Freecycle

A few weeks ago I was given four beds by three different people - all complete strangers.  They wanted to get rid of them, and I happened to need them - so they gave them to me.  

I've recently been clearing out my loft and had a lot of stuff I've accumulated over the years.  None of it was rubbish, so I wanted to give it away - so I did.  I gave it to people I didn't know who said they wanted it.  There was a cot, a couple of turntables, a slide projector, a negative ionizer, a couple of children's bicycles, some ADSL microfilters - and several other things.

My heating recently broke down.  As I'm replacing the boiler I didn't want to get it fixed, so I asked some complete strangers if they had some electric heaters they could spare.  Two different people came up with six dimplex heaters to tide me over till the new boiler was fitted.

A few years ago, this kind of transaction would have been the stuff of dreams.  Stuff went to the tip if you didn't know someone who wanted it.  You would never go round asking strangers for things you needed.  But the internet has changed all that.  The internet and a rather clever idea called Freecycle.  You can read all about it here, and find your nearest branch.

Freecycle is billed as a way to "keep stuff out of landfill".  I think it is far more than that.  In fact the issue of filling up landfill is a bit over-done and Freecycle probably doesn't even scratch the surface.  What Freecycle is, is a real community.  We hear about "online communities", which often means a group of people who communicate on-line but never meet.  Freecycle goes much further than this.  It's about local people being able to contact each other, know each others' needs and support each other.  That's far more valuable than any environmental ideal or any chatroom you can find anywhere else on the internet.

Political Correctness GONE MAD

This made me laugh

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7643136.stm

Not only is it wrong to tell people which toilet they should use, but it wrong to say that it's political correctness "gone mad".  That might offend ... mad people ... like the green-haired lady in the interview. 

Smallcreep's Descriptive Writing

I think my father was always impressed by highly descriptive writing. When I was a teenager he recommended Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath to me, principally for the political message of the book (which turns out to be completely spurious, but that’s another story). However, he told me that his favourite passage in the book is a description of a tortoise crossing the road. Steinbeck devotes an entire chapter (albeit a very short one) to describing in minute detail the scene as the reptile climbs the bank, crosses the road and gets hit by a truck. I remember being very impressed by this passage myself. When Dad wrote his own book it gave him an opportunity to practice this style of writing for himself, and he made a very good job of it too. Here’s a video of Peter Currell Brown reading a passage from his book Smallcreep’s Day about some pipes on a wall.

It’s interesting that The Grapes of Wrath is a book with an intensely political message, and my Father was interested in the politics, but his favourite passage was a description of a natural event which appeared to have no bearing on the story whatsoever. Steinbeck may have intended the tortoise to be a metaphor, but that was lost on me as a teenager. Similarly, Smallcreep’s Day is a book with a political message, but Dad’s favourite passage is a description of something rather mundane – some pipes running round a wall. The way the words are used to describe the subject is far more important than the subject of the description. Are the pipes intended as a metaphor too?

Glow-worms

Glow-worms are one of those memories of childhood for me. I’d never actually seen one before, in spite of growing up in the English countryside, but they appear in children’s books so I grew up believing in them. They are so romantic -little insects that produce a light at night. The glow-worm in James and the Giant Peach provides light for the entire crew of the peach. But I didn’t know what they really looked like. When my mother told me that they lived near her, in a cemetery in Stroud, I was keen to go and take a look. At about 22:00 on a fine evening at the end of July we went up to the cemetery to see if we could find any. And we did! Two things surprised me about them; their colour and their intensity. Never having seen one, I had only ever imagined what they would be like. I had imagined a dull yellow glow that you would miss if you weren’t looking closely enough. But that’s not how they looked at all. The intensity was on a par with a green LED, such as you might have on the front of a T.V. And the colour was bright green – not the kind of colour I had imagined at all. We saw several of these lights in the long grass, but as we didn’t take a torch, I have no idea what the insect that made them looks like. I did try a photo, but there was not enough light for the autofocus, and without a flash all I got was a blur. But here is the blur so that you can appreciate the colour of the things.

O2 Broadband

Today I went live with O2 Broadband. They are about the only broadband provider that people actually recommend and don't complain about - them and Sky, and I can't get Sky unless I subscribe to their telly services at a minimum of £16 per month. O2 only put my exchange live last week, and it's taken them 8 days to migrate my line from Twang.net. Today at 08:50 I plugged in the modem, went through the O2 set-up procedure, and without any kind of drama I was live with a download speed of over 12 mbps and an upload speed of 1.1. The cost for this service is £15 per month and you get unlimited downloads as long as you don't abuse it. It helps that I'm only just over 1000 m from the exchange - not everyone will be so lucky, but if you can't get more than 8 mbps then they'll only charge you £12.50 a month. Better still, if you have a mobile contract with O2 they'll knock £5 per month off your bill, and if you don't, then you just get a free pay as you go SIM and use at least £10 per quarter you get the same discount. After 2 hours experience I'm happy to recommend O2 as a broadband provider. Let's hope the don't get bought by Carphone Warehouse!

Vectrix scooter revisited

Canary Wharf Motor Expo was on again this week, and I bumped into the people from Vectrix once again. This company makes an electric scooter called the Maxi Scooter which I rode a couple of years ago and was very impressed with (see my first blog on the subject).
A year on, the scooter hasn’t changed significantly, but the price tag certainly has. Last year they were retailing at over £7,000; now the price is £5,600 OTR. With petrol 15% higher in price and rising I needed to know if it would cope with my commute; so I asked to borrow it for the evening and ride home. They agreed; so on Thursday 2008-06-12 I was to pick up a fully charged scooter.
The economics, surprisingly, still don’t entirely add up, it has to be said. There is no doubt that now the Vectrix would save me money on my commute. If I was to sell my Pan European and go electric only then it would save a significant amount of money. However, that’s not practical – for example I’m riding the National Road Rally in a couple of weeks and that requires 870 km without stopping long enough for a recharge. Limiting the range to 110 km (at best) would not work. So the comparison has to compare the full cost of the Vectrix with the additional cost of riding the Honda to work.
First shock is the lifespan of the Vectrix battery. They are predicting it to go 10 years, or 80,000 km, or 1700 charging cycles. Given that I ride 25,000 km per year, that battery would last little more than 3 years. So the economics have to work on the bike being scrapped after 3 years (at least I don’t have to factor re-sale value into the equation). That means £146 per month in depreciation. Then the cost of borrow that extra money over three years works out at another £25 per month (that’s an optimistic number too). However, that depreciation might be overstated as the battery is supposed to be replaceable at a fraction of the cost of a new bike, so it might be possible to reduce that figure. Again, the cost of tyres is a deciding factor here – it’s by far the highest item on the running costs. I’m assuming maintenance can be mostly done by me, and allowed £50 per year, but these small wheels are going to go through around 3 rear tyres and probably one or more fronts per year. Apparently it’s quite heavy on rear brake pads too. That comes to another £40 per month, fitted. With another assumption on additional insurance costs, that brings the total monthly running to around £60. Adding up the running and financing costs, I reckon the scooter would cost £232 per month if it was used purely for commuting.
Comparing this to the cost of the Pan European, as I said, I have to remove costs that would be incurred if it sat in the garage all year. This includes tax, insurance most of the depreciation and one service per year. Pans keep their value quite well, but they also cover very high distances before they are fit for scrap. So I’ve allowed £40 per month for depreciation, and nothing for the cost of finance. The main costs are servicing, tyres and petrol, which come to around £200 per month. Two thirds of this is petrol, so it’s quite sensitive to rising petrol costs. If I assume a petrol cost of £2/litre then the number rises by £100 per month.

So the bottom line is:

• Vectrix cost per month £232
• Pan Euro cost per month £240
• Total saving per month - £8.

Hardly a convincing case, but I suppose if I could reduce that depreciation number it might make sense.

So I turned up at the Vectrix display on Thursday with my lid and leathers expecting to be given a key. A different salesman was on duty this time, and she was a little less optimistic than the chap I saw on Wednesday. She said they’d looked up my address and thought I’d struggle with the range. In fact they were pretty sure that I wouldn’t make the 55 km home if I went on the motorway. That range 110 km is only available if you use urban roads and keep the speed down to 50 km/h or below for most of your journey. Unfortunately that would leave me with at least a 90 minute commute – something I could have lived with for one evening, but not as a daily grind. They spoke about the new generation of battery that would be out in a year or two that might extend the range; and about the concept sportsbike they’ve got in pre-production already – that does 200 km/h with the same range as the scooter. But currently they have nothing to offer that would do my 55 km commute on the motorways and fast A-roads to Canary Wharf. Luckily the Pan European is still in fine fettle and should last at least another 100,000 km (4 years commuting) before I have to replace it. Perhaps the electric will have become practical by then. Who knows where the price of petrol, or indeed electricity will be by then.

National Road Rally 2008

See my other blog for full details.