Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[mickthemaverick]

I think we are polar opposites on this one Zel, 1) I have never replaced a headlamp bulb unless it has blown so I moan about the cost when I do have to! and 2) We managed for many years without DRLs and in a world that is supposed to be trying to conserve energy to limit carbon production running just 4 watts on one car works out as a considerable amount of power, in my opinion wasted, on lighting lamps that we don't need!! Not to mention the trucks with hundreds of lights etc............ok they are LED but still use some power that would be better used keeping an elderly pensioner warm in the winter at a lower cost due to more availability!!

[Zelandeth]

Even maybe ten years ago I'd have agreed with you - but the degree of utter blindness I see on a daily basis beggars belief.

Saving £50 on fuel in a year (I'm actually Curious now so will probably do the math later to figure out roughly what actual numbers we are talking) isn't much help if I then need to fork out god knows how many grand in the event of a crash to find a like for like replacement car because some gormless idiot with no insurance ploughs into me while they were looking at their phone. If I can do something to make myself more conspicuous on the road these days, I'll do it.

Also the road layout itself means I can basically cut the expected MPG from any car more or less in half anyway which makes tiny percentage losses like this even less significant. I know driving around normally back in my old home area in Aberdeenshire over several days I was seeing nearly 40mpg from the Volvo - it dips below 20 quite regularly in MK.

Maybe once I manage to move back into the sticks rather than in central Milton Keynes, I might change my tune again.

[mickthemaverick]

I can't argue that it makes a significant difference to the individual Zel, but my argument is that collectively across the planet I expect there are enough savings available for India to send up another pointless space rocket!!

[Zelandeth]

I can't argue that it makes a significant difference to the individual Zel, but my argument is that collectively across the planet I expect there are enough savings available for India to send up another pointless space rocket!!

Oh absolutely in agreement there. To be honest that's why my usual vehicle of choice for local bumbling about has generally been the Trabant since I got it. I don't need to be hauling the best part of two tonnes of car around with me for most of what I'm doing. In the height of summer when I basically need the AC to be able to function, or if I'm making longer trips then sure. But for a huge amount of my local driving I'll take the smaller, lighter car. Aside from the (considerable) fuel saving, at 600kg it's causing far less wear to the roads too.

The gigawatts being wasted in server farms on pointless AI nonsense which is actually making life worse rather than doing something useful would be a decent start.

Computing power overall is actually probably a decent example - when you consider how efficient computers have actually become in the last 20 years - how much computing power is just wasted on needless, allegedly shiny faff that companies have decided they need to cram into the latest version of Windows beggars belief. I know that the background power usage of my own desktop when running Windows is a good 0.5A higher than my daily driver Linux distribution which is Mint. I only know that as there's an ammeter on the wall above my desk which shows the usage of my whole workstation. Based on our current tariff and usage patterns, that's somewhere around £130 a year! That's just background usage difference on ONE desktop computer between operating systems.

If you got rid of all the AI tosh (and I'm giving a pass to areas like medical research where it can actually be used *usefully* rather than trying to quote utter and complete nonsense at me in response to a search engine enquiry), pointless "bling" on everyone's desktop, and turned off even 50% of the random plugged in electronic devices in the world that don't need to be powered on, you'd probably be looking at hundreds of gigawatts of savings in a heartbeat.

[mickthemaverick]

100% in agreement with that Zel, such a shame the human race was created with 'Greed' as an apparently primary condition!!

[Hell Razor5543]

Gordon Gecko, from 'Wall Street' (1987), said "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good".

[mickthemaverick]

Gordon Gecko, from 'Wall Street' (1987), said "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good".

Then I would advocate that Gordon had his vocal chords in the wrong end of his body!

[CitroJim]

The gigawatts being wasted in server farms on pointless AI nonsense which is actually making life worse rather than doing something useful would be a decent start.

Yep, absolutely...

[Hell Razor5543]

The gigawatts being wasted in server farms on pointless AI nonsense which is actually making life worse rather than doing something useful would be a decent start.

Yep, absolutely...

Well, one 'by-product' is a lot of heat, so how about ducting that heat to proving ovens of bakeries?

[CitroJim]

The gigawatts being wasted in server farms on pointless AI nonsense which is actually making life worse rather than doing something useful would be a decent start.

Yep, absolutely...

Well, one 'by-product' is a lot of heat, so how about ducting that heat to proving ovens of bakeries?

Yes, that would work for me Or, even better, use it as a source of district heating for the houses/offices/public buildings nearby. This system was (might still be) used extensively in the Eastern Bloc in the past with tremendous results... I've experienced it first-hand in my travels. I remember just how hot it made a disused hospital in Minsk (Belarus) we looked at back in the early 90s. It made it stink a bit too

[mickthemaverick]

Way back in the 70s I visited a company called Sevalco on the severn estuary whose prime product was bricks. They actually used the clay on which the factory lived to fire the kilns and collected all the chimney heat via water heat exchangers which generated steam that they used to drive turbines to power all the worker's homes and shops around the plant. Excellent and early example of what could be done!!

[myglaren]

Some examples on here:
https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatace ... xcess-heat

I'm sure that I have mentioned previously about the system in Borås where I lived.
Electricity was generated using oil fired boilers and of course hydroelectric.
We lived a few hundred yards from the power station and could see it from our rear windows. And see rubbish trucks arriving and departing, the facility was also the rubbish incinerator for the town so that the rubbish also helped generate electricity.
But there were none of the usual cooling towers.
The cooling water was pumped around the town and the majority of homes and businesses had heat exchangers in the cellars to provide heating and hot water.
The main drag in town also had underfloor heating to keep it free from ice and snow.

All very efficient and environmentally friendly, and best of all, cheap electricity, cheap hot water and heating. Very cheap indeed.

Now all the 'kitchen waste' and garden waste is used to generate methane and the town's busses run on that.
Other rubbish still used to generate electricity and heat for buildings.

[myglaren]

Incidentally, there is a government building a mile from me, a huge 'black tower' that was offices and at the back was a similar heating arrangement for one of the villages, not ours fortunately as it was always a bit of a disaster, expensive and unreliable. Looks as though that is closed, the tower of offices has been closed for several years.

[Zelandeth]

The problem with community heating projects is that in this country we're so absurdly bad at it.

There was great fanfare about how they were going to use excess heat from the boilers and heat recovery system in the new office building that my former employer built in 2012 for such purposes - right up till the point the building opened and it turned out that they didn't have even close to enough capacity to heat the building in winter, never mind have excess heat to export. The whole HVAC system in that building was an absolute joke anyway - and apparently hasn't got any better since.

[Zelandeth]

Had a brief it turned out totally unnecessary panic this afternoon when I came back out of a shop to find a large puddle of very rusty coolant under the VP.

This puzzled me on closer inspection. For one, it didn't feel excessively hot. Certainly not to the point I'd have expected it to barf large quantities of coolant. It's hard to put numbers on it or anything, but you kind of get a feel for what feels "too hot" and know when an engine smells too hot. This wasn't ringing any alarm bells. Secondly the coolant level actually seemed to be fine on investigation. The thing which really made me go "hmmmm..." though was that the coolant in the car was lovely and clean...not rusty Radweldy goop like was on the ground...Yeah, you guessed it. It seems I'd parked over a puddle left by the car which pulled out of the space right before I parked. I didn't notice because I walked away to the rear of the car.

I think one of the jobs for this weekend really needs to be to give the Rover a good clean. It's filthy from a combination of just winter grime and from dust kicked up while the landscaping was underway. I moved it this afternoon when getting some awkward furniture through the gate and could barely see out the thing reversing back onto the driveway.

I have fixed one fault on that car though (or at least I hope I have), which was tightening up the securing screw on the driver's wing mirror - so hopefully it will now stay where it's put rather than ending up pointing at the rear wheel after you hit the first bump. It's a tiny thing, but was a *really annoying* tiny thing when driving it. Especially as the driver's window really doesn't like opening or closing. That's probably going to be near the top of the list to investigate as again - it's really fluffing annoying and the sort of silly thing which leads to me just not wanting to drive the car. It actually works just fine but is really stiff so hopefully just needs cleaning up and the relevant parts lubricating.

Reckon with that and the front camber sorted properly so it tracks right I might actually be inclined to get some more miles covered and maybe actually start developing a bit of confidence in it.

Oh...and sorting at least the trip/odometer (they packed in last time I had it out) so in the absence of a working fuel gauge that I have *some* way to keep tabs on the fuel situation...That should also be near the top of the list I guess. Or try to sort the gauge - though that involves draining and pulling the tank, which quite simply put I really don't want to do, so yes I am indeed putting that off! On the plus side, I am pretty good at removing and installing the instrument cluster by now, so that bit shouldn't take me too long! I only had it out about 150 miles ago to attempt to sort the ammeter and replace several dead illumination lamps (one of which has already gone out again anyway).

Would you believe it, the Volvo is demanding yet more attention now!



Bloomin' needy modern cars!