Solid Air – Norma Waterson

Posted on 13/12/2018 by dougaj4

I don’t know how I missed this, but I just discovered yesterday:

More about the album: The Very Thought of You

On her second solo album the Grande Dame of British folk is presenting us with a surprising, inspired selection of songs. Most of the songs on this album come in pairs, and each has a story attached. Stories referring to Norma’s childhood memories or commenting contemporary events, most of them connected to famous personalities in the world of music; people as different and remarkable as Nick Drake, Judy Garland and Freddie Mercury. The mood is quiet yet lit by Norma’s powerful and passionately smooth voice, revealing new dimensions to well-known songs. Featuring Richard Thompson, Danny Thompson, Martin Carthy and Eliza Carthy.

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Python Problems

Posted on 29/11/2018 by dougaj4

I have recently returned to using Pyxll to link Excel to Python (of which more later), which required the installation of a 32 bit version of Python 3.7.  First trials after installation returned the message: “AttributeError: ‘module’ object has no attribute ‘CLSIDToPackageMap’“.

Fortunately someone else had had the same problem, raised a question on Stackoverflow, then answered his own question about 12 hours later:

After deleting C:\Temp\gen_py, the code above works again. Hope it can save trouble!

The same trick also worked for me, and is continuing to work with no further problems.

My gen_py folder was located at c:\Users\douga\AppData\Local\Temp\gen_py\, even though my Python installation was on my D: drive, and just in case anyone might be concerned about deleting a system folder, it contains the message: “# Generated file – this directory may be deleted to reset the COM cache…”

 

 

Posted in Computing - general, Link to Python, NumPy and SciPy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Numerical Integration; Tanh-Sinh Quadrature v. 4.4

Posted on 23/11/2018 by dougaj4

Update 27 Nov 2018: Version 4.41 now available from the link below, with minor modifications for compatibility with Excel 2007.

I recently received a new version (4.4) of the numerical integration spreadsheet by Graeme Dennes which is now available for download from:

Tanh_Sinh Quadrature.

The new spreadsheet includes significant improvements in the performance of several functions, as well as new functions:

The Tanh-Sinh quadrature workbook has been enhanced as follows:

(1) A faster Tanh-Sinh program has been implemented, increasing the speed by around 50 percent, and the speed of the DE programs has been doubled.

(2) A fast finite interval program TINT has been added. It runs at over twice the speed of the Gauss-Kronrod program.

(3) The speed of the Gauss-Kronrod program has been improved through modifications developed by Berntsen, Espelid and Sorevik.

(4) The Plotter worksheet now shows two plots: the plot of the selected function over the finite interval (a,b), and the plot of the function after being transformed by the Tanh-Sinh function.

(5) Now includes over 1200 test integrals with results correct to 15 significant digits. This may be the largest set of diverse test integrals and results available at no cost. It includes several of the “standard” sets of test integrals in wide use.

(6) The Romberg integrator, written by the author, may be the fastest and most accurate Romberg integrator available. Advice to the contrary would be most welcome.

(7) Minor change to allow compatibility with Excel 2007.

Graeme Dennes

 

Posted in Charts, Excel, Maths, Newton, Numerical integration, UDFs, VBA | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

AS 3600 and RC Design Functions 8.01

Posted on 13/11/2018 by dougaj4

The updated RC Design Functions spreadsheet (presented here) included an updated UMom function to find the ultimate strength of a rectangular section under combined bending and axial load; but I omitted to include the revisions to the alpha2 and Gamma factors; that is the factors defining the depth stress of the rectangular stress block.  This has now been fixed, in Version 8.01, which may be downloaded from:

RC Design Functions8.zip

As before, the shear design results currently only cover the simplified shear design requirements.

 

Posted in Beam Bending, Concrete, Excel, Newton, UDFs, VBA | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Falling feathers and hammers

Posted on 09/11/2018 by dougaj4

It is well known that at the end of the Apollo 15 Moon landing, Commander David Scott dropped a hammer and a feather to demonstrate that they would accelerate at the  same rate, and land on the ground together:

What is not so well known, at least I didn’t know, is that this experiment has been repeated on Earth, at a much grander scale, at NASA’s space power facility:

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