@freiheit to quote Billy Bragg "must I paint you a picture"?

@Mσᶎ How can you lie back and think of England, when you don't even know who's in the team?

He's a decent guy, and not a bad musician. Got a box set of his a few years back.

I am back to Tokyo

After the Amsterdam this place feels nor just huge, it is monstous

Hi @Rilakkuma

Rode bicycle today too made a beautiful but unwanted front wheelie by kicking a pedal on the asphalt

How are you @PeteH ?

I am good @Rilakkuma - I want to ride today but thunder at the moment.

I spent 4 hours yesterday painting a Log Store - just about dry before it started raining

How was your flight?

don't know - slept over most of it :)

but had to go to work right after and feeling somewhere between being alive and sleeping

they're the best

those sleeping flights?

yes, I agree. You sleep somewhere over Lapland and wake up over Sikhote Alin mountains

by the way, I have a friend there in Sikhote Alin mountains

he is a monk and lives in the forest

once he called me to his house deep in the forest, showed the nature around

absolutely unforgettable experience. There are actually people who are sort of hermits in the forest, live without much contact with the outer world and make their living off forest and selling wild ginseng roots sometimes

by there, you're almost home

they contact each other using sticks they call Pan Tsui - leaving messages on a stick next to a dwelling of another hermit and getting messages back same way

I used to get fed up - we'd hit Newfoundland and think "almost there", but a couple hours still to go

do you mean Scotland?

sorry, being little slow thinker today

no, from UK to JFK

When I flew UK -> Tampa it was even worse

Since that time, I have never been on long-distance flights. Even short distance is rare

For some reason "vertical" flights feel longer than "horizontal" ones

Flights from Tel Aviv to Paris, from Tokyo to Sapporo etc are always long and boring :)

yeah

probably because the imaginary earth in human imagination is wide and not so high

possibly, I'd never really thought about it!

Mrs has travelled a lot - Dubai, HK, NYC etc. Her sister used to work for an airline, got cheap flights

But for me, even "low cost" airlines are expensive since I need to pay for 3 tickets!

:))) the classical iPad -> iPaid story. Are ships much cheaper there?

Probably yes, when you include car rental

in Japan ferry is some 30% cheaper but normally ferry takes a lot of time and require expenses on food and drinks so finally the price is about the same

Also more relaxing I find...although it does limit where we go on holiday

From here to France is overnight. Go to bed.....wake up in France

right, ferry gives the right holiday feel

yes. Airports have become stressful esp since 9/11

With the ferry, the holiday starts as soon as you park the car and head to the cabin

Of course, if you have to travel for business, that's a different matter

I travelled a few times - just to places like Dublin or Edinburgh, but mostly I used to refuse

btw

yesterday in Amsterdam while walking with Japanese colleagues someone asked them if they are Irish :)

not sure what was so Irish about them.

;) In the USA, people used to think I was Australian! Possibly a bit more understandable

Bugger....just got an email to say I have a delivery of firewood coming today. Hopev they come early so I can go ride, otherwise I will be stuck in all day

This is my forst delivery of such a large order.....500kg of firewood

I'd like to see how big that is

Even if I don't get out, I will be getting good exercise!

Congratulations @PeteH and @RoryAlsop, the Kingdom is still United!

That reminds me.....@andy256 I was surfing last night and came across the Sony Experia Z3 Compact phone. Looks really good, but more than I wanted to pay. Am not totwally confused once again :( sonymobile.com/gb/products/phones/xperia-z3-compact

@andy256 well nobody asked me, but I'd have voted to go.

@PeteH what kind of wood?

ash.

Nah, too much trouble to unscramble the eggs!

Ok. My guess is 3 m^3

A man needs to be free

Yep. You just declare independance :-)

going by the crate size, only about 1.5m^3

I only have enough storagev for 1.5m^3!!!

Ok. Thought it would be less dense than that.

500kg seems a lot, I agree

Half a tonne, in fact :-)

Really looking forward to carrying it from the driveway to the LogStore at the back!

@Rilakkuma are you home now?

will have rippling muscles by the end of it all

@PeteH wheelbarrow?

Maybe a bike trailer :-)

no such thing :( also uneven ground - need to walk it through the house a few logs at a time

through the house?!

yeah. Our back garden/patio can only be accessed thru the house or thru the garage

Going thru garage poses the same problem

How big are the pieces?

not big. Maybe 1ft long, 6" dia. I've bought from these people before, just didn't buy a whole winter's supply last time

They're only to go in a wood burner

Oh. No Guy Faulkes?

Can't remember how to spell him.

That was why there was some urgency about getting the Log Store weatherproofed.

Where is he now that we need him?

Lol :-)

Hi @andy256, not really. At work :)

but being barely awake so it is time to go home

They weren't too keen on that question on Sustainability.

@andy256 Tell me, when you program Android, what language are you using?

@Rilakkuma Ah, but in Nipon.

@PeteH Java

@andy256 yes. Nippon feels very exotic when straight from Europe here. Exotic, little retro, absurd and warm.

@Rilakkuma Yes, I like Japan. Make one appreciate a modern culture :-)

@andy256 no, on SE.SL I found that strange. I didn't see the problem. But fortunately I got an answer. Asking questions on SE can be very difficult!

Sure can!

I don't really think sustainability is flying.

Less than one Qn per day.

@andy256 looks like it only got the one downvote though. It's a shame, SL is a great idea and not something I know a whole lot about

It doesn't seem to be focussed.

I could ask about composting grandmothers, and that would be about sustainability if I asked it right.

I certainly waited a while for an answer. On Bicycles I'd wait a few hours, on Overflow probably a few minutes.

So - seconds!

lol

I stopped writing on SO.

Too many sharks, and no give.

me too. All a bit cutthroat.

And so few quality questions.

I found Programmers.SE which looked interesting. But got fed up with people asking questions about Ruby and tagging them O-O

Lol!

Yes, I still answer stuff on Programmers. Just occasionally.

@andy256, rode a bus from Narita to home today and was overwhelmed by the whole shower of contrasts around. It is so weird - huge city, monstrous concrete giant, wild, subtropical vegetation directly on this concrete, old woman in kimono walking on the street, 1970-ties taxis around, super modern structures just next to it all.

I'd comment "this has nothing to do with object orientation, would you mind remoiving the tag?" but to no avail

Whatever you throw into Japan will be transformed in some sort of Pokemon.

@Rilakkuma sounds like you could use some zzzzz's

@PeteH Not enuf rep to do it y'self?

@andy256 just making a point...

@Rilakkuma Exactly what I liked about it when I was there :-)

@PeteH Ah

@PeteH do I sound completely weird? :)

just 30 minutes more and our meeting will end

quite useless for me to attend though

@Rilakkuma always :-)

@Rilakkuma you should keep that post - it's like poetry

haha, thanks!

Funny, I feel half asleep this morning. I need to go get ready for when this delivery guy arrives

@Rilakkuma a bit of work and it could become hiaku

And I need to call the garage to book my car in, and call the cattery. Busy busy busy

Cat the callery?

@andy256 need to put it into three lines and arrange by haiku rules...

Later chaps

@andy256 no, and a lot of them are from the two guys who are trying to get it started.

See you!

Cheers!

night Pete.

@andy256 Arrrrrgggggghhhhhhh

Greetings @Mσᶎ!

Was that a pirate signing off?

@Mσᶎ your avatar keeps blinking at the top and left.

I have a private project to convert my car to electric. Thought at least some of the traffic on Sustainability might be related. A few old Qns are, but not much.

:D

cicada's wing shows the entry of autumn season, because most cicadas die around this time and disintegrate so their wings are all around lying on the asphalt as is

Good effort :-)

@andy256 Delighted! And what a turnout. My home county had the highest No percentage in the country - I'm so proud!

@RoryAlsop No need to unscramble the eggs :-)

@andy256 good try, but haiku must have seasonal word

it is not a rule, but mostly it is there

@andy256 there's a bunch of car nuts in the ATA Melbourne, they have their own meetings and mailing list. For a while it seemed that 90% of ATA member activity in Melb was car conversions...

No idea why my avatar blinks, it's a png.

Also, if you're not in the ATA now, joining gets you access to back issues of Renew magazine which has quite a few articles on conversions. But mostly I'd say find the car nuts and talk to them. Well, let them talk to you.

@Mσᶎ ATA?

www.ata.org.au the alternative technology association. hippy geeks from the 70's, basically.

ata.org.au

clickable link this time...

Sounds cool.

they do useful stuff, they have a lot of consumer magazine style reviews and dirty great spreadsheets for various sustainable technology things. So if you're looking at a new fridge it's worth checking their reviews and charts as well as your local consumer organisation, because ATA will tell you more about power consumption and performance

also, you being in the USA you can get a SunFrost fridge much more cheaply than we can.

well, we can get most things cheaper than you people.

so it isn't exactlysurprising

it's kind of sad that in the whole world there is only one company making domestic fridges designed primarily for efficiency. Sad because there's only one, and because so few people buy fridges with that criteria.

I'm not at the point yet in my life where I buy appliances, it's more like "oh good this apartment has a fridge!"

Part of the problem here is they don't meet the Australian standard "cool a car load of groceries from 30°C to 4°C in 4 hours", because they have a tiny little compressor that's ridiculously efficient but is designed to work with the very insulated box so its peak power output is low. But that means they can't be sold here, each buyer has to import their own.

But when I someday am at that point, you can bet I'll be getting all the energy efficiency ones I can.

Over here rental properties come without fridges, washing machines and so on. Stoves yes, sometime air conditioners, but very rarely a fridge or washer.

Almost everywhere you rent out here comes with a fridge and stove. Never seen a rental with A/C. About 50% have washer/dryer and about 50% have a dishwasher.

so renters have to shift those things round. Which is not good for the machines, and is also a PITA. But then, rental property whitegoods tend to be very low quality. We even have special "rental grade" hot water heaters... cheap to buy, reliable, but very inefficient so they cost a bomb to run.

A dishwasher and on-site laundry are pretty much dealbreakers for me. Laundry doesn't have to be in the unit, but I'm not loading all my clothes on my bike and galavanting around town anytime I need clean clothes.

@Mσᶎ are there seriously rentals that don't even come with a water heater??

I'm sure there are laundomats in Australia, but I've never used one.

@nhinkle no, but when buying one for a property landlords focus on capital cost not running cost

Ah, of course.

hence there's a market for really inefficient ones that are cheap to buy.

Dishwasher mostly because I'm lazy, but overall the water and energy efficiency of a dishwasher tends to be better than washing by hand.

Our power consumption here is more than half heating the laundry via the hot water heating that's bolted to the wall near the ceiling (so we can't wrap more insulation round it)

Around here an increasing number of landlords get good efficient appliances, then advertise "energy efficient home" and charge way more on the rent. They probably end up more than making their money back on the initial investments, and there's enough of us sustainability types that there's a market for it.

@Mσᶎ see just use cold or warm water instead of hot for laundry. Works fine.

@nhinkle here there's not even an owner-occupier house price premium for insulation.

@nhinkle that means also washing dishes in cold water, and showering in cold water.

@Mσᶎ does your washing machine not have a cold cycle option?

We either run the hot water heater, or we don't. We can't turn it on to have a shower.... well, we could, but it takes a few hours to heat up.

Yes, and we use it. We do a hot water wash about every six months mostly to clear the pipes in the machine.

Ohhh, OK. I was confused because you said "Our power consumption here is more than half heating the laundry"

By "heating the laundry" I mean the room that contains the hot water heater and the washing machine, not the clothes that are being washed.

Welp, that makes a lot more sense. I thought you literally meant, heating the laundry. >.<

Herp a derp.

In British, "laundry" is also a room. What do merkins call that room?

@nhinkle - i'm guessing you're in a college town where you get all that. you won't necessarily get that once you leave a college town.

@Batman true. Well, not currently living in a college town (I'm on an internship). But yes, previously living in a college town at my past several rentals.

jesus christ didn't know stackexchange chat had sound.

@Batman there's a speaker icon up on the top right to turn that off.

@Mσᶎ aren't ya glad I showed you that? :P

the fart noise every time someone says my name is disconcerting.

@nhinkle very

yeah i turned it off. i hate how chats have noise on by default.

we had a big win in Melbourne when we rented a house that had decent insulation and thermal drapes, but horrid coloured carpet... so the rent was cheap. Now we're trying to buy, it seems to be the same. People will pay extra for built in air conditioning, but not for the insulation that makes air conditioning unnecessary.

Unfortunately that makes it very hard to find a house with decent insulation.

A lot of people have no freaking idea about anything related to energy efficiency.

Then they complain when their power bill is high.

Oh, and the ATA also sell coffee.

Is it fair trade organic coffee?

For good reasons, it just amuses me. They put RAPS into Timor-Leste, so they deal with locals there who grow coffee. So they import that coffee and sell it effectively on behalf of the growers.

I dunno if it's officially Fair Trade{tm}, but it's fair trade.

What's RAPS?

shop.ata.org.au/shop/east-timor-coffee-blend

You're all about the TLAs today.

Remote Area Power Systems = off grid.

Ah, cool. What type of technology?

in Timor, because the "grid" barely makes it out of the capital city.

We mostly do backup power where I work, but we're working on some continuous off-grid power platforms.

Usually little 20-50W panels with SLA's to do lighting and phone charging.

But increasingly bigger systems to run laptops and low-power electronics for community services.

It's as much about providing expertise as the hardware, Timor is third world but not abject poverty. The problem is that there's not enough money to make an import business profitable (little country). We shall not discuss foreign aid.

I am looking at our ecohutch being off grid, because I expect we will use less than 10kWh/day, making a 3kW system quite usable and that's about $10k all up. Or about $4k for grid-interactive with no storage. Feed-in tarrif here is 8c/kWh and falling, so it's arguable whether it's worth doing at all. Luckily no "you must grid connect" laws here (yet?).

When we're looking at over $1/day in connection charges plus $500-odd to get the connection certified, connecting starts to look less attractive. There will be much mathematics done before we get to that point, though.