Sunday, 12 January 2025

listening to your inner voice

I decided that I wanted to change the (rather antique style) grips on my SR500 for something more comfortable. 

I'm pretty happy with them but unlike the older styles, the ends are "uncovered" on modern grips. This left me the task of attaching end covers for aesthetic and functional reasons. I ended up selecting these:


as (before I'd taken the grips off) I figured they'd be suitable no matter what I found (empty hollow bar end or filled in with something. As it turns out the Yamaha bars had solid steel rod inserted into the bar to assist with damping vibrations. So I had to drill and tap a thread into this.

This task was done by:

  1. carefully identifying the center and then marking that with a center punch
  2. drilling a small pilot hole (that was straight and con-centric to the bars)
  3. successively drilling this out to the final diameter needed for the thread cutting tool
  4. cutting that thread (there's a technique) 
  5. shortening the supplied bolt
  6. screwing it in and using light grade thread locker on that 


Left hand done, I moved over to the right where I met with problems on step 4


Because of an additional complication on the RHS, you can't imagine how much I feared this outcome and had taken every possible precaution against it by 
  • turning gently (two fingers)
  • only turning till it bound
  • back off at least one, sometimes two turns to feel for the 'break' of the cutting tool swarf 
  • backing all the way out to double check the measurements of drill depth 
  • knowing how far I'd been able to turn the cutting tool into the newly cut thread...

Of course now I haven't fucking got a cover on that side because when you break these off in there, there's just no drilling it out ...


On the place it broke, I'd felt that while the screws had enough thread I did not test that on the many occasions I'd backed out. I should have been doing this to be clear exactly how many turns of thread the cover mounting screw had (and it only needs a few right!!).

Had I done that I may well have saved this issue, had a good looking bar end on the right and maybe just more loctite on that one ... FCK

This is as much a warning to  others as an exercise in accident analysis and self punishment

FCK!

Friday, 1 November 2024

Everything wrong with Ai in one post

I believe the original goal of AI was to help the stupid and ignorant get access to summary data from authoritative published information. Yet because AI has no sense of  reality (fact from fiction) or ethics (right from wrong) we instead get stories told by morons (AI is a moron) to morons. Eg I asked a question and got another answer ...


So if the person reading the answer doesn't understand nuclear reactor types then they're fucked and will think the answer is yes.

The other very real problem here is energy demand. AI searches require a lot more energy; 10 times more is mooted.


So that's a real problem too, and indeed Google and Microsoft are so aware of this (and also aware of how the morons are fucking society with their short sighted plans for how we can reach net zero) that they are currently building their own nuclear reactors (probably BWR at first) to be able to supply this growing demand and get off the grid (being increasingly run by populists; which means morons).

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Tuesday, 20 August 2024

understanding INR range and variation using statistics

I've been working with managing my INR for some 14 years now (so, not really long), but as well I've helped a few others along the path of being able to self manage. This has been not only helpful for them, but a great learning experience for me too. One of the things I've had to do is teach an understanding of how to use basic statistics to help understand things. Things like the data we have about our INR. Lets look at this set of data, remember, these are daily measurements:

This person was just starting their warfarin therapy and we were working out the optimal dose required for them. We had to make some adjustments but we ended up on 9.5mg daily. You can see from the above that there are some ups and downs;

  • for the most part we've been at or above 2
  • we've kept times above 3 small (being even as high as 4 isn't really significant)
What we don't really know is "how well we meet the ideal target of 2.5" which was set by the doctors. We could average all those numbers and then know that. In this case the average was 2.57, so that's great! But if we ask "is this variation large" we don't really know. This is where some statistics tools comes in handy.

Statistics is something most of us use but try hard to ignore (probably) because of the trauma of high school maths classes; but we shouldn't because its really helpful. One doesn't need to know how to do the hard work to get the benefits because spread sheets have all this functionality built in; all you have to do is have the data in a column and use a formula to get it all worked out for you; write in =AVERAGE(E20:E130) and there it is.

I'm pretty sure most people are comfortable with average, but alone, average isn't helpful, you need its good mate the Standard Deviation. Lets go with an example: You know that the average height of 16 year old boys is 173.5cm. You have a boy from a class who's 185cm. So the question is "is he very tall or not really unexpectedly so"?

Intuitively we know that the answer is no, because we have experience with children. But if we also find out that the standard deviation is 7.4cm we know that anything between 166.1cm and 180.9cm is a totally expectable result. We know this because that is what Standard Deviation (SD) is designed to measure. Below is a curve which is called a "Normal Distribution", people who have been working in statistics for years know this curve well.

the Normal Curve

It shows us that 68.2% of people (in this case, but its also more generally "of measurements") will fit between -1 SD  and +1 SD (we use the lower case for Greek symbol sigma σ to represent SD which you'll see on the bottom axis of that graph of the Normal Curve).

So just like we know that most boys age 16 are between 166.1cm and 180.9cm we can use the SD to work out how much variation that person has from "the population". The SD for the data in that bar chart above is 0.41, which means that any variation we see where the INR is between 2.16 and 2.98 is entirely normal for this person. Note: we don't know about you because we don't have your data.

Next, looking at this we can see that quite a portion (about a quarter of all measurements) fall within 2 SD either side of the average (or μ) which means INR readings of 1.75 through to 3.39 are to be expected, but just not often. Also 1.34 through to 3.8 may come up (however rarely) and this would be statistically rare, but not impossible.

So how does this help us manage our INR?

It helps to know that if your regularly and reliably taking your regular dose and if you're regularly seeing your INR within 1SD of the average then you shouldn't really make any changes in your dose. Keep your dose consistent and you can then rely on the statistics to understand what is normal for you.

Looking back at the graph of INR we also see something else ... from measurement to measurement we typically don't see that much change. Sure there are a couple where "day to day" we saw substantial on the 1st of August where INR fell from 3.3, through 2.7 (next day) down to 2.3. This was the result of some changes; dose was dropped to 8.5 and it fell fairly quickly but as you see didn't drop below 2.1. The INR then ranged back towards the average within a week.

The approach we should have taken was "keep a steady hand on the tiller" combined with waiting for a few more readings. However ...

As a good (budding) statistician, if you do see a reading which is outside of the 1SD range and you know that nothing has changed (no new foods, no binging on grapefruit, no binging on greens) then you should expect it to gradually change back towards the average. Unless something has changed and you don't know it. If it stays higher then you know "something has changed" and investigation is warranted into what.

So, please do make friends with  both average and SD, incorporate that into your spreadsheet as well as using regular weekly measurements. Occasional mid week samples "just to know" are also often helpful, but as you can see from both the historical experience behind Average and SD, combined with regular dose and weekly readings you can be in INR range in the high 80% of the time.

To get into the 90's you just need a few more strategies ... but that's for another post.

Best Wishes

Sunday, 11 August 2024

The Case evolution of early Seiko Divers

Now, this is undertaken with "homage" watches, but I've seen quite an amount of comparisons between the "homage" and the original to be satisfied that they are pretty close to the original. Indeed from what I've seen so close that even experts are satisfied and are frustrated that "Seiko didn't do this"

So, the order of release dates of these watches is this

  1. 62MAS
  2. 6105-8000
  3. 6105-8101
What I'm wanting to do here is show what I've observed in the design evolution of the cases of these watches, which I think actually started with the 62MAS and then jumped over to the 6105-8000 case where it then morphed along into the divers case which ended up being refined into the SKX series.

So these watches are (usually if not always) seen by budding enthusiasts from a top down or slightly off angle top down. They are seldom handled, but instead seen like this:


62MAS (Seestern)


6105-8000 (Rdunae)

6105-8110 (Addiesdive)

My view is that this presentation hides what's happened. This is exacerbated by most people only looking at YouTube  and combined with the relative naivety of what amounts to a large fresh watch enthusiast audience (coming into watches post-COVID). 

First off, I want to remind readers that none of these in the Original Seiko had a screw-down crown. The 8xxx cases had a sort of locking crown and the MAS was just relying on its o-rings to seal. This point is not insignificant in watches that will need

  1. reasonably frequent time setting (because they aren't quartz and so it was likely to have worse accuracy than 30 seconds per day (that's around 3.5 minutes per week)
  2. date needs to be reset about 6 times per year.
This is important (as I've mentioned in other posts) because once you damage the threads in the tube within the body (not the crown which screws into that body) your watch is no longer waterproof and the crown sticks up higher waiting to get whacked probably bending the stem (and then the watch is finally junk).

Depending on if you're a person after a daily driver "tool watch" or a KingWang follower who is the tool for the "tool watch" this may or may not matter to you.

So lets look at what I find interesting; lets line these three up...


It looks to me that the 'machining style' of the case follows an unexpected pathway. Starting from a billet of metal, machining (at first) a slim and stylish (following the fashion cues of the past but morphing them) to make the iconic 8000 case of the 6105-8000 "Slim Case" from basically the same style of case scalloping out (carving out) that the 62MAS already started. Meanwhile "The Willard is basically flat on the bottom. The Willard is just a big fat blob of metal. In contrast the 8000 is a more sophisticated turtle shell shape.


Shaping, sculpting and polishing is beautiful and as you can imagine results in a rather significant weight reduction.

Returning to the MAS and the 8000, I've overlaid the MAS onto the 6105-8000 to show how much steel is cut away from the sides of that billet (making the MAS a more refined looking case) but remains present on the sides of the 8000 case. The 8110 remains a blob with the caseback actually sunk under the level of the case (gunk collection if you ask me).


 Indeed, look at the  tips of the lugs on the cases for a familiar line.


which interestingly didn't carry over to the 8110 case, which is basically a raw blob of metal and so to me, not properly a "Turtle Shell" case, which the 8000 case was.

So lets look from the face side.


This shaving off of metal (or leaving it there instead) results in a watch which is bigger and chunkier and I suspect may have been a way to use existing machining setups while allowing a move of the crown down to the (soon to be iconic) 4O'Clock position.

Now, overlaying the 63MAS outline over the 8000 we can again see that amount of extra metal and the crown position.


The astute will notice that the dial size is actually the same and that the gap in the case for the strap is 19mm on the Rdunae while the Seestern has "modernised" to allow 20mm lugs. Personally I think that was a bit of a wise step (despite what wangers may whinge about on line) because it opens up a vast array of straps (and frankly the Rdunae is shipped with a 20mm strap anyway and its just shoehorned in there).

You can see the (smallish) amount of case shaved "off from the lugs and case" of the 62MAS it is enough to account for the weight differences found here (link) of 66g vs 72g (or the 8000 being about 10% heavier). 

This of course alters the wearability of the watch for daily use compared to the later 6105-8000 (but the Willard at 94g pushes it further). Because I didn't get long with my 8000 (see here), I perhaps need to get another one to test this out, but both of these are very wearable daily divers, more than I can say for my personal experience of the Willard.

Anyway, to me these three watches are "iconic" for different reasons. I believe that the 6105-8000 would have fallen further into obscurity if not for Apocalypse Now and the success of the subsequent 8110 case series. I mean with The Willard its Win Win for Seiko, less machining and if the clients don't care about weight  then perfect (and to be honest, back in those days "Dive Watches weren't common nor were they worn all the time by owners.

Anyway, that's pretty much all I wanted to say here.

Enjoy your day