Posts

Posted on

Efficient Driving

Well that was quite surprising.

I was driving from Weston to London, a distance of 140 miles. I didn’t have a full charge, but the Funky Cat was reporting a predicted range of 165 miles. The trip consisted of in the main motorway driving, up the M5 and then down the M4. Experience with motorway driving told me that I would struggle to do the 140 miles with a 165 mile range, so was expecting to stop on the way to add some charge to the Funky Cat. I wouldn’t expect to have 25 miles on the car left.

However, the motorways were quite slow, with heavy traffic. I noticed that as I drove the AEC figure was dropping. By the time I arrived at London the AEC figure was down to 20.0 and I had a predicted range of 40 miles left. 

With a 48kWh battery in the Funky Cat, a figure of 20kWh/100 mile could mean a theoretical range of 240 miles… The normal figure I see is in the 25-27 range which is around 185 miles. The WLTP for the Funky Cat is 193 miles. This experience was highly unusual.

When I got to London I added some charge with some on street charging.

Driving back home to Weston, there was less traffic on the roads, so it was quicker, but as a result I used more power for the same distance home, I only had a 56% charge when I left London, so had to stop and charge and had an issue with that.

Posted on

Speak slowly and clearly

Since I got my iPhone 17 Pro Max I have thought about using it for some filming, video blog type things. I know I could do that selfie thing and hold the camera in my hand, but I also wanted to do some pieces to camera, where I am not holding the phone. I knew I would need some kind of external (and probably) wireless microphone.

I had a look around, and decided to try something cheap first and then potentially get something better (more expensive) at a later date. I got the Mini Wireless Lavalier Microphone.

I like the fact it came with some windproof heads for the mics as well.

Posted on

On street EV charging

One feature of London suburban streets is the availability of on-street EV charging, usually making use of street lighting to provide the power.

I was staying with family in Wimbledon in London and I decided to take advantage of the availability of the charger to charge the Funky Cat.

It is a slow charger just pushing out around 5 kWh, so this is a solution for when you have time to charge. There is a twelve hour limit for the charger I was using. Despite the slow speed, it’s not cheap, between 7am and 12pm it’s 60p kWh but overnight it falls to 40p which is better value.

I only used it for three hours getting 15.6 kWh. The real advantage was convenience, not having to drive somewhere to charge was a real bonus. Of course for local residents who don’t have a driveway, this is a solution for when you need a charge.

Posted on

ZIP printing issues

I had a Pogo printer for many years and this was replaced with a Polaroid Zip in 2020. The print quality on recent prints was quite dire, not sure if this was the printer or the paper. It is also not printing on the whole paper, leaving an unprinted stripe on one side.

zip zink print of Albert Hall

I quite like the retro faded nostalgic look of the prints, but I would prefer to have the choice to print better looking prints, or prints that look like they are forty years old.

I have ordered some new paper, but if the printing quality hasn’t improved then I think I might buy a new printer. The one I have is five years old, so it is getting on a bit.

I generally use the Polaroid Zip to supplement and enhance note taking, more than using it to just print photographs. I also like the fact that it is battery powered so I can take it to conferences and meetings, though I don’t do that as much these days as I use to. The fact the images are stickers is a bonus as well.

The Zink paper technology appears to be the de facto standard for small print printing these days. I did like the small HP 6”x4” printers they use to do, which was about twenty years ago now.

Well, we’ll wait for the paper and wait and see what happens.

Posted on

Problem, not my problem

One of the regular places I charge when travelling back from London is the Tesla chargers at the Westbound Reading MOTO Services. There are no Tesla chargers on the Eastbound side, why that is, I do not know.

It normally just works at these chargers, but on this visit, the charger failed to work. Usually I never have problems with these chargers, however having arrived and parked, but was unable to start he charge on the app. This also then locks the charging cable  in the car. I then had to do the usual hassle of opening the bonnet to manually release the charger from the car. I moved the car and put it on charge and it all worked fine from then on.

I don’t think this was a problem with the Funky Cat, I think that there was a specific problem with that charger.

I did get 23.8 kWH in 35 minutes, which took the Funky Cat from around 30% to 50%. This was delivering at a rate in the region of 50kW. One of the downsides of the Funky Cat is that it can’t take advantage of the speed of some of the rapid chargers out there. Some are rated to deliver 350kW, the Funky Cat can’t take that kind of power.

Having reached just over 80% I stopped the charge and unplugged. I find it strange that unplugging after a successful charge just works. I wonder if there is a kill switch on the charger itself so that it doesn’t remain locked when a charge fails to initialise.

Posted on

Hold my phone…

Since I got my iPhone 17 Pro Max I have thought about using it for some filming, video blog type things. I know I could do that selfie thing and hold the camera in my hand, but I also wanted to do some pieces to camera, where I am not holding the phone. 

I looked online and decided to get a tripod mount for the phone, I already have a tripod, so this would be something I could use with that.

In the end I went with a YZNT tripod mount.

It had all the features I needed and was quite cheap as well. I will let you know how I get on.

Posted on

The Funky Cat has a puncture

A couple of weeks ago the Funky Cat had a puncture. I was driving into Bristol on the B3128 down Clarken Coombe. There was a rock in the road, which I tried to avoid, failed and it ripped a huge hole n the side of the front nearside tyre. I was able to make it the lay-by.

The Funky Cat doesn’t have a spare tyre, it has a pump and some tyre repair fluid. I knew that this probably wouldn’t work as this didn’t feel like a normal puncture.

The air pump and the tyre repair fluid can only be used to repair sealed tyres with a puncture on the tread.

So, I made the decision to call the RAC, the Funky Cat is a lease car, so comes with breakdown cover. The problem I had was that where I was on the B3128 there was no phone signal. I had to walk into the Ashton Court woods to get enough signal, to check the website to get the right number and call.

The RAC was very quick and quickly got the wheel off, and then they headed off with the wheel to get the tyre replaced.

That took longer than it should have, but that wasn’t the fault of the RAC (or the tyre place). Once the RAC was back they completed the repair and I was on my merry way.

Posted on

Slightly dim

I had an annoyance with my MacBook Air, which has taken me quite a while to get sorted. The annoyance was compounded by the fact I had sorted it out on my work MacBook Pro, but didn’t remember how I did that, so wasn’t able to replicate the solution on the MacBook Air.

So, what was the annoyance?

Well it wasn’t huge, simply put, when the MacBook Air is on battery power, when waking from sleep, the MacBook Air screen would be dimmer and I would need to increase the brightness manually. 

This didn’t happen with my MacBook Pro, so I knew it was possible, I couldn’t remember what I changed.

I looked at the display system settings on the MacBook Pro and compared it to the MacBook Air, but couldn’t work out what the change I made was.

Then… I was checking the settings in relation to the wake from sleep issue I was having with the MacBook Air when I saw a setting in the battery settings, under options.

Slightly dim the display on battery.

Screenshot of settings Slightly dim the display on battery.

For some reason I had been looking at display options in System Settings and not the battery options.

Fixed that annoyance then.

Posted on

Tahoe 26.5 causing me issues on waking from sleep

I recently updated my Apple M3 MacBook Air up to Tahoe 26.5 and I am having an intermittent issue with the MacBook Air waking from sleep. I’ve not had this issue before, and it has only started happening since the 26.5 update.

The problem is, shutting the laptop lid to sleep the Mac. Later when I open the MacBook, the screen is dark and there is a dark spinning beach ball. The only solution appears to be doing a hard power shut down and restart.

Searching online doesn’t really help. Possibly a hibernation state problem, but not really sure.

Posted on

170 once more

I do realise that the predicted range is based on my previous driving, and that will vary depending on which roads I am driving, use of heating and air-conditioning, acceleration and regenerative braking. However, after charging to 100% I was pleasantly surprised to see a 170 mile predicted range.

Screenshot

The lease for the Funky Cat comes to an end in a couple of months and I have been looking at replacements. Not that I would get a new Ora 03 to replace the Funky Cat (it isn’t available as an option anyhow) I would like to get a car with a significantly longer range than the Funky Cat.