Archive for December, 2013

Spoke dynamo / speichendynamo. Farewell old friend.

Thursday, December 19th, 2013

One of life's reassuring constants has just quit on me: my bicycle dynamo. I bought it from a German website about 10 years ago after a German colleague told me such a thing existed. This was in the days before translation engines on the web, so I recall some trial ...

China’s Lunar Lander – did it Crash?

Tuesday, December 17th, 2013

I first saw the video of the Chang'e 3 lunar landing at LiveLeak and have to say I thought it was beautiful: the smooth motion and clear images reminded me of looking out of the window of an aeroplane as it banks while lining up to land at a destination ...

Rainwater toilet flush

Wednesday, December 11th, 2013

Among other efforts to reduce our South West Water bills, we employ If it's brown flush it down. If it's yellow Let it mellow. - which saves a lot of money, but the bathroom always smells of wee. Fortunately for us, we live in rainy Devon and there's a rainwater butt fed by the drainpipe ...