Welcome to my digital home! There are lots of articles you might find helpful buried in this site on topics such as modifying an Alfa Romeo 159, rebuilding a Lotus 7 (Robin Hood 2B), not to mention a ton of stuff on technology in general. It’s all here somewhere, so use the search function or navigate using the menu structure. if you want to talk, reach out via the contact function, I usually do answer!
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Alfa 159Before I even started this project, I spent quite a lot of time figuring out potential box sizes and planning the acoustics of the project. The overall goal was maximum SQ & Power balance with the least boot space loss possible! No mean feet to achieve.
I opted to retain the stock OEM head unit rather than go for an after-market double-din one as I wanted the overall look and feel of the car to remain normal, while improving the audio characteristics and overall frequency response. In order to achieve this I made use of an Audio control LC2i active, line level converter. A unit from the USA that is very special and literally takes speaker level outputs up to 400W RMS and then runs them through a series of electronic clean-up routines to get a perfect line level out for the sub-woofer, than can also be controlled by a remote gain control, and a perfect 2 channel full range output for a mid amp (to be utilised in a further project).
This unit combined with an Infinity KAPPA Perfect 12 VQ (M3D) sub-woofer and an Alpine MRV-420 amplifier I already had was all I needed to put a little boom back into the boot!
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InfoSecCourtesy of the Institute for Information Security Professionals
As I mentioned in the opening CEO article, the inaugural Top Gun event in Manchester was a great success on many fronts. We had 20 participants, organised into the Red and Blue teams, plus 5 members of the Control Team, and the day just seemed to fly past, so intense was the concentration, interaction, ingenuity and fun.
We cannot give too much away as to the content of the case study or the processes we followed on the day, for fear that we might spoil some of the element of surprise for participants in future events. Suffice to say that those who were there threw themselves into the exercise and, accordingly got the most out of it, as well as proposing a few additional suggestions for developing and improving it for future players.
Let us however, convey the particular views of a member of one of the teams, and let them tell you what they thought of the event.
“TopGun, The Blue View. (Jay Abbott, PwC)
I have to admit, I was genuinely sceptical about the TopGun event as the idea of playing the Security equivalent of Battleships during one of my busiest times of the year was not one that featured far up the “to do” list, that said, I am genuinely pleased that I made the time to attend. We arrived with very little information about what was planned, and were immediately split into two teams, Red and Blue, The Red were of course the attackers, and Blue were the defenders and the teams split had been pre-planned by the organisers to ensure that a good cross section of skills rested in each team to keep things fair.
The remit was simple, we each were given suitable pieces of a puzzle, i.e. some deliberately sketchy information related to the organisation, typical of that you would find on your first day of work or your first information gathering exercise. From there it was a case of building a better picture of what you have and figuring out the best way forward (sound familiar?). At this point, the teams were physically split and departed into adjacent “war rooms” to prepare their respective strategies. We each could communicate with our “control” staff, who acted as the coordination of the event and holders of information. The co-ordination role was pivotal in the success of the event as they were able to coordinate the virtual attack and defence strategies in real-time to keep the feeling of real-life and to ensure that the game was fair.
From a blue perspective it was business as usual, we had a budget and an environment to protect, we had to evaluate the skills in our team, establish specialism’s that could work in key streams, and run the entire thing like a project.
All in all it was a very worthwhile day that created a great deal of discussion and provoked much debate. What I personally took from the day was something that I see all too often, but is perhaps not as obvious to all, to quote Paul Dorey on the day it is summed up in the phrase “Security is Asymmetric”. Put simply this is the fact that someone attacking an organisation need only find one hole or vulnerability in order to succeed, while those protecting the organisation must try to plug every hole and mitigate every vulnerability to be secure.”
Event wrap-up discussion and lessons learnt – great work everyone!
The participants captured their comments on an evaluation form and we are reviewing and acting on those comments. They also scored the event out of a scale of 1 to 5, and rated the event at 4.3 overall, but with specific scores of 4.5 for facilitation and presentation, and 4.6 for opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas. A great success by any measure.
Thanks to all involved, and to PwC, our hosts for the day.
Courtesy of the Institute for Information Security Professionals
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InfoSecI am getting a little annoyed with hearing people wax lyrical about “the cloud” and how its going to revolutionise the world. I have a news flash for you all, its not new and its not revolutionary!
First of all, lets define what we are talking about. There is a simple definition for Cloud Computing, and three models of operation as held by NIST, these are:
Definition:
Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.
Models of Operation:
Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.
Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.
Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).
Now, I am pretty sure that during my long career, I have seen a lot of companies doing IaaS and PaaS as a “Business as Usual” activity, haven’t you? In my experience, IaaS is nothing more than a traditional infrastructure outsourcing arrangement, as undertaken with IBM, HP/EDS or BT, while PaaS is just a simple hosting service offered by most ISP’s (I accept I am simplifying here). So what are we really talking about when the press pickup and pedal the term “cloud computing”. Looks to me like they are talking about SaaS, which again, has been around for a while, Hotmail anyone?, but not really taken off in the enterprise until it became “cloud computing”. So is this just a media spin to pedal Hotmail to the enterprise or just a natural progression from outsourcing boxes to apps? What is revolutionary here, I am yet to see.
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LiveMixesIts been a long time coming, but here it is… a fresh mix on a totally new rig, so excuse the flaky mixing 🙂
https://jabawoki.com/wp-content/mp3/Jabawoki_Rolling_House_Beats_15082009.mp3
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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LiveMixesOldschool Hard House from the archives
https://jabawoki.com/wp-content/mp3/Jabawoki_06052002_HardTrance.mp3
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Alfa 159For the last year or so, since I have been pushing the power limits of the Q-Tronic Gearbox, I have had an issue that has been getting progressively worse, as the power increased.
For those that don’t know, the Q-Tronic gearbox in the Alfa 159 is actually a Aisin Warner TF80-SC, also known as the AF40-6. This is a complex automatic 6 speed gearbox that has the combined use of a conventional 5-pinion planetary gear-set and a compound Ravigneaux gearset which makes it incredibly light and compact. This combination is known as a Lepelletier arrangement. The shifting of gears is managed by a computer programme which oversees a clutch-to-clutch actuation. Gear changes are accomplished by one clutch engaging the instant the clutch from the previous gear disengages. (Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWTF-80_SC). This gearbox is used in an extensive list of modern vehicles and is a very strong and versatile unit.
While the power being fed into the gearbox was within manufacturer tolerance, i.e upto 450-500nm everything was just fine and every gear-change was silky smooth, however, as soon as pushed the power north of 500nm I started to have issues.
Essentially, the problem manifest as one of two common issues often associated with a worn or damaged valve body. These were:
Shift Flairs – The gearbox engages the first clutch to allow for the second gear to be engaged and takes a few milliseconds longer than it should to disengage the first clutch and engage the second resulting in the RPM’s have a 500rpm flair on the gear change.
Missed Shifts – The gearbox engages the first clutch to allow for the second gear to be engaged and takes a few seconds longer than it should to disengage the first clutch and engage the second resulting in the RPM’s hitting the red line and staying their until the clutches caught up with each other resulting in the next gear being SLAMMED in from 5K RPM to 3KRPM.
Neither of the above problems are particularly nice to experience and needed resolving.
In about May 2015, I noticed that the issues were related to me “driving in a spirited manner” and as such I decided to monitor the gearbox temperatures to see if that was part of the issue. This quickly showed that the issues only manifested once the gearbox oil exceeded 90 degrees C. The following data log graph shows the temps hitting 98 degrees C in under 20 minutes of “spirited driving”:
As soon as I pushed the power into the gearbox it became unusable.
Some research into the oil used in the gearbox showed why heat was the problem. The following extract from the technical specifications of the oil I use in my gearbox (Fuchs Titan ATF 4400), clearly shows that the Kinematic Viscosity of the oil at 40 degrees is 37.3 mm2/s while at 100 degrees it is 7.3 mm2/s. That is a big difference! So, if my oil temp hits 98 degrees the efficiency of the oil to be useful and lubricate is negligible, and in cases where I have seen the temp up to 110 degrees C, I essentially was lubricating the gearbox with water…..
http://www.fuchslubricants.com/titan-atf-4400
This became a real issue in September of 2015 on a trip to the Nurburgring. A combination of an aggressive track and blistering heat meant that the gearbox hit 110 degrees within 1/3 of the track and after only a few corners I was having to limp through gear changes to keep the car moving. Not the most pleasant experience to have on the ring.
From this point onwards I started to research exactly how I could solve the issue.
The gearbox oil cooler is a Laminova type cooler that uses the engines water cooling system to pass water through a block attached to the side of the gearbox that has an oil circuit in it. This allows the water to cool the oil through proximity. all you need to know about oil coolers is here on Mocal’s site: http://www.mocal.co.uk/FAQ.html.
After much thought, the plan was simple. Make the oil cooler a traditional air cooled external unit of larger size so that the harder I pushed, the greater the airflow and the more cooling was available.
To do this, I needed the help of my friendly mechanics, the much trusted and respected Autolusso. Ned and his team have been the ones who do all the work on my car and with the exception of the odd tweak here and there, have been responsible for all of the major modifications made to the vehicle to make it the monster it is today.
I enlisted Ned to help me find and/or design an adapter plate that would allow me to remove the oil cooler that was bolted to the side of the gearbox and replace it with a set of pipes off to a cooler mounted up front. After many conversations with a few different suppliers, we pulled a few different cables, pipes and parts from different makes and manufacturers together and started the research.
We quickly established that there was nothing available or even close to what we needed, so the best shot we could find was a set of oil cooler pipes of a 3 series BMW. These fitted backwards! so at least we had something to play with.
We continued to research and plan over the xmas period until, after a dyno night, I realised my car was about 50 horses down on power from where it should be! This was not amusing, and as such I spent a few weeks looking through my many iterations of the map until I found the one table that I had not carried forward. To cut a long one short, my total injection was being limited to 100mm3 where as it should have been at 130mm3. After a couple of tweaks and a test to 120mm3, the car was flying again, but the gearbox was now very unhappy and it only took a 0-100mph run (not on public roads) to make the gearbox temps over 90 degrees C !!!
So Ned and I decided to bite the bullet and just crack into the mod to see where we ended up.
A suitable cooler was chosen out of a small selection Ned had put out for me:
And we took off the original Laminova cooler to see what the options were. After some initial head scratching we decided what we needed to do was to use the existing cooler as a plate to weld on some BSP fittings, so Ned grabbed the biggest grinder he could find and proceeded to destroy the unit in the name of research!
After a quick session of destruction he disappeared with the remains of the part and resurfaced about 20 minutes later with the finished prototype:
This meant we could bolt the remains of the original cooler back onto the gearbox safe in the knowledge that it would not leak or fall off or otherwise fail!
All that was left was to fit the selected oil cooler in place and run some pipes:
To do this a bracket was manufactured to allow the cooler to live off to the side of the FMIC where it could get a decent airflow (as I had already removed the fog lights and modified my front bumper for greater air flow). We also had to relocate the horns next to the FMIC but this was a straightforward move.
I found the basis of the bracket in one of the many parts bins and assume it was part of a former Alfa that no longer needed it and subsequently donated it to me 🙂
One final mod was to remove the water cooler circuit that went from the EGR to the old cooler and back to the engine. To do this all we had to do was remove the pipes and cut one to make the 4ft of hose now 4 inches!
All that was left was then to put the front bumper back on, top up the fluids, run it round the block and see how it performed!
I decided to data log the run home. a Good 90 minutes of M1, A421 & A1 in rush hour traffic, so mixed driving, on and off power and in and out of standing traffic. In order to push the gearbox I deliberately pushed power as much as I could do so safely and often sat in the wrong gear to get things as hot as possible!!
The following graph is of that 90 minutes of mixed driving:
The first thing to point out is that the max temp reached was 76 degrees!!!!!! and the lowest temp, often observed at speed was 63 degrees! This is as perfect an outcome as I could of hoped for as it means the kinematic viscosity of the oil is well within tolerances and effectively lubricating the solenoids so that they can engage and disengage the clutches efficiently!!
The gearbox worked perfectly at all speeds and power levels throughout the entire journey!
Time will of course tell, but early data says this mod is a must have for any owner of an automatic gearbox that wants to unleash the power that their engines are capable of delivering. Trust me when I say, that these gearboxes just lap up the power! (as long as you keep them cool 😉 )
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GeneralWell, despite wanting to spend thousands of pounds on the perfect setup, I decided I had to transition away from Vinyl completely first and get used to the fully digital interfaces. So, in my usual, straight out of left field way, I bought myself an M-Audio Xponent and some new speakers 🙂
The Xponent is an awesome tool, it is the perfect transition medium for anyone thinking of moving into digital and is very well featured. Its a little on the plastic side, and the faders feel like they are fisher price, but it works like a dream and is portable enough to follow me around the country!
I now have two primary setups, home & away.
Home is the Xponent, married to my main desktop feeding a pair of KRK RP6G2 Active Studio Monitors, and it sounds awesome!
Away is the Xponent. married to my X200s Laptop & feeding a pair of M-Audio AV20 portable studio monitors, although it lacks base, it has punch, power and clarity and lets face it, we don’t want to piss off the neighbours in the hotel now do we 🙂
I still suffer from the age old problem of not actually having time to use this lot, but the away kit helps with that problem a fair bit, so once I get fully transitioned, expect a flurry of new mixes on the way!
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RH2B Build DiaryAfter first getting into the Hoody, I realised that I would have to modify the steering column mounting position as I was just too big for the seating position that had been set by the original builder.
Factor in the new seats and the larger steering wheel, and this became pretty critical to me being able to drive it again! The steering wheel mounted to a steel plate hung off a chassis cross member, with a brace bar back to a side chassis rail. Moving it was as simple as drilling some new M10 holes in that mount point a little higher up, and then attacking a lot of metal with a die grinder until I had sufficient clearance to get the column up an inch!
A little more leg room.
Its often the easiest of changes that have the biggest impact. For instance being able to take your foot off the clutch while turning a corner seemed pretty useful to me 🙂
ready to grind!
One issue I found was that due to the mk1 centre clocks, I was unable to engage main beam anymore (left stalk pushed forward), however this is a temporary issue as I intend to design and 3dprint a new stalk that has an extra long bend in the middle to gain me the additional half an inch of clearance I need to get that function back. The future is now!
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Alfa 159 / ElectronicsAs part of my quest to replace every single bulb in my Alfa with an LED equivalent, I noticed that the high level brake light utilised small bulbs and not LEDs (strange I know, but that’s Alfa for you!). So me being me, I took it apart and found that it would be very easy to replace the bulbs with LEDs whcih was a result. Of course, this wasn’t enough so I thought, If I had 10 LEDs what could I do with them 🙂
Enter the ATMega328 MCU, or as you may know it, the Arduino 🙂
The ATMega328 has 14 Digital Pins, 6 of which are PWM and an additional 6 x analogue inputs, problem is I needed 10 x PWM pins. The best option in this case is to use a shift register such as a 595 to extend your pins, but as I didn’t have one to hand, I decided to do it the hard way. There is a software library for the arduino SDK called : SoftPWM.h which lets you simulate PWM on any pin, which is quite useful to limit the hardware used and make better use of the processing power of the chip. So 4 hours of “figuring it out” yielded this result:
The basic functional requirement was simple:
When the brake pedal is pressed illuminate as normal
If the pedal is pressed for more than 5 seconds get your cylon on 🙂
You can download the sketch from the downloads section if you want to play with it. There are lots of arduino cyclon sketches around, but most / all of them are 6 LED’s or less due to the hardware PWM limitation, so this one lets you have up to 14 LEDs without moving into shift register world. and the schematic is below for your information:
This is isn’t the finished product btw, juts a learning experience on the way. I have some high powered LED’s on the way from China, and some shift registers in the post, as the main issue with doing this in software is speed and I need some more speed for some additional functions 🙂
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RH2B Build DiaryWhen I collected the car and drove it a few times in the winter was incredibly loud, like TO LOUD, and I like loud! So Something wasn’t quite right with the exhaust, and it needed to be sorted.
I removed the exhaust and bought some acouosti-mat sound deadening material to repack the exhaust only to discover it was not repack-able. Fortunately, a local fabricator said he would cut it open, repack and weld it back up for me, so that averted the crisis!
All that remained of the original packing material.
To say it needed doing was an understatement, it was completely empty of packing so was essentially a straight pipe with an echo chamber!
Once the fabricator sorted the packing for me, I wrapped it in exhaust wrap, reinstalled the heat shield and put it back on the car. The sound was much more palatable. Sporty, throaty but not deafening!
Much better!
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