the house of squiggles

Little Unk has claimed my study as her territory.

Well actually, I persuaded her to move from living under my bed to having a cozy residence in a suspension file storage box with an entrance cut into the end and lined with a folded towel, on one of the desks in the study. Unk is a very fast learner, the first time she and Vella were face to face (about half a metre apart) Vella hissed and gave a very low pitched gutteral growl. Unk was sort of taken aback by this, but then repeated the display back at Vella. Now Unk always seems to be the first to give out the hiss, and start growling. She does this whenever Vella decides to stick her head into Unk’s study.

For anyone trying to visit this website yesterday, you probably found it not working. It seems that Unk had tried to climb a bundle of CAT 5 cables that run from the floor up to the shelf where the main network switch lives. In doing this, she managed to dislodge one of the plugs…… yep, no internet service to the network in The House of Squiggles was the end result. I am going to fit a strain relief bracket so that the weight of the cables is not pulling on the plugs and sockets on the rear of the network switch. 20 lengths of CAT 5 cables that run 1.5M vertically can be quite heavy……. but then again, when a cat is climbing the bundle they get even heavier!

As you can see from the above photo, when Vella is not around Unk is quite relaxed. She is a very affectionate cat and just loves being patted and climbing on me.

Sorry folks, my broadband connection is on a go slow until the end of May…………

Please be patient, pages will take longer than normal to download.

Sometimes the timing of things seem to be ‘just right’.

One day early last week someone had put a small story up onto a newsgroup that I read about how they came to name a cat Unk. The story goes that this person had managed to have themselves adopted by a stray cat, and had accompanied said cat to the Vet for a checkup and to get it’s injections. When the vet asked what the cat’s name was the guy told the vet that he hadn’t named the cat yet, so the vet wrote “UNK” (short for UNKNOWN) in the name field on the cat’s file……. Well the bloke thought this was an OK name, so the cat became known as Unk.

Well, I have managed to have myself adopted by a small Tabby and White cat that had been living rough in the Point Cook area. Seeing as this cat is of Unknown age, Unknown parentage, and I couldn’t think of a name……. she has become my “Unk”.

I say she, but I am not quite sure yet. I have managed to pat her a few times, and give her rubs around the ears, but not been able to pick her up yet. She was after all living the life of a feral cat.

So, it’s interesting times at The House of Squiggles, with introductions between Unk and Vella. To say the least, Vella is not impressed!

Apologies for the image quality… my mobile phone camera is not very good! These photos were taken while Unk and I were getting to know each other, before she moved into The House of Squiggles.

Above: Unk in stalking mode.

Unk sitting and trying to decide if she likes me. She was purring like a little motorboat when I took the above picture.

An updated image of the Geranium featured a couple of months ago.

Another WICEN activation. This time providing communications for the canoe leg of a Tri-Athlon event.

The MARS Challenge starts off at Soverign Hill in Ballarat with a little run to Mt Bunningyong, a mere 20 km, where the unfortunate individuals who have chosen to undertake this torture hop merrily on their bicycles to cycle to Geelong, which is like a little ride in the park at 79 km. Just in case they are not tired yet, it’s time to board a canoe and paddle 32 km, yes folks 32 kilometers down the Barwon River to finally end with a 50 metre ’sprint’ to the finish line!

Did I say sprint to the finish line…… some people actually did just that! There were a few people who are probably ordinary mortals and they could only just manage a casual walk to the finish line after pulling their poor battered bodies out of the canoe.

Again, being a sedate ‘Geek’, I took up my position sitting on a comfy chair, with my radio and thermos of coffee at the Finish Line on the beach in Barwon Heads. Some great company was provided by a small group of fellow Radio Operators and as usual ‘A great day was had by all’.

The view of the Finish Line from our position under the brolly seen below.

We weren’t very hard to find….. all you had to do was look up!

The antenna I used was a 4 element Yagi mounted atop my portable 7 metre tall mast. I manufactured this antenna with the guidance of Graham VK3XGD during a club construction project with the Geelong Radio and Electronics Society (GRES).

P.S, we didn’t loose any of the athletes, nor did we have any disasters requiring us to call for medical assistance.

Being out and about and socializing with people is one of those activities that I quite enjoy at times.

I say ‘at times’ as there are also times where socializing is NOT the thing I want to do. Well this was one of the times that I quite enjoyed being around people. I like to have a reason to be at whatever location I find myself at, this time I was providing communications for one of the checkpoints on a mountain bike ride through the Wombat State Forest. The Melbourne Bicycle Touring Club runs this event each year in the middle of Autumn (Fall) hence the name…. MAD Bike Ride, the acronym actually stands for Mid Autumn Days Bike Ride, but heck the way some of these folks push themselves so hard, I think the acronym fits!

I am a casual member of a group of Amateur Radio Operators called WICEN, the Wireless Institute Civil Emergency Network. Events like the MAD Bike Ride are used as an exercise to practice our message handling techniques, as well as making sure our portable two way radio gear is fully operational. I was allocated to be with the people running the morning tea stop on the Mountain Bike course. We were located at the Firth Park picnic ground in the Wombat Forrest a few km south west of Mt Macedon. The weather was beautiful, which is quite common here in Victoria during Autumn.

The above image was taken during a few quiet moments at the checkpoint. A campfire was necessary as it was quite cool first thing in the morning…. actually with an event like this a campfire is necessary anyway. It just adds that certain touch to proceedings.

As the saying goes, “A great day was had by all”,…. well except for the 2 guys who ended up with broken collar bones! The check point before me, and the one after mine both had to call for ambulance attendance due to these injured riders. OUCH!!!!

A first-grade teacher, Ms. Brooks, was having trouble with one of her students. The teacher asked, “Harry, what’s your problem?” Harry answered, “I’m too smart for the 1st grade. My sister is in the 3rd grade and I’m smarter than she is! I think I should be in the 3rd grade too!” Ms. Brooks had had enough. She took Harry to the principal’s office.

While Harry waited in the outer office, the teacher explained to the principal what the situation was. The principal told Ms. Brooks he would give the boy a test. If he failed to answer any of his questions he was to go back to the 1st grade and behave. She agreed.
Harry was brought in and the conditions were explained to him and he agreed to take the test. Principal: “What is 3 x 3?”
Harry: “9.”
Principal: “What is 6 x 6?”
Harry: “36.”

And so it went with every question the principal thought a 3rd grader should know.
The principal looks at Ms. Brooks and tells her, “I think Harry can go to the 3rd grade.”

Ms. Brooks says to the principal, “Let me ask him some questions.”
The principal and Harry both agreed.

Ms. Brooks asks, “What does a cow have four of that I have only two of?”
Harry, after a moment: “Legs.”

Ms Brooks: “What is in your pants that you have but I do not have?”
The principal wondered why would she ask such a question!
Harry replied: “Pockets.”

Ms. Brooks: “What does a dog do that a man steps into?”
Harry: “Pants.”

Ms. Brooks: What starts with a C, ends with a T, is hairy, oval, delicious and contains thin, whitish liquid?”
Harry: “Coconut.”
The principal sat forward with his mouth hanging open.

Ms. Brooks: “What goes in hard and pink then comes out soft and sticky?”
The principal’s eyes opened really wide and before he could stop the answer, Harry replied, “Bubble gum.”

Ms. Brooks: “What does a man do standing up, a woman does sitting down and a dog does on three legs?”
Harry: “Shake hands.”
The principal was trembling.

Ms. Brooks: “What word starts with an ‘F’ and ends in ‘K’ that means a lot of heat and excitement?”
Harry: “Firetruck.”

The principal breathed a sigh of relief and told the teacher, “Better make Harry Principal….. I got the last seven questions wrong.”

The cactus has done its trick again…….

The flower bud grows over a couple of days, then during the last day of bud development the bud starts to open in the late afternoon. By early evening the flower is starting to open. Obviously these plants rely on the night insects for their pollination as the flower is dying by the next morning.

These photos were snapped at about 8 AM the morning after the flower had been in full bloom. (I must try and get a photo at about 5 AM the next time it flowers!)

I am very glad I attended the Centre Victoria Radiofest in Kyneton yesterday.
The technical lectures I sat in on were excellent, I was particularly interested in the PicaStar software defined radio project. It sounds like something I would get a great deal of joy out of being involved in…….. I just hope the EMDRC are still running a construction group in 12 months or so, when I may be in a position to afford purchasing the components and pre-made circuit boards to enable me to build one.

For anyone interested in further information, join the Yahoo group at
Yahoo Groups

Seeing an HMV Little Nipper radio sitting on one of the exhibit tables brought back memories of the radio that sat on the kitchen bench in the house I grew up in. The only difference is our one had a medium grey coloured back rather than the burnt orange colour of the one at the Radiofest.

I can only guess at the emotions a rat may have when it hops into it’s treadmill and goes for a run…….   an outside observer would notice the rat does not actually go anywhere, nor does it even appear to achieve anything except for getting some exercise.

Thats how I feel about life at present, I am not sure that I am actually achieving anything of importance, apart from continuing to wake each morning and hop into my version of the rat’s treadmill and undertake my daily activities.