Card games

I've never been to card games (be it real - say, Poker - or virtual - say, Heathstone or Gwent) much. Any game I've tried, I've lost interest pretty quickly. I guess those just aren't for me, for whatever reason .

That being said, I have tried Magic the Gathering too. This was somewhere around 1996-1997, I think, so more than twenty years ago now (...damn, doesn't that make me feel old). Even then I pretty quickly found out that it wasn't for me, so I just packed up and put my cards into storage. There wasn't any really great or even good cards there, by that day's standards at least, so I didn't even bother trying to sell them. Now, though, I have to wonder if those cards would have gained some value over the years...

The thing is, I've packed a lot of things away, in cardboard boxed, in relatively random order. Without any labels. And there are many, many boxes at this point.

Finding those cards might require some serious digging.

PHEV (part 2)

Continuing my experience referred in last part.

At the moment I've driven some 4100km with said Outlander, and since then gasoline price here went up, to 1,60€/l (about 7 USD/gal!), following the raising price of crude oil. Looking at the price of gasoline, it feels great to be able to drive around with almost zero gasoline usage.

For example, this week, we've driven maybe around 200km total so far, effectively 100% of this being on battery power (daily totals being in 20-40km range, allowing full recharge overnight). The average electricity consumption of the car (as reported by the car) is about 21kWh/100km, which means about 2€/100km energy cost. Not bad, not bad at all, especially when comparing to what gasoline would cost.

Quick edit: At this point, total gasoline consumption has been about 4,6 l/100km; not exactly surprising as there have been two longer trips (1000km+ each) without ability to charge during it - mostly due to lack of charger network at the moment.)

Yet, at this point, I have to acknowledge that up front cost of hybrid, compared to gasoline-only car, is much, much higher, and it will take very, very long time before lower energy cost will offset that. I was fully aware of this when I made this choice, with undestanding that I need to drop my CO2 emissions from current levels. I need to get around anyway, so I might as well choose to do it with near-zero per-kilometer CO2 emissions, as opposed of what gasoline would produce.

Again, producing car consumes energy (and produces CO2) too, but those figures aren't publicly available so making calculations of them is, at best, guesswork. I would have had to upgrade the car anyway soon-ish, so that reduces that number to difference of what could have been, and what is. Again, unknown numbers.

Now, to practical issues. It took a while to get used to plugging car in every night to recharge, but eventually I managed to adjust my mental processes for that, and now it's habitual, takes effectively no extra effort anymore. Apparently some people never manage this and give up with EVs very quickly.

The charge port location (right side, at the rear of the car) is a bit troublesome too, as most charging stations seem to assume charging port being at front of the car. The cable thus typically is very short - 2 to 4 metres, forcing either backing up to the station or fiddling around with extensions. Which, in case of high power (4kW+) electronics is not something that is safe over time!

Included charger (from normal house socket) fortunately has fairly long cable, but dedicated, higher-power charging station at home would better over time (especially if I replace other gas-guzzler later with fully electric car with 40kWh+ battery). But with those, typical charger cable lengths are again an issue.

Storage. Previous Skoda Octavia also had loads of different storage compartments and spaces around the cabin. Outlander doesn't, which is a bit of a problem, since I like to put my keys, phone, wallet and everything somewhere when I'm driving. I'll need to get to aftermarket parts for that, and even then space will be somewhat limited.

Power windows. I have no idea why the driver's "cut off" button prevents also driver from operating other three windows, but whatever the reasoning is, that is simply brain dead behavior. I want to be able to prevent kids from operating their windows themselves, while being able to operating them myself if needed, without having to touch the lock button.

It also seems that all fuel consumption gauges have been designed to show MPG, which of course is completely retarded way of measuring consumption of fuel, and conversion to litres/100km has been made almsot as an afterthough. That is the only way I can figure out why the bar in this display starts from 18 and not from zero...

This isn't even the worst display, as history information shows data scaled to 0 - 60-ish l/100km range. As the effective consumption of car has so far been less than 10l/100km (and last I checked, just now, it was at zero over view duration), this scaling makes this entire display completely useless. All the small variations are invisible due to this huge, useless scale.

Not that these displays showing momentary usages are very useful anyway, as during normal use engine powers up, charges battery for some minutes, then powers back down again. During that time instant fuel show something, but it's not real consumption figure. You can't get instant consumption from this thing because of this behavior.

All this are mostly minor annoyances. Now, if someone would just make a car like my old Skoda Octavia Combi, with its cargo capacity (those dogs again...) but fully electric with 300km+ range ...

Loving a good spreadsheet

Even since microsoft decided so badly f*** up the usability of build-it Windows calculator I've found myself using "excel" more and more for all kinds of simple calculations. Excel in quotes, because I don't really use Excel but LibreOffice's equivalent, Calc, but "Excel" is essentially synonymous to spreadsheet today.

Need to quickly calculate some VATs? Calc.
Check current and voltage of resistor divider? Calc.
Track my daily spending? Calc. (Well, at least that is one thing spreadsheet is actually intended for).
Calculate 10+20+30? ... Well, if I am submitting those figures to customers, I might do the math in my head, and double-check with Calc. Just in case.

In the end, I may have few different sheets open at the end of the day, often each just containing few cells' worth of numbers and quick calculations. These I often discard when they're not needed any more.

But not always. Sometimes a sheet might contain something I may need to look up again. Conversion tables (like resistances to voltages to matching temperatures, or relative humidity to absolute, or whatever)  and I save it for next time.

Invariably, when the "next time" comes I open a sheet, hoping to find beautifully formatted table, ready to calculate all my figures, but it seems it never is. It's a mess of figures and formulae, thrown together on a single page, possibly even without any notation anywhere (except maybe units somewhere.)  And it takes almost longer to figure out how the sheet actually works than it were to write all of it again.

Of course, when a sheet gets used often enough, I do at some point seem to remember to add some notes and formatting to it. But it tends to take a few iterations.

Nevertheless, all hail Calc, one of the most useful multi-purpose tools in engineers' arsenal!

PHEV

I previously mentioned considering buying a hybrid car, although main topic was a bit broader. The main point still stands - namely, the absolute requirement (of entire mankind) to cut carbon emissions. There just is no way around it, no matter the (monetary) cost.

I also mentioned considering getting a PHEV - that is, Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle - in essence meaning a car with both fossil fuel engine (usually gasoline) and electric motors along with batteries. At the time my choice was Kia Optima. Since then I've changed my opinion.

Eventually I went and replaced my Skoda Octavia (1.6 TDI - that is, diesel, with approx 5l/100km - 47-ish mpg-us) with Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. The price of Outlander and abovementioned Optima was almost same - but in the end mostly electric drive train with four-wheel drive won me over.

As all hybrids, this is "automatic", although in this case there actually is no gearbox anywhere. Up to around 120km/h the car is fully electric - rear and front axles have both 60kW separate electric motors. When going faster than that, the combustion engine is directly coupled to front wheels. So no gearbox. A real series hybrid, at least most of the time with my driving.

So far the consumption isn't looking too bad either. So far I've driven 2100km, with approximate average consumption of around 5l/100km. While this doesn't sound that great, I have to note that about 75% of this has been highway driving where gasoline engine needs to provide almost all energy to keep the car moving.

With full battery (with capacity of about 12kWh) I can get some 30-40 km out of the car, which easily covers most or even all of my daily driving, bringing gasoline consumption when near home to around 1 liter/100km or so, or even full round zero when cabin heating isn't needed.

This isn't typical highway/city driving ratio for me, however, it just happened that there's been a lot of travelling lately. Typically the ratio is closer to 50:50, which, with figures listed above, would drop average consumption to maybe around 3,5 l/100km range.

So, if you only even drive short trips, PHEV is great. But if all your driving is long road trips, this technology isn't for you, not yet at least.

Also, it is really cool to drift around majestically in almost complete silence. Loud engines (and/or exhausts) are nothing but childish, I want my car quiet! Although wheel noise is something that really can't be fully removed.

It isn't all wonderful though. Like I said, full battery charge can take care of my daily driving, but there's always the next day. Meaning that the car needs to be plugged in for recharge almost every single day. And the charging isn't quick either - from standard 10A 230v mains socket (so about 2,3kW supply) the full charge time is around 5 and half hours. I'm looking for dedicated charge station that could provide around 10kW, but that will cost some extra to install. At least I've got a home where such addition - and even ability to charge the car at all - is possible - I fully realize not everyone has this possibility available.

Already I'm thinking of replacing our other car with fully electric one, but at the moment there really aren't any suitable models available. Lack of large enough trunk for all the stuff - and dogs - makes every single one of current options useless for me. Too bad, guess I have to wait a bit more yet for that...

Interrupted

The zone. That is what every programmer is looking for - when you get to work, you drop in the zone and get loads of work done very, very quickly and efficiently.

I'm quite certain that the zone exists in other fields too, although I guess it's mostly within the creative fields - writing, paining, imagining, programming, designing - where it's most prominent. If you haven't encountered it, the best description I have for it is very focused mode of mind. In the zone you are absolutely focused to this task on hand - be it new painting, program feature, chapter in book, fix to old software or whatever, you have it all - the entire vast thing, whatever it may be - right there, fully realized in you mind, within your grasp and because of this can do incredible amounts of work very quickly.

If the zone is interrupted - mostly due to some unwanted external stimuli, like phone ringing, someone talking to you (or even some talking to their colleague few cubicles over) or whatever - if feels bad. And worse, it shatters the zone. Focus is lost, and hours, even days worth of work to be done, gone, just like that.

It sucks. And that feeling when it happens is the worst.

At my old work, I was surprised to hear that some of the younger (career-wise) people were kinda afraid to come to talk to me about issues they were having, but, on reflection, I guess it was because they had the tendency to interrupt me when I was in the zone. No creative person responds well to that, and I guess I was letting it show. I never wanted it to be this way, and always wanted - and tried - to help them the best I could. But that moment when the zone shatters - it's nasty.

Even now, when I have realized what is going on, losing the zone causes issues. Someone talking, doorbell ringing, whatnot - it all interrupts me. But now I just take few deep breaths to let the worst of the anger out and get on with it.

Curiously enough, though, phone never had similar effect to me. I can answer phone, have short conversation and still resume from where I left off. This is pure guess, but I think it's because it's verbal only - when you don't see the other person, all that subconscious processing of postures, gestures and expressions isn't there to break the concentration.

That is the zone. And if you are one that has them, or know one that has them, it's good to realize what is going on. In the end, it makes co-operation much easier.