Last night was the final night of this term’s DramSoc production, Don Juan on Trial, which I had been roped into doing the lighting design for (by Jude, of course). It was in the round in the concert hall – which made my life harder – but it was still one of the most fun productions I’ve been in recently. Oh, and the lighting was marvelous. Photos to follow.

And that brings me to my final light-related thing – photography. Taking photos for Don Juan was again fraught with difficulties – mainly a lack of light. Which is not surprising, given that it was set in an abandoned chateau at night! I’ve been waiting a while for a new lens with a much bigger apeture, but it hasn’t turned up yet. So the photos were all heavily underexposed, and taken using ISO 1600, in the hope of getting a fast enough shutter to get sharp photos. For reasons that I’m not quite sure of, most compact digital cameras are much better in low-light situations – they ‘force’ the photo by default (i.e. use a reasonable shutter speed, and push the ISO to the limits). It’s a lot harder to persuade my SLR to do it’s stuff when it’s outside of it’s happy zone.

Although I’m completely knackered from all the work (including the annual epic last night, get-out, get home, unload and collapse routine for the final weekend), I feel a bit refreshed from getting away from work for a while. I’m trying to put more effort into making good use of my free time (and trying to focus on some things that I keep putting off). So we’ll see how long that lasts then, as usual.

Anyway, that’s me finished my stint in Hammersmith, and I’m back to South Ken for the foreseeable future. Which is nice. And I got paid today, which is even nicer. Drinks are on me.*

And to whoever left their iPod on the Storeroom desk – one, that’s really, really feckin’ stupid, and two, it’s just the right height to prop up the keyboard to a comfortable typing angle.

*Offer for one night only. Large clues may have been given as to which bar I’ll be in. Be there, and prove you’re a geek, cause you’re browsing my weblog on a Friday night.

However, the dramsoc email address (the one at the top of the DramSoc website gets lots of spam apparently (although I’m not sure if this relates to the @ic address instead), and here’s the problem – our method doesn’t help when you write out the email address on the page. Try entering in “www.dramsoc.org” into this page (explanations). Notice that the email link to elpresidente doesn’t get found, since that just has “Martin” instead of the email address. If you’re techy minded, have a look at the source to see what’s happening.

Oh well. Next time he’s bored, maybe Gary will write another little javascript thingy.

Talking of the radio, when are those bastards going to bring the speakers back from Devon? I can’t get the fricking wavefront set up in the storeroom all by myself, unless someone dares me to push the amprack (sans-crossovers) down the stairs…

The play for which I was one-man-teching was Brimstone and Treacle, put on by 1066 Productions. It’s the first time that I’ve worked for a professional theatre company, and I’m glad to say that none of them twigged that I was an amateur techie until I enlightened them in the bar afterwards! Obviously I’m a well trained DramSoc techie . It’s a great play, but if you go and see it, it’ll both lighten your wallet (hey, this isn’t a DramSoc production) and leave you feeling slightly disturbed.

Most importantly, I managed to be a “parachute techie”, and I didn’t screw it up. Nice.

Let’s deal with the not-so-controversial part first, and look at single-phase wiring. Since 1969, flexible wiring has to have adopted the green/yellow (earth, or ‘Protective Conductor’), blue (neutral), brown (live, or ‘phase’) convention that everyone is familiar with. Interestingly, the blue/brown combo was chosen to harmonise with Europe, in the interests of the ‘removal of trade barriers in Europe for domestic and similar equipment’ (taken from this IEE publication), which is a Good Principle. This new update to regulations (BS 7671 to be exact) applies the new colours to fixed wiring, superceeding the black/red combo of yore. That’s fair enough, it’s what most people in domestic situations are used to, and it should stop any confusion, especially, as noted, in the DIY sector. Of course, the old cables will still be around for a long time, but there’s no way around that.

Things are slightly more complicated when it comes to three phase power supplies. (For those of you who don’t know about three phase, either chill or read this not quite perfect introduction). The old colours were Red, Yellow, Blue, and Black for neutral. But for all single phase installations and flexible wiring in Europe (including the UK), and all 3-phase supplies in Europe, Blue is Neutral. So it has been decided that if we are going to change, then blue should be for neutral. Fair enough. Everyone else uses brown or black for the three phases, which is a bit more of an issue – since that’s now two colours common to both systems (blue and black) but with different, and potentially dangerously different, roles. Well, at least we’re harmonising.

Except we aren’t. The 1976 (HD324) standard on colours (which for some reason we’ve avoided for quite some time) suggests black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, violet, grey, white, pink or turquoise can be used for phases, with black and brown preferred. Everyone else seems to have settled on using only brown and black for the three phases, which means that (and this isn’t hard to deduce) you have two browns or two blacks in the cable, and so the phases are hard to distinguish. The IEE weren’t happy to see the phases becoming indistinguishable, and so tried to get consensus to introduce a third colour. Instead, we’ve jumped the gun, and declared that we’ll have brown, black and grey as the phase colours. I’d have preferred violet, pink and turquoise, but I guess we’re lumbered with the boring colours. Now we need to hope that at somepoint in the future, the rest of Europe will “harmonise” their colour schemes with the scheme we came up with to “harmonise” with them. (And if that’s different, we’ll need to “harmonise” with that…)

So why did we jump the gun? I quote from the impact assesment:

The UK lately has been faced with a further decision as to whether to proceed with colour changes now or wair upon agreement within Europe with respect to all the requirements of HD384-5-51. Because of the continuing problems in respect of the man-machine interface, the committee decided that it would be appropriate for the UK to proceed. The decisions to be made were becoming generally known. Contractors and clients were asking if and when the new colours could be used in new installations, particularly those with a long construction period. The committee decided that early adoption was appropriate and that, as soon as it was practical, contractors should be allowed to use the new colours in their installations.

So they were pestered into making the decision before consensus in Europe could be achieved. Hopefully that won’t matter much in the long run.

All that said, is their actually any point in harmonising in the first place? I think the trade barriers arguement for portable appliances is a good one, but wiring in a house in Liverpool isn’t likely to end up in Lisbon. Arguements about being able to use standard wires fall flat too, since most countries have their own cable standards (even if they’re all the same colours inside), and “as there islittle commonality in cable types in Europe, (except between the UK and Ireland), in the short term there will be no saving in cable costs”. So it sounds like a nice thing to do, but harmonising has no benifits other than things being harmonised. Not a very pressing argument.

And the drawbacks? Safety would seem to be the obvious one, and probably one most on the minds of all the DramSoccers out there. I liked this phrase from the report:

Industrial and commercial installations are the domain of the professional installer and problems associated with amateur work should not arise.

Which is fair enough – you should know what you’re doing before messing with three-phase supplies. As Mr T commented one time, 240V will hurt you, but 415V kills. However, the rate of accidents with electricity is low, and their aren’t enough people killing themselves by miswiring, if any, for the HSE to keep track of them separately from other electrical accidents.

Finally, have a look at how many times the EU is mentioned. That’ll be none then. Sure, most countries in Europe now are in the EU, but the IEE is comparing wiring colours with Hungary, Norway and Switzerland, and not Poland, Estonia or Greece. This new standard is being generated in Britain, with the aim of harmonising wiring with major countries in Europe, and isn’t a new EU directive nor anything like it. So don’t jump to conclusions when you hear bureaucracy and Europe mentioned in the same breath.

(If any Electrical Engineers want to correct me on anything, then feel free to post in the comments – I’m a Chemistry graduate after all).

Grrrrrrrr.

But more importantly, either go on Tour, or pay some money to go watch it.