Are buslanes actually traffic calming?

I don’t generally mind buslanes, when they serve a purpose; when they give public transport priority access to a town or city for the last mile or two, it’s annoying to be sat in a queue but generally understandable.

The lanes that really annoy me are the 300 yard ones: the ones that start, go for a bit, and then stop, for no real reason other than to move a bus a bit closer to town. They’re usually a mile or more from where you’re trying to get to, and largely empty because all the buses are stuck in the traffic that the buslane is causing.

It dawned on me today, however, that they actually serve a purpose - they calm the traffic a mile before it hits the city centre, meaning that the queues are well back (actually in the slums surrounding the city centre) rather than stacking up as you hit the lights and roadsystem of the city itself.

Clever.

The Samsung SG4 is so fast why?

Of course, we all like progress - the world would be a dull place if our devices were still chugging along at the speeds we grew up with. But there has to be a limit, surely?

I just saw that the Samsung SG4 doubles all of the iPhone 5’s benchmark scores. That’s one seriously fast device. Great!

But, no - not really. What happens to everyone, Android or otherwise, that doesn’t have a device that fast? Do they suddenly have to deal with apps that run too slow on their antiquated phones?

Not likely - it’s much more likely that app developers will, for the foreseeable, make sure that their apps run on most devices, rather than the latest one from Samsung.

Basically, all those speeds on your shiny new SG4 might be great when you’re talking about benchmarks down to pub, but in reality, they’re going to be sat, unused, in the stable that is your phone, waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

“But the SG3 is the most popular device on the planet!”, you scream. “Surely the SG4 will be just as popular?” It’s true that it’s the single most popular device, but that doesn’t mean there’s more SG3’s out there than all other android phones put together, merely that there’s no other single device with the same numbers. Combined, the SG3 has a small market share, and the same will be true for the SG4.

That means there’s going to be a huge market that app developers will alienate if they cater for the SG4’s speed. And given that their market is how they make their money, they’re not going to do that, are they?

Look past the hype, it’s a whole new world.

Did I forget…?

I did a Google Trends search for myself just now, mostly because I’d forgotten Trends existed. Here’s the graph I got for the last 8 years:

Nothing special, until I realised that, with little modification…

I. AM. BATMAN. 

The Chevvy Adventure

In August 2012, some might say foolishly, I bought a 1977 Vauxhall Chevette; I’d been looking for something with a bit of character for a while, and the right one came up:

At this point, it’s probably worth quantifying the ‘foolish’ comment: I knew nothing about cars. I’m a very hands on, technical and engineering-led kind of person, having built, fixed and operated industrial machinery, re-wired houses and been a web developer. I have always avoided car maintenance, however.

So it was kind of stupid to go out and buy a car from an era where you might expect to do real, hands on maintenance midway through a drive in the country, never mind on a monthly basis.

And so it was that 12 weeks to the day after the car was delivered (and during which time it had run flawlessly), the Chevvy wouldn’t start. All turning the key and pulling out the choke got me was a flat battery and a broken choke cable. And so my adventure in real car ownership had begun.

It’s probably best I set expectations now - I am going to write this assuming you are like me…that is, not stupid, but largely ignorant to the finer detail of the progress of convenience and reliability we have made in the last 30 years when it comes to automotive ownership. So if you’re already in the know about such things, please bear with me…or piss off, I don’t care.

Lesson one - WTF are points?

Cars in the olden days had these things called points - basically a contact within the distributor that sends a spark down the right HT lead to the right spark plug at the right time. You likely know all of those words, but equally you’ve never really comprehended what they mean. Let me explain:

The engine in Chevvy has 4 cylinders, each of which has a sparkplug. Fuel and air are mixed and pumped into a cylinder and the spark plug ignites it - it’s this that turns the engine. The spark plug needs to fire at the right time to ignite the fuel when it’s in the cylinder (we’ll talk about the specific timing of this later).

Your spark plugs are connected to something called a distributor by HT leads. HT leads are basically just wire, capable of carrying and electrical voltage to the spark plug.

The distributor is mechanically attached to the engine of Chevvy, and turns at the same speed as the engine is turning (actually, it’s at half speed, but that’s not important). Within the distributor is an arm that spins, and on the end of that arm is a contact. This contact is designed to brush against contacts poking out of the distributor cap, each of which is attached to a HT lead.

So, the distributor, connected to the engine and spinning at a speed relative to the engine, uses this contact to contact touch to send a spark down the right HT lead and into a spark plug at the right time to ignite the fuel in the right cylinder.

With me thus far? Good.

OK - The distributor gets its spark from something called a coil - basically a capacitor which takes power from the battery and turns it into a high voltage, but low ampage, electrical current. This is connected permanently to the distributor.

The thing that makes the connection between the input of the coil and the contact on the end of the arm is the points, and thus we come full circle.

Basically, the points are two small contacts which are mechanically controlled to come close enough together in time with the engine revolutions to cause a short across, sending a spark from the coil to the contact arm and out to your sparkplugs.

Apparently, these things are notoriously finicky; so much so that it was common practice back in the old days to carry around some fine sand paper so you could clean the contacts up on the points as they got pitted or worn.

So, the first point of call was to clean the points. That didn’t work. Nor did replacing them.

Bugger.

So, at this point, I reached out to a wider audience. Namely, the internet. 100% of the people who responded to me said I should replace the points distributor for something electronic (I should point out that this was just one person). I did a bit of research and, for £100 and some minimal effort, it seemed to make sense.

Whilst I was at it, I also decided to take a closer look at the HT leads and it turns out they were well past their prime, so I ordered some new ones, along with a new set of spark plugs.

Total cost at this point, if you’re interested, was about £150.

Alas, none of that worked. Also, I didn’t realise but when you take your distributor out, you’re supposed to note the position of it as, if you put it in incorrectly, it just Won’t Work. Basically, it’s possible to put the spindle in 180degrees out of position. No biggy in terms of damage, but your engine won’t fire.

So, what left to try? Recommendations flew in (from the same 1 person) that the coil might be at fault. £5 on eBay, no problem. Also, no solution.

I was getting a bit stumped at this point, having replaced basically the entire ignition system.

I decided to double-check it was fueling, and that there was fuel actually in the car (there was no reason for there not to be, but thought it prudent). There were, of course, no obvious faults here.

By this time, due largely to the 3-4 day delay between identifying something new to try, ordering the parts and them arriving, coupled with typically shit UK weather and other commitments, several months had passed. Specifically, it was the second week of January.

I collared my dad when he was round to see The Boy and we set out to get the damn thing running. During my most recent attempt, I had been unable to get a 12v reading form the distributor, although a few weeks earlier when Dad and I were tinkering with the same, we did….so the first thing we did was to check the electrics over properly.

Sure enough, there was a dodgy cable between the battery and the coil. Very dodgy - so much so that there was no power getting through it.

It can’t always have been like that (in other words, I don’t think this was the original fault) as we had scored a 12v reading on the distributor in earlier attempts, but it was definitely broken now. So we replaced that cable, double-checked our timing with a strobe light and some white gloss on the crank shaft. Expectantly, we turned the engine over. Nothing.

BUT WAIT! We flicked the distributor around 180degrees, and BRUMUUUUMUMMMM. HE’S ALIVE! Some fine tuning on the timing and we called it a successful, if cold, afternoon’s work.

That isn’t the end of the story though, no…once I got to actually do any miles with this newly running engine, it would start to splutter and fade after a few miles, getting progressively worse. It would still get you there (I made it into Manchester and back, some 26miles round journey), but it was hardly what you’d call ‘smooth’.

Again, I was back in the world of not really knowing what it might be - no sooner had I presumed to have got my head round the electrical element of the ignition system that something was very wrong with it.

Luckily, I did now know enough to start working things through in my head, and narrowed it down to two things it was most likely to be:

1. incorrect choke setting. Remember I broke the cable? Well, I’d replaced it very early on in my ownership, before I even owned a Haynes manual, and it turned out I’d made an incorrect assumption about it needing to be slightly on all the time. I reset this so it was completely off when the cable was in, and it ran much better. But not perfect.
2. Timing. The engine seemed to run fine (or certainly much smoother) when the car was static, both on idle and when revved…the problem was when it was under load (ie, moving the car), which basically meant a performance issue likely caused by incorrect timing. This was a spot on assumption, but I incorrectly blamed a non-functioning advance governor in the distributor.

A…what? OK - last lesson on the distributor, I promise. Basically, when your engine spins faster, you need to tell your spark plugs to fire that little bit earlier to account for it. So inside the distributor, there’s weighted arms which move out as they spin faster (when the engine spins faster), causing a mechanical reaction which advances the spark slightly…and slows it back down when the engine does.

Given that Chevvy was seeming to run OK even when moving at low revs, I assumed that this advance simply wasn’t working.

It turned out to be a bit simpler - the timing was just wrong. The problem was that we’d aligned the right bits to the right bits, but at the wrong idle speed - the manual actually advises to slow the engine down to 400rpm, which is hard to measure as the car has no tachometer, but it was definitely running faster than that.

So I did what I assume all the great mechanics do - I adjusted it by ear and test-drive; basically, tweaking the timing until the engine sounded like it was running better, then taking it out to see if it drove more smoothly.

There’s still a bit more tweaking to do, I reckon, and I can definitely reduce the idle speed now (which I suspect has been manually increased previously to account for incorrect timing). Needless to say, Chevvy has run flawlessly for me since this weekend’s tinkering, even starting first time on what I think have been the coldest mornings of this winter so far.

On to the next bit of work!

Also, for those still interested, the total cost of all of this, including the Haynes manual and lots of tools (strobe gun, compression tester, gap feelers, inspection light etc) is about £200. And it’s been a lot of fun :)

The final question of ‘what was the problem, then?’ - I honestly don’t know :) I suspect the points initially, but then the dodgy HT leads packed in when I started abusing them by constantly removing the distributor cap, then the dodgy cable on the coil got knocked and went all temperamental. Or maybe the original coil was bust. Or maybe Chevvy just wanted a rest. Who knows? :)

Kindle Fire HD - An actual iPad competitor?

Every tablet is launched to the fanfare of being the next iPad killer, but none have even come close. Samsung, as they do in the smartphone market, do well out of the whole thing; but it someone rocks up to a meeting or sits in a coffee shop and pulls out a tablet, 9.9 times out of 10 it will be an iPad.

Google’s Nexus7 didn’t really impress me, either - specs were OK, but nothing you couldn’t get for a similar price from China months ago. The only thing it really had was Jelly Bean - the latest and greatest Android version.

The thing is, whilst geeks and fanbois the world over think this is a USP, the truth is that no one really cares. The majority of the tablet and phone-buying public simply don’t understand (or wish to understand) what this means.

You can still buy phones and tablets running old versions of Android, some as low as 2.3, which is now several years old. You can do that because the manufacturers know that all the majority of their potential customers care about is that they can get ‘apps’, take pictures and update twitter. Oh, and the more gigabytes, the better.

So there’s the Nexus7, with it’s so-so specs, admittedly attractive price but not much else. Sure, it’s being pushed hard by google, but then they’re known for dropping things equally as hard.

Then along comes Amazon, with their trusted network of just about everything under the sun and a shiny new tablet. It’s got all the right words attached: HD; tablet; 16gb; £159. That makes it just as cheap as the Nexus7, far cheaper than the iPad, with all the same benefits (same storage as the iPad, more than the Nexus7).

Plus, who doesn’t trust Amazon? Their prices and customer service are amazing; You buy from them, you know your device is going to give you a good chunk of faithful service.

So, Amazon are a serious competitor to the iPad; I believe the first to be so. I don’t think they’re a potential iPad killer, however - the iPad carries a distinct aura of premium about it which will be hard to steal, regardless of price. But in the ‘also ran’ category, I think the Kindle Fire HD will have it sewn up.

Take a look for yourself here (UK Store): Amazon Kindle Fire HD, Google Nexus7

A glimpse into the past

I thought I’d share this picture, for several reasons.

Firstly, it’s the second digital photograph I ever took…on my own real camera, at least - you can see the box on the desk there, it’s an ixus 2.0.

Secondly, it’s a glimpse into the past - this was taken on the 10th April 2002 - nearly 10 years ago, and it’s awash with technology and other things from a by-gone age:

1. Stella - I was young enough that I could drink it without going loopy
2. CRT monitors - TFT’s were still a year or two away, and even then were expensive and…well…crap
3. floppy disc drives, 3.5”. They were still an essential part of any Windows-led environment
4. No Apple - 10 years ago, I was completely Mac free…I’d add a first gen iMac to this picture in a few months and that would start the transition
5. Zip Drives and Discs - largely forgotten now, they were the ipso-facto media for cost effective home backups and general media sharing - you couldn’t walk into a design agency 10 years ago without coming across them
6. A lot of blank CDs - remember when you needed a lot of them? Remember when 650mb of data was big?
7. Tower PCs - no one builds their own PCs any more, other than gamers, but 10 years ago it was much more cost effective to build and maintain your old stuff, so the choice of chassis was important. Tower PCs gave you a lot of room to add stuff, and you just don’t see them any more
8. Lots of extension cables - this is back when *everything* needed it’s own power supply. Cordless mice, external drives, speakers - nothing was USB powered (USB itself was yet to become ambiguous in daily computing life)
9. Cordless mouse with a dock - yes, I know you can still get these, but today the dock is for somewhere nice to keep your mouse - 10 years ago, it was because the batteries only lasted a day if you were lucky…docking was vital
10. PC cases with the side off - again, you just don’t need to do this any more, but 10 years ago you did it on a regular basis to jiggle a lose cable, swap a soundcard or drive out, or simply because the damn thing was overheating
11. Mouse pad - again, you can still get them and lots of people use them, but they’re not the big thing they were 10 years ago. Trust me, they were a huge business
12. Windows NT - The main PC, under the boiler, was running XP, but the one with the monitor on the wall was running NT. I forget why, but it was for a reason. Speaking of which…
13. Monitors on raised / wall stands - used to be all the fashion. Not any more…
14. Crimping tool (you can see the handles next to the lamp on the shelf)…pre-made network cables used to be very expensive and come in stupid sizes - the budget-conscious made their own cables to suit requirements. And then spent a lot of money on tools to make the cables, thus cancelling out the cost-saving. And the cables failed all the time. Oh well…
15. Under-desk keyboard tray - I’d already abandoned it - in this picture, where two desks are aligned together, the one on the left is actually stopping the tray from pulling out, such was my dislike for it. Generally speaking though, we went batshit crazy for pull-out keyboard drawers 10 years ago (I know people who still do)
16. A clock on top of the monitor - vital, because you could never trust your PC to keep the time, nor rely on it automatically updating

There’s likely much more nostalgia in here. Ahhh, the memories….

:(

As Toby takes his first steps, and navigates his walker around obstacles, and pushes cars around making engine noises, and actually plays rather than just making noise, I realise that I’m losing my baby and gaining a little boy.

This is both very good (awesome toys are coming very soon!) but also very sad - it makes me realise how people feel when their children go to school, move out etc - your children move on and don’t need you like they used to :(

Live at Ikea

I was reminded via @belindagreen on twitter this morning that you can generally eat quite cheaply at Ikea - Belinda was enjoying a 99p full English, but I know that the hotdogs are reasonably priced at under £1 and if you want a plate of meatballs and chips, you’re going to see a lot of change from a fiver.

So taking the culinary excellence (when measured by cost, at least) of Ikea, and given that they have lots of example room setups…erm…set up (bedrooms, offices, kitchens etc), one would think that it would be perfectly possible to actually live in Ikea.

I wonder if it’s already been done? A living example of Ikea furniture, right in the store. I might suggest it….if only because the walk to the office would be reduced from an hour to mere minutes, even if I had to follow the pre-defined route and didn’t take a shortcut through the market place.

I shall email them, post haste.

Migration…

I’m trying, I really am…but I just can’t be arced migrating from my old server. I’ve narrowed it down to 7 sites that need to stay live, the rest can be archived…but it’s like days (hours) worth of work.

Maybe I need to drop off my beer-ban just 1 day in to spur me on…

Grrrrr

I wanted to blog about something. It wasn’t important enough for a full on blog, and too long for a tweet….so tumblr is the obvious place.

I decided to download an iPad client to do it on, which took a few minutes to research and download etc.

So here I am, ready to rock…and I’ve forgotten what it is I wanted to say :(