My Digital Life

I just got back from a fantastic trip to Sorrento in Italy (a great part of the world you should go!).  To get around whilst we there there I hired a car at the airport.  Now I’d never driven in Italy before and didn’t think too much of it.  I should probably have taken more notice of the warning in the Lonely Planet book I’d bought that said of driving in Naples (where I flew to)  ‘There can be no greater test of courage…’.

It was obvious from the first few minutes on the road that the rules there are different, so without having a copy of the Italian Highway Code to hand I started to work out these strange new rules based on what I saw. 

1. The most obvious… they drive on the right (ready as ‘wrong’) side of the road.  Not much of a problem really as long as you remember!

2. Speed limits.  Although there is very little actual speeding, it seems there is an overwhelming sense of urgency that compels you to overtake anything and everything in front of you at all times.

3. Overtaking.  Overtaking is allowed anywhere - on straights, on the entry of a corner or on the exit of a corner.  This can also be used in conjunction with rule 4 below.

4. Any speed is acceptable on blind corners as long as you use your horn as you turn in.  It seems the horns on Italian cars are sufficiently powerful that they sweep away hidden obstacles as you approach.

5. Road markings and signs.  Where as in some countries road signs and markings are used to control and manage road vehicles, in Italy they are for decorative use only and do not have to be obeyed.  For example on motorways although lane markings are present it’s accepted that you just fit as many cars as will fit onto the road.

6. Road positioning.  As a result of rules 2, 3, 4 and 5, the racing line should be used at all times.  It is not necessary to obey rule 1 when following this rule.

7.  Parking.  Anywhere will do.  Really.

Hopefully these observations will help any new travellers to Italy that stumble across this blog.

In truth it’s not that bad.  Whilst it does come as a bit of a shock, even for a South London boy like me, you soon get used to it.  For me I just came to the realisation that you just have drive like you would on a Trackday - not a well organised trackday mind, but maybe a test day or something like that.  All you need to do is keep an eye on what’s in front of you and let whatever is behind take care of itself.

There are some amazing roads around the Amalfi coast, and I’d love to take my car down there someday for a bit of exploring.  Maybe just not during the busy summer months.

Disclaimer:  Whilst these are genuine observations and based on things I saw and experienced, DON’T ACTUALLY FOLLOW THESE RULES!

Over the past year or so my car’s been looking a little worse-for-wear.  What with moving house and the long commute I’ve not really had a chance to wash it as much as I used to.

Having read though a tonne of car cleaning threads on Seloc I thought I’d tool up with some new stuff from http://cleanyourcar.co.uk and put my new toys to good use. 

So I spent Saturday afternoon giving the car a good clean inside and out.  I ended up doing the full wash, clay, polish, seal and wax routine and am really chuffed with the results.  If not the sunburn I got in the process! :)

The pics don’t really do it justice!

After having a fantastic drive to work this morning, I thought I would dig out an old route for a ‘run’ I’ve done with the Lotus guys in the past.  It’s based around the country roads in Surrey and Sussex and starts fairly close to my office finishing not too far from home.  With the sun still shining I’ll probably take the long way home later - it’ll take an hour extra but it’s worth it :)

Now I’ve found the file I thought I’d post it up here.  The original authors are (I think) lost in time so I can’t credit them, but it’s a great drive.

I was just looking through some car news and noticed this, the Fisker Karma:

It’s a rather clever hybrid sports car, it even has solar panels in the roof to boost the batteries.  But… it is just me or does the front look a little like the Joker?

Fortunately the rest of the car looks great:

Just following on from my lost post, I’ve just watched an interesting piece on Channel 4 news about fuel prices and green taxes.

In the piece, one of the talking heads said something like "road pricing is far fairer [than fuel duty] by pricing on distance travelled".  I can’t help thinking that this way of thinking is flawed.  Surely we have to drive behaviour towards more environmentally friendly fuels and vehicles rather than away from travel altogether. 

If fuel and vehicles are taxed based on the CO2 they generate, it seems to me that the carrot and stick are then acting in the right direction.  Especially if some of that tax is aimed at the fuel and car companies rather than the consumer - this would incentivise them towards creating cleaner fuels and cars that can use them. 

Being a fan of all things Lotus, I’ve been following news about their tri-fuel Exige 270E technology demo with some interest.  It’s essentially a standard Exige that has been modified to run on either Petrol, Ethanol or Methanol - or any combination of the three.  Sensors tell the ECU what fuel is being used and it then adjusts the engines combustion appropriately. 

Although there has been a lot of focus on hydrogen as a fuel for the future, Lotus is arguing that due to the inherent problems and costs involved with hydrogen, synthetic methanol may be a better choice. From my layman’s perspective Lotus arguments seem pretty sensible.

Simply storing hydrogen is difficult, you can either compress it to 700psi, or liquefy it at -230 degrees centigrade, neither of which are best suited for transport in vehicles.  It’s also not very energy dense, I understand it’s something like a fifth the density of petrol, and once you add in the energy spent creating and storing if the well-to-wheel efficiency drops even further.

One of the biggest problems though is that hydrogen will mean a complete change in engine design and use, a hard change that will cost manufactures and support services like petrol stations huge amounts to implement.

Methanol, whilst not a panacea, does offer some advantages.  It’s a liquid at room temperature for a start.  It’s also more energy dense than hydrogen, though not as dense as petrol.  It does however have a higher octane rating - something that allow the 270E to produce more power than the regular petrol based version.

In my view though the biggest advantage has to be that a move over to methanol can be gradual.  The chaps from Lotus reckon most modern engines should be able to run methanol with very few changes.  The main physical obstacles seem to be around the fact that methanol is more corrosive so seals, pipes, tanks etc need to be changed.

That being the case, a change over to methanol would be much simpler for manufacturers.  Potentially they can future proof their cars against future ethanol or methanol fuels now, or at least within a few years.

If new cars were able to use these fuels in various mixes, fuel producers would be able to add synthetic methanol into their fuels and phase out petrol over a period of time.

Of course, methanol still produces CO2, but as it can be synthetically produced from carbon dioxide and hydrogen the potential exists to recover these from the atmosphere or existing industrial waste collection.  The idea being that CO2 emissions at the exhaust will be balanced to a neutral point.

It seems like an interesting technology challenge, and I’m glad to see Lotus taking a lead in it.  What I’d love to see though is Lotus taking a lead in delivering tri-fuel cars to customers.  It would seem like most of the development for their current Elise and Exige range has been done for this project.  If the costs per car weren’t too great it would be a hell of a marketing tool, and would certainly set them apart from their competitors.  Would the other manufacturers follow?  Who knows, but it’s a Toyota unit that Lotus have been working with, so it would be easy for at least one major company to follow.

It was a good day for Robert Kubica and BMW in Bahrain today as they achieved their first F1 Pole Position, and with some style.  It was a great lap, hopefully he wasn’t running on fumes and can give the Ferrari’s and McLaren’s a good run tomorrow.

I’ve got a huge amount of respect for BMW Sauber.  Since BMW bought Sauber in 2005, year on year they’ve consistently hauled the team up the grid.  If I was the president of Toyota I’d be asking my guys some very serious questions…

I’m a car nut.  There’s something about driving that captures my imagination.  I’m never sure whether its the act of going somewhere, the sensation of reading the road through the steering wheel and the seat of your pants or just the cars themselves.  Whatever it is, for me the journey is often as enjoyable as the destination.

There’s lots of cars that I like, and quite a few car companies I admire, but Lotus really stands out in my affections.  It probably started as a James Bond thing (I still want an underwater Esprit) but if you look past the fast cars and former F1 glories, there are some pretty sound principles that I think apply beyond the realm of sports cars and racing.

Lotus was started by a guy called Colin Chapman, and under his guidance a relatively small set of people set about changing the world.  They were innovative and successful, always pushing the limits whether they be the limits of technology or the rule book.  Helping with this success were some underlying principles and ideas, and one in particular which Colin referred to as ‘adding lightness’. 

Why make something more than it needs to be?  You don’t need huge amounts of power to move something that is agile and light.  Add lightness to it, add simplicity, trim away all the excess crap you don’t need.  A lightweight car will accelerate quicker, brake better and go round corners faster.  Good things that will help win you races or make your customers smile.  Isn’t that also what we want in IT?

Whether its code, infrastructure or organisational structures anyone who works in IT will know that simplicity is always the best policy.  Sure it’s not always possible, but as an objective or principle it’s hard to beat.

By it’s nature Code is complex, so is infrastructure.  Even so there can be a certain elegance to their design.  I’m not developer, but even within the scripting I’ve done before there’s a certain pleasure in writing a script that applies a simple, elegant solution to a problem.  Something simple will run faster, use less resource, be easier to support.  Even easier to copy and paste into tomorrows project.

If you’re solving problems or delivering projects, in my experience a small, highly motivated team of people will deliver faster and with better results than a complex heavyweight organisation.  Give them some simple processes to use and a lightweight framework of standards and you’re laughing.

Add lightness.  You don’t need those cup holders.  They’ll slow you down.