Posts by Year

2024

Telwater Stacer/Quintex Aerator Fix

This is the first problem I’ve had with my Stacer 429 (very similar to the Quintrex 420SC Renegade) since I purchased it in 2015. The live bait tank pump stopped working. Here are the steps I used...

Back to top ↑

2023

Open Day 2023

Photos from the University of Sydney Open Day 2023. Thanks so much for those that helped out.

The History of Australian Computing

Resources on the history of computing in Australia: Graeme Philipson, A Vision Splendid - The History of Australian Computing, 2017 John Deane, Connections in the History of Australian Computi...

Delivery of EDDI Payload for CUAVA-2

The Electron Density and Debris Instrument (EDDI) that I’ve been working on with Quinn Musulin, Iver Cairns and Joe Khachan was delivered. The instrument measures electric field spectrum using a di...

Phuket trip

Went for a 1 week holiday in Phuket. It was many years ago that we were last there.

World tour

I am on sabbatical this semester so on my return trip from the FPGA conference, I came back the long way via England, Italy, Switzerland and Hong Kong. The purpose was give a lecture about our rece...

Back to top ↑

2022

Fishing Trip with Eden (Part 2)

A repeat trip with Derek (Warren’s brother) and his 12-year old son Eden. Here is the report from 2019 http://phwl.org/2019/fishing-trip-with-eden/.

ICFPT 2022 Conference

Had an amazing time at the International Conference on Field Programmable Technology in Hong Kong, the 21st conference in the series.

Scheme primer

Here is an excellent primer on scheme, a lisp-like programming language.

Shoe rack

My wife wanted me to build her a shoe rack. Since you can buy one from Ikea for $20 and it is hardly going to be furniture, why not spend a day building one for considerably more?

MICRO22 Conference in Chicago

Here are some photos from the MICRO22 conference in Chicago. where we presented a tutorial on Deep Learning-Optimized FPGA Archiectures, slides available here.

Domain woes

While overseas, http://phwl.org suddenly stopped working.

Outboard Links

I had not used the Windows Subsystem for Linux before as it didn’t support encrypted drives. It has come a long way and here are some notes.

Bodangora Wind Farm

Visited the Bodangora Wind Farm, owned by Iberdrola Australia (wikipedia entry here. It is located near Dubbo, has 33 turbines and capacity of 113.2 MW.

Breville Dual Boiler links

Here are some links to information on the Breville Dual Boiler. Ours is the BES920 espresso machine and BCG820BSS grinder.

Corolla Ignition Coil

Wife returned home with the Corolla’s Check Engine light blinking and the car sputtering on 3 cylinders.

Yaesu FT-817ND

The Yaesu FT-817ND was for many years the ultimate low-power (5W) all-band radio.

Yaesu VX-6R

A good and relatively inexpensive 2m/70cm handie talkie (HT) is the Yaesu VX-6R. It is compact and rugged. While still available in Australia, it was discontinued in the US in Dec 2020.

Proxmox server

How to install proxmox on a single server with 2 disks (SSD and hard disk). This was for Proxmox Virtual Environment 7.1-7.

Fixing rice cooker E1 error

This is a $20 rice cooker from Taobao which stopped working with an E1 error just when we had family over for dinner.

Trip to Eden

This was planned as a family trip but Nicole was a COVID close contact the day prior to departure so couldn’t participate.

Back to top ↑

2021

Computer Engineering Lab Christmas Party Photo

Down on numbers again this year due to COVID but we had another good Christmas party at Balls Head. People that attended but missing from the photo were Barry and Kathy Flower, Bo Peng and Ian Hedd...

If-bit-then

This optimisation came up in a consulting job for CruxML. A common pattern in embedded programming or high-level synthesis is if-bit-then, i.e. test a bit and modify a variable depending on the re...

Moree campervan trip

Hired a Toyota Hiace campervan and went for a drive to Moree via Muswellbrook and Tamworth.

Wyong Field Day

This was the first time I attended Wyong Field day 2021 “Mayham”.

Trailer Bearings

Here is how you tell what types of trailer bearings you have without taking them out.

BeagleBone Green Getting Started

How to get started with a BeagleBone Green (BBG) including installation, internet, GPIO, device tree, Si5351 interface via i2c and cross compiling the kernel.

Back to top ↑

2020

Hawkesbury River 2020

As has been the custom for many years, I went for a camping/fishing trip with high-school friend Warren on the Hawkesbury River (here is a list of previous trips).

Googong Dam

Barry and I were in Canberra on a CruxML business trip and had a quick fish in Googong Dam.

Installing Docker

This post has been superseded by https://phwl.org/2022/installing-docker-2022-version/.

Lightning Ridge

Went for a drive to Lightning Ridge in the central north of NSW. It is an opal mining town and the major source of the rare black opal.

Dubbo trip

Went for a drive to Dubbo as a cure for cabin fever.

Codan 6924

Picked up this “not working” Codan radio on Gumtree.

EIE graduation class

Photo of my undergraduate graduation class, Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Sydney.

Loose mattock head

This Stanley mattock has had a loose head for a few years now. Time to fix it properly.

Staple Review

A stapler is one of the more important pieces of academic equipment.

Updating jekyll on macOS

When doing a bundle update I got an error telling me that installing ffi failed, and the following had to be fixed: ``` phwl@x86_64-apple-darwin13 phwl.github.io % gem install ffi -v ‘1.12.2’ –sou...

Back to top ↑

2019

Fishing trip with Eden

Warren’s brother, Derek and his son Eden were visiting from Broome and we took them out on the Hawkesbury. We only had a few hours and the tides were not quite right.

London trip

Went to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden to see the David McVicar production of The Magic Flute.

Spring VHF/UHF Field Day

Photos from the 2019 Spring VHF/UHF Field Day. More information at the Manly Warringah Radio Society site.

Graduation Ceremony

Congratulations to Rijul Gupta who graduated today with first-class honours. This photo shows him receiving his degree from the Chancellor, Belinda Hutchinson. In the foreground, from the right is ...

New Stove Case

Carried an electric stove all the way back from Shanghai only to drop and break the plastic case.

Mooney Mooney Spring Trip 2019

This was the first trip for Warren and I for the season. We were on the way to Milson Island when the engine started hesitating and then stopped.

Generating a Publications List from BibTex files

Publications list in Markdown For many years I’ve been using a convoluted process to generate my publications list from separate bibtex files for journals, conferences, books, patents, etc. I thou...

Hong Kong and Zhuhai 2019

[ <a href= "/assets/images/2019/07/IMG_1116-large.jpg" > <img src= "/assets/images/2019/07/IMG_1116-large.jpg" alt=""> <figcaption> </figcaption></a>...

Visit to W1QG’s shack

Chris Dick was kind enough to introduce me to his friend, Dick Benson W1QG, a retired hardware development engineer. We went to visit his very impressive shack (which was not difficult to spot from...

Moving from Wordpress to Jekyll

I have been using Wordpress for many years. It produces good looking websites and is easy to install and maintain. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy at all to backup the website, and the interface is al...

Academic Genealogy

I visited my PhD supervisor, Dr Marwan Anwar Jabri last week in San Francisco. He left academia to found Dilithium Networks which was then acquired by OnMobile Global Ltd. He is now Founder at Neur...

Mako on Fly - San Diego 2019

The mako shark is one of the fastest and most ferocious fish in the sea. They can swim up to 69 km/h (42 mph) and jump 6m (20 feet) in the air. There two species, the shortfin (Isurus oxyrinchus) a...

Yosemite 2019

Went for a two day trip to Yosemite National Park, staying at Yosemite Cedar Lodge. It is such a magnificent place. Wish I had more time there to take photos.

macOS Install

It seemed like a good idea to remove all the accumulated rubbish on my MacBook Pro and install what I really needed. Here are the steps:

Intel NUC8i7BEH

Impressed by the Intel NUC8i7BEH. It went together easily, requiring only a Philips head. Installed Ubuntu linux and it is pretty fast and quiet.

Electronics Flea Market

On the second weekend of Mar-Sep, the Electronics Flea Market runs in the carpark of Fry’s Electronics, Sunnyvale CA. I arrived at 8am because I thought I might be the only one there at the startin...

Death of a Canon S120

I really liked my Canon S120 but it met its demise by being drowned in coffee. Replaced it with a very similar Canon G9X mk II which has a larger, 1” sensor. From my limited time with the new camer...

Las Vegas 2019

Made the 16 hour return drive to Las Vegas for a long weekend. Here are some photos.

Sydney Harbour Kingfish Jan 2019

It was cold and wet today but good to get out with Beard and son in Sydney Harbour. First time I can remember the temperature high and low being 21 C in the middle of summer.

EDC

Thought I’d post a photo of what I’m going to take on my upcoming 6 month trip the US for my “every day carry” or EDC.

Back to top ↑

2018

Hawkesbury 2018

Returned to the Hawkesbury River with Warren and my daughter Nicole. Last time I was there camping with Nicole was in 2009. The fishing was tough and the trip reasonably uneventful. Here are my sna...

Tokyo Institute of Technology Tsubame 3.0 Visit

Hosted by Prof Hiroki Nakahara and Prof Yuko Hara-Azumi, I gave a talk entitled “Large Scale FPGA Implementations of Machine Learning Algorithms” (slides available at /talks) at the Tokyo Institute...

Amateur Radio Shops in Akihabara

Passing through Tokyo this week and took the opportunity to visit a few amateur radio shops in Akihabara. <a href= "/assets/images/2018/12/DSCF5835.jpg" > <img src= "/assets/imag...

Shanghai Harbin 2018

Had a short holiday prior to giving my 2018 Reconfigurable Computing course at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT). Photos herein are mainly of food.

Mooney Mooney Morning 2018

Couldn’t believe this was the first time this year Warren and I fished Mooney Mooney. It was forecast to be 13-31 Celcius, 10 degrees above the average and the first warm day of spring. Wind was to...

Chengdu and Hong Kong 2018

Took a train trip to Chengdu for Sichuan food prior to the Performance-Aware Programming with Application Accelerators (PAPAA) 2018 Workshop in Hong Kong.

An Afternoon in Frankfurt 2018

Frankfurt street scene with multiple reflections: barber shop with guy’s ghostly head, girls walking  and shops. <a href= "/assets/images/2018/07/DSCF5430.jpg" > <img src= "/asse...

Fishing Utah 2018

Prior to the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in Salt Lake City, went on an awesome fly-fishing trip, hosted by Brent in Provo, Utah. My previous trip was in 2008.

Installing powerpoles

Anderson Powerpole connectors are the standard for 12V amateur radio equipment. Instructions are here: https://powerwerx.com/help/powerpole-assembly-instructions and this figure shows the correct o...

Shanghai 2018

Went to Shanghai again to collaborate with Prof Lingli Wang at Fudan University.

Refinishing Footstool

Refinishing a footstool I made about 5 years ago in Tasmanian Oak. It was my take on this elegant design published in Fine Woodworking http://www.finewoodworking.com/2002/02/01/a-sturdy-footstool.

Pittwater Jan 2018

Despite it being really windy, had a good day of fishing with Beard and his son Lachlan in Pittwater.

Back to top ↑

2017

Directions to CEL

The Computer Engineering Laboratory is on the 8th Floor of the Electrical Engineering Building (Building J03), The University of Sydney. My office is Room 837 (inside Lab 840) and the entrance is o...

Forster trip with Ken

Ken came to visit from Seattle so Beard and I took a day off on Friday to go car-camping in Forster.

Fujifilm X Links

Introduction Wandering around Sim City in Hong Kong, a mint Fujifilm X100T jumped out and emptied my wallet. This is the first digital camera I really like as it is small, quiet and fast, making it...

Trinity River 2017

The 3rd annual FPGA Fly Fishing Workshop (FFF’17) was down on attendance, only Ken and myself participating from the 19-20th Feb, 2017. This year, it was on the Trinity River, California, fishing f...

Back to top ↑

2016

Olympic Peninsula Fly-Fishing 2016

I participated in the 2nd FPGA Fly-Fishing (FFF’16) Symposium in Seattle WA, hosted by Ken and attended by Guy, Aaron (not pictured below) and myself. The previous FFF was in New Zealand and is des...

PAPAA 2016

We had a very successful Croucher PAPAA workshop at Hong Kong University.

Danny Lim

Took this photo of Danny Lim, Activist, outside Redfern station. A nice guy and quite a character!

Luderick Fishing Sydney Harbour

Luderick (otherwise known as blackfish) are among my favourite targets as they are quite plentiful in Sydney Harbour and the fishing is very visual. The rig involves a green weed or sea lettuce on ...

Back to top ↑

2015

Hawkesbury River 2015

A camping trip with Warren to the Hawkesbury has become an annual event but unfortunately, we couldn’t do it this year but went for a day trip. This was also our first fishing trip there in the new...

New Zealand Fly-Fishing 2015

After attending the International Conference on Field Programmable Technology, Brent, Ken and myself took a 5-day fly-fishing trip around the Omarama region of the South Island in New Zealand. We c...

Sydney looking west

A westward looking photograph of Sydney with the Eastern Suburbs in the foreground, Sydney CBD and Harbour in the middle, and the Blue Mountains in the distance. It is a post processed using techni...

Stacer Outlaw 429

Traded in the Quintrex for a new Stacer Outlaw 429 with Evinrude 50 hp at Huett Marine.  I highly recommend them as they are great people to deal with and very knowledgeable.

Quintrex Fishseeker Photos

Didn’t realise that we have had this boat since 1993. It has performed faultlessly over this period and the Evinrude 30hp outboard still starts first pull.

Fishhook removal

In all my years of fishing, we were fortunate not to have had a bad injury. There was the time Beard, Warren and myself tried to run a rapid on the Katherine River in the Northern Territories in a ...

Meeting Dr Karl

A great honour to hang out with the inimitable Dr Karl Kruszelnicki (and Taylor Swift) this morning. A real gentleman.

Hawkesbury River 2014

Much like previous years, went to do some fishing in the Hawkesbury River over the Christmas break. This time, Beard joined us. Nothing too different from other trips and a good time was had by all.

Back to top ↑

2014

Fishing with friends

Our boat was purchased around 1991 and has served us well. It is jointly owned with my close university friends, Beard and Warren. We were pleased to go out together for the first time in more than...

Back to top ↑

2013

Postcard from Harbin Summer 2013

After a superb trip to Harbin in winter, I returned in summer to attend the ICEMI conference, kindly hosted again by Prof Peng Yu, Prof Shaojun Wang and Mr Yeyong Pang from Harbin Institute of Te...

Cowan Creek

Photos from a short trip to Cowan Creek on a foggy morning. More after the jump.

Kangaroo Tagging at Nelson Bay

I had the opportunity to visit the Nelson Bay Golf Course and observe the tagging programme of semi-wild Eastern Grey Kangaroos being conducted by a colleague in Veterinary Science. Our interest in...

High Altitude Balloon Launch #1

Our Sydney University Electrical Engineering students, Stephen Tridgell and David Portelli successfully made a high-altitude balloon launch from Blayney, NSW. Stephen’s report is after the jump.

Shanghai April 2013

I had an excellent trip to Shanghai last year and wrote about it here. I was fortunate enough to be invited back.

Panorama at Akuna Bay

Went for a drive this morning to Akuna Bay. Fog was coming off the river and this photograph was taken on the road between Akuna Bay and Church Point.

Luderick Sydney Harbour

Went for a fish in Sydney Harbour with my neighbour Michael. Had a great time catching luderick (otherwise known as blackfish).

Lake Eucumbene 2013

Lake Eucumbene is an alpine lake about 500km south west of Sydney. My fishing mate, Beard (nickname which refered to his facial hair - he doesn’t have one anymore but the name stuck), and I made a ...

Back to top ↑

2012

Hawkesbury River 2012

In what has turned out to become an annual event, went on a 4 day camping trip to the Hawkesbury River with my high-school friend, Warren. We camp on a beach which is only accessible by boat.

Molonglo Radio Observatory

The University of Sydney’s Molonglo Radio Observatory is located about 3-4 hours south of Sydney. It is being used to prototype some of the technologies in the proposed Square Kilometer Array.

Back to top ↑

2011

Back to top ↑

2010

Back to top ↑

2009

Blue Mountains

The 1 million hectare Blue Mountains is a World Heritage listed National Park in NSW Australia. Its name comes from the blueish haze that often appears above it due to evaporation of eucalyptus oil...

Life, the Universe and Fishing

I was asked by Prof Evangeline Young to give a “Lunchtime Pizza talk” on the 15th May, 2009. Here is the text of the talk which is not really about fishing but concerns graduate research.

Back to top ↑

2008

Forster 2008

Went on a 4 day fishing trip to Booti Booti National Park with my mates, Warren and Chris despite unfavourable tides and weather. Life’s too short to only go fishing when conditions are good. We we...

Back to top ↑

2007

Forster 2007

Forster is about a four hour drive from Sydney. Went on a very brief overnight camping/fishing trip with my good friends from Sydney University, Warren and Chris.

A trip to Finland

My trip to Finland coincided with the Midsummer Festival, an event which I was lucky enough to share with my host Tero.

Back to top ↑

2006

Victorinox Swiss Army Knife Soldier Set

The Victorinox Soldier is the classic Swiss Army knife (SAK). Each has a date stamp and this set is from 1934, 1965, 1970 and 1997. Also note the evolution of the blade (from clip point to spear po...

Back to top ↑

2005

Walthamstow Reservoir

From Sydney, going trout fishing requires commitment. It is either an 8 hour drive to the Snowy Mountains or a plane trip to New Zealand. From Hong Kong, it is even more difficult. In London, I fou...

Meon Springs

Fished Meon Springs yesterday. It was my first fishing trip in the UK and my first experience fishing a managed, stocked fishery. Went with Tero Rissa who got the beautiful 6.5 pound hen rainbow tr...

Back to top ↑

2004

Weipa

Here are some photos taken from a fishing trip to Weipa in 2004 with Chris See.

Back to top ↑

2002

London Lakes

Here are some photos from a trip to London Lakes in Tasmania that I made in December 2002.

Back to top ↑

2001

Fishing Photos

Here are some of my favourite fishing photos from the age before digital cameras.

Back to top ↑

2000

A Ballard of Ducks

The railway rattled and roared and swung With jolting carriage and bumping trucks. The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung In the western sky: and the tireless tongue Of the wild-eyed man in the co...

Testament of a Fisherman

I fish because I love to; because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful and I hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly; beca...

Back to top ↑

1999

Back to top ↑

1996

Cessna first solo

Been taking flying lessons and took my first solo in a Cessna 152  in December 1996.

New Zealand Trip

Fished the South Island of New Zealand in November 1996 with fishing buddy Beard. Here are some pictures of the trip.

Back to top ↑

1994

Liquid nitrogen ice cream

After reading the April 1994 article, “Chemistry and Physics in the Kitchen” in Scientific American, I made liquid nitrogen ice cream for the first time with Drs Barry Flower and Markus Schenkel.

Back to top ↑

1993

Back to top ↑

1991

Back to top ↑