With the footrest fully raised and my legs in that tunnel there on the left I could lie flat and actually get a decent sleep on a plane, which I'm never able to do normally. Anyone much taller than me wouldn't be able to stretch out completely straight, but at my height (182 cm) it was great.
Our hotel in Bangkok looks alright. We're only here to sleep though, by 5 am we'll be on the airport shuttle bus heading back to the airport for our flights to Brussel via Helsinki.
Also checking in on the home alone lizard while approaching the Caspian Sea at 40,000 ft.
The dips in the basking spot temperature readings tell me that he was quite active and basking regularly in the middle of the day yesterday, but has been less active so far today.
*Big* detour southwards for the Bangkok to Helsinki flight in order to avoid overflying both Ukraine and Russia. I wonder how many kilometres and minutes it added.
Apparently Finnair have a thing for blueberries. The in-flight drink options for our Bangkok to Helsinki flight included blueberry juice, a Blueberry Spritz mocktail, and Ainoa Sametti "Velvet", a blueberry dessert wine. Port-like, as they claim, but rather sweet.
The last 24 hours did not go entirely according to plan, but despite bouts of gastroenteritis for both my wife and my son we managed to catch the train from Brussels to London, dragged ourselves and our luggage across London on the tube, then caught the train to Stansted airport where we picked up our hire car for this trip.
It's a Mercedes EQE 350+ battery electric car. First impressions, based on an hour and a half of driving on the motorway and A roads with no time to read the owner's manual, is that it's undeniably a Nice Car but I do miss several features from our own rather less prestigious BYD Seal.
The first thing that struck me was how dark and claustrophobic a car with a metal roof feels once you're used to one with a glass roof! I also missed having a driver's heads up display, and most of all the BYD's 360° camera system. The Mercedes only has a reversing camera plus parking sensors, which feels like a big step backwards after spending a year with 360° parking cameras.
Apparently the car should be able to charge at up to 173 kW. I don't know whether it wasn't playing nicely with the Tesla Supercharger, whether it was the cold weather, or whether I'd need to pay a subscription to unlock maximum charging speed but it definitely maxed out at 85 kW today.
I will concede that the branded puddle lights are an excellently wankerish touch.
At this point I think I can say that gastroenteritis over the festive season sucks. 0/10, would not recommend. After it hit my wife and kid during the 23rd & 24th of December it came for me on Christmas Day. Being unable to eat or drink at all for a while then being unable to stomach more than tiny quantities of the plainest food and drink does suck a lot of the enjoyment out of proceedings. Looking at seasonal treats and being too scared of the intestinal consequences to consume them does not make for relaxed happy times.
Fortunately my family and I are now able to eat and drink more or less normally again, but I'm still not 100% and not able to indulge like I otherwise would at this time of year.
Parking sensors become less useful when they are constantly beeping and lit up even when you're Doing it Right.
Because it's a fairly wide car and UK car parking spaces are so small every parking attempt results in the car continually warning me I'm too close to stuff. Here I was straight, and centred, and so were the cars either side of me, but the car was beeping up a storm. The red line on the reversing camera is useless too. If I used that as a guide I'd always be leaving a metre of the front end of the car sticking out of the parking bay.
I can cope, of course, but it would be quicker and much easier with a 360° camera system. It is, I believe, an optional extra that our rental EQE does not have
Checked out some of the local industrial archaeology.
This is Hawkesbury Junction, a.k.a. Sutton Stop, the meeting point of the two oldest canals in the UK, the Coventry Canal and the Oxford Canal. During the early parts of the industrial revolution horse-drawn canal boats were the principal means of moving coal and other bulk goods around the country.
More views of the engine house, lock, turnover bridge, and inn. We tried to have lunch in the inn but they were too busy, we had to settle for a different old pub nearby.
Oh great, just about recovered from the gastro and now I'm getting a cold. Damn this disease-ridden continent.
On the plus side, I have found some nice things to say about the rental Merc. The automatic headlight high beam function works really well, the heated front seats are super effective, and while adaptive cruise control may be locked behind a paywall the car does have a speed limiter function.
The speed limiter is something our old Hyundai i30 had, and I do miss it a little in our BYD Seal. It is basically the mirror image of cruise control. You set a speed and rather than auto automatically applying throttle to reach that speed it will automatically reduce throttle, and if necessary apply (regenerative) braking, to prevent you from exceeding it. Unlike cruise control you can manually brake as much as you want and the system will remain active, which makes it useful in situations where you need to regularly brake for corners, roundabouts or traffic lights but would still like some assistance with keeping to a set speed in between.
The motorway services at junction 1 of the M6. There are a total of 64 fast chargers here, 28 Tesla Superchargers (Tesla only) and 36 GRIDSERVE. The GRIDSERVE chargers can be used without an app, RFID card, internet access, or account, you just plug in and tap a credit card to start charging.
The kid and I had a lovely day at the National Space Centre in Leicester, while my wife got a dose of history at the Richard III exhibition in Leicester city centre.
I have many more photos of the cool things inside, but they're all in my Proper Camera.
Another charger, another charging app I can't install because my home address happens to be outside the UK.
It is undeniably a good thing that most chargers in the UK can be used simply by tapping a credit card. No need to install an app, create an account, order an RFID card, or have internet access at the site.
It's undeniably a bad thing that this is often the only option available to visitors to the UK, because it leaves them with no way to monitor the progress of a charge while away from the car, increasing the risk of overstaying at the charger.
You can't use the car's app to do this if you have a rental car, because when you're not the owner you can't use those apps. That leaves the charging company's app as your only option, except it seems that a lot of the companies operating in the UK have set their apps as UK only in the Google Play Store. That doesn't restrict the app to people who are *in* the UK (which would make some sort of sense), it restricts the app to people whose home address is in the UK, which seems utterly pointless.
So far I've run into this with both GRIDSERVE and ChargePoint, and I strongly suspect there will be more. The only charging app I have been able to use is Tesla, because that one is international.
Had a most un-Australian problem this morning while leaving our rental flat in Coventry: the car's boot was frozen shut. I had to go get a spatula from the kitchen to pry it open.
Today I discovered that Ionity chargers work a bit differently than the GRIDSERVE and ChargePoint chargers I've used so far. You can't just tap a credit card on the machine to start a charge, you have to go to a web payment portal instead. That would present problems if someone did not have a smartphone with local internet access, but for me and my eSIM this actually works better because in exchange for using the web payment portal I got a web dashboard to remotely monitor the charging session, while still not having to install an app, create an account or get an RFID card.
This is the best charging setup I've come across so far in the UK.
With these Smart Charge chargers you just need to tap a credit card to start the charge, at which point a QR code is briefly displayed on screen which you can use to access a web page to monitor the charging session or retrieve a receipt.
Like the Ionity chargers you get charging session monitoring without needing to install an app or create an account, but the Smart Charge chargers are even quicker and simpler to use because you can pay by tapping a credit card instead of having to use a web payment portal.
Not a PlugShare glitch, apparently there really are 6 different EV fast charging sites in one services on the A303, just down the road from Stonehenge.
Tesla have a site with 16 plugs there, GRIDSERVE are there too with 8 CCS2 plugs, and the Costa, McDonalds, Harvester and Holiday Inn all have 1 or 2 plugs of their own.
The kid and I had a great time at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge today. As I anticipated he had fun playing old games on the many computers, games consoles and arcade machines, but he was also surprisingly interested in writing 2 line BASIC programs on the BBC computers in the "80's classroom" room.
The Centre for Computing History is a computer and video game museum based in Cambridge, UK. With a collection of vintage computers and game consoles, many of the exhibits are hands on and interactive.
A few more photos emphasising the hands-on nature of the Centre for Computing History. Most of the computers, games consoles and arcade games that are on display are working, and set up for visitors to use. It's great.
The Centre for Computing History is a computer and video game museum based in Cambridge, UK. With a collection of vintage computers and game consoles, many of the exhibits are hands on and interactive.
Anthony Horton •
Anthony Horton •
With the footrest fully raised and my legs in that tunnel there on the left I could lie flat and actually get a decent sleep on a plane, which I'm never able to do normally. Anyone much taller than me wouldn't be able to stretch out completely straight, but at my height (182 cm) it was great.
Anthony Horton •
Anthony Horton •
Bangkok airport has floor cleaning robots roaming around.
Anthony Horton •
Anthony Horton •
The dips in the basking spot temperature readings tell me that he was quite active and basking regularly in the middle of the day yesterday, but has been less active so far today.
#LizardPosting #LizardsOfMastodon #Lizard #CircuitPython
Anthony Horton •
Anthony Horton •
Anthony Horton •
Anthony Horton •
Anthony Horton •
Anthony Horton •
Anthony Horton •
Anthony Horton •
It's a Mercedes EQE 350+ battery electric car. First impressions, based on an hour and a half of driving on the motorway and A roads with no time to read the owner's manual, is that it's undeniably a Nice Car but I do miss several features from our own rather less prestigious BYD Seal.
The first thing that struck me was how dark and claustrophobic a car with a metal roof feels once you're used to one with a glass roof! I also missed having a driver's heads up display, and most of all the BYD's 360° camera system. The Mercedes only has a reversing camera plus parking sensors, which feels like a big step backwards after spending a year with 360° parking cameras.
#ElectricCar #EV #EVhire
Anthony Horton •
#EV #ElectricCar #EVhire
Anthony Horton •
As expected fast charging is almost twice as expensive here as it is back home (£0.55/kWh vs ~$0.65/kWh), but that's still cheaper than petrol.
Also as expected the Mercedes once again compared poorly with our BYD. Max charging speed appears to be 85 kW, while our Seal Premium can do 150 kW.
#EV #ElectricCar #EVhire
Anthony Horton •
I will concede that the branded puddle lights are an excellently wankerish touch.
#EV #ElectricCar #EVhire
Anthony Horton •
Fortunately my family and I are now able to eat and drink more or less normally again, but I'm still not 100% and not able to indulge like I otherwise would at this time of year.
Anthony Horton •
Because it's a fairly wide car and UK car parking spaces are so small every parking attempt results in the car continually warning me I'm too close to stuff. Here I was straight, and centred, and so were the cars either side of me, but the car was beeping up a storm. The red line on the reversing camera is useless too. If I used that as a guide I'd always be leaving a metre of the front end of the car sticking out of the parking bay.
I can cope, of course, but it would be quicker and much easier with a 360° camera system. It is, I believe, an optional extra that our rental EQE does not have
#ElectricCar #EV #EVhire
Anthony Horton •
Anthony Horton •
This is Hawkesbury Junction, a.k.a. Sutton Stop, the meeting point of the two oldest canals in the UK, the Coventry Canal and the Oxford Canal. During the early parts of the industrial revolution horse-drawn canal boats were the principal means of moving coal and other bulk goods around the country.
Anthony Horton •
Anthony Horton •
On the plus side, I have found some nice things to say about the rental Merc. The automatic headlight high beam function works really well, the heated front seats are super effective, and while adaptive cruise control may be locked behind a paywall the car does have a speed limiter function.
The speed limiter is something our old Hyundai i30 had, and I do miss it a little in our BYD Seal. It is basically the mirror image of cruise control. You set a speed and rather than auto automatically applying throttle to reach that speed it will automatically reduce throttle, and if necessary apply (regenerative) braking, to prevent you from exceeding it. Unlike cruise control you can manually brake as much as you want and the system will remain active, which makes it useful in situations where you need to regularly brake for corners, roundabouts or traffic lights but would still like some assistance with keeping to a set speed in between.
Anthony Horton •
Australia has some catching up to do.
#ElectricCar #EV #EVhire
Anthony Horton •
I have many more photos of the cool things inside, but they're all in my Proper Camera.
Anthony Horton •
It is undeniably a good thing that most chargers in the UK can be used simply by tapping a credit card. No need to install an app, create an account, order an RFID card, or have internet access at the site.
It's undeniably a bad thing that this is often the only option available to visitors to the UK, because it leaves them with no way to monitor the progress of a charge while away from the car, increasing the risk of overstaying at the charger.
You can't use the car's app to do this if you have a rental car, because when you're not the owner you can't use those apps. That leaves the charging company's app as your only option, except it seems that a lot of the companies operating in the UK have set their apps as UK only in the Google Play Store. That doesn't restrict the app to people who are *in* the UK (which would make some sort of sense), it restricts the app to people whose home address is in the UK, which seems utterly pointless.
So far I've run into this with both GRIDSERVE and ChargePoint, and I strongly suspect there will be more. The only charging app I have been able to use is Tesla, because that one is international.
#ElectricCar #EV #EVhire #ElectricCarHire
Anthony Horton •
#EVhire #ElectricCarHire #EV #ElectricCar
Anthony Horton •
I also like the purple halo lights.
#EVhire #ElectricHireCar #EV #ElectricCar
Anthony Horton •
With these Smart Charge chargers you just need to tap a credit card to start the charge, at which point a QR code is briefly displayed on screen which you can use to access a web page to monitor the charging session or retrieve a receipt.
Like the Ionity chargers you get charging session monitoring without needing to install an app or create an account, but the Smart Charge chargers are even quicker and simpler to use because you can pay by tapping a credit card instead of having to use a web payment portal.
#EV #ElectricCar #ElectricCarHire #EVhire
Anthony Horton •
Tesla have a site with 16 plugs there, GRIDSERVE are there too with 8 CCS2 plugs, and the Costa, McDonalds, Harvester and Holiday Inn all have 1 or 2 plugs of their own.
#ElectricCar #EV #EVhire #ElectricCarHire
Anthony Horton •
We've dropped off the hire car and for the remaining 2 weeks of our holiday will be getting about by train, on foot, and by plane.
Anthony Horton •
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/
#ComputerHistory #RetroComputing #BBCcomputer #BASIC
The Centre for Computing History - Computer and Video Game Museum - Cambridge
www.computinghistory.org.ukAnthony Horton •
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/
#ComputerHistory #RetroComputing
The Centre for Computing History - Computer and Video Game Museum - Cambridge
www.computinghistory.org.ukHugs4friends ♾🇺🇦 🇵🇸😷 hat dies geteilt