November 10th

I started the day playing Warcraft, and got my Death Kniggit up to level 90.  I've started doing Klaxxi quests to work on my blacksmithing.

I'd finally got all the bits together for the batteries in the Vanagon, so I fitted them.  The 6 gauge cables on the bus bars are a lot stiffer than I'd thought, so they don't lie as nicely as I'd intended, so I might redo them at some point to make them shorter.  I did make a start at making some 10 gauge wires (after all they're really short, so they don't need to be as thick as I've made them), but that wire's even stiffer and harder to work with.  Anyway, with an automatic charge relay connecting the battery array (4x UB12220 wheelchair batteries giving 88Ah) to the house battery, everything should work better.  I have an onboard charger for the batteries, and when I plugged it in, the house batteries were green (full charged) and the car battery was red (needs charging).  A little while later, the house battery was green and red (low level charging) and the car battery was red, so both chargers were charging the batteries, joined up.  A little while later both batteries were green and red, so charging at a lower level, and by the time I went to bed, they were both green.

In the evening we watched Prometheus... it was OK, I guess, but it did disappoint me a little with some of the "huh?" moments.  We agreed that it was worth the $1.30 to rent it, but we'd be disappointed if we'd paid full price to see it at the cinema.

November 5th

I've grown dissatisfied with the light over the mirror in the master bathroom, as it uses 2 150W halogen bulbs (well, it's supposed to use 3, but I broke one taking it one out years ago).  It's very, very bright and hot, and it hurts my eyes, and I don't like the fact that it uses more power than my office.

Well, I've just installed 2 6W LED arrays.  They're (understandably) not as bright as the halogen bulbs, but they're very white.  We'll see how we like them - there's a chance I could end up getting another one for the middle bulb holder if we want a bit more light.

November 4th

I started the day playing Warcraft, getting my Death Kniggit up to level 89.  Vic was off at an SPCA thing, so I had the space in the garage to throw tools - I got some work done on battery cables, but managed to bugger up several drills work hardening a couple of pieces of stainless steel I wanted to use as bus bars, so I'm a little dead in the water now until I get some more drills.  And some more stainless steel, by the looks of things.

I took the DRZ down the new freeway to Lincoln and took the Flightstar out for a while.  The "experimental jet" showed up again - I like it when he "slows it right down to 160mph" to join the circuit :o)

November 3rd

I was aiming to get the Vanagon back together, or at least driveable, but I forgot to plug in the battery charger for my little chop saw.  That I'd broken the blade on (I bought some new blades - they come in packs of 5, so I'm assuming they break often), so I can't carry on at the moment.

I started fiddling with the Raspberry Pi again, but this time I've plugged it into the wired network and used PuTTY to ssh to it from my desktop, so MrEngman's script just ran and downloaded what it needed.

I've added to the /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian wheezy main contrib non-free rpi deb-src http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian wheezy main contrib non-free rpi

Then it's just a matter of, as root:

$ wget http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian.public.key -O - | apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get update

and installing it:

$ wget http://goo.gl/yiaz0 -O wview-install-raspbian.sh

$ chmod +x wview-install-raspbian.sh ; ./wview-install-raspbian.sh

That took a while (as there are a lot of dependencies), so I went and played Warcraft while it was installing.

I'd ordered a new Dremel type thing - it's a Black and Decker, with (supposedly) a lot of torque.  My original Dremel was cordless, and had possibly the most retarded battery connection system I've ever seen, and the cheapie I got to replace it sucks.  Well, the new B&D arrived this morning, so I used it to cut lumps out of the van.  I threw paint over the bare metal, and called that good.

I went to the airfield and did a bunch of circuits, and got the plane to 400 hours - I've done less than 100 of them.  Jack and Ken were there, and we got into discussions about an electric ultralight they're building.  I declined to be the test pilot on Thursday (I'm probably 50lbs lighter than either of them) as I have to work :o)

In the evening I went around and adjusted the clocks so I won't have to do it tomorrow.

November 2nd

I couldn't sleep, so I was up at midnight playing Warcraft.  Still, I got my Death Kniggit to level 88.

In the evening, I decided to start playing with the Raspberry Pi again.  As the latest drop of Wheezy doesn't seem to work, I've installed the 08-16 version, that supposedly does.

08-16 doesn't support the Edimax WiFi card, so I've been trying to get MrEngman's script to run.  Of course, I've been working on it at my desk, so it doesn't have a connection to the Interwebs, so I'm using my laptop to download stuff that it needs onto a memory stick, and plugging that in.  Lots of reboots later, and we're closer, but it still isn't working.

November 1st

Another month, so more data:

Power I've paid for

Power I've generated

In the evening, Vince came over to fill in the log book for the plane - it's passed its annual inspection without any problems.  To celebrate, we went out to dinner.

October 30th

After work, we went to dinner with Vince - he's been rebuilding a plane, so he's been busy.