Posts by Alan Brown

Re: I'm all for the idea of electric vehicles but

"many drivers of ICE powered vehicles are currently stranded in places like the M80 and according to the news, have been there in excess of eighteen hours (at the time of typing) running engines periodically to keep warm."

Many drivers of ICE vehicles are stupid enough to set off in bad weather without making any preparations for unexpected stops or possibly tossing a set of snow chains in the boot.

4WD is not a magic "get you out of trouble" wand, it's more usually something that gets you more stuck further from help than previously possible (and it certainly does nothing for improving braking performance or roadholding on bends in icy conditions.)

Re: Electric... yet another failure then

"so some 160 of these high power chargers at every motorway service.."

How many car parks are there at the services?

The only reason you have a filling station is because the stuff you're filling the car with has a nasty tendency to catch fire if you look sideways at it, so it needs special handling procedures.

Vs drive into the services car park, plug in and go grab lunch.

Re: Balloons/airships ?

"You cannot 'rig up' a conveyor to LEO (Low Earth Orbit)."

At one level of explanation that's what a Lofstrom Loop is.

Re: Balloons/airships ?

"Is there any research (or any point into researching) using some sort of balloon to do the heavy lifting to 100Km, and then launching a rocket from that altitude ?"

Ballockets were tried back in the early days. There was nothing to gain from them and payload was limited by the lifting capacity of the balloon.

You'd probably gain more with some kind of catapault mechanism under the launchpad (sproing!)

"all pouring millions into space companies"

It's cover for the StArk project.

Re: Gerry Anderson thought of it first

"It was about 15" long, and used nearly all of the Lego that we had."

How much lego would a 7 foot version have used? How much would it have weighed? :)

Re: You'll never get me up in one of those things

"any rocket motor on the payload may get spun up before it gets released"

If you've ever seen the L1011 or B52 pegasus launches you'll know that's not the case.

The launcher drops the rocket and peels back. The rocket loses around 1000-2000 feet in altiude before the rocket ignites and another few hundred feet before gaining enough speed to make up the loss.

Firing the load on-wing might sound like a good idea from an efficiency point of view but consider what happens to the carrier aircraft if the rocket engines misfire or explode.

Re: You'll never get me up in one of those things

"A bit of air turbulence and there's going to be a heck of a twist around that central spar"

Meaning at the slightest hint of such, it won't fly.

I agree though, It looks like it should have a joined tail.

Re: People who know told me

"You'd be surprised how much fuel this approach can save."

As Elon has already proven, fuel is the least expensive part of the whole freaking deal.

"doesn't imply bad"

Unless you count ripping the wings off.

Mind you it'd be a fun tweak to "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers"

Re: Points to ponder

"I do 50km/day commute, with 300km once or twice a month, and 4000km once or twice a year. That's not something that would work for an EV, but isn't necessarily a "standard" pattern."

300km "occasionall"y is a good argument for easier vehicle hire when you need to do that (or a drop in range extender on an EV)

Having a specific vehicle as a daily driver _just_ so you can do a 4000km trip a couple of times a year comes under several shades of silly.

Re: No second hand market

"That was promoting a feature US premium cars have had since I was in nappies and at least one eastern Europe car manufacturer has been doing since 1959 and probably earlier"

Something that's been built into Rover 75s, landrovers and range rovers for a long time too.

Northern European carmakers/owners tend to use electric block and cabin heaters rather than webasto heaters though - one big advantage being that there's a ready-built source of chargepoints already installed across northern climes as a result.

Re: Modular reactors are the only real answer.

Now fast forward into the future when carbon emissions laws mean that gas- and oil-fired boilers are outlawed and think about how big that demand spike will be.

And that's on top of electric cars, etc etc etc

Re: No second hand market

Remote starting is not the same thing as remote/timed heaters.

Look up Webastos for one example of this tech in ICE vehicles.

Re: Hmmm

"would you live on the land of a decommissioned nuclear power station"

Yes. Quite happily so.

The total "high level waste" from a current technology nuclear power station is such a mind boggingly huge amount - almost enough to fill an olympic size swimming pool over the 60 year lifespan of a 800MWe plant - that it accounts for less that 0.1% of the footprint of the site - and radioactive materials have the advantage that you can detect them at a distance, unlike all the nasty toxic and cancer-inducing chemicals in a multi-square-mile coal ash slurry pond.

Also: "high level" radioactive emitters are also shortlived ones. You should be more worried about all that depleted uranium dust (a very toxic heavy metal) scattered all over warzones in the world as it's a much bigger health risk.

Decades of "greens" holding back development of safer nuclear power (molten salt based systems) are coming home to roost. We could have had waterless(*) nuclear power stations by now which would have been somewhere between 10,000 and 1 million times safer than current nuclear power - which is

"only" 300,000 times safer than coal fired electricity.

Statistics is your friend. There are no statistical anomolies in population health downwind of any nuclear power station, vs plenty of them downwind of fossil fuel plants. Noone died at Fukushima (although 1500 people died in the evacuation panic thanks to nuclear misinformation). 76 people died at Chernobyl and the _actual_ rate of cancers resulting from that is so low as to be almost indistiinguishable from background noise(**). Ditto at Hiroshima and Nagasaki - and as for the claim of "centuries" to cleanup after a meltdown, Three Mile Island's cleanup process is proceeding quite well, thankyouverymuch.

(*) Molten salt systems take away the "radioactive steam bomb" risk and when you dig, you'll find water interactions or steam explosions at the core of every civilian (and most military) nuclear accidents so far. Prompt criticality causing instantaneous boiling and a steam explosion is a common theme.

(**) "What about all those thyroid problems?" you ask. They were found because they were looked for. Korea had a similar screening process a few years back and found similar rates of abnormalities with no nuclear incidents in sight - and the appalling health problems of the Chernobyl response teams is mostly a result of being treated as pariahs by ignorant medics refusing to treat them because they are afraid of radioactivity being contagious than any actual radiological problems.

Re: Hmmm

"Solar gives you maybe 1kW/m^2 of potential energy, ie solar irradiance at surface. "

When the sun is directly overhead.

At any other solar angle you need to multiply by the cosine of that angle (or the sine if you regard straight up as 90 degrees instead of 0 for this purpose) and even THAT doesn't fully take into account extra atmospheric attentuation at higher latitudes. This applies even if you face your panel directly at the sun.

Solar outside the tropics is pretty much greenwashing and there are major pollution problems associated with solar PV production that make coal ash ponds look relatively minor - just because it's not happening in _your_ backyard doesn't mean it's not happening.

Re: Crooks concealment law

" just today I found a considerable mismatch between what someone was saying about a company & their directorship involvement with it compared to what Companies House reported "

Yes, that happens rather a lot. It's amazing how "out of date" Companies House data can be isn't it? Along with all those other results which appear to be "out of date"...

Re: I'll miss them

" The secret to buying 'one transistor' is to..."

Is to realise that all the funny numbers don't really mean that much(*) and that you only actually need around 4 generics to do most jobs, then buy a baggie of 20 of each type for 2-3p each.

Ditto on resistors. Whilst there are 9 values per decade in 5% and 9 decades in ranges, you typically only need quantities of 6 values and 10 of everything else will last nearly a lifetime whilst only costing a tenner or less if you buy them all at once.

(*) In the bad old days each batch of transistors made would be characterised and then a new type number assigned, with every batch being different thanks to chemical variations and poor understanding of the laws of quantum physics. The fact remains that the vast majority of transistors are used as switches, followers (impedance converters) or current drivers and matching gains don't matter unless you're building some precision class AB circuit that noone would ever bother with anymore due to op amps being far more stable, consistent to characterise and less noisy when deployed correctly.

As for caps, wide variations in values don't matter much (if at all) unless you're playing with RF and the bigger problem there is some numb-nuts who doesn't understand parasitic inductance substituting low value electrolytics for high value ceramics or mylars. Newer electrolytic building techniques have pretty much eliminated the huge parastic inductances we used to see anyway, hence why circuits no longer slug 100uF electros with 0.1uf bypass caps (unless you're the paranoid type like me).

Times change but it's always been better to buy your small components by the kilo and then use them in projects as they come along than to try and buy 1 of N and 2 of Y, etc etc etc. You may never use 80% of them, but having the ones you need onhand when you need 'em is still cheaper than 2-3 trips to the shops.

As for Maplins and the others of their ilk: Unlike hobbyist leatherwork or candlemaking (which are making resurgences), hobbyist electronics is a dying art and that has a lot more to do with most teachers being scared of technology and maths than any decrease in availability of discrete componentry.

Re: Edinburgh Woolen Mill

"Whereas Maplin's website has always been one of the worst going."

It's not just Maplin. It's clear that top manglement in a lot of these outfits need to get to grips with this new-fangled "Internet" thing and understand when the staff in marketing are fucking things around too much. The money boys seem to fall for "shiny shiny" demos and forget the number one importance of retail sales is making sales AND getting repeat custom.

If I'm going to a website to buy stuff and work through a catalogue, do I _really_ need to be bombarded with banner adverts, or so much java/javascript that it needs a marching band to support it? WHY are the actual parts that matter - search functions - so completely and utterly broken? WHY are websites being optimised for XYZ browser?

Re: Well at least

"Maplin opened lots of large, expensive-to-run stores in retail parks"

Or in high streets (and a lot of Maplin's "hundreds of stores" are within Amazon Prime coverage areas)

The problem wasn't that they opened them. The problem is that they kept them open when they were losing custom hand over fist. One of the more sensible openings in the last decade was a relatively small branch in the bottom of a large B&Q building at New Malden with a lot of integrated car parking (when Kingfisher owned both) that does reasonable turnover on account of being easily accessible from the A3 - easy access == more custom and people can't be bothered hitting closer stores if they have to faff with trying to find parking.

That said even going in there has usually been an exercise in frustration over the last few years. The writing's been on the wall for Maplin for a long time, and it's not the only brainless zombie shuffling along the High Streets of Britain.

Re: Well at least

"What is the point in Maplin?"

The same as with Dick(head)Smith Electronics in Australia - there isn't one any more.

Re: Well at least

"f I order from Amazon I can get it next day but the downside is that the earliest I can only get it is next day. If I could get it locally I could get it today. "

It doesn't help when you do look online, find the item is supposedly in stock but then it's nowhere to be found in-store.

Re: Fuck livestock

I know it's a troll, but....

Cats tend not to crap in open spaces. Being small and subject to aerial predation(*) they usually try prefer cover and as ambush predators themselves they usually try to bury it afterwards.

The worst offenders for crapping on driveways/paths/doorways are humans - and dogshit isn't nearly as noxious as monkeyshit.

(*) Young cats are a similar size/weight to rabbits and equally attractive to hawks/falcons. They're also vulnerable to foxes. I've seen them taken by both (it's kinda obvious when the "rabbit" is black with a long tail and has a red collar with a bell on it)

Re: Fuck livestock

in lieu of a fence, have you considered a wildlife camera?

Re: This:

"It's shit. Nobody would pay for it."

Nobody would pay _that much_ for it.

The problems are manifold.

Firstly that the asking price is ridiculously high (The reason that cinema snacks are priced through the roof is that the distributors are only allowing them to make 25-40p per seat. For popular films there may be no markup at all allowed)

Secondly the copyright period has been systemically and cynically extended well beyond what's reasonable.

Thirdly that "copyright" has been creatively interpreted to cover "look and feel" (marvin gaye songs) and music passages that the original authors didn't create (bittersweet melody) whilst reducing "fair use" allowances.

The USA profited immensely from being the world's heaviest collective intellectual property pirate up until the mid-late 20th century, but with the boot on the other foot its been going all-out to try and protect its interests worldwide in ways that in previous times would (and _did_) lead to wars being waged.

Interestingly, the solution was proven as far back as 1980 in the computer software industry - combatting widespread software piracy was as simple as making the software so cheap that people didn't bother.

On the other hand, some companies (eg microsoft) effectively encouraged piracy of their software by eschewing copylocks, etc until they'd achieved ubiquitousness of their proprietary formats, then once the trap was armed, started fencing users in.

Re: Whaaat...

"In this case it appears Ofcom are trying the same wheeze that led to FTTC."

This is speciically because they didn't have the balls to simply say "no more broadband funding until Openreach and BT are completely separated companies with dialtone completely separated from lines"

Remember, that's what New Zealand did after assessing the British market (Telecom NZ wanted NZ to adopt our model), documenting BT's ongoing market abuses and decided that they weren't going to allow that to happen there (they already had a rapacious monopoly, the only question was how far they'd go to break it up and the answer was "fully")

The result of having the dead hand of the monopolist removed from the throat of the lines company was a complete reversal of culture and a broadband market which is amongst the most competitive in the world despite the challenging topography and low population.

Re: Got rid of utorrent years ago

I've never actually seen a klingon _eat_ a tribble.

Re: Two stories:

Doesn't matter. If you're up to your chest in water, either will kill you just as well.

For that matter so will 12V - the importance of voltage is mostly about breaking down dry skin resistance and it's the current that does the real work. (volts jolts, mills kills)

(For the pedants, the difference is that DC causes muscles to tense and stay tensed whilst AC pulses them a little. The reality is that it makes bugger all difference above 25Hz)

Re: Two stories:

"Had she put batteries in? Yes - she said. Opened it up. Two new AA batteries - nose to nose."

In my very early days of being a service tech I lost count of the number of pieces of battery powered kit that came in with problems that were solved by changing the batteries - because the user had put in less than a full set when changing them.

1-2 flat and several new ones (or several unknown mixed brand ones from the back of the drawer) doesn't work in an early-80s generic walkman or boombox - and a battery tester needs to have a good-sized load resistor in it - measuring open circuit voltage isn't enough, nor is the lick test.

Re: Hmmm

"So he laughed and said to hand them over but she looked blank and repeated they were in the trash"

I worked in a radio station. Our line for new staff 'Those rechargable and reusable battery packs are $300 each. You signed them out, you're responsible for them. If you don't return them then they're charged to you.' (or whatever they took out) Sometimes things simply went missing without being signed out, but the simple solution was not to replace it until someone 'fessed up or it reappeared and the appearance of a (dummy) cctv camera over the doorway of the equipment store solved that for the most part.

Being a US station, yes, they can charge staff for things like that, but scare them like that when they take them out and you'll never have equipment lost unless it's an emergency. Journalists are amongst the most contemptuous users of 'not my stuff'

Re: Its powered by magic fairies and gnomes

"The cleaning staff also worked for the company and had a clearance level almost as high as the techs."

They were still known to unplug random equipment in order to get power for the vacuum cleaners.

Clearance != training

Re: Parachutes

I assumed when I read this that SpaceX was using a parafoil due to their steerability. (This is the same reason that Dyna-Soar plans in the late 1950s proposed using Rogallo airfoils and these were considered for the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo capsules before water landings were decided on.)

One of the more interesting properties of a payload fairing is that it's a natural lifting body, which means that even if initially tumbling they're going to naturally align themselves for stable reentry as long as the centre of pressure and centre of mass are arranged appropriately. I wonder how much penalty there would be in adding control surfaces.

IIRC the one that washed up on the Isles of Scilly showed no sign of burn damage, so they must be light enough that deceleration energy is very low.