Life After Freedom: 2011

Hello all who would like to read and see what I do with my days. It turns out that for the next four years or so I will actually have quite a lot to do with most hours of most of my days. This is due to me having landed a divine post-grad course at the University of Bradford. Don't worry if you haven't come across the name before, it's probably a bit out of your league.

This is the magnificent array of machinery that I am fortunate enough to touch. It is mostly made up of a transcient dynamometer, which is the blue and silver box falling off the right hand side of the picture, and a prototype Jaguar v8, on the left.

This is the v8 from the other side, showing the Denso ECU (Nadir (my old housemate) works for Denso) and a selection of sensors.

This is my workstation with the engine cell through the window.

I took these photos this morning before I grasped the insane task I had been given by my supervisor, Dr Byron Mason. He sent me a 124-page tutorial last night with vague instructions about understanding it by 3pm this afternoon when we would be meeting with JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) to discuss what this tutorial was all about. The tutorial was for a new piece of software called INCA and no-one else at uni knew how it worked, and it was my job to be the man in the know. However things weren't too bad. Turned out we were only having a Webex with a couple of guys from JLR and they were going to assist us in setting up INCA with our hardware, namely the Denso ECU. After we finished the Webex, Byron said to me that he thought I sounded like I knew more than JLR! Nice.

INCA is a swish bit of kit, it allows for on-the-fly alterations to almost any parameter the ECU manages, and these days that means everything from throttle to fuel-rail pressure.

As well as bagging that place at the uni, I've also got my mitts on my first ever flat by myself.