Once more this september we are greeted by a gorgeous weather, so yesterday afternoon, it was head down to the Beach ( Lahinch for a change ) to see if i could improve my body-boarding skills ( I did not ) and do more picture coverage with the GoPro camera.
Not the biggest waves, but it was all fun under a gorgeous sun :D.
On the final day, I spent a lot more time in the Body & soul area, enjoying the sun, starting with a concert from Eleventy-four - which I had previously seen in Bourkes. An amazing choir entertained us in the afternoon, before I catch up with some Tipperary friends.
On the second day I had my eye on the cure who did not disappoint me.
The day started very well with a full string orchestra playing the full "Dark Side of the moon" in a stunning fashion, before wrapping up with some tune from Stevie Wonder.
So in the end it was the best thing ever. The weather was brilliant. The bands were fantastic. I saw the Cure for the first time, along with Sigur Ros. I bumped randomly into friends once in a while of the weekend, only to loose sight of them on the crowd hours later.
Did we mention the weather was brilliant? And the people and the artist, the food....
So in 2012, I finally set foot in the Electric Picnic ( http://electricpicnic.ie/ ) , the yearly Irish music festival held in Stradbally Hall.
After setting camp in the morning - I arrived quite early, avoiding all the traffic, people had promised me - i went for a quick around the place, even found the salty dog.
The first band was on the main stage: Alabam Shakes ... good, but as I enter a tent I got stunned by the performance of a fuming "Willis Earl Beal".
The first day finished with the XX tremendous and an unexpected volcanic and eruptive performance from Sigur Ros to close the night.
??
Willis Earl Beal
Willis Earl Beal
Roots Manuva
The XX
Sigur Ros
Artists Seen
Alabama Shakes
Willis Earl Beal
Roots Manuva
Grizzly Bear
Grandaddy
The Jezabels
???
The XX
Sigur Ros
Ed Sheeran ( only the end with a tremendous version of "Chasing Car"
Once in a while, somebody asks me : "What do you do for a living ?" ....
And they usually meant what do you in front of a computer, outside of tweeting and posting on Facebook....
Well my job does indeed consists of spending loads of time in front of a computer screen.
My work station in the Irish office.
But to do what, you should ask... well for the past almost 10 years, I have been a Physical Integration Engineer. Very pompous title indeed, but basically it's one of the fundamental part in chip design.
As for my part the physical integration - or layout -, it does the translation of the system description in some programming language into a graphic representation (the layout) which will be used to produce the chip in the factory. Or: Chip design involves migrating a design from the logical realm (front-end design) to the
physical realm (back-end design).
The microelectronic chip are made of tiny - and getting tinier as the years passes - transistors, laid out on a silicon sheet. The process used involve photolithograhy - very similar to the development on photographic films - and used masks. Which masks I am helping creating.
An inverter and it's layout equivalent
When I started I was doing Analog Layout, so the conversion progress was highly manual, as someone put it, drawing rectangles of different colors representing the different layers ( or mask ) which were going to create the transistors and connections. Somehow i always found that it had some artistic touch, and I have to say most of the good very experienced engineers I met in that field were crazy - to some extend.
The job can also lead to some Chip Art. Sadly i have no pictures of the doodles I may or may not have inserted in past chips.
Since I moved to Digital stuff, where actually some program do layout the rectangles for you, and you're controlling those programs ( or trying to ). The idea here is to automate as much as possible the layout process, and ensuring the timing and other rules are respected.
The basic knowledge how mask design, and what are the physical impacts is still needed, but the tasks there are more programming or at least scripts writing, not too offense the software people.
A busy Saturday in Kilkee, where i did dry cox fro our diving club.
View from the boat of the dive site ( Middle Rock ) , we used the Lought Dergh in the morning, after having stuck our in the sand by stubbornly trying to launch at low tide.
middle rock
George's head
All pics from a GoPro.
It was a beautiful sunny day in Kilkee, and the place was busy, in particularly because the great swim was organised that day. Anyway our plan was to go diving, with a very low tide at noon, we planned to launch our boat at 10AM. We were all ready for the boat launch on the slip around 10, but we decided to purge on refill the hydraulic steering wheel of the boat first. This operation took a lot longer than the 10 minutes initially planned, and it resulted in a very slippy boat covered by oil. Off course by that time the water had almost reached it's lowest point in the pier, and we had to try launching the boat with a rope ; after 4 attempts, we managed to have the boat in the water and out of the trailer, only to find it beach on a sand bank in the middle of the pier.
There was no way we could drag the boat for 10 meters over the sand until it reaches enough depth.
So we threw an anchor ( so it would not drift on shore once the tide was rising ) and borrow our friend from lough Dergh boat to go diving.
We settle upon Middle Rock as a dive site, with 1 hour delay to the initial plan.
Sadly it was not the end of our misadventures. A threesome of divers had an equipment issue - one of the guy's regulator went on free flow and refused to give air, forcing the three of them to air sharing, and aborting the dive. It resulted in an uncontrolled ascent , sightly faster than recommended - well depending on which table had been used, the rate could have been bound safe - ah the good old navy tables ( 9 meters per minutes ).
Unfortunately for me as a cox, they surfaced in the worst possible site over middle rock, right where the waves are breaking on top of the rock. I collected the 3 boys, not without having to drag them with the boat out of the danger zone. One of them was feeling a bit unwell and was put under O2.
We then proceeded to recall the other divers, without any success, despite revving the engine and banging cylinder underwater.
After 10 minutes, they finally surfaced, and once everybody was on-board we headed to the pier. Once there we called the coast guard for advice, and soon the problematic party was rush to the Kilkee rescue center for examination and all 3 of them were put under O2. They were evacuated soon after to Galway by helicopter ( the helicopter came to Kilkee for another emergency, and it was decided to use it to transport all causalities ).
Once in Galway the boys were put in a re-compression chamber and put under observation before being released late, all safe and sound.
With nothing left to do, except checking by phone on the lads progress, we decided to go on with the afternoon dive. By that time our boat was afloat ( finally ), thanks to the rising tides, and a group of 7 divers headed again for middle rock, and once again I served as dry cox.
Once again we did not escape incident, but it was more minor, one of our diver had its high pressure hose blow up on the boat, and as a result did not enter the water - which was as well as i had an helpful hand for what follow, as one of the pair aborted the dive early due to high PPO2 reading on a rebreather.
Anyway after all that stress, everybody was brought back safe and sound on the shore, for those who did dive, they had a lovely one - well that's what they said despite the puking on the boat afterwards.
And that was all for the day, best thing was to head to the pub, have some food, and welcome back the boys from their escape to Galway.
Some key lessons from this:
Direct system horn, which was very helpful to signal and call for help, without the lads blowing it, i would have reacted much later.
Dry cox: it has the advantage to speed up the dives, avoiding for people waiting on the boat ( in case of 2 sticks ) while over are diving - either before or after their own dives. But in case of emergency, the cox is busy driving the boat, and cannot take care of the diver at the same time. I would highly recommend to have 2 people on the boat at all times.
Recall: there is a need to find a proper recall procedure for diver underwater, revving the engine did not work - but maybe I was to gentle with that - banging piece of metal underwater did not work either ( which i thought would ).
The importance of working mean of communication with land ( either VHF or cell phone )
