There's a parking machine on Dixon Street where someone has busted the solar panel, I wonder if it was the same person?

This is an area that's quite familiar to me, as I've done a few circumnavigations of Kapiti, I've also landed on Fisherman's/motungarara before, as well as Brown's island next to it.

The tides through that area are vicious, to the point where a trip in the area has to be planned around them, you can't overcome the flow for any length of time, especially for a circumnavigation.

They were definitely lucky to make the island. I wonder where they landed? There are actually houses out there, on the northern end.

Neat. The area around Auckland Airport is perfectly suited for a hovercraft, come to think of it.

Auckland Airport has a hovercraft?

I've heard that one a few times before actually, it's not entirely unfair either.

The line is out of action while deicing is taking place, but only for the shortest amount of time necessary.

That's what I'm thinking, yes. Although you could pump a lot of heat into the pantograph, and pair it up with a scraper at the same time.

It wouldn't be able to run line speed, but it would be reasonably fast, I'd think.

If she refuses to resign, it will be interesting to see if greens use the "waka jumping" rules against her.

They were against them at the time, as they felt they could be used to silence dissent in the party ranks, so to use them would be an embarassing change of direction for them.

This is how power line deicing works on systems overseas. You need two legs to the circuit, so it would involve either isolating lines from each other on double track, or earthing out the end of the lines, and using the tracks as a return path.

The option I was actually thinking about was having a heated pantograph of some type.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levis_De-Icer

It's been done with power lines overseas, where they somehow increase the current in the lines to heat them up to shed ice.

No idea how it actually works though, I'll have to look into it.

Yes, it's connected directly to the ONT with nothing in between.

At the moment it's just running as a router and PoE switch, with two wireless access points on it. We plan to add cameras, but other expenses have taken priority.

I'll have a look at it tomorrow, I think it does have VPN functionality. I've never really needed it though.

Other options are a deicing spray, like what is used on aircraft, both at airports and in flight, or some type of heater that has a heating element directly on the wire.

Turning an old unit into a deicing train wouldn't be massively difficult, I would think.

Someone gave me a tandem kayak! It's a Sisson Southern Light, a very old design, and possibly older than me. It needs a few maintenance items, a few scrapes being painted over, and some new lines, but is overall in amazing condition.

The hull length is 6.2m, with the rudder adding further to that. I plan to take it out Sunday.

I have a Ubiquiti Dream Machine SE, which has POE built in, but your option would be the next simplest option.

All the Ubiquiti gear is very well priced, and dead simple to use, I plan to add some cameras at some point to the system.

This is a real shame, it sounds like they may have survived in the water for a very long time too, if they were alive when the bulk carrier was in the area.

I'm well aware that I'm not the one doing the hard work on this.

I think the platform becoming more mainstream is a good thing, to an extent at least. At the moment we're kinda known for militant communists, tankies, and Linux evangelists, among other stereotypes.

This will definitely come with problems, of course, but it will also take some of the echo out of the chamber.

I'm glad this place exists, and I hope it continues to grow over time. Having a platform like this that isn't beholden to advertisers or the bottom line is incredibly fortunate, and I hope we can take a bite out the market share the more mainstream platforms have.

I am so thoroughly over this cold, I'm glad we're now getting warmer weather at long last.

That's the more extreme end of the spectrum, we were paddling in much calmer conditions. Mostly just noseying around the rocks. And yes, we were surfing in sea kayaks, it's a slightly different game to board surfing as we're catching waves much further out than the other surfers, and ideally peeling off before they actually curl over and break. We had a competition, which I actually came third in.

I think that's the inside of my pocket, I didn't notice that photo was in there.

Chloe being ahead of both Peter's and Seymour as preferred PM must surely rankle.

I did a trip up to Waihi beach over the "long weekend", leaving Wed. My car blew a head gasket just north of Taihape, and we ended up getting a rental and towing my trailer the rest of the way, which meant we arrived early the next day. I did two trips up the coast, and the third day was spent playing in the surf.

Now I need to work out the most cost effective way to get my car back home, and sell it.

Here's the GPS tracks and a few photos from the trip.

Thursday, coastal paddle and rock gardening. https://www.relive.cc/view/vZqN1DG9zG6

Friday, coastal paddle, rock gardening and a walk up a stream. https://www.relive.cc/view/v26MjYPpVEq

Saturday morning, surf practice. https://www.relive.cc/view/v26MjYxAoEq

Sunday afternoon, surf practice and comp. comp https://www.relive.cc/view/vYvE2mAWBGO

It's been a great weekend, and I plan to be back next time.

I've considered going the other way with our bathroom, and just having one switch for everything, as we almost always use the fan and lights all at once. Have you considered just having two switches, one for heat lamps and one for fan and light?

A smart switch just sounds like something to go wrong to me.

One of the things I really dislike about NZ politics is the amount of hyperbole and over the top language used, from both sides of the aisle, and I very quickly lose interest in what someone has to say if they talk like that.

If what you're saying is true, the truth of the matter is bad enough without them needing to exaggerate.

Surely you can appreciate calling this a "war on nature" is a bit ridiculous.

Nobody is setting out to destroy nature, it's just less of a priority for them.

I have a lot of respect for Forest and Bird, but using highly emotional language like "destroy a pristine mountaintop and rip up the seafloor" and describing this as a "war on nature" make it much more difficult to take them seriously.

It's a fun job actually.

Follow up story

I originally started training to be an electrician, before being offered an apprenticeship as an alarm technician. It's a unit standard based qualification, so a lot of it crosses over.

There's something else to consider, and that is all the people you lure off the road and onto public transport are not only now costing you money, but you also lose the revenue from them driving their vehicle, not only the RUCs or fuel excise, but the GST on all the running costs.

I suspect labour costs are the single biggest driver, you're not being paid to drive your car after all.

And despite that, a public transport journey is heavily subsidised, and the leaf driver is actually paying their own way via RUCs.

I don't understand how public transport is so expensive.

Given what a mess Wellington traffic is, especially getting in and out of the city, I don't think many people are driving at the moment when public transport is an option.

I honestly think most of the people who could use PT are already on it, at least in and out of the city.

The whole point of my reply was pointing out why public transport isn't an option for me, and why, no matter how good it gets, we will need to upgrade our road infrastructure eventually.

Absolutely nobody has said it won't help.

That's not what I asked you.

I'm pointing out why I won't be taking the bus if I'm heading out that way.

Can I use it for when I take my kayak out there? 5.5m long boat shouldn't take up too much space in the bus, right?

I mean, it's a ferry crossing and a day's drive for me, versus an overseas holiday.

I like it, this solves the problem of nobody making the thread on the weekends, and also less clutter in the instance feed.

I haven't checked my tree for a while actually.