I thought I’d share a conversation I had with my 86 year old grandfather on Saturday.
We were talking about a recent caravan trip they had taken using their brand new Navman. I can’t recall the model but it’s on the cheaper end of the scale.
Pa had a fairly good idea where he was going but was pretty excited about using the GPS. Initially everything went well, he was quite happy that the unit was taking him exactly the way it should. I need to point out that to get to this particular destination you first need to take a freeway. Basically, there is only one road you can take.
So Pa was pretty impressed but then the Navman told him to turn left at the next intersection. He thought this was odd as previously he had always continued along the road. Assuming the GPS knew best, he faithfully turned left. At this point my Nan queried the Navman. She spoke to it. Navman didn’t respond. They continued down the road for 20 minutes, alarm bells ringing in my Pa’s ears. Eventually Navman told them to to turn right. It kept telling him to turn right so he did what he was told. My Nan then directed her questions towards Pa after getting no response from Navman. Pa told her that it was a GPS unit and was sure it had found some new shortcut not previously known to him. As he continued down the road, they noticed the vegetation was changing from country to bush and then to their complete surprise, a dead end!
My poor 86 year old grandparents had to turn their caravan around a dead end road that had turned to gravel.
My Granddad’s opinion of GPS units is this:
“GPS units are great if you have no clue where you are going. If you have the slightest idea of where you should be going, turn off the GPS. Better still, if your wife starts to query the direction….listen to her!”
Did you realize EV charging stations are all around us? All you need is an electric outlet. For example, see how parking lot lights could be used for charging electric cars.
I haven’t noticed electric outlets on light poles in Perth, Western Australia but I am going to look a little closer the next time I am out shopping!
I stumbled across this video earlier today and thought I’d share.
It looks like a pretty impressive electric bus conversion and the blog has some updates and additional information so check it out: Electric VW Bus Blog
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It’s been some time since we posted about the bus (OurTime) conversion.
Once I started cleaning up the rust, I was quite shocked to discover more and more of it. I couldn’t just let it go so ended up spending about 5 months on the body cutting out rust and making up new frames where needed.
It was exhausting and I wasn’t quite sure if it was ever going to end!
Very thankfully, it’s all done now. I feel it was well worth my time and effort as I simply couldn’t have driven around in it knowing what was underneath.
It’s been a really busy few months as I finally got to the inside of the bus and have done things like lined the inside roof and dash.
I’ve started putting together the kitchen cupboards.
Here is a photo of the end of the cupboard, you can see where the bowl of the sink is underneath. The cut out above the Microwave is where the Induction cooktop is going to go, it will have a door on the top of it so that the bench will be all in one long piece. Read the rest of this entry »
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This is pretty impressive. This video show’s you how to make a great little portable stove from stuff you probably have laying around your house! It’s perfect for camping, backpacking, and power outages.
I’ve just read a good review of the TomTom ONE GPS unit.
It gets a 4.5 /5 star rating which is pretty good. It will be hard to go past buying a TomTom although the Navman units are pretty good as well. Read the rest of this entry »
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We have been waiting to find out more about the much hyped iPhone which has finally been released in Australia.
With our plan to travel around Australia within the next 2 years, GPS will be an important addition to the bus. We are more or less settled on buying something along the lines of TomTom but wanted to see if we could kill two birds with one stone and have a mobile along with a GPS. Read the rest of this entry »
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When Dad first told me of people using fish ‘n’ chip waste oil to fuel their cars, I really thought he had finally gone mad. Note I say *finally*, love you Dad but seriously sometimes you have some pretty wacky ideas!
But it seems he wasn’t losing his grip on reality, people really are converting their vehicles to run on waste vegetable oil from fish and chip shops.
Civil engineer, Gerard Mimmo from Australia and his wife, Rachel are embarking on a trek around Australia in their converted 4WD using waste vegetable oil. Their plan is to travel 30,000 km’s having so far completed over 1,000 km’s. BTW, this is actually their honeymoon, much credit guys..great to see!
Their vehicle can use either diesel or vegetable and as Gerard explained it a solenoid switches between the diesel and the oil. A cold engine starts with the diesel but once it’s up to a running temperature they can switch it over.
They are using oil donated by truck stops and fish and chip stores and hope to complete a carbon-neutral journey.
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