Ooh, incremental launching…

Second Severn Crossing was a good one, with the added fun that pretty much the entire structure was precast on land…

A fascinating Flickr collection.

It’s a nicheometer display by NuVinci.

It may be the national animal, but the area where we live isn’t known for its herds of zebra, so I was pretty surprised to find this one hanging around with a donkey on the village outskirts.

And better not seen:

Seemingly well researched book on the arms trade: The Shadow World[/url].

I ghettoed mine using this method[/url].

The foam strip made fitting the tyres difficult, but did seem to improve the grip on the bead.

As per Klunk, you need to find a digital terrain model.

Couple of search terms that provide potentially usable returns are:

“digital terrain model malverns”

“open source digital terrain model uk”

(seems like STW doesn’t like Google URLs so you’ll have to cut and paste)

You’ll probably need CAD skills to turn a list of X,Y,Z coordinates into a surface/file that can be fed to the CNC device – I can do topo survey data into civil designer software but manufacturing isn’t my thing.

(Edit to add: wanders off to OSM and NASA to see if it’s possible to extract data for use in calculating areas of watersheds)

I’ve been using Sport Tracks[/url] for a few years – desktop version doesn’t need anything uploaded to the internet.

Can’t remember what features are withheld from the free version.

Keeps track of equipment and parts, e.g. bike can be associated with chain and tyres.

It does need you to be using a logger capable of recording gpx/tcx/etc.

Wow, STW is old. I was too off my face to know what the Internet was back then.

I remember some great rides, beer and curry with the GoFar[/url] gang. Did any of you have a square-shape Jeep Cherokee in the last century?

As far as books on the arms industry and its vested interests go I thought The Shadow World[/url] was pretty good. Quite a few case studies.

Damn you.

“The elephant in the room…”

“…just left.”

http://www.msf.org/

Links to regional/national sites in the banner at the top.

Easy to set up a direct debit.

On a windless morning riding in two groups about 100m apart a rider in the lead group should not use pepper spray.

Valve isn’t lined up with labels on tyres….

Also Rule #49.

…right-click on the link to change the arrow arrangement: to, from, both ways, none.

Select the two nodes you want to link then CTRL-L.

(Thanks, have wanted to do it in the past but gave up too easily.)

Assuming the M4 is sealed-off east of Sutton Benger the A350 takes care of itself, although West Country residents may want to close it themselves at Lacock and Semington, along with the B3107, A3102 and A365.

Edit to add: This.

Edited again to add: Berkshire can *** off, though.

Maybe somebody needs to mention it on the Tesco Wikipedia page?

Those of you suffering punctures: Fat Ghetto Tubless is perfectly doable[/url].

Summary: 20″ Maxxis motorbike innertubes (lack of local alternatives), 45North Dillingers and Stan’s sealant or the somewhat cheaper Slime(TM) green goop.

Surface area available for thorns:

And if you ride through cocktail bars:

I only joined this forum because I wanted something to hang my gym shirt on.

The Telegraph has 4 paragraphs on the glitch/hack/whatever and 10 paragraphs of churnalism on number of outlets, company history and new products.

Win for Greggs.

I think the question is more about reading data from a table or database and showing it in a graph, and being able to choose what information you want to show: like this.

I’ve also been looking into this and most solutions seem to involve Java things, I haven’t had time to delve further though, so watching this thread with interest.

Some possible leads here[/url] and here[/url].

What I’m interested in is turning a tab delimited text file into graphs.

Woppit, that’s taking pride in your lunch. This is a pack lunch:

From a previous thread on here I recommended http://shipito.com/ to a friend in order to get goods from a US-based eBay seller to South Africa.

They report it went well, although the import tariff + duty in SA was about the same as the goods (budgeted for, still cheaper than local purchase).

UK should be a doddle.

What most of them up there said:

– hydrogen causes normal metal pipe to become brittle, you need stainless steel or composites (not sure how well plastic pipes would work – I remember seeing a hydrocarbons pipeline installed through Wiltshire in the 90s that I think was plastic).

– there already exists a vast infrastructure for transporting electricity, the only issue is economics with respect to turning expensive high-grade energy (electricity) back into low-grade energy (heat) for cooking and space-heating. Sadly the only alternative for cooking is to burn things (solar stoves not really being a practical proposition in many places). Solar-thermal and heat-pumps could work for water- and space-heating though, even in higher latitudes.

– generating hydrogen on-site with electricity is also (currently) wasteful: electrolysis is poor at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. Scientists busy working on it though. Current CHP installations as far as I know are economical because they run on natural gas or byproducts from other processes (landfill methane, biodigestors)

– focus needs to be on reducing energy usage: see the graphs of what we use energy for in the Without Hot Air document. “Stuff” is the embedded energy in the things that we buy.

Problem with hydrogen is that generating it using electricity seems to be 50-80% efficient, then you have the losses when converting it back to heat/movement/electricity. And it creates an awful lot of CO2. My understanding is that hydrogen is also a bugger to store and transport.

I tend to the view that the hydrogen economy is a distraction when talking about energy storage.

Compressed air underground: I’m no expert on rock, but you know how you get subsidence above old mine workings? What could possibly go wrong when you pump them full of compressed air? Not to mention the energy losses in the system. (I’ve also seen what happens when an air-pocket in a uPVC water pipe 2m underground lets go when somebody closes the outlet valve but doesn’t turn off the pumps)

Given current technology my money is on pumped storage (Ffestiniog style), thermal storage in sodium or oil (as discussed in the focussed array thread) and batteries/smart-grid (even more so as electric cars become more widespread).

We had some solar PV people (Irish-German joint venture) visit us with a view to installing a 20MW plant: their installation was going to include several containers full of batteries and a few MW of diesel generators in order to guarantee supply. And needed 40Ha of land (~650m x 650m).

I’ve recommended it before and will do so again: Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air[/url] puts energy use and energy generation into perspective, without seeming to have any particular axe to grind.

Hopefully somebody will be along shortly with a “disruptive technology” (a modern equivalent of the spinnning jenny or steam engine) that will give us a practical, economical method for storing energy.

I dabbled with BASIC as a kid, and more recently a bit of scratching in html/asp/php. I’m not sure if the language you code in is really important, rather it’s the practice of thinking in a structured/logical manner.

Coding isn’t just about writing programs or websites. How many careers use Excel or similar for data analysis? Engineering, finance, medicine…

Anyway, I bought a book on Python for my 10yr old and run Python on Windows.

There’s also Alice for generating animated stories – some point and click but with use of coding principles close to the surface.

Not exactly coding, but some fun to be had with Lightbot[/url] – controlling a robot with instructions and uses subroutines for repetitive actions.

As others have said: Lego Mindstorms[/url] is a great combination of programming and construction/assembly – and there’s at least one app similar to Lightbot[/url].

Ginger ale, ice, lemon.

Not sure if coincidental, but this popped up on Twitter yesterday from RantyHighwayman[/url]:

The following tweet did state: “be absolutely clear, though. Time must be taken away from motorised traffic to make this work in a 90s to 120s cycle time”

Three complete bikes from CRC and Wiggle over the last few years and all arrived happily in Southern Africa with tyres, forks and brakes all connected and at working pressure.

All in a regular bike boxes with some bubble wrap to stop rattling and rubbing. I have no idea if boxes by courier receive better treatment than baggage, but no significant damage to boxes.

All I had to do was fit wheels, handlebars to stem (levers, shifters, grips attached already) and the seatpost/saddle.

I’m assuming they came in a large plane to JHB and then on “a feeder aircraft” to the destination.

If you don’t depressurise everything for the flight then remember that Kenya has a variety of altitudes, so if the bike is assembled in Cape Town and you live in Eldoret you might have to adjust the tyres, shocks and brakes yourself, ditto if coming from Johannesburg to Mombasa or Lamu. 8)

Dead easy: I reckon I’ve got it down to about a minute, most of which is opening the seat-pack – assuming I don’t push right through and have to repeat…

They don’t work out cheap though – almost a quid a worm in these parts, so I’m interested to know whether anybody has a ghetto solution, such as shaving pieces off car-worms or using very thin strips of old inner-tube (no old inner tubes handy, otherwise I would have done already).

1,100km of sand, sand and more sand with my fatbike/Gates/NuVinci combo. From the tooth wear so far I reckon there’s still a few thousand km left in the front. It’s not too highly stressed though – I’m no Cavendish.

My regular bike has been through a couple of chains, a cassette and 2 chainrings in a similar distance – despite thorough (and time consuming) chain cleaning.

Lego is essential for a child’s development. If you don’t have your own then make a plan: relatives, neighbours, kidnap, etc.

When my crane arrives I will direct my wife towards richmtb and mrblobby.

😳 <cancels Amazon order>

Just realised I already own 42009, it’s in the queue for construction behind the green breakdown truck and the pneumatic excavator. I suspect one of the kids may have cracked open the Mindstorms EV3 sometime in the last week or two while I’ve been at work.

My wife rolls her eyes when she gets a “you have a parcel” notification in our mailbox.

9:Zero:7 with a NuVinci and 42:28, spins out at 20-25km/hr

No chain.

Don’t the holes let in too much air? So big draught, big flames and little radiant heat (no thermal mass either).

Preferred method round here is brake drum or wheel rim from a truck with the bottom blanked off (or fitted with an ash-drop if you have metalwork skills). Relatively slow burn, nice hot coals and the heat radiates really well.

Here’s a picture of one from t’internet and a link to another one:

Probably have 5 or 6 in each of my tyres after a year of fatty ghetto tubeless, always fitted with a slathering of rubber cement/vulcanising stuff (same as used for fitting patches).

Would also love a ghetto substitute as it seems wrong paying close to a fiver for five worms. Compared to walking home though… priceless.

Looks like a re-purposed clip lock (available under a variety of different trade names) roof sheet.

Common as muck in Southern Africa.

This study might answer questions concerning axle-loads and turning circles – the axle limits look similar to the UK/EU. One of the conclusions is that interlinks have a high payload efficiency – running and pavement wear costs versus load carried.

Granted our roads are not so twisty as in the UK but access from highway to industrial areas have similar geometry, and the report does say that interlinks are best suited to long distance haulage (compared to other truck configurations, it doesn’t address road v rail).