bang!

I heard a bang, and went to investigate.  It sounded a bit loud for a bird strike.  In the conservatory, I discovered an exploded pane of glass:

The inner pane of the double glazing on that panel is no more.  (The outer pane is intact, so at least we are weatherproof.)  Well, the pane does still exist, in a higher entropy form, some caught in the blind, some swept up into a bucket:

not diamonds, unfortunately

It wasn't that hot in the conservatory:

only 28 Celsius; not hot enough to shatter glass

I'm not sure how they go together

 Seen in Incheon (Seoul) Airport:

I appreciate the straightforward shop name

view from a hotel window

We are back in Seoul, ready to fly home tomorrow, having taken the "Eurostar" bullet train from Pohang this afternoon, after the conference finished.  We are in a different, smaller, cheaper hotel this time (we had tried to book this one on the way out too, but it had been full).  It is a perfectly nice adequate hotel, but the view from the window is somewhat ... stark.

The view out my window of a nearby wall, and a desperate weed.

temple excursion

The conference has been going really well.  Lots of excellent talks, and I've been learning a lot.  This afternoon, however, was the conference excursion, to some local historical temples.  This was preceded by a governmental extreme heat alert, so I took my umbrella to use as a parasol.  I needed to: the temperature hit 37.7 Celsius.  Fortunately, we were well-supplied with Pocari Sweat.

Our guide (far left) knew all the right places for group photos with great backgrounds.  He literally drew lines in the sand for us to stand behind.  Here is the entrance to the complex.

In front of the main temple entrance.

Beautiful carving detail in the roofs.  Our guide was careful to explain that the central swastika symbol is not the Nazi symbol, but an ancient religious symbol. (As in all such things, the full explanation is much more complex.)

One of several golden Buddhas

A welcome respite from the dusty heat of the temple compound

Another line to stand behind, this time in front of an amazing old bridge

sushi

We invited speakers at the UCNC conference were invited to a super sushi dinner.  Lots of interesting things to eat!  Other people started photographing the amazing dishes, so I followed them...

many kinds of fish (each lovingly described) draped over huge pieces of bamboo

the next course is more shellfish-oriented

deep fried little tiny things

fish head

more shellfish, plus phoneshadow

view from a conference centre hotel room

We took the bullet train from Seoul to Pohang yesterday.  It felt familiar as I got on.  Ah, it's actually a Eurostar train!  Comfortable, smooth, and on time.

After a short taxi ride from Pohang Station, we arrived at the PIC (PIC = POSCO International Center, POSCO = Pohang Iron and Steel Company).  The Centre includes the conference venue and a hotel.  The view from my room is a combination of AC unit (necessary in the heat!) and lovely greenery.

Today started with a tour of the POSTECH campus (POSTECH = Pohang University of Science and Technology) for those who had arrived early enough.

braving the heat

the local synchrotron, unfortunately not part of the tour!

And then our TEMC workshop as the first event.

view from a hotel window

We arrived in Seoul yesterday, after a 12hr overnight flight from Heathrow, ready to head off to Pohang this afternoon for the UCNC conference.  It was a one hour metro ride from the airport to Seoul Station, then a short walk to a nearby hotel.

The view from my hotel room window this morning:

view from the hotel back towards Seoul Stations

This was not the same hotel room as I was given when I arrived.  

keycard promises

I'm not sure how rock stars sleep, but I bet it isn't being woken up at 1:30am by an alarm going off in a locked cupboard in the room, having the desk manager come up and switch it off, with assurances the problem was fixed, then having the alarm go off again 10 minutes later, having a different desk manager come up, and then being moved to a different room.  Which was then fine.

Ah, well.  We are off now to the station, for the 2.5hr journey by "bullet train" to Pohang.

publishing smoothly with Alice

A colleague, who is Editor-In-Chief of a journal, forwarded me an email he recently received.  Wow!

Although written with a degree of plausible deniability ("we just want you to help with the review process", as if organising the review process isn't basically what editors do anyway), it's actually pretty blatant.

Dear [[COLLEAGUE'S NAME]]

We are an academic research institution in China. Our authors and clients come from universities all over the world, so we have many high quality articles in related fields such as computer science, engineering, materials science, physic, management science. We know your reputation in academia, so we look forward to working with you. We know the rules of cooperation, so we can ensure the confidentiality of cooperation and achieve mutual benefit.We are also keen to help editors cite their journal literature and help journals better improve their impact factors and ratings.

After 10 years of development,we have accumulated more than 60 000 customers (doctors and college teachers), including but not limited to computer, materials science, physic, chemistry, communication, medicine, electronics, automation, management science, mathematical application, ecological environment, electromechanical and other majors. Most authors expect their articles to be acceptrd and published in SCI/EI/SSCI journals as soon as possible.We have successfully published hundreds of articles in journals such as Elesvier, Springer, IEEE, IET etc.

We know that you are responsible for many special issues of Springer，IET, SAGE，Welly and Elsevier publisher. And we hope to establish long-term, stable and friendly cooperation with you.You can get a more comprehensive understanding of us through our official website:

[[[REDACTED URL]]]

Our cooperation is to help more authors publish their articles more professionally and smoothly. The process is roughly like this：1、We will select articles suitable for your journal (ensure the quality and scope of the article) and send them to you for confirmation of submission.

2、After the submission, please help our article to be accepted smoothly. （please help with initial check，review process and so on）

3、After the article is accepted, we will give you a fee. If you agree to cooperate, I will discuss the fee with you again.

If you think we can cooperate also, you can add my WhatsApp or WeChat at any time.

Waiting for your reply. I think we're going to be great partners.

My WhatsApp: [[[REDACTED]]]

Sincerely

Alice

Thanks, but no thanks, "Alice".

 

view from an office window

I'm lucky to have a lovely view from my 2nd floor office at work. 

Although June has been unseasonably cool, and dull, today there was a (short!) spell of gorgeous evening sunlight, which I spent a few minutes admiring.  As always, it was brighter and more colourful in reality than in the photo.

8:30pm BST, looking south east

solar system model

Before I can develop new charts of the new solar PV + battery system, I need a system model to help me spec up what I should do.  After a few more complicated attempts, I came up with the following:

The horizontal line represents the house mains through which all the power flows.

PV1&2 are the two banks of PV panels on the house; PV3 is the new bank on the garage: they supply power to the mains.  As does the battery when needed (overnight, and daytime when very cloudy or high demand), and the grid (as a last resort).

The main sinks are the house usage, and charging the car via the 7kW Zappi charger.  The car can be powered off surplus PV during the day, or off the cheap rate grid power at night.  Any surplus power goes to the battery (before the car) until it is charged.  After the house, car and battery are satisfied, and further surplus is exported to the grid.

I'll use this model to design some new generation and consumption charts next.

Westward Ho!

I've finally got around to processing some of the data from our new garage roof mounted solar PV.

Because the house PV is facing south, and the garage is facing west, we expected the garage PV to start later, and finish later.  On the nice sunny 12th of May, that's exactly what we see:

blue = half the south facing house PV; orange = west facing garage PV; x-axis times in BST; y-axis production in Watts

We're getting nearly half as much again solar production from the new panels (the blue line is showing only one of the two banks of panels for house PV production, to make comparisons easier).  The new system peaks later, so we are extending the day to some degree.  But, the two systems actually start and stop generating at about the same times.  On 12th May where we are, sunrise was 5:07 BST, sunset was 20:44 BST.  So they both start generating just after sunrise (despite the garage panels facing west, directly away from the rising sun), and both stop just before sunset, albeit one generating much more than the other around these times.  

This is due to the panels generating a small amount from diffuse sunlight reflecting from the rest of the sky, in addition to generating the bulk from direct sunlight.

The effect of diffuse sunlight generation is even clearer on 16th May:

blue = half the south facing house PV; orange = west facing garage PV; x-axis times in BST; y-axis production in Watts

This was a cloudy day: note the different y-axis scale, here maximum production per bank of panels was around 1.4kW, as opposed to the 3.5kW on the sunny day.  On this day, sunrise was 5:01 BST, sunset was 20:55 BST, essentially the same as on the 12th.  There was no direct sunlight: it was cloudy all day.

Now the two curves are essentially identical, just tracking the thinning and thickening clouds: the different orientations of the panels has practically no effect.

More charts coming later!