The stupid intersection

I went to pick up Nicole from work.

As I waited outside in the car it started to rain really hard.

We had a bit of a panic at this intersection. I turned right, according to the red arrow and then encountered another red traffic light (red circle). As we were unsure whether or not to continue I stopped the car at the imaginary stop-line (blue) and waited for the red light to turn green.

Google Street view is showing no "no right turn" sign from where I turned. Also the dotted line guides you around the corner. Furthermore there were right-turn arrows in my turning lane where the arrow had a 90 degree angle. So my manoeuvre must've been legal.

I probably looked pretty stupid and stopping your car on a main road like that is actually an offence. Luckily there was no one behind me. :-/

We drove down to Henley for a bite.

The water was very high. Actually I had never seen it this high here. When we left it was dark and the water was actually washing against the promenade!

We went to Evida. It was nice and warm and we met an old friend of Nicole, Jenny.

Weekend!

Crossing the street after work.

We went to Henley beach where we watched the sun set after dinner.

Swimming with Sharks

Two doves in our garden recently became parents. Their eggs hatched a few days ago and their babies are already quite big and their eyes have opened too.

Here's mum or dad (can YOU tell the difference?!) who came back for some feeding. During the day they don't really sit on the nest anymore. It's very warm so they babies won't get cold.

We went to the post office to post stuff and pay bills.

It was a very warm day (27C inside our flat!) and in the evening I just wanted to swim in the sea. I just had to. It was calling me :-)

Right. I was going to write about a fin that we saw in the distance. About twice as far away from the beach as I was. It was definitely not the dolphins but we didn't think it was a shark either. They spotted a great white last week but that would've been gone by now and you don't get many great white's here.

So out of curiosity I check the news and guess what?

It was a f*cking shark. And not a toy shark either. Actually even bigger than the one we had last week aparently. It must've been about 100 metres away from me. Check the story in our quality news paper or look at more photos.

It also explains why we saw a speed boat racing towards the area where we saw the shark. Probably police or something. The scary thing is that there was also a guy on a jet-ski that we couldn't find anymore when we left.

Scary.

The gemstone fair / Henley beach

What do you do on Sunday morning? That's right, you go to church! My church is called "Bunnings". I had to go there to buy some AlimiNIUM L-profiles to make emergency repairs to the cocky girl's cage because during the night she had discovered that the painted wood of the roof tastes good. A few more nights like that and I would have to replace that beam. So now she can nibble on the AlumiNIUM. Good luck!

When we came home again, Karin and Gavin had arrived to work on the garden. The garden is a bit of a mess because weeds have sprung up everywhere due to the massive amounts of rain recently. Gavin needed safety goggles while using the whipper snipper. That calls for a photo of course.

Nicole fleeing away from the noise ;-)

My emergency repair had completed by then. The cocky-boy actually hasn't touched the bars but just to be safe he got AlumiNIUM profiles as well coz he also loves a good chew.

In the afternoon we went to a gem stone fair. There were a lot of people.

There were a lot of gem stones.

There were a lot of people checking out the gemstones.

There were also a few fossils here and there. This one was fantastic. Some sea creature. According to the seller (I guess he knows...) in this animal's age it was the top of the food chain. Yup, it was.

The gemstone fair was very nice. More stones and more people than I expected. Nicole scored a few very nice stones.

After this we drove to Henley beach where we walked up the jetty.

After having seen only rain for the past two months, lots of people (and their dogs) came out of their hiding places again.

This jetty has stairs that take you down so you could get in a boat or something. It's also a nice place for making photo's.

The colours were very nice.

Nicole looking at what I was doing.

I was making more photo's!

And more...

And more...

Never before had I seen an empty end of the jetty. Usually there are always a few people fishing at least. There were quite a few people out and about but just not here.

At the gemstone fair there were a few places that were selling one dollar surprise bags with stones in them. Nicole bought one and it had some nice stones in it! I think it's a fantastic idea to sell these one dollar bags. This photo shows the contents of the bag. The wrappers in the top left corner contain a few desert roses.

At Bunnings I also bought myself (collateral buyage) a Dremel.

It's a precision power-tool that can be used for engraving, sanding, grinding and polishing and probably a bit of cutting too.

I like.

Mushrooms and transformers

I hadn't been to Woolies for a while because Nicole has been doing all the shopping while I work. But because we both had a reasonably busy week we went together again for the first time in 7 weeks I think. Anyway, Nicole likes mushrooms.

The apples were displayed nicely.

After doing our shopping I bought a new pair of pants and after that I drove us to Henley. We wanted 2 things:
1) See the beach and smell the ocean
2) Get coffee and cake

This is the Henley beach jetty. I don't think I've ever photographed it from this angle before... Exciting!

There was also bit or sunset going on. Gets a bit boring after a while ;-)

Imagine living in one of these houses. You have to see the sunset every day! What a life...

This is the place we had coffee and cake. A quite nice little discovery.

Remember the power supply I started building? I ran into a small issue: HEAT. The end transistor can handle 200°C max. but not without cooling. I was using one 2N3055 which would have had to handle 34 volts x 3 amps = 102 Watt, in pure heat. That's a small heater... To cool this I would need a very BIG heat sink (cooling element) and also forced cooling using a fan. I no like.

The problem is this: The power supply's end stage is basically the external load in series with the internal transistor. The total voltage over these two is always the same in my old design: 34 Volts. If the voltage over the external load is only 1 Volt(this can be regulated), there is 33 Volts over the transistor. When the external load is also sucking 3 Amps through that transistor, the transistor is consuming 3 x 33 = 99 Watt of power.

So I bought the above toroidal (ring) transformer which turns 220V into 2x 12V. Rectified this is 2 x 17 Volts. So I can make the total voltage over transistor plus external load 17 Volts or 34 Volts. I'm going to make a switch that sets the output to two seperate ranges: 1-15 Volt and 14-30 Volt. This way the voltage over the transistor can never be more than 16 Volts. I'm also reducing the max. output current to 2 Amps AND I'm going to use 2 transistors. So now the max. power dissipation of one transistor will be 16 Volts x 1 Amp = 16 Watts! Easy to cool down :-)

Oh, by the way, if you have read all the above, you're a hero! And if you understand it as well, you're also a geek! :-)

The dolphins

After a mediocre day we wanted to go do something so we drove to Henley beach.

Because we drove the wrong way we actually saw some undiscovered streets with lots of trees.

Hmmm....traaaiiiiins :-)

When we arrived at Henley the sun was setting slowly.

Our seagull friends were there as usual.

There wasn't much wind and the water was beautiful.

Looking on to the square.

Looking towards the jetty.

We walked on to the jetty and looked over the water.

And then we saw this, a little fin.

And then the fin was gone for a while.

But then, a mother dolphin and her baby came really close to the jetty!

It was very hard photographing them but you can see the silhouette of the mother here with her baby on her right.

This was stunning. They came out of the water about 5 meters away from us, maybe just to say hello. What wonderful animals.

In the meantime the sun had set and it was getting dark quickly.

A last look but the dolphins were gone...

When we came home it was completely dark. It was only 18:45.