Posts by Niall Wallace

Tesla Roadster runs for 241 miles in Monte Carlo e-rally

Not too bad on the speed really

On the basis it appears to have been an economy run with the best economy winning those speeds are allright, 20kmh below the wet weather and 40kmh below the dry weather motorway limits, and thats ignoring the fact it is averages which can be considerably lower than your top speed.

19mph seems poor in the mountains but then what Per Gunner Eriksson can do in a Ford Focus knowing there is nothing comming the other way round the corner and some bloke telling him exactly how sharp the corner is, whether or not there is a big rock sticking out and if the handbrake or scandinavian flick is a good option.

In comparasson it's range on a single charge is better than I can get out of 40L of Premium Unleaded (95RON), 30mpg if I stick to 50 up the A9, regular route takes 2 hours not caring about economy (22mpg) to do 94 miles, 47mph average speed. (A90 from dundee to Perth, A9 to Dalwhinnie, A889 to Laggan Bridge, then a small bit of A86, fair whack on HQ Dual carriageway, and usually get a fairly clear run on the A9)

I think it would be a great test of the Tesla, compare it to a 25 year old SAAB on a typical trip to the highlands.

Google Street View hits UK streets

Crap Coverage

Somehow they have missed the 2 more affluent areas of Dundee Broughty Ferry and Invergowrie but managed to go right out into the depths of Angus and collect Montrose, Brechin, Forfar, Kirrie and Arbraoth.

I have so far found them committing at least 3 traffic offences against "No Motor vehicle" sings, for clarity that is the one of Eddie Kid, doing a boring 1 car jump.

Their face removal system seems to work, here we see Oliver Cromwell defaced

http://local.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&ie=UTF8&layer=xc&g=Hazelfield+Street.+Belfast.&ll=54.605166,-5.942241&spn=0.001846,0.013733&z=17&lci=com.panoramio.all&cbll=54.605167,-5.942238&panoid=8MaZWA0V3I_KKVdzKu-IPg&cbp=11,97.31874535213078,,0,-5.476562500000004

Some bus drivers I know have managed to spot various colleagues either on fag breaks, shift swaps or driving.

No such anonymisation here:

http://local.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&layer=c&cbll=56.46369,-2.965365&panoid=2LMF0h1X4DtkFK6jbQZmgA&cbp=12,184.34012021523426,,1,3.5047468354430786&ll=56.463581,-2.965279&spn=0,359.89151&z=14

And for balance Bobby Sands appears to be blocked, and anonymised when viewing from the Falls road.

http://local.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=falls+road.+Belfast.&sll=54.605961,-5.940771&sspn=0.001846,0.013733&ie=UTF8&ll=54.5981,-5.952423&spn=0.008229,0.027466&z=16&lci=com.panoramio.all&layer=c&cbll=54.598014,-5.952545&panoid=bmcwdgkjGsRFBAP-LlPaLw&cbp=12,263.3087210559338,,0,-0.27343750000000205

But perfectly visible here

http://local.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=falls+road.+Belfast.&sll=54.605961,-5.940771&sspn=0.001846,0.013733&ie=UTF8&ll=54.598087,-5.953045&spn=0.008229,0.027466&z=16&lci=com.panoramio.all&layer=c&cbll=54.59803,-5.952944&panoid=Ok0DAN-dJNgDMb8m4hZLIQ&cbp=12,196.17370180982982,,0,-14.406250000000004

Dundee is too boring to bother with pictures of.

Microsoft smooths Windows 7 snafu

Windows 7 : Vista in Disguise?

Tried Win7 on a VPC yesterday.

From what I see it's Vista in Blue, just as slow, and not striking difference. But I am running on an old 3Ghz P4 with only 2Gb of ram.

Need to buy a new machine to try it out on then.

Pretty much what I expected.

Tragic Twitterers tweet goodbye to family life

BBC have done twitter for years

Yeah really, Ever been listening to footy on the radio and been watching the "live text comentary".

The only time I have watched a twitter feed was when a rally organiser was using it as a live text commentary for results. And the only reason i was that interested in the results was be cause my brother and his driver coudl seal a championship that day.

Other than that can't see any point in it, who really cares if you are walking the dog... Other than the old man who watches your street fro mbehind the curtains.

Academic wants to 'free up' English spelling

Well, Well or Well

While his example of its would work as it is pronounced the same regardless of whether you are meaning its mine, it is stupid, it has broken down.

The well example? It could be Well as in thing you get water from / feeling or it could be We will which is pronounced differently. He says We ll might work but then if Well has a short E then We Will must be Weell which is similar to the How you feeling well in Scots (not SSE)

And then if you adjust spelling do you adjust it to English English, Scottish Standard English, Hiberno English (See Wikipedia entries for the differences).

Something that continuously annoys me about Dickens work is forcing me into reading an An before a H. So will House be officially as it is to me a House or will it be An Ouse (isn't that a river in Yorkshire?) as it is to others. And again we hit a pronounciation problem unless the River becomes Oose. Or we could adopt Umlauts so that would be Öse.

The simplest answer to the apostrophe problem is to ban them, no more short cuts. Write what you mean in full and there is no more problems understanding them.

Oh yeah and it's Haitch.

Boffin says Astronomical Unit should be binned

Magazine Lengths and Temperature

I just love the football pitch measurement, now I know that UEFA have a standardised minimum pictch size fo their competitions but beyond that football pictches vary wildly in size.

Double Decker busses is another classic, is that an AEC Routemaster (8.4m long) or a Neoplan Jumbo cruiser (11m long) whats that in Reg Units?

0 for freezing - Wimp

20 for a nice spring day and room temperature, Agree on Room temperature, but when the temp gets past 10 up here it is officially a heat wave

PC superstore unhinged by Linux

Ford Engine into a BMW great Idea!

What an analogy!

Yes I would like a nice old ford engine in a BMW too. Forget all the modern crap on a Beamer engine that limits what you can do to it, take a stock pinto/crossflow/kent/CVH and tune it to where you want it.

A Ford engine may not be open source but they are certainly massivley modifiable

Loads of companies around that will tune your Ford engine for you as well a bit like all those different Distros.

All the comfort of and performance of a Beamer M5 without all the arsing around with the computer to get it into super quick mode :-)

TomTom bids €1.8bn for map provider

Maps

Would rather pay for one with OS mapping when I am no longer able to remember a route identified from a Landranger or Memory Map. Less chance of landing in the drink, flying off a cliff, thumping down a farm track much to the farm workers attention or ending up at totally the wrong golf course... if I played golf.

MEP plans EU build ban on cars faster than 100mph

100mph limit, Easy.

All you need to do is take a modern engine and mate it to a gear box with gears set so that with the engines rev limit and wheel circumference it won't be able to get past 100mph. Of course this would mean very short time between gear changes while accelerating which because of the gear ratios would be much faster.... So if you cut the top speed of cars it could result in cars being a lot faster at accelerating, more torque steer and potentially more difficult to control.

Missing German doctor reappears after 22 years

Dovecot or Dovcote, Chambers say either as does Oxford

dovecote or dovecot noun a building or shed in which domestic pigeons are kept.

ETYMOLOGY: 15c.

as does the OED

dovecote

/duvkot/ (also dovecot)

• noun a shelter with nest holes for domesticated pigeons.

G-Wiz electro-car fracas leaves Top Gear blubbing

Low Speed <> emissions

Driving an internal combustion engined vehicle slowly doesn't mean less emissions, there is an engine speed at which each and every engine is most efficient at. Most cars seem to hit this at around 55mph in 5th which is why its used as one of the benchmark points where fuel consumption is shown.

I got stuck behind a slow driver doing 35mph on a coutnry road where there were few overtaking oportunities. I was stuck reving at 3000 rpm in 3rd, go into 4th and the engien was struggling to keep speed, drop to 2nd and I was soon back in 3rd. Bugger all chance of overtaking.

The G-Wizz is more dangerous than a bicycle, Bicycles are more mavouverable, your much less likely to get stuck in one when side swiped by a hummer, no insteady your thrown across the road and udner various other vehicles until you stop. a little bit of road rash and a few lucky misses is probably much prefferable to having a solid steering column through your stomach whihc wouldnt' be a particularly fast death.