onetrack

American culture is all-pervasive and has infiltrated every country in the world where they've rolled up. They even built a town here in Australia, using all American building standards, power standards (110V power station), and even imported a sizeable number of LHD cars, so they wouldn't be forced to drive those dreadful RHD cars! That town is called Exmouth and if you were silly enough to buy an ex-U.S. Navy-built house in Exmouth, you'll find nothing made to Australian Standards fits! The doors are all 3 feet wide (to accommodate lots of portly Americans, I suppose), the windows are also oddball dimensions, all household fittings, wiring and plumbing is U.S.-made materials, and even the cladding for walls and roof is unknown in Australia! Some of the Americans sold their LHD cars locally when they returned to the U.S., and made a financial killing.

The W.A. Govt is charging ahead and investing in large storage ("grid-scale") batteries, as fast as the manufacturers can supply them, and as fast as State budgeting will allow. https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/energy-policy-wa/energy-storage https://www.synergy.net.au/Our-energy/SynergyRED/Large-Scale-Battery-Energy-Storage-Systems

The first 7 years after I left school and living in the city, were spent living in a rented farmhouse in the wheatbelt, where we only had 32V power. We had a stack of 2V lead-acid batteries and a 32V generator run by a single-cylinder, hand cranked, YB model Southern Cross diesel engine. It was no fun cranking up that engine on cold Winter mornings! There was a brass cup inserted upside down into the rocker cover, you filled this brass cup with oil and poured it into the orifice, and the oil ran into the intake and assisted in cold starting. The decompression device was a pin that went under the inlet valve and held it open, and which pin was operated by a lever and rod assembly, which was actuated by turning a pipe sleeve that rotated on the cooling water intake pipe. So you filled the old YB with oil, rotated the sleeve as you slowly cranked the engine, until the inlet valve was held open, then you picked up cranking speed until it felt like your arm would fall off, and then you rotated the decompression sleeve to close the intake valve, and hopefully, she'd fire up! Cold mornings with frost on the ground and thick oil made this a "short straw" job!! The engine was built in the Toowoomba Foundry and I was surprised to see Southern Cross built over 14,000 of them! They were the days when we built good stuff in Australia, designed by Australians! We had also Dunlite Wind Generators, too, they were quite advanced for their time, and large numbers were exported, even to places such as Canada and the U.S.

Michael Leunig, one of Australia's finest cartoonists and poets, has passed away, aged 79. Mr Curly and his ducks have gone home for good. I had the pleasure of going to one of his talks in Perth about 20-odd years ago, he was a gentle soul, and a great observer of human nature. He was declared a National living treasure by the National Trust in 1999. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-19/australian-cartoonist-michael-leunig-dies/104748614

I got confused for a moment between this John Marsden, and the other John Marsden, the highly promiscuous and abrasive gay lawyer, who's been dead for years.

After further investigation, it appears, yes, you must have electrical installations installed by a licenced electrician, even if they are completely independent of the grid. Australian/NZ Standards apply, and some States have specific requirements that depart from the AS/NZ Standards or override them. There are distinctions between Extra Low Voltage (ELV), Low Voltage (LV) and High Voltage (HV) installations. Even ELV installations require licenced electrical installer oversight. The only exception is 12V and 24V DC wiring.

Willie messaged me, he's just fine, he just cut back on computer time to concentrate on his driveway repairs and other jobs. Oh, course, he's also purchased a couple more trailers to cart stuff around with! 😄

I just had a random thought on Monday evening as I was returning from the Wheatbelt to the City, and driving South down the Tonkin Highway past Ellenbrook, looking at a huge golden sun setting. As I watched the sun sink, I counted up and realised 27,588 sunsets have gone down, since the day I first drew breath. That's a lot of sunsets. I've missed a fair few of them, for various reasons, but I've also seen some pearlers. This is one I took a photo of, in July 2019 - on the coast at Gnaraloo Station in W.A.

It's been a fair while since Williedoo posted. I trust he's O.K.? Maybe he's got caught up with rebuilding his convoluted driveway with all the free giveaways he's been acquiring?

If you set up your own stand-alone electrical system, without any connection to the grid, does it still have to be installed by a licenced electrician?

It was a turbine turning tool manufactured from nylon, especially designed to not cause engine component damage. The maintenance failure was simply one of slack accountability for tools. The advice to leave the tool in the engine intake for the incoming shift was totally wrong, and interfered with tool accountability, which should be paramount at all times. The tool was entrusted to one LAME, and it should've been returned to the tool-issuing dept at the end of the LAME's shift, even if it was immediately required again by the incoming shift. https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/15/tool_found_in_a380_engine/

I'm not buying an EV for at least 3 years, because in 3 years time, the current crop of EV's will look like Model T Fords, such is the rapid pace of EV development.

As plebs, we don't see the regular high pressure lobbying and other corporate pressures applied to our political masters, that sends decision-making skew-whiff, and directed towards favouring the corporates and the super-rich.

There are any amount of renewable energy and energy-storage solutions that the LNP simply ignores, in their quest to keep their fossil fuel mates rolling in money. Heating bricks with solar or wind energy, and then using the stored heat to generate power, is an elegantly simply solution that works admirably. The system uses fire bricks (which are a simple, basic product, that has been in use for thousands of years), to store solar or wind energy by heating the bricks to 1500°C (using electrical heating wiring through the bricks), and the bricks can retain their heat for days, if fully insulated. The heat is recovered using air blown through the bricks, which superheats the air, and the superheated air is then used to generate steam, which can drive generators. The steam can also be used in many industrial processes, thus providing cheap energy for industry. https://rondo.com/how-it-works

I thought that there was no organisation involved with random thoughts? They're just that - random thoughts, out of the blue.