to do so. Thus, my living room is (for the first time basically ever) reasonably tidy -- nothing is on flat surfaces, except things that are supposed to be (birthday cards, coasters, etc).

Poohsoc 20-ish anniversary

Poohsoc is proposing a 20th anniversary dinner, mainly for alumni. There was a really low response, though, and Ed was a bit depressed organising it if he wasn't sure if anyone would want to come, so for any old members of poohsoc who aren't on the alumni mailing list, if you want to express an interest you should email committee@poohsoc.org.uk

CUSFS and CTS were also organising a big anniversary dinner of some sort in 2013, but I don't have those email addresses handy, but if you're interested you should be able to find a committee email list on the websites.