Installing Domestic Distribution Board

Our house is almost 20 years old. Those days it there were no MCB's. The only option was rewirable fuses.


With time the Distribution box started to give trouble. the fuses became loose and the wires were deteriorated at junctions. Because of this the sensitive electronic equipment connected to these loops started giving trouble.

Finally, without being lazy I decided to replace the DB. Since I'm a Sri Lankan, I suggested my father we should by Orange; a Sri Lankan brand. Plus its 4 times less expensive than imported brands. The important brands carry a life time warranty whereas Orange has a two year warranty.

In a house hold, there are several loops so that a malfunctioning of one equipment will not trip the whole house at once. The live wire is fed to each MCB at the top and each loop begins from the MCB. All the neutral wires returning to the DB is connected to the neutral bus bar.

In the old system, this is how the live wire connected to one side of the fuses.

Just so that i won't mix up any wires, I labeled the live wires of the loop start.

Fixed the plastic box frame.

Fixed the MCB's and wired them.

Screwd in the cover and it's done.

How mothers work

Today I woke up at 10am and started working on the badminton tournament as usual. That means I’m staying in front of the computer fixing deadlines on what needs to be done and making phone calls to arrange stuff. Amma called me twice and yelled twice to have breakfast (milk rice) but I said I’ll at once have lunch. Next thing I know she brings everything to my desk. I couldn’t even say thank you because I was on a phone call trying to get free projectors for S. Thomas sports complex on the day of the tournament.

Regardless of the child’s age, how mothers work is “feed child”.

Wind power is the future

IET organized a wonderful visit to the Puttalam wind power plant last Saturday. It was really interesting because of the clean power it produces and the how less it affects the environment. The wind power generating units are made in Spain by a leading company called Gamesa. Due to economies of scale the Sri Lankan investors couldn’t go for plants higher than 60 meters. Therefore they purchased the smallest units produced by Gamesa where each unit generates 800kW. Due to government regulations one private power producer (PPP) can only produce 10 MW. Therefore the same investors formed two companies where each company owned 10MW and the total generation capacity became 20MW.

These units are of the second latest technology. The wind turbine adjusts its pitch and direction for maximum wind thrust. The wind turbine is geared to a synchronous generator. The AC produced is rectified into DC and then inverted to form a clean 50Hz AC power through semiconductor power electronics. The gear system naturally wastes a lot of energy. The latest technology is to have the wind turbine directly coupled to a low speed (higher number of poles) synchronous generator.

The wind turbines only extract 50% of the energy in the wind. Hence the impact to the climate is less than negligible. According to statistics only 1 bird hits a wind turbine each year in the US.

A Canadian consultant whom we met at the site told us that wind power is the future for Sri Lanka. He was very passionate about wind power plants. He also added that there are many sites with a high wind potential in Sri Lanka and investors are willing to go for this technology, but CEB is only allocating 15% of the installed capacity for non conventional plants. That is because of the low reliability of these power plants. US have a 25% wind power installed capacity, but it has spinning reserves in case the wind stops blowing. Sri Lanka doesn’t have that financial strength to entertain spinning reserves. Therefore we burn fuel instead.

Cool Laxapana

We could only stay at the Laxapana Power Stations during the week. The DGM office of the Laxapana Complex is very close to the OE bungalow. To get there, you have to take the Colombo Hatton bus and get down at Kalugala, a very small town just after Kithulgala. From there you have to take an hourly bus to the Laxapana town. On the way you will pass the laxapana power stations, DGM office and OE bungalow. If you continue further you will end up in Norton bridge.
The atmosphere there is very relaxing. In fact, I took the liberty to write down some thoughts that crossed my mind. It reads,
“Naturally woke up at 6 am. The first breath in the morning totally wiped out all the carbon in my lungs which were collected during my entire life in Colombo. The air was cool and fresh. The sunlight was soothing to the skin. The quietness was pleasant to the ears. It was very relaxing. No rush. Even the people walking by don’t seem to be in a hurry.
It's a nice way to live.”
“It's Tuesday night. I'm in bed, going to sleep. Back at Colombo I needed a fan everywhere I go. Here the temperature is just right. I set the fan to the lowest position. Then it's slightly cold. It feels very comfortable. Goodnight.”

Downloadaholics

Hello everyone, my name is JellyBrain and I’m a downloadaholic. Last year I owned an Acer laptop where the wifi indicator light blink rate was proportional to the data transfer rate. I used the laptop to download movies and TV series during the night in my bed room. If the light was not blinking fast enough, I couldn’t sleep! After extensively using the laptop it died out after 2 and a half years.

Doesn’t downloading totally divert your attention? Say you are editing your CV after 4 years and suddenly utorrent pops up say ‘download complete’ on your favourite show. Will you or will you not watch that 22 minutes of happiness right away? I would. And when you get back to your CV, all the attention will be gone and your CV would represent a 19 year old sexless person (typo) who was hibernated for 4 years (born in 1987, but age is still 19).
This is an addiction. I’m having a very bad one these days because I got all aired seasons of How I Met Your Mother. Once you watch 3-4 episodes you get attached to the characters. You watch the proceeding episodes mostly to know what happened rather than to enjoy the jokes. I realized this yesterday. When my brother was watching season 3, I was still on season 2. If I didn’t care about the story, it wouldn’t matter to me what season it is. But it did!
I hate myself. You should hate yourself too if you are in this position or worse.

Caution- Chinese extension chords

I know most of Sri Lankan households have these potentially hazardous power extension cords. Anyone with a basic knowledge of…. actually with common sense will notice that there are three pin outlets but the other end connecting to the wall outlet has only 2 pins. Is the earth wire (the green one) just for fun?
Since this is made of very cheap material, it melts even if you keep it in the sun. What will u think will happen if you use this for a prolonged period of time for a considerably high energy consuming equipment like an iron? The above. Now this one got totaled. What if the insulation got peeled off slightly? The next time you pull the wire out of the drum while it’s live, you would get electrocuted.
This happened because the wire was rolled around the drum so the heat couldn’t dissipate. One way to avoid this is to keep the chord completely extended all the time and be cautious when using these.
The other option is to not use these at all.

Know your fuse

Several months back there was a night of very heavy lightning. It was in the middle of the night so no one had cared to get out of bed to disconnect the telephone line even though it had woken us up. In the morning we found the telephones were not working. I checked the router. It didn’t show any sign of damage. However it was not working. We called SLT. They arrived and found out that the surge arrester had blown out and protected the telephone and the router. Look how they replaced the fuses.

Nope, they didn’t replace the fuses because they didn’t have any new ones in their van. So they did this. I told them if you don’t replace this fuses with proper ones, next time you will have to replace my telephone and my router. Then the technician called his supervisor and had a bit of an argument in the van. Finally they used a smaller wire and found one working fuse. Even this is not perfect. You have to replace the tiny wire with a proper fuse.

So guys, next time SLT repairs your telephony system, just check whether they have done it right. Prevention is better than taking action after everything has happened.

Forwarded e mail I found interesting

> Only in America ........do drugstores make the
> sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their
> prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the
> front.
>
>
>
>
>
> Only in America ........do people order double
> cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet
> coke.....
>
>
>
>
>
> Only in America .....do banks leave both doors
> open and then chain the pens to the
> counters.
>
>
>
>
>
> Only in America .....do we leave cars worth thousands
> of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the
> garage.
>
>
>
>
>
> Only in America ......do we buy hot dogs in packages
> of ten and buns in packages of eight.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Only in America .....do they have drive-up ATM
> machines with Braille lettering.
>
>
>
>
>
> EVER WONDER ....
>
> Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens
> our skin?
>
>
>
>
>
> Why can't women put on mascara with their mouth
> closed?
>
>
>
>
>
> Why don't you ever see the headline 'Psychic
> Wins Lottery'?
>
>
>
>
>
> Why is 'abbreviated' such a long
> word?
>
>
>
>
>
> Why is it that doctors call what they do
> 'practice'?
>
>
>
>
>
> Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and
> dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?
>
>
>
>
>
> Why is the man who invests all your money called a
> broker?
>
>
>
>
>
> Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called
> rush hour?
>
>
>
>
>
> Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat
> food?
>
>
>
>
> Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal
> injections?
>
>
>
>
>
> You know that indestructible black box that is used on
> airplanes? Why don't they make the whole plane out of
> that stuff?!
>
>
>
>
>
> Why don't sheep shrink when it
> rains?
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck
> together?
>
>
>
>
> If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the
> opposite of progress?
>
>
>
>
>
> If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the
> terminal?

Few things I learnt about car insurance

Last Thursday I met with a slight accident. While I was going heading my way out of the car park near the Regal cinema, a car backed out of its parking spot onto my right rear door and got dragged over the wheel arc. The gentleman was a senior consultant to the Ministry of Public Estate Management and Development. The fault was his and he claimed it true. So there was no argument, only a polite conversation about… non accident related stuff.



The car I drive is registered in my mother’s name. It’s insured at Janashakthi Insurance. I called the number on the insurance card and they sent an agent within 15 minutes. He estimated the repair cost, gave me a receipt and told me, if it costs more, please produce an estimate to the office and it can be solved. Everyone was happy, end of story.

When a car get's into an accident, to claim the damage, the car must be running for a purpose of the insured person. That means, when I crash my mom’s car, I should tell the insurance company that I was on my way to pick her up or something like that. But that was then. Now they don’t care.

I’m sure most of you know about the no-claim bonus. For those who don’t know, it’s the discount you get from the insurance company on your insurance premium if you don’t claim anything during that year. At Janashaskthi insurance, they increase the no-claim bonus by a certain amount for each year you don’t claim anything. So even if you claim something this year, you won’t totally lose your no-claim bonus, you will lose only the addition this year.

So before you claim a small amount, calculate whether it’s worth claiming. Because the amount you save at the end of the year through the no-claim bonus will probably be higher than the small repair cost. You can get all these details from your insurance company through telephone.

The day after the accident, Janashakthi insurance called me saying an advanced payment is ready and asked me whether to post it or whether I can collect it. Of course you can cancel the claim even after they sent the cheque, but to keep things efficient, it's better to know before all this whether your claim is worth or not.

First day on training

Yesterday was the first day of training. Our name list were not sent
to the training centre. So we had to wait the whole day to get our
appointment letters and training schedules. As we were not informed
before, some groups had to leave for kandy immediately. CEB doesn't
provide accommodation. That's fair, but it's not fair that we got to
know about it at the last minute.
However, they were able to process all 35 applications within one day.
I guess that's something to be happy about.
I also heard that people who went to dockyard, airport and air force
were sent back because they had no security clearance.
To sum things up, nothing worthwhile was done on the first day.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Malaka Gunasekara
<Like what you do, do what you like>
www.jellybrainguy.blogspot.com

BitTorrent Router

Since I was talking about energy efficient downloading, I found right now that Asus has a product. The product is called 'ASUS WL-700GE WIRELESS STORAGE ROUTER'. Other than being a wireless router, it has a 160GB hard disk and a GUI through a web browser where you can make it download files using torrents or regular http (or ftp) while your PC is off. Says it consumes only 15W when downloading. You can buy it from ebay (from here) for approximately $176.
Seems it's not the most popular product. This review tells that it's not very stable. It says if you try to pause torrents they get lost and download speeds aren't great. The same reveiw says it doesn't completely replace the PC when it comes to torrent downloading.
I hope something bettter will come in future.
I also have a few suggestions if some one who's going to develop this by any chance reads this blog ;)

• Have a capacity of around 16-32 GB of flash memory. They consume less power and it will reduce the price of the gadget. For massive downloaders let their be a connection for an external HDD
• As the torrent download manager on the device use utorrent
• There's no need for a router. Just make it connect with the router you already have through LAN and let the device be accessible throught the web browser to manage torrents etc.
• have a small LCD display to show progress, start, stop pause etc. (some basic functions)

I really think this could save the world a lot of energy.

[I published this through e mail. If you guys didn't know, you can e mail posts to blogger (to your respective address) and they get published instantaneously. Very useful to update your blog on the move.]

Energy efficient torrent downloading cntd...

Finally had some time to get me hands on the phone and install wmtorrent trial version on the new ROM. It seems with a comparatively less number of seeds, even though the computer downloads at maximum speed (50kbps), the phone downloads at a variable speed which is around 25kbps. However, by morning it still couldn't finish downloading a 174MB file. The phones become sort of slow when the software is running.

Unfortunately, cprog error which it had been having ever since I got the phone, still presumes. And it emerges more often when you try to play with it.

The phones gets heated up heavily during downloading and battery is used quite fast, so you gotta keep it plugged in. You also will have to prevent it from going to standby or else the wifi gets disabled. That means the back light will be lit all night long.

However I'm unable to complete my initial experiment (which was to test how much downloading can a mobile wifi unit handle) because the phone keeps crapping on me.

First complete (sort of) software

Today I finished the software I was developing for a module in my course. The module is titled 'Programing Project'. I registered for the module hoping I will get something interesting. Instead the project we got was sort of boring. Had no choice, so did it. Here it is.

http://www.MegaShare.com/1751732
http://rapidshare.com/files/342701440/setup.exe.html

The software is named VaveGen. It will display waveforms of any sort. It can be used to demonstrate Fourier series.

Please be kind enough to leave a few comments after using the software.

*Update 29-Jan-2010
I uploaded to rapidshare. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Energy efficient torrent downloading cntd...

The good news is the torrent was completely downloaded by morning and it was seeding.
The bad news is windows mobile was freezed.
This is probably because of the unstable ROM version of the PDA. Therefore the test could not be continued. Planning to flash and install a proper ROM and continue the experiment. Be patient!

Energy efficient torrent downloading

It feels good to be back on the blogsphere again.

I know most of you download stuff off the internet. If you consider size wise, I'm sure torrents take the first place. We let huge files download over night. It's a complete waste of resources. When a computer is switched on, all the peripherals consume power. Do we really need all of those components powered up just to download a torrent? The first thing I wish we had was an Operating System for downloading torrents where only the necessary components of the computer is running for the torrent download. It is not available. So the second options is to download using your wifi enabled mobile phone. It consumes very much less power. However the problem is, how much of downloading can a mobile phone handle before it's miniaturized wifi circuit burns out? Well I'm about to find that..............with my fathers phone of course. :D

After some internet research I found out that the most convenient torrent client is WM torrent. It costs $20. The trial version expires in 14 days. Right now it's downloading the movie 'Gamer'. I changed settings in the phone so that it never goes to sleep. The screen is permanently on and the phone is plugged in to AC power.

I will keep you guys posted on what happens in the long run.