This is my first post for a while. I have been a bit overwhelmed by other work in the last several weeks, with teaching and other commitments, and the blog has sadly suffered. But I’m still here. This morning, while sitting in a car in the permanent traffic jam through the Waikato Expressway roadworks south […]
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What irks me most about Tourism Minister Stuart Nash’s comments about a new NZ tourism strategy this morning? Is it: The complete disregard he has for the millions of New Zealanders who would love to take a New Zealand holiday but can’t because they are crippled by high housing costs His desire to increase carbon […]
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In the last few weeks, I’ve been working with some colleagues at the University of Waikato to construct a first-year course introducing Climate Change Science, with a bit of a NZ focus. This would be suitable for students of all backgrounds (not just science students although those would likely be the majority). It’s not that […]
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If you drive an electric car more than trivial distances between charges, you likely appreciate a state-of-charge meter (that is, what would be called a fuel-gauge in a petrol car) that is accurate. When it reports a range of 30 km, you do want to be sure it will actually do this distance. If you […]
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Yesterday we arrived back in Cambridge after a few days holiday in Auckland, being tourists. We sampled such delights as the unheated hotel swimming pool, the complicated and expensive process of getting on a bus (basically having to find somewhere from which to buy a HOP card, for a non-refundable $10 a card), the completely […]
Continue readingWhile the south of New Zealand has been struggling with too much rain in recent days, here in the north we are so very short of it (though Saturday’s forecast looks promising). Basically, we have had almost none since Christmas. As someone who relies on rain to wash the car, this means my car is […]
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Apparently, some people enjoy washing their cars. Each to his or her own, I suppose. I mean, some people like duck shooting, some people follow Coronation Street, and some people’s idea of a good day out is to sit on a grass bank at Seddon Park and watch cricket all day. (Guess which one I’ll […]
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I’ve been reading Jules Verne’s novel “Twenty thousand leagues under the sea”, considered as one of the very earliest science fiction stories. In brief, Monsieur Aronnax, and a couple of sidekicks, are taken prisoner by Captain Nemo and his mysterious crew and treated to an underwater voyage around the world on the truly expansive submarine, […]
Continue readingHow accurate are our car speedometers? That’s well discussed., e.g. on this AA question forum. If the ‘expert’ here is correct, your car speedometer could over-read by as much as 10% + 4 km/h (which is quite a bit – if you are doing 45 km/h it might read 54.5 km/h, or if you are […]
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