Jerry_Atrick

There are always questionable decisions that result in red cards. There are questionable decisions in all sports that have adverse effects. That is part and parcel of the game. I can't recall a time when FIFA has overruled a decision in the world cup prior. In 2018, Australia lost to Italy in the last 32 or whatever. Australia, under Gus Huding were the far better side. I saw that game. The British referee made what looked like horrendous decisions which cost Australia the game. Even the Brits were apologising on his behalf... FIFA didn't review and "put right" the decisions...

The reason why I want a NC750X is that it is a reliable bike, lasts forever, and is incredibly frugal - 80 miles/gallon is quite easily doable. I do lots of miles and will continue to do so. Although, the downside is while it is torquey, it isn't particularly powerful at 56bhp and I am now quite used to what is probably about 85 under the petrol tank. My CBF1000 is a commuter hack. If I had a decent space for the workshop and the tools (not much more than I have - e.g. crimpers, etc), I am sure it is a doddle to fix. Mechanically, it is absolutely sound. I am told my issue could be the fuse on the starter solenoid, but it doesn't make sense as the starter has no delays or lower power dips, etc. I am thinking it is a case of pulling the tank off and following the wires. My guess is a wire is pulled from a connector; a connector is corroded or there is insulation chafing. Ahh, bugger it.. .the Triumph dealer said they didn't realise I wanted them to hang onto the bike until I get back - they don't have the space. So, I will just bite the bullet and buy a couple of more tools; more stuff to send back to Aus.

Well, things had been running more or less smoothly for a while. The weather was getting better, and i was able to consistently replicate my charging issue - when the high beans were put on or brake lights came on. But, it was generally performing well. I had also slotted into a routine where the ride was comfortable. When I booked the bike for its next service, I asked them to look at the charging issue. It came back worse than when it went in. FFS. now the charging system does not work at all, and for that they charged me (pardon the pun) a new battery. FFS. I can't take it anywhere as in about 20 - 30 miles the thing will discharge. That was the second shot I game that shop - no more. Because it's an electrical issue they hid behind the "well, it could be anything that decided to fail at that time." I figured it would cost me more in time than fight them for the c. £100 I assume they charged me (they don't itemise the cost against what they did in the service on the invoice) and just accepted the loss. I have spent some time tinkering. The stator is good - AC coming out of it is good. The regulator (after I was sent the wrong one) is good, 14.2v coming out of it at 5k revs. But between there and the battery, which has the starter solenoid, something is amiss. I am guessing it is a simple short, but the wiring to the battery follows a circuitous path which will require tools and room I don't have. So, I am charging it up and sending it to the local Triumph dealer while I am in Aus. I will pay 30% more in labour, but they have a good reputation around here. The only other independent shop around here can't see my bike for 6 weeks - they are booked that far ahead.. So, I am a little peeved off because it is the best weather for riding at the moment. Also, the switch on one of my rather expensive heated gloves has pooped itself and the vendor (manufacturer/distributor) decided they would try and avoid the warranty - they are only 3 months old (at the time). Waiting for them to come back - not that I need them right now. Suffice to say, I am a little dejected on the biking front at the moment. But, it is a fantastic bike, but if I can't get this one gremlin on it sorted, I will probably put it up for sale and use some of the reno money to get a NC750X.. Which I may do anyway because for some stupid reason, Honda in Australia don't sell them new anymore - so will import it myself.

Only the high density lines are profitable on a rail operating basis; most Japanese railway companies have diversified their income stream by investing in real estate and retail businesses. There are very few commuter and mass transit rail services that operate on a stand alone profit basis. The UK under Maggie tried it and it can be considered a failure with re-nationalisation starting now (although that is also a mixed bag at the moment). The reality is there is not a lot better as a mass transit system than rail. Between the big cities and bigger regional areas it makes sense. If stopping the Melbourne - Brisbane rail line is to recalibrate the project, that is a good thing. The sad thing about it is it i only intended for freight. A decent speed passenger service linking the two cities would be excellent and, assuming it wasn't extortionate to use, you could put me down for it. My bro and his wife did the Ghan in the lower of the premium service - was still about $5K each from memory.. They loved it. One of the good things I would guess over a car would be that when you pass through the vast expanses of nothingness, there is plenty you can do to while away the hours.. not much in a car. Of course, my real preference would be in a 150kt aircraft at the helm, but the cost would probably be a bit more.. and the in flight service is pretty crap.

There have been a few different articles focusing on different cancers... "ironically", none I recall on skin cancers. Here's one: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-07/cancer-diagnosis-rates-under-50s-rising-causes-four-corners/105495620. It is mainly around the gastroenterinal cancers from memory. Given we have been burning fat on meat for decades if not more than two centuries, the rise in the rate has scientists stumped, apparently.

Everyone is following the world cup, but as FIFA is a corrupt rort for a sport, there is no way that my eyeballs are going to be used in the numbers to get the advertisers to pay the TV stations to pay FIFA to watch the world cup. What#s this got to do with Chump? Well, he has stepped in and FIFA has bowed to his request to suspend the suspension - in accordance with the rules - of whom I suppose is an American star player: https://www.skysports.com/football/news/12098/13560770/world-cup-2026-fifa-step-in-to-allow-banned-folarin-balogun-to-play-usa-last-16-tie-a-move-praised-by-president-donald-trump So, if you;re likened to watch the game, you are now inadvertently supporting Chump cheating.

Microsoft are doing very well, aren't they?

Well, positives are things are slowly moving forward. Currently preparing for Wednesday's flight to Melbourne. I realise it has been 8 years since I have been to Aus. Ship! Time flies. Not going to tell you which day in case you alert immigration 🤣 Although I could be out for as much as a month, I will be travelling light - hoping to get away with carry on only. I don't think I will, so it will probably be a small backpack. Also, on the reno front, things are picking up. I am not sure if I mentioned the need to rewire a floor of the house. Not a terribly big job, but more cost. That was found when they pulled a fuse board out to replace with one up to current regs. The spaghetti behind it, including a circuit that bypassed it altogether made some of my early coding deliverables took well written. We have found a tradie who is working through stuff. He has done these doors we had to put in for building regs; but the building inspector allowed us to not procure fireproof doors or even install them to be a barrier against fire spreading as the listed (heritage) building officer would be dead set against them even being installed. And that is the regulatory environment we are up against. Now, the downstairs loo and bootroom, that I made major progress on until work really heated up are done, and the formal living room is under way. If this fella keeps it up, I think we will be done by mid August and ti will be on the market. And he is doing a good job, too. And on the work front, an opportunity to climb the greasy corporate ladder opened up. I was invited to apply, but because of my plans, declined. I was supporting the application of a colleague, but it looks like he won;t get it either, and it will be an outsider. Which is fantastic, because that person will be both of our manager. Things are transforming at work where it will slim down in the not too distant future. I have already been implementing a succession plan where today, apart from being the doyen of our delivery function, my reports are coming right up the curve and even a contractor has been earmarked to be a sucessor. So, a new person in that almost exec role will want to stamp his or her authority and make changes - and as I don't feel I owe that person anything, the conversation will be something like "don't let anyone go on my account." Employment laws will mean they will have to make me redundant - and that will mean enough to accelerate this reno and put it on the market and take a little while to sell. Even if the latter (which I have been trying to engineer for about 12 months now) doesn't work, I am hoping by the end of the year, it will be all done and dusted.

Hope the flying went well.

The best form of testing is to release to production

It's not just EVs that have LED and similar tablet type displays in front of them.. most new cars to these days. That really is not the issue. A speedo cable can snap on an analogue system and you have the same issue - I have had it happen on a Saturday arvo and no speedo until Monday morning. I would hope there are no controls on that screen. Sticking yuor hand between the spokes of the steering wheel is not a good thing. On the controls, using touch screen doesn't give you a sense of magnitude of change (e.g. temperature, etc) without looking. Well, at least for some time, anyway. Also, early model Teslas were infamous for the depth of menu setting one had to go through to get to whatever function was required. Muscle memory will only go some way.. as it does on analogue or tactile type inputs. How many times (in an old 4 or 5 on the floor, or even a 3 or 54 on the column) have we crunched the gears or almost stalled the car going into the wrong gear. However, the physical/tactile approach allows us to correct without reverting to looking at the gears (unless we really stuff it up and have lost spatial awareness of where the gear is). So, the Atrick household vehicle mix is chaning. Daughter just wants an old banger (UK speak)/bomb (Aus speak) of a car as she will be in a house in the next academic year, won't have a driveway, and will not want the hassle of a nice car getting road rash from an inner urban environment. Good on her. So it will be a petrol Ford Fiesta (most likely); manual, a/c, power steering and otherwise minimal. Mrs Atrick is in for a little shock... She is getting an EV - Probably an MG4 to replace her mini. She doesn't know it yet.

We don't know the details of the deal he has.. They will have done their homework. My guess is they only service they are paying him for is access to his address book.

Indeed.. and as the technology improves, they will continue to change.

Have you ever shut down and then started a coal fired power station? I am sort of bored answering this.. so will let AI do the talking: I don't see any excellents for coal. The one thing that renewables is poor at, ironically can be moderated by the answer to the last thing on the list. The key being the older ones, and the design for European conditions (which under current climate change, at least in the southern half of Europe is fast approaching Aussie type weather anyway). The blades and turbines design can be changed to meet Aussie requirements relatively easily; Coal, not so easy to refine the design any more that it is.. You can add scubbers and makle the boilers a bit more efficient, but I doubt they would advance too far from where they are now.

Our discussion around climate change has centred on power generation and ICE cars v EVs. But, it is a muilt-pronged approach required. As the rest of the world clears its heat sink, China is building its up: https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/trees-in-chinas-great-green-wall-appear-to-grow-faster-than-natural-forests-study-finds Where fossil or nuclear makes sense, it should be used. The reality with today's technology, there are fewer and fewer places it makes sense. And should the political shift to drive a shift to local storage and distribution, the use of rapidly outdating technologies will make even less sense. We talk about the economics of doing it, but we rarely talk about the economics of not doing it. And economics is man made, anyway... the real cost (ie. outcomes) of not doing will lead to socio-economic costs far beyond the pure economic cost of doing it.

Yes,I agree,, It was a contextual comment and I was being a little lazy - on a train with a phone and fat fingers.

I read Aus has high cancer rates that has the scientific community stumped.. Could that be one contributing factor?

$1tn in a new grid for all of Australia to meet tomorrow's energy security requirements - for a country the size of Australia- even allowing for local storage and power for remote areas doesn't sound too much. We can A) get going ASAP and spread the cost over a longer period and have an orderly transition. B) kick the can down the road yo a point where we have to do it in short time and the cast will bite That is an investment in tech, jobs, and reducing the costs over the journey not to mention reduced cleanup costs, reduced public health costs and the like. The real financial disaster is to not do anything or contract it all out to foreign companies and not use that money to build a local industry even if it is a little more expensive.. A bit like 380bn in sub purchases

Let me see if I have got this straight.. your position is that fossils/nuclear provide energy security over renewables (and its related tech)? If that is so, then the above post sort of throws that out the window faster than a Putin dissident. Scotland are paying power stations to mot produce power because of a failure to plan execution of upgrading to renewables. They asked to have all this extra capacity in the form of renewables added to the grid that cannot handle it. That is a policy or politics failure. Not a renewables can't meet "baseload" failure. It is akin to building a new suburb with only bicycle lanes but to be extra green, adding driveways with electric car chargers and declaring it an ice car free green suburb - and they crying EV cars aren't practical transport for a suburban life. That is called overpaying or underinvesting in energy security... the payments they make to compensate the owners for the governments cock up probably would have gone a decent way to grid upgrades. On the other hand, Raring power station was availing itself of a government guarantee because, even presumably fully amortised, wasn't predicted to be economically viable (ie produce power at a price that others could and make money).. in the supposed economically most effective way being a privatised market. Isn't that the government being tapped by the fossil fuel industry for energy security? BTW, Origin don't currently opt into the scheme as they are predicting, again fully amortised, it will not lose money We can find individual cases with all forms of generation that have not gone to plan or need a bail out. And all forms receive some form of government subsidy. That is policy because of energy security

Well.. given we risk assess them, I sort of have seen how it is done Governments don't cover our losses

Actually, given project finance is usually collateralised/financed against the cash flows of yhe asset it is financing, it is in their interests to make sure that asset is going to perform as expected/promised... And they generally do go to decent lengths to ensure that.. so in an indirect way they do care

I don't see the thread saying 100% powering it... Follow the money.. If it wasn't economic to do it, it generally wouldn't be done.. and it certainly wouldn't be used.

Tou're quite right re the levelised cost. But taking these into account, a) it is still cheaper and b) it also doesn't take into account hte ongoing capital investment required to fossil burning plants that isn't needed for renewables in any of the same way. Your point on naming a country that exists solely on solar and winbd is moot, by the way. In the scheme of things, these are newer technology at scale and existing infrastructure in countries where it is applicable would make sense means its a transition, not a big bang. That is the politics, not economic side, Maybe we should make Australia the first to go the whole hog, but a lot of established vested interests will have their noses put out of joint, and they happen to contribute to the major political parties' cofferss... South Australia's electricity isstill relatively expensive due to structural factors which have always made it expensive compared to eastern seaboard states. @octave has already prvied the info above - I don't need to repeat it suffice to say fossils will be more expensive. But if you want to pay more, be my guest,,,

This is why I don't do politics or science by meme, or in this case a simple graph, because we are find a set of numbers that suits our agenda and just publish it. Is the above the cost of generation, the wholesale price, or the retail price. Because, the latter two have factors that can distort the market. For example, Denmark's wholesale price is connected to the European markets believe it or not, so if an expensive dirty coal plant happens to produce and sell energy at the same time or within a price setting period, the wholesale price is largely set to be based on that price... which is far more expensive than wind or solar. That is wholesale price distortion. Of course, other European markets are subject to this as well, but since the grid is segmented, not all are setting the same wholesale price. Then the distortions at the retail price are local market conditions, taxes (of which Denmark has a lot - even VAT (GST) on electricity! Wowsers. Not even the UK levies VAT on electricity. So the retail price may not be at all reflective of the generation price. I prefer the Levilised Cost of Electricity comparison, which seeks to take out some of the more artificial price setting. According to Google AI, Denmark wins on wind, but loses on Gas and Solar: Note, the cheapness of fracked shale gas does not include the cost of cleaning up. Also, if Denmark decided to stay gas (or presumably coal, etc), from the above, they would be paying roughly double or more to produce electricity. I would suggest that the numbers show that wind and solar is much cheaper - for them. Not so much for the USA, again except this does not cover the true clean up costs. Which sort of shows the point of renewables - the optimum mix will be determined by local conditions. And, yeah, in some cases, even fossil fuel generation will make sense.. So, lets do a like for like comparison. South Australia, according to Google has around 84% of its electricity generated from wind (44% of total electricity generated) versus solar (33%). According to your chart, Denmark has a touch under 70%. That would suggest for South Australia, solar and onshore are very cost effective producers of electricity and offshore not so much (at least not yet). Also, because of SA's rapid deployment of storage, they seem to be already reaping some economies of scale benefits because of a rapid roll out, but as there is only commentary, it is hard to tell. In addition, in SA, gas is more than double solar and coal is almost triple the cost of solar, and around double of offshore wind. It does though, beat offshore wind, so unless we can address the issues that cause that, offshore wind (which probably has more constant wind). But interesting, SA is more wind and solar as a percentage of its generation, yet on a levelised basis, SA is cheaper. And as someone who has worked in the generation business, I am sure you're aware of the importance of this measure over retail or wholesale prices as a true indication of the comparative cost of generation. Thee price that is paid at the "pump" is only in a small way related to the cost of generation.. that, in @pmccarthy's vernacular, is the politics end of the argument. The cost of generation is the data end, and renewables are already at a big advantage there. Take politics out of it, and there really is no compelling reason to do so., The sun doesn't always shine - no.. Only at night or seriously overcast days is it that bad, but when it is shining brightly, we can store the excess and save it for when it isn't shining brightly. Even today, they are developing nocturnal solar panels which can harvest the infrared rays during radiating cooling of the earth to generate electricity (https://www.moeveglobal.com/en/planet-energy/sustainable-innovation/nocturnal-solar-panels-energy-without-sunlight). And there is a new technology that it looking at capturing vibrations from the wind and earth instead of using blades to generate electricity - fewer parts, cheaper and less landfill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibration-powered_generator This is the point. Fossil fuel burning is destroying the planet (in conjunction with a lot of other stuff we do). And now, it is no longer cheap to do it; and it will get more expensive. So we have to seek out alternatives. To not do it is kicking the can down the road and just making it more expensive to fix. It can be done; the tech is already here and it is improving very quickly. It is the politics that is the issue. In the mean time, if you want to take a meme-led approach, go for it. As for wind and solar not yet powering most of a country - well - no.. but it does most of a state that is the physical (admittedly not population) size bigger than many countries. But it's a ridiculous assertion because a place should use the most appropriate renewable/s, not an arbitrary renewable, anyway.

Last week, a packet of Tim Tams were £1.85 in Tesco (on sale from £2.50). Needless to say, to support Australian manufacturing, if not ownership, I bought a few packets 😉