Posts

Nobody Is Listening, Not Even Us

Everybody loves the idea of science fiction becoming reality and Aliens finding us, sharing their warp drive tech, like the Vulcans do in a certain popular franchise. But. If you go out to the stars, lets say the closest likely to have a planet, Proxima Centauri B (I think), and the angles between us, the Sun and that star become tiny. So, for radio purposes you have effectively a straight line between that remote plane, the Earth and the Sun. The Sun is the biggest radio transmitter in our solar system, literally emitting every electromagnetic frequency from DC to daylight and beyond, at powers so high, that even the most powerful TV transmitter on the planet has a signal strength at the tower that's like a fart in a hurricane,compared to the sun. Sure, we receive radio by tuning a bandpass filter to block out the background noise and receive the signal. So, now imagine 2 transmitters and a receiver laid out in a straight line. One is a licenced 10kW FM radio station, then a fe...
Post a Comment
Read more

eBikes and Trains

Image
This Sunday, I'm hoping to get to a group ride with fellow recumbent trike riders, the first I've been possibly able to make since I got my trike back in April. Even with that, life is complicated. Helping a friend with their recovery from major surgery after illness, and they're struggling. Frankly, so am I, I'm a complex patient, myself, but in better shape than my friend... for the moment, at least. And Melbourne's new Metro Tunnel opens Sunday, this is historic! Choices! First World problems. The missus has just pointed out the trike ride would be better for my mental health, and I could park up the car, with a tarp over the trike, on my way home and do a Metro Tunnel round trip, later in the day, not among the very first but, "I rode the Metro Tunnel the first day it opened," is all about being a part of this city's great history. Gunna try to fit in a quick spin on the train on Sunday. Gotta try to. Acknowledgement of Country We proudly ackno...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Origami Bicycle Trailer

Image
The rider of the recumbent trike pulls up at the secluded beach, the site looks promising, the dunes encroach on the park lawns in overlapping zig-zags, there's also a treated pine kiddy fortress, but the ground level is eroded and very uneven. OK for a bivi, but not the bike caravan. A patch of the park lawn, tucked deep between two dune intrusions provides the perfect spot. The rider pedals their Greenspeed in towards the campsite. Behind the trike is a boxy looking trailer, a small cube, about 600mm on every side. The rider finds the flattest piece of lawn, is satisfied he's hidden from the road, so he unhitches the strange trailer, removes its wheels and drawbar, then removes the olive green wrap-around tonneaux cover to reveal a stange "layer-cake" of folded framework and foamboard. He lifts the stack of foamboards from the trailer and places them on the ground. Then, in a blink, he unfolds first the top layer of the trailer, then the bottom layer, to reveal a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

On another rant... "Wide Range" Enviolo Bicycle CVT Gearing

Enviolo CVT bicycle "gear" hubs. They're infinitely variable over a claimed 380% gear range. In a mountain bike context, with a 38 tooth chainring and an 11 to 48 tooth cassette, that's infinitely variable between a lowest gear of, say 22 gear inches for climbing, to a highest gear just shy of 86 gear inches... not exactly a sprint downhill gear. A typical mountain bike, running say, a Microshift AdventX 10 speed derailleur system on 11 to 48 teeth, or 480% range will give you a more mountain biking friendly 95 gear inches. Both of these comparative drivetrains are assuming a 38 or 40 tooth cog on the cranks, depending on a 27.5" or 26" wheel, respectively. Derailleur, to me, wins on torque and speed for wide range. However, Enviolo does have a torque sensing option and will select the the ratio automatically, claiming this, especially with eBikes, is more efficient. Possibly so, but is it easier to ride, really? The Enviolo Heavy Duty models and up, have ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Bicycle is a Vehicle

^ This . The subject of this treatise is also the object(ive) of this treaty - that a bicycle is a vehicle. I live in Australia, so your mileage may vary in other parts of the world, but Australian law recognises bicycles as vehicles. It mandates them as vehicles, in fact. Australia's National Road Rules Standards Legislation (2007 plus amendments, the latest last year, I think) states in Part 15... 15. What is a vehicle? a. (cars, motorcycles, busses, trucks 'n' shit, can't remember the exact wording, don't care) b. A Bicycle. ( IS a fucking vehicle. In fucking law! ) Now, some states word their local laws slightly differently but the Australian Constitution says (can't recall chapter and verse) Where an inconsistency arises between Federal and State law, Federal law shall apply, in so far as to the inconsistency. (I'd have to look it up, but I encourage you to look it up, too.) Now, this does not mean I'm exclusively a "vehicula...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Star Trek Economy and the _Art_ of Engineering

Image
Update 08/11/2025: So, the bike this is for, according to some Googling this afternoon, is a 1995 Giant Sedona in their mid 1990s elegant "Green Olive" with gold lettering. I used to have a 1993 Iguana in the same colour but silver lettering. It's gorgeous in the light and so much of the times. I've also redesigned the disk brake bracket for sleeker lines, but I won't be ordering that print that until I'm sure the rough proto fits. Might even do the V. 2 print in titanium if it's not absurdly expensive. As an art project, largely to prove all the things I've been told about cycling are more often than not empty opinions (more on that stuff later) I'm deliberately engineering a classic 90s mountain bike into a modern "flyable" touring bike cum 1 "all terrain" bike. The frame is "too small" for me, at 40cm (16") but this is fixable with a riser bar, a long seatpost and shortish cranks. It has cantilever brake b...
Post a Comment
Read more

iOS 26 Has Ruined iPhone

Touch is broken, like seriously broken, touching the button onscreen, square in the middle, will lelect the button to the left. If that weren't trash enough, Liquid Glass toolbars hover over links and obscure stuff which, on short output dynamic pages, often makes progressing through some forms impossible. It's not as bad as Android yeat, but it's definitely #enshitification by Apple standards. Was thinking of a new iPhone 17 in the new year, it might be a new "dumb phone" instead.
Post a Comment
Read more