Notices by David Hembrow (hembrow@todon.eu)

The UK has introduced a requirement to have an electronic travel authorization on order to visit the country. I just thought I'd have a look at it and see what I'll have to do if I'm ever to visit my mother again, and I'm in a queue. A queue on a website. Never seen that before (but it does seem very British).

It doesn't accept any method of payment which I use. Well that's just great.

What's more, the only way to make payment to the British government is to sign up to a choice of American payment services which will send some slice of the payment to the US. Why on earth have they done that?

Oh, and if your use the app, which they really want you to do, then you're phone has to meet their requirements. So it may also cost you a new phone to visit the UK in future. And if my phone stops meeting their requirements after I pay for an autorisation which should last two years? Who knows.

Thanks Brexit, the curse which keeps on cursing.
#brexit #eta #unitedkingdom

A few photos from recent cycling trips through the countryside.
#regel17 #velomobile #cycling #biketooter #netherlands

A few more photos from last Sunday.
#regel17 #cycling #velomobile #biketooter

This doesn't look good. I mean, a reduction in atmospheric CO2 might be nice (perhaps not this much of a reduction), but my device displaying 255 ppm CO2 immediately after calibration probably just means that it's faulty.

After I took it indoors the display rise above 300 for a few minutes and then it started displaying error 0x8002.

Anyone out there seen this fault before?
#Aranet4 #aranet #co2sensor #co2

So here I am watching the Dutch coverage of the German elections. The exit poll is just in, so we go quickly to the *second biggest* party to hear what they have to say.

Why go straight to the second biggest? Because they're the neonazi afd, and the Dutch media *always* talks to the extreme right wing who want to screw us all over before they talk to anyone else.

I'm really sick of this. We're in the state we're in now, possibly facing escalation of a completely pointless ear, largely because of the shit job that journalists are doing, seemingly everywhere.
#germanelection #DutchMedia #nos #journalism @NOS

@Sustainable2050 The first solar panel that I found on Marktplaats this morning is a 440 W panel listed at €43.50. Retail price. £36 at today's exchange rate.

That works out at €99 per kW for solar vs €15000 per kW for nuclear. A factor of 150. Ok, so there are some other things that you need to make a system, but putting up panels does not cost €14900 per panel...

(And yes, you will want to install more panels to allow for dull days, might want battery storage etc etc, but none of it will make the price as high as nuclear power!)

Parcel deliveries this week. We've had a lot of fog this week. Freezing fog, even, as it's been below zero a lot of the time. Not especially nice weather to be out and about, tbh, but there you are. Anyway, it's safe for me to continue to cycle with my parcels of bicycle parts because the cycle-paths keep the cars away from me.
https://www.dutchbikebits.com
#dutchbikebits #cycling #cyclepath #fog #wintercycling #biketooter

And of course there's been recreational cycling as well. This trip was out into a village to buy bread for lunch. The velomobile means I stay warm despite the less than lovely weather. Fog makes everything look a bit magical.
#cycling #regel17 #velomobile #biketooter

We had freezing fog for today's group ride. Everything looked a bit magical with the ice on trees.
#regel17 #cycling #biketooter #velomobile #netherlands

This is the peak of bicycle technology.

It's a bike which a local customer brought around yesterday because it's been a few years and she thought it was about time that someone had a look at it.

I know it looks terribly old fashioned, but hear me out:

This is a reasonably light-weight, efficient bike, with effective gearing and brakes. Nothing on it is unmaintainable.

This bike came out of the factory in 1982 (May 1982 according to the stamp on the rear hub). It has admittedly had a fairly good life, always having been kept indoors, but it's been ridden a lot yet needed almost no work.

The front rack had a broken non-essential part which I removed. The rubber strap / snelbinder over the rear carrier rack was broken so I replaced it, and the skirtguards were perished and falling apart so I replaced those as well. Otherwise, I've just checked that things were working and added a bit of oil. One of the pedals was running roughly until I oiled it.

Bike shops don't sell bicycles like this any more. Modern bicycles are not designed to last a whole lifetime, like these were.

https://www.dutchbikebits.com
#bicycle #BikeTooter #cycling #repairability #righttorepair #netherlands #ProperBicycle #NotAnEBike #dutchbikebits

The frame is made of steel with really nice lugs and good quality brazing and very good paint. There is no rust anywhere. The mudguards are probably stainless steel. Again, there's no rust. Other parts are aluminium, and of course there's a bit of plastic and rubber.

I can still buy all the inexpensive parts I need to repair this bike, but I can't get the parts required to repair some modern bikes. Electric bicycles in particular become completely unmaintainable after a few years so I usually can't help people with those. But if you have one of these lovely old bikes and you take a bit of care of it, it'll last your whole life.

This is the level of reliability we should demand from manufacturers of everything that we buy.

@ayoub The Israelis are making it clear that they really don't like hospitals and medical centres.

This is yet another war crime, isn't it?

Sunday was spent racing in Assen. My Mango is no longer close to being a competitive racing velomobile. Other newer designs are much quicker.

My average speed was about 40 km/h, which requires pedaling with a continuous output of about 220 W for the 47 minutes or so of the race. The Mango goes significantly faster with the same effort as is the case for my my racing bike or my two wheeled recumbent, but I still finished last! That's OK. I do this for fun, not with any expectation of winning.

The fastest designs have racing hoods, enclosed wheel arches, a lower seating position (smaller cross section as seen from the front) and a more aerodynamic form. They're also lighter. These things definitely let you ride faster with the same effort, though for everyday use the differences are not so great as on the track.

I had a racing hood for a short period. These things make a surprising difference - I could go 10% faster with just that addition and the same Mango, but I found that I overheated quickly on the track and that it was absolutely lethal to use on the road so I got rid of it.

There's a speed calculator here, which I really should update with some newer machines:
https://hembrow.eu/personal/kreuzotter/espeed.htm
#regel17 #velomobile #cycling #biketooter

A few busy cycling days behind me, all I needed to do today was take these parcels to the post office. They were light enough to tie down on top of my basket (which was already full) so I didn't need a trailer.
https://www.dutchbikebits.com
#dutchbikebits #cycling #BikeTooter #cyclepath #everybikeisacargobike

The Netherlands is amongst the countries that has withdrawn humanitarian aid to Gaza through the UNRWA because of an accusation that 12 out of 13000 employees of UNRWA somehow helped Hamas. The claim is based on "confessions" obtained by the Israelis through torture.

The most efficient way to send donations is probably by direct bank transfer. Details of accounts can be found here:
https://www.unrwa.org/donate/questions-about-donations

@pettter I know a few people who have been able to take advantage of the actually quite ludicrous favourable tax terms for some "ex pat" workers. That's not me though.

I was told by a neighbour this morning that I am "the right kind of immigrant".

When asked to explain he said that I work and pay taxes. He didn't also say that I'm ok because I'm white but I wonder how the conversation would have gone if I had a different skin colour.

Am I reassured that because i am "the right kind of immigrant" everything will now be fine in the Netherlands after a quarter of the people who live around me just voted for a fascist, when the new speaker in our parliament is a conspiracy theorist as well as a fascist, and when most of the rest of the country appears to think that this is just fine ? No I am not.

I have more in common with asylum seekers and any other immigrants than I do with fascists or with unthinking voters for fascists.
#pvvisfascism
#RefugeesAreWelcomeHere

And the winner of the Dutch election is... The Dutch Media. They've spent decades hyping up every right wing racist party, allowing them to say the most outrageous things without any fact checking at all. The public has now given the most votes to a racist linked to Putin. I'm ashamed.
#tk2023 #DutchPolitics

@CelloMomOnCars @breadandcircuses And then you have relatively efficient e-cars like the Citroen Ami. It weighs just 485 kg and has a far smaller battery and far smaller energy consumption than most e-cars. It has a range and load capacity which are far more than adequate to cover almost all drivers' daily use, but the styling and 'power' are perhaps not adequate for the average driver's ego.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami_%28electric_vehicle%29