Programmer, motorcyclist, pilot. Far too analytical for my own good.
Kerikeri, NZ
Joined February 2009
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Interesting that while they welcome it, Russian newspapers don't have a lot of confidence in Trump's current anti-Zelenskyy rhetoric.
First full two week period of the new Electric Kiwi tariffs that started on 19/9: daily charge up from $1.15 to $1.60, 7AM-11PM rate up from 38c to 45c, but 11PM-7AM rate down from 32c to 18c (which is hoooge).
Result: 223.02kWH of grid power for NZ$45.42 of which $22.40 is the daily charge. Average cost 20.36 c/kWh incl daily charge, 10.32 c/kWh just for the electricity, or 6.47 c/kWh including the 132.52 kWh from my 2.64kWp of solar panels (effectively 3.6 hrs/day in still early spring)
Bruce Hoult retweeted
This is still one of my favorite photos. It is the first time they mated starship with the heavy booster. Neither flew, they were just mock-ups for fit.
Lenticulars in Northland rn ... is that real? Can't see any sign from Hukerenui due to too much local low level cloud. @WeatherWatchNZ
Spring is springing (so will the clocks in 10 days), the little red Honda adventure/exploring bike passed the safety inspection and is ready for summer. I’ve had this one just over six years (since the start of COVID). In another six years I’ll be 70, hope I’ll still be using it then, and long after. I own another bike with 4 1/2 times the engine size but this little guy is so fun.
Wow I wish I knew about this sooner! Free site that returns machine-readable (JSON) weather data for any location and any day past or near future.
All kinds of hourly weather data is available from sun to cloud to wind to UV index. Even, as shown here, total solar power (direct and diffuse) per m^2 of solar panels at a tilt and azimuth you specify. Just multiply by your array area and efficiency and you're set to go for solar planning.
Here it is for a point not a million miles from me ... a long walk or a short bicycle :-) I'm post-processing it with a simple "jq" script to make it useful at a glance.
api.open-meteo.com/v1/foreca…
@WeatherWatchNZ
Flight of the Conchords were right about Business Socks.
a lab in the netherlands scanned couples during orgasm and stumbled onto the strangest finding in sex research.
when women wore socks, the orgasm rate jumped from 50% to 80%
the researchers weren't studying socks. the scanning room was cold, some women complained, socks were offered. suddenly the success rate exploded and the team realized they'd accidentally run the most important experiment of the study
the mechanism showed up right on the brain scans. female orgasm requires the amygdala, the brain's fear and threat detection center, to power down. cold feet kept the threat system quietly online. warm feet let it switch off. that tiny bit of physical discomfort was enough to block the entire cascade
- her brain cannot climax and scan for problems at the same time. the systems are neurologically mutually exclusive
- socks are a stand-in for the real variable: comfort. temperature, privacy, no time pressure, no risk of interruption, nothing pinching or hurting. every small discomfort is a tax on the fear center
- this is why the same technique works one night and fails the next. the variable that changed wasn't your hands. it was her nervous system's threat level
- the environment is doing foreplay before you touch her. warm room, locked door, no rush, phone away
men study techniques for years and lose to a cold room. her nervous system decides if orgasm is possible before your skills ever enter the conversation. handle the amygdala first. the socks were never about socks
Just got notification my power prices are changing on Electric Kiwi "MoveMaster" in the Northpower (Whangarei) region from Sep 19.
Daily charge: $1.15 -> $1.60
7-9 AM, 5-9 PM weekdays: $0.6375/kWh -> $0.6036
11 PM - 7 AM: $0.3187 -> $0.1810
Other: $0.3825 -> $0.4527
Mixed bag. $164/year more in fixed charges hurts. Slight reduction in peak rates, but I already use zero power in those times (run on battery).
It's nice to finally have a real night rate. Before the 9-5 price was only 20% more than night, meaning there was zero benefit in charging batteries at night to use during the day as the round trip loss of AC->DC->battery->DC->AC is right around 20%.
Now with 9-5 rates at 2.5x the night rate that's worth charging batteries for, maybe even buying more.
Charging before 5 PM to use in 5-9 PM is now less attractive ... peak will now be 1.33x day, until now it's been 1.67x day.
This is going to make it much harder to know how much to charge batteries at night. Until now the main thing was just to have enough in the battery to get through the 7-9 AM peak, see how solar production went during the day, and top up before 5 PM as needed.
Now a 4-5 PM top up is barely going to be worth it compared to just seeing how it goes between 5-9 PM and switching back to grid power if needed ... which I've previously regarded as a disaster if it happens (very very rarely if I start from 100% charged).
There will now be a premium on forecasting how much solar production there will be next day, before bed time, especially in winter where it's probably going to pay to have 100% battery charge at 7 AM while until now I've used 60%, which becomes 15%-25% at 9 AM, allowing plenty of room for a good sun day to charge the battery and if it doesn't then oh, well, just top up to 100% in 4-5 PM.
I think maybe now I have to get more battery and try to use zero grid power all the way from 7 AM to 9 PM every day. Need to do some calculations.
Numbers crunched with the help of @grok and the last 12 months of half-hourly power usage data. It's now worth expanding battery from the current 6.144kWh to ~10kWh which will both 1) prevent full battery by 12-1 PM and wasted sun the rest of the afternoon, and 2) start winter days at 100% battery at 7 AM and get as far towards 9 PM as possible without using grid power at all. With 3.5-4.5 kWh used between 7 AM and when the sun starts working well (best case) 10-11 AM in winter, and then typical 5-6 kWh of solar production there's no chance of the battery hitting 100% again.
That's midwinter. Now in August I'm getting more 8-11 kWh solar days (but not always). Having 4kWh of available battery capacity at 10 AM, plus usage during the say, is plenty to absorb that. And on the rare worst days with 0.5 or 1 kWh of solar production ... I can switch to using grid power between whenever the battery drops to 6 kWh left and 5 PM.
EP3800-48V 75 Ah 3840 Wh expansion battery ordered ... looks like ~4 year payback on that, assuming no power price increases. Looked at Micromall's 100 Ah battery for $1999 but it's only very slightly cheaper at NZ$400/kWh vs $429/kWh for Pecron's own ecosystem supported pre-integrated battery.
Well ,that's the first outage here for a while. I've only got the 6kWh battery at 60% because I'm expecting a good solar day tomorrow. It's going to last 20 hours running the fridge and internet and computers, or 3h20m running the heat pump as well. Decent solar production starts in 8 hours. I guess I can keep the place warm for 2 hours and if power isn't back then I've still got 8 hours of power for everything else.
Bruce Hoult retweeted
Contrast two kinds of men now arguing over America's future.
One looked at empty Texas scrubland and saw the largest building on Earth, then summoned $16.8 billion in capital, thousands of construction tradesmen, and 3,000 permanent minds to raise and run it. Before that he saw rockets landing upright when every expert called it fantasy, and electric cars people would line up to buy, and he materialized those too. His tools are reason, vision, and trade. Every dollar he commands was handed to him by a customer who got something better in return.
The other kind is the politician who could not pour one yard of that concrete. But he holds the one tool of his trade, the state's gun. He calls the building excess, drafts the wealth tax to seize its output, and names the seizure compassion and justice. Ask the senator demanding Musk's billions what he has ever built. His one skill is the forced transfer of what abler men have made.
When Terafab rises, understand what you are looking at. The unforced human mind, made visible at scale. The looters will still demand their cut, and the demand itself is the confession. Nobody loots an empty desert. Wealth must be created before it can be seized, and it is created by men like Musk.
Bruce Hoult retweeted
I still use the original iPad Pro I bought in 2015 every day, charge it about every two weeks. $0.23/day. Watch is A1978 bought Oct 2018. $0.14/day. Mac is 16GB 1TB M1 Mini delivered Dec 2020. $0.54/day. Phone is SE 2022 256GB. $0.37/day. All still on original battery. USD/day to date, and counting … no plans to replace any of them yet. TOTAL is $1.28/day.
Bruce Hoult retweeted
It has been a great honor to serve the Ukrainian people as the Minister of Defense.
Here is what our team managed to achieve:
1. Disabled Starlink access for Russian forces.
2. Took over a Ministry of Defense with zero budget, took a risk, reallocated funds from payroll from the end of the year, and effectively invested them in mid-strike capabilities, fiber-optic FPVs, low-cost reconnaissance, ground robotic platforms, interceptor drones, and deep-strike drones.
3. Launched "Logistical Lockdown", this cut off enemy logistics and initiated the isolation of Crimea.
4. Continued the funding program for the Drone Line.
5. Launched a support program for modern drone-assault units that rely primarily on advanced technologies in combat.
6. Introduced a 70% advance payment policy for procurements made via e-Points on the Brave1 Market portal.
7. Fundamentally overhauled the procurement system.
8. Procured thousands of pickup trucks, buggies, and ATVs for the military for the first time—and did so through open tenders.
9. The drone interception rate rose from 83% to 91%, and the cruise missile interception rate soared from 47% to 87%.
10. Contracted Patriot PAC-2 GEM-T missiles for the first time, and submitted an application through an EU loan to purchase PAC-3 missiles.
11. Launched a baseline drone supply system for brigades and corps.
12. Launched a massive grant program for manufacturers of explosives and missiles.
13. Initiated an unpopular but vital transformation of the military.
14. Conducted three UDCG meetings, where we successfully broke through the Russian information trap claiming our defeat, restoring partners' faith in Ukraine. This secured $40 billion in support announced for this year (excluding the EU loan).
15. Launched the mechanism to utilize the EU loan for our military priorities.
16. Found a way to scale cheap missiles against jet-powered Shaheds and signed a record-breaking contract.
17. Our domestic ballistics. We radically revised the technical specifications, maximized accuracy, and reduced the cost by 30%.
18. Signed a contract to procure Gripen fighter jets.
19. Collaborated with the military to plan and execute Operation Auchan, which halted the enemy's mechanized offensive for six months.
20. Opened up exports under the Drone Deal program to attract investment and scale up domestic defense-industrial complex (OPK) production.
21. Launched the Trophy Lab, providing partners with the opportunity to study captured Russian military technologies.
22. Launched the Defense AI Center A1 to accelerate the integration of artificial intelligence on the battlefield.
Thank you to my entire team for their relentless 24/7 service. A special thank you to my family for their patience.
Thank you all for your support!
I will continue to work toward the mission I originally brought to the Ministry of Defense: defeating the enemy through asymmetry, the speed of innovation, and the power of organization.
To be continued.
