Sadly I have to announce that today Fidget came to the end of her two year life. She hasn’t been herself since an ear infection spread to her brain a couple of months ago. We don’t think she was suffering a great deal of pain as she wasn’t squeaking. I’ve found this footage of Fidget as we’ll remember her – a very inquisitive little hamster.
Just wanted to add this final graph of Fidget’s running – this will be the last. Was pleased to see that she broke the 1km mark on the 25th July! Now I’ll have to think of something else to do with the Arduino….
The graph above shows Fidget’s night-time running activity over the past week or so. Originally I was hoping to prove that hamsters run several miles a night but it seems that either they don’t, or we have a very lazy hamster. I’ll monitor her for a few more nights in the hope that she’ll break the 1km mark but it looks unlikely.
Unfortunately on the first night of measuring Fidget’s running the cage moved slightly and the wheel counter no longer triggered. I bit of blue-tac later and I now have a reading for last night. Unfortunately Fidget only ran 800m or half a mile – whilst this falls short of my expectations it is still pretty impressive for such a small animal. I’ll see if she can break that record tonight.
Pictured on the left is the final version of the Fidget wheel counter. It all looks a bit untidy but I have assured Jessica that it will not be there forever – just long enough to get an insight into Fidget’s night time habits. I read that hamsters can run several miles a night but don’t believe it.
I used the Arduino board that I got for Christmas and linked it to a cheap LCD screen I got off eBay. The potentiometer adjusts the contrast of the screen.
The circuit is reasonably simple with a reed switch and magnet arrangement mounted under Fidget’s wheel. The switch is connected to one of the Arduino’s input pins and pulls the value up to 5V when closed. The Arduino keeps count of the number of times the wheel has revolved and converts this value into the number of kilometres travelled. Unfortunately the display is still upside down and I cannot be bothered to engineer a solution to this.
I’ll take some readings over the next week or so and will finally be able to find out if Fidget runs a long way each night…. though I could probably just ask Dad who had the pleasure of sleeping on an air-bed in the room that Fidget occupies.
Today Jessica went for her second scan and we got to see Bump on TV again. Lately we’ve been aware of Bump’s presence thanks to the occasional tremor of Jessica’s tummy in response to Bump testing her limbs. We also know the sex of Bump now but there are some people that don’t want to know the sex yet so I’ll continue to use both he and her in my blog posts.
Bump was facing downwards during the scan so we haven’t got the classic scan photo of bump but you can still see some detail. Comparing the three month scan to today’s pictures is amazing – we can now see a defined spine and during the scan we could see all four chambers of the heart pumping away at around 160bpm. All the measurements came back normal so everything seems fine for Bump and the due date remains the same.
Now our house move is complete I’ll hopefully have some time to post a bit more on the blog. For those of who doubted the Fidget wheel counter would ever be complete… the picture on the left shows the latest progress. I’ve managed to hook up an LCD screen and now need to display some text on it – not sure what I’ll do to get it the right way up though!
I’ll keep the blog updated with progress 🙂
Hi, as some of you probably know I haven’t been out of the house much lately due to what has now been diagnosed as Gastroenteritis. Thankfully this seems to be fading away now and I should be back to my old self soon. This is good timing as I have just about had my fill of daytime TV and the stock of programmes on the DVR has diminished considerably over the last week.
Anyway, this is mostly a picture post – me and Jessica went for a walk in the shortly lived snow on Sunday:
Unfortunately Lewis Hamilton didn’t do too well in the race, despite me wearing the hat in support.
Expanding her repertoire of impressions… Jessica attempts a snowman.
And finally, a shot of fidget. Everyone comments on how well behaved and cute she is when they see her. This is the view we see when we put a DVD on, shortly followed by her gnawing the bars in an attempt to draw our attention.
We had Fidget out for her usual run in the hall this evening but she was much more energetic than usual. There is a corner of the door in which she likes to dig but today I put one of Jessica’s boots there to stop her further damaging the paint work. Fidget wasn’t too pleased and tried to get behind the boot – things looked pretty funny so I grabbed the camera. The footage below shows what happened when fidget tried to climb the door using the boot as a starting point.
No hamsters were hurt in the production of this short film.
Just a quick post to let you know that there are now even more photos in the wedding selection – over one hundred now… There are still a few more to collect but that is going to take a week or so. In the meantime, enjoy some footage of Fidget on a night when she was going particularly fast.
*Sections of this post edited by fidget*
A distinct absence of blog posts recently as we are getting closer and closer to the big day. Me and Jessica have been rushing round trying to sort out flowers, balloons, shoes and tablecloths to name just a few.
We are also taking a one month break from Taekwondo whilst we get the wedding sorted out. This may become a longer break for me as I am considering stopping TKD and trying to move up to the next grade in badminton. I am finding it hard to motivate myself to remember:
10 3-step sparring routines
8 2-step sparring routines
4 1-step sparring routines
7 patterns
+ a shed load of Korean words
I’ll see how I feel after a month – perhaps I’ll want to rush back.