Work In Progress

Claus Mikkelsen of HDS teases us that their next big announcement is an anagram of REGRADES OUR CLASSY TREAT. http://blogs.hds.com/claus/2009/05/regrades-our-classy-treat-may-27th.html

Chris Evans claims (http://thestoragearchitect.com/2009/05/21/enterprise-computing-the-new-usp-scabetera-dreary-storage-cluster/)  that “Regrades Our Classy Treat” is an anagram of “A Dreary Storage Cluster”.

However, I note that it is an anagram of “Storage Daycare Rustlers”, so I think HDS’s new announcement is that they are going to be stealing children from kindergarten (*) and pressing them into service testing HSSM.

-phil

(*) Perhaps (in a Very Frightening Development) holding them upside down by their ankles

Work In Progress » Blog Archive » Low Flying Bikes
a pancaked front wheel on the tandem

And that’s not all.  Wheelworks tell me we need new cranks, rim, and most annoyingly, a new fork.  Lots of $$ of damage, and a five week delay to get a new fork painted and shipped out.

Note to self: try not to do this again.

Today I had a 80mph bicycle accident. No people were involved.

Our Co-Motion Periscope tandem flew off the trunk-rack as I was going slightly over the speed limit on rt 90. So did my rattly old Trek that was also on the rack, behind (rearwards of) the tandem. I think this is what happens if you drive fast with bike wheels sticking out on both sides into the main airflow beyond the turbulent wake of the car.

I was driving in the left hand lane, westbound on the Mass Pike, just before exit 12 (Rt 9, Framingham). As it happened, I immediately saw the bikes break free in my rear-view mirror. Amazingly there was nobody behind me to receive a face-full of bike. The road was clear enough for me to pull to the right and stop in the shoulder, while the bikes bounced to the left of the left hand lane.

All I could think to do was to call 911 to get someone to clear the road and, with luck, to return the bikes to me. The dispatcher said a state trooper would be out soon, but as I terminated the call I saw a Mass Highways truck pull over near the bikes and two men jumped out and threw them in the back and drove over to me.

Unusually, very few cars had been by in this time, and none of them had hit the bikes.

The Mass Highway guys commiserated, recognizing the beauty of the yellow tandem and its sad condition: the front wheel was pancaked, but no other obvious damage. They left, and I awaited the State Trooper – he showed up in 5 minutes and took my details. He was reasonably friendly and helpful too – he offered me the option of picking the bikes up at a Police depot, but I thought it would be easier to load them back on the car.

I got them loaded up – as I said, a pancaked front wheel on the tandem, and no obvious damage on my Trek (which is about as beaten up as a bike can get already).

Then off to work, and later to Wheelworks to have them lavish some affection on the yellow tandem.
Unloading the bike at wheelworks, I leant it on the car and scratched the door a little. I was more annoyed about this than about the fact that I’d dropped the bike on the highway at 80 mph. What’s wrong with me?
What lessons to learn from this:

• Be more careful putting bikes on the trunk rack
• Strap the bikes to the rack, not just to each other
• If it’s the tandem, don’t let the wheels overhang (remove them, maybe)
• Drive slower
• Maybe I should not be allowed to have nice things
• Figure out what’s important:
• The bike?
• The car?
• The people that weren’t riding the bike when it crashed at 80 mph

‘Intelligent’ cars as fuel-efficient as hybrids
The technology for road telematics already exists, but given questions on safety and other issues that surround it, it is only being deployed in a small handful of field tests.

Engineers at Australia’s University of Melbourne compared how the two novel technologies matched up on fuel efficiency.

They used an unconverted saloon, or sedan, as the benchmark and three different driving cycles, configured to the Australian, American and European urban lifestyles, for the test runs.

A hybrid version of the car would deliver fuel economy of 15-25 percent over the unconverted vehicle, they calculated.

But this saving was matched when the benchmark car was fitted with basic telematics that predicted traffic flows as little as seven seconds ahead, as determined by the Australian drive cycle.

Here’s my brilliant idea: how about doing both things – make it a hybrid AND fit telematics
.

Maybe this was the best Archers episode ever.

Not because Ruth finally got sensible and saved her 18-year marriage to David

Nor because her kids drew a picture of her carrying a wineglass the size of a bucket

But, yes, because David prepared dinner to the strains of the Bob The Builder cover of Mambo No. 5.

Sizzlin’ !!

Tesla Roadster unveiled in Santa Monica – AutoblogGreen ***
Tesla Motors unveiled their uber-chic Roadster, a supercharged electric vehicle that looks, feels and drives like many other high-end sports cars Wednesday night. The main difference is the noise. Powered by a 3-phase, 4-pole AC induction motor, the Roadster can go 130 mph and does 0-60 in about 4 seconds, all completely silent.

Some of the more interesting factlets:

• Range is 250 miles (on a 3.5 hour charge).  This is a lot for an EV that actually looks like a car – compare for example with 80 miles for the Tango.
• Battery pack is 6,831 lithium-ion cells.  (253 x 27).   That’s the same technology as laptop batteries.
• Price is $80,000 – $120,000.  That’s a lot more than the plug-in Prius: actually about the same as the equally sporty top-end Tango : but the Tango looks like it got stuck between two buses, while the Tesla looks like, well, a car.

This is one of the sad results of living in the wrong country for too many years, and never really paying attention to anything before that anyway.  I honestly thought Dizzy was a song by Bob The Builder. I never knew Vic Reeves did it first.

Let alone Boney M or Tommy Roe.

Researchers Build Sharpest Tip

Forget the phrase, “sharp as a tack.” Now, thanks to new University of Alberta research the popular expression might become, “sharp as a single atom tip formed by chemically assisted spatially controlled field evaporation.” Maybe it doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily, but considering the researchers have created the sharpest object ever made, it would be accurate.

But is it really sharp? These guys talk about its application in the next generation electon microscope, but will it cut fruitcake without making crumbs? And will Gillette be making razor blades this way soon? And does it cut doorways into new dimensions OR WHAT?