June 2, 2020

The History of Electric Cars - 20th Century

A continuation of my previous article on EVs during the 19th Century, I now cover some significant events in the 20th century around electric cars. Arguably, during this time period, EVs had two chances to become mainstream, but both were impacted by events in the energy industry.

1902

If there is one key event that killed the EV’s chances in the 20th Century - this is it. The hugely successful Model-T Ford began mass production. Through it was a hand crank car, gasoline was already readily available, and the efficient production line processes made it relatively cheap compared to previous cars.

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May 30, 2020

The History of Electric Vehicles - 19th Century

This is the first part of a three-parter on the history of EVs across the last 200 years or so. It comes from a Lunch & Learn presentation I did at work recently. I wanted to make a bit more visually pleasing, and break down the content into smaller sections.

Here’s the first part - the dawn of electric motors, batteries, and the fledging automotive industry in the 19th Century.

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May 30, 2020

My Microblog

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May 30, 2020

Charging Your EV

Picture of hyundai kona at otherwise empty charging hub

Charging the Kona at Lochee Charging Hub in Dundee

Having had our first Electric Vehicle for a little over a year, we’ve made a few long journeys that require the use of public chargers. These are some of the experiences I’ve had and some of the things we learnt along the way.

Connectors

Most modern EVs have two connectors. This is what they look like.

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February 9, 2017

Docker and .NET Core Linux Performance Tracing

_Note: This is an old post that was sitting in my drafts for a long time. It might be useful to someone still as most of the content is still relevant. _

You should checkout dotnet-monitor if you are using .NET Core 3 and above! - it promises to make the while thing a lot easier. I’ve left the below content for posterity, but it’s very out of date now.

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January 7, 2017

Music and Artificial Intelligence

There was a great BBC click podcast this week, covering some of the advances made in technology and music. There was some interesting stuff around Bjork’s new music video and art exhibit, but also a section on IBM Watson research. They did some interesting work on computer/musician collaboration with Alex Da Kid. They also discussed learning algorithms, used to identify vocal stem samples in songs, and attribute them to the original song. Many vocal lines are sampled hundreds, or thousands of times, and it’s not actually clear how derivatives of original work have evolved. Some interesting stuff in there - worth a listen.

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January 6, 2017

Registrator, a Docker Service Registry Bridge

I’ve been diving into golang recently, partly by accident, given that we decided to use an open source docker service registration bridge called registrator. Registrator fills in a niche with docker containers - how to get them into an existing service registry such as (the excellent) consul. We plan to use this to keep our existing netflix eureka service registry updated with new container based services as they are brought online, and allow us to integrate containers into our existing VM based microservices environment. There was a great PR to provide eureka support to registrator which someone had already submitted. However, we had additional requirements too:

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January 5, 2017

Rise of The Robots

I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of Rise of The Robots, by Martin Ford. It was a fascinating and insightful look at how robots and computers are used today to replace human work, and how the expansion of artificial intelligence and the reduction in costs for new machines are accelerating their creation. It got deep inside my psyche - I’ve been thinking about the implications for a couple of weeks afterwards, and it started a big conversation on Christmas Day with my family. Collective bargaining, a degree and an engineering skill set just don’t cut it any more, if you’re competing with a robot that can produce more widgets, more quickly, with higher quality and lower cost. Some of the traditional views about how you protect jobs in a capitalist economy just don’t apply to this threat. Nedd Ludd would be spinning in his grave. One of the central tenets of the book, is the reduction in jobs that will result from the rise of AI, and the increased automation of jobs that humans used to have to do. Interestingly, this week, FoxConn, a major electronics manufacturer in China revealed it had automated away 60,000 jobs from it’s factories. Though it’s questionable whether you’d really want to work in such a place unless you had no choice. Many, from technology futurists, to economists, agree that automation is going have a big impact on the jobs market in the future. One of the main problems mentioned in the book is that most of the jobs we do today, are not necessary for survival. And a lot of the old middle-class positions are either already non-existent in the 21st century, or primed for automation. There are potential software solutions to replace jobs, whether you are a bookkeeper, lawyer or a fast food chef. Fast food is a good example of an area that has thus-far resisted automation, because of low wages, and highly efficient staff training and procedures. Both make employee turnover a less serious issue for the big fast food giants. However, at a certain crossover point in wage growth and automation cost, a point is reached where companies will find it cheaper to invest in automation - that is, machines to flip the burgers, dunk the fries, and package them up. At that point, lots of people’s jobs will become threatened very quickly, with the power that two or three large food franchises have around the world. Our local McDonalds have already automated most of their order points. So what about solutions to these problems? How can we keep producing careers for people, in an age where so many jobs could be automated given sufficient money and motivation? I think one important mention by Ford is that we don’t really need to work as much as we do anymore in our developed economies. We have chosen to take the time we’ve saved from automation of agriculture, and manufacturing, and instead directed much the same time to office work, for 40 hours a week. Why do we all need to spend this arbitrary number of hours doing these, often unimportant, things? For many people, they don’t even produce a great deal from the time they spend at work. Everyone wants to feel like they produce something important - but I doubt any most office output is really important as the loaf of bread we produce by machine, or the wheat grown in the field, and harvested by a machine. Will the idea of full-time employment for everyone even be desirable, let alone possible in the late 21st century? Some ideas to change the way we think about work, are the universal basic income, higher wages for less hours of work, or just plain artificial job creation mechanisms. I’m not sure which of these, if any, will be used, but I am sure that something will have to change, lest we get a future where the divisions of our society grow much larger. Unfortunately, I think in the meantime, before we realise the real threat, there will be big fights over a return to trade protectionism, amongst nationalism and fear of immigration that we are seeing across the developed world, and the force down of wages in many sectors - something we have seen in Britain already in recent years. To summarise - a great, thought provoking book, with lots of well argued points of interest. I’d recommend the audible version if you don’t have a lot of time to read. It’s quite a lengthy work. Links: Audible | Amazon

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January 4, 2017

Coworking and Mental Health, plus Nottingham Co-Working Spaces

There’s a great article here on the benefits of co-working, and how it can transform what can be a lonely and difficult struggle for some people working at home, into an energising and supporting environment. I’ve found it’s becoming more and more important to me too, now in my 10th year of working at home for the majority of the time.

The co-working spaces I’ve used in Nottingham are:

Antenna This is my regular haunt, which I typically use once or twice a week. The £30 a year membership fee is really a bargain, though you don’t get the free tea/coffee that some more office like environments provide. Cafes suit me for working in, but the noise and bad wifi doesn’t. Antenna solves both of those problems. It’s really a cafe bar with fast wifi (100Mb) and a nice working atmosphere. I feel at home here, and like to go to the Tech Nottingham events that are on the first Monday of the month too. The food at Antenna is excellent. I often treat myself to a breakfast sandwich, which are delicious. They also have virtual tenancy options for the use of an additional member’s lounge, with desks available from £49+VAT per month. There are well equipped meeting rooms available for hire. Cobden Place I had a co-working rental here for a few months, but I didn’t use it as much as I thought I would. It’s got a nice community, and is a real co-working office, but it’s a bit more bare bones than Antenna, and I had a few network issues a couple of times when I was in that put me off. The location is excellent, in the Hockley are, in a little alleyway opposite Wired Cafe. They also provide studios, a meeting room, and resident desks for various costs. The basic (once per week) package starts at £35. Minor Oak This is a new place in the refurbished Sneinton Market units which opened in September. At first glance it looks promising - they have a quiet area, and phone booths for quiet meetings, which might be ideal for me. It’s also a short hop from Antenna. Since it does daily/half-day pricing, there’s a low barrier of entry to trying it out too.

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October 9, 2016

Glastonbury Ticket Site Update

Three years ago I wrote a detailed post with observations and advice on the Glastonbury Festival ticket sale, and how their website appears to work. Again, I was involved in the big refresh this year, trying to buy tickets for friends and family. I wasn’t successful in purchasing tickets this year, although my sister was able to buy two sets of tickets (I.e go through the checkout process twice). I also spent a lot of time dealing with a grey page, with connection errors and the like, like many people. Immediately after the sale, after the tickets sold out, the pages refreshed fine. This suggested to me that it’s not just about traffic this year - they are likely using IP rate limiting. This explains several things:

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