The second half of my summer break was spent wandering the Lake District and attending the Infest music festival in Bradford. I had a very good time and did a lot of driving. I am quite convinced that my wheel balance is out very slightly for speeds above 70 miles per hour, there’s a fine vibration there but it’s not that often you can go faster than that here in the south east of this country.
I wasn’t deliberately keeping an eye on my fuel consumption as life is too short to worry about that. Life might be considerably shorter in future due to excessive fuel use but owning Bora Horza Gobuchul gives me a slight advantage in the smugness over non-hybrid drivers.
Consumption
This image shows that over this trip I did just over a thousand miles and returned a fuel consumption of 59 miles per gallon. That’s not bad. It’s a shame Bora Horza Gobuchul doesn’t report in litres per 100km which I think I prefer, but goodness that won’t catch on, it’s waaaay too European.
Since getting rid of the Beast and buying a new car I have missed using a gear stick and doing things with my feet and left hand. I now have a hybrid car which has a stick I move into Drive position and then into Park position. That’s it. My left foot operates the manual parking brake. I really like the car. It’s comfy and drives really smooth. But I need my fix of gear stick work.
Fortunately I have a decent steering wheel for the PlayStation and I can use the gears on that. It’s not the same but it keeps the coordination going a little bit I guess.
There are a few things to note. I have the gear stick set up on the right of the steering wheel to mimic racing cars.
G29 Driving Force Wheel
I will say that without really thinking about it I was heel-and-toeing the game and doing it quite well while using the clutch and steering. I’ve been playing Drive Club and while the game play and feedback about handling isn’t as good as Gran Turismo it will have to do until the PS4 version of GT comes out, which given that they said 2016 is quite likely to be 2025 knowing Polyphony.
It’s possible that not coordinating feet and hands in a real car anymore means I am going to get better at it on this gaming device. I will still get to drive manual vehicles, most likely minibuses at work for taking people places. I feel slightly sorry for them as I remember how to use a clutch!
I’m trying to monitor my car’s efficiency. It’s not the easiest to compare to the Beast because I didn’t really keep records of fuel consumption for that car. From memory I could get about 50mpg on a motorway and about 35mpg through the week when I’d be driving in and around town a lot.
This display shows that over 72 miles of driving which included motorway, dual carriage way, town and country I got around 56mpg.
I will do a big run one day and see what I get.
The main thing about this car is that it makes you very aware of how efficiently you are driving and so your driving behaviour changes.
After seeing Rogue One (again) Mr O and I decided to visit a military museum. Rather, what we did was use the POI thingy on the Sat Nav and it came up with the Military Museum in Aldershot. I’d never been to this garrison town before and it is something to behold! Plenty of red signs everywhere.
We journeyed from Guildford to Aldershot. The road was a curious one making its route atop a ridge.
Journey Part 1
After arriving at the museum we noticed the gates were locked shut. We weren’t that far from a set of armed guards securing the base itself so we tried a search for something else. This time we checked the website to make sure it was open. Off we set for Tangmere Museum. It would appear the Mr O misread the website as it clearly states it opens in February. But, we weren’t aware of that and so drove to Tangmere near Goodwood.
Journey Part 2
Along the way we saw many lovely countryside sites with layers of fog which, if we had a decent camera, would have been great photos. It was very picturesque. Except for one bit. We had seen a race course on the top of a hill and we were discussing whether it was Goodwood or not and BLAM. The sun was directly in our eyes along the line of the road. I came to a halt. I couldn’t see shit. The sun was literally in line with the road.
Blinded (highlighted bit)
We had to try and drive for about 200m without being able to see. I found that if I moved my head so the door pillar blocked the sun I could just make out the left and right sides of the road. I still couldn’t see anything in front but we ambled along and hoped that someone else would stop if they were coming the other way. It was a curious experience and one I don’t really want again. We should have made a note of the time because there would be a decent set of mathematics to be done to check where the sun was and how much it aligned with the road. If I had the inclination we could probably work out where and what time just from the facts I have already said.
Tangmere
Another set of locked gates indicated closure. Bugger. All we wanted now was a cup of tea and some cake. We knew Goodwood circuit was nearby and so we drove to that. Everything there was also closed. The day had turned out to be a series of closed places that we wanted to visit. We had to drive back to (near) Reigate for a cuppa.
Journey Part 3
The journey itself was fun, interesting and a delight. It’s just a shame everything we were trying to see was closed.
I recently purchased a new (ish) car. The name of the new vehicle has yet to be decided but some things did need to be sorted out.
As a safety feature the car beeps an alarm inside the car while in reverse. There aren’t parking sensors so this was purely to warn the driver that you aren’t going to move forward when you depress the go pedal. This beeping was annoying. Googling around soon led to two potential ways to fix it.
If the Prius is pre-2010 then you can use the following method:
Step 1: Depress the brake pedal and hold it there.
Step 2: Press the Start/Stop button to turn on the engine.
Step 3: Push the Odometer button. Push the button on your dash designated Trip/Odometer until “ODO” is displayed on the screen. If it is already displaying this, you will have to cycle through the options to refresh it by pressing the button a total of three times.
Step 4: Press the Start/Stop button. Press the Start/Stop button to turn off the engine of your Prius.
Step 5: Press the Start/Stop button again. With your foot still on the brake, press the Start/Stop button again, and your engine will restart.
Step 6: Push and hold the Odometer button: Push the Trip/Odometer button again and do not release it.
Step 7: Press the park button. While still depressing the Trip/Odometer button, put your Prius in reverse, then immediately push the Park button. Do not release the Trip/Odometer button until this is complete.
Step 8: Push the Trip/Odometer button. Instead of the usual miles traveled on the odometer display, there should be the text “b on.” Push the Trip/Odometer button until the dashboard displays the text “b off.”
Step 9: Press the Start/Stop button again. Press the Start/Stop button again to turn your Prius’ engine off. The reverse beep is now disabled, and you will not hear it again in future trips.
This, I think, is the car equivalent of ctrl-alt-del and using reg-edit and BIOS simultaneously. Now, I can follow instructions, but I wasn’t looking forward to doing this. My car is registered as a “59” but apparently it was a 2010 model as when I looked under the dash there was a OBD2 connector.
It turns out that car manufacturers have standardised the laptop connections to the car and its CPU. This makes sense and it also allows people to connect their own devices and customise or fix or break their own car.
So, I invited a friend over who tries does hack his own car and attempt to improve or fix it. He has a Bluetooth and WiFi connector and I downloaded the Carista app on my phone. After connecting the adaptor to the car and then getting the phone secure connection running the app decided to run some diagnostics tests.
After a short while I was able to pay for a week’s subscription to the Carista app and then able to change the settings.
My car no longer constantly beeps when reversing. It beeps once. Which is good.
I also turned off the seat belt alarm. That would beep constantly too if the driver didn’t have a seat belt on. I always wear my seat belt so this noise isn’t needed either.
It was a weekend of many happenings. I usually try to keep weekend happenings to a minimum and then I can use all the spare time to see a film, exercise, mess around with technology of various forms and play the PlayStation.
This weekend was the end of my relationship with the Beast. But, it was also the start of my relationship with the Not-Beast, which has yet to be named.
Not The Beast
There’re a lots of differences between a diesel turbo six speed manual and a petrol hybrid automatic! I will probably bore you with these over time so I won’t go into the detail here. My main current issue is that I don’t know how to hill start this car. Oh, and sometimes I forget to take the “handbrake” off because in this thing it’s a “parking brake” and operated by the left foot.
The new car isn’t named yet, but will be soon. Suggestions welcome to @iparish. This purchase does now mean that the only manual driving experience I will get is either the school minibuses [limited to 100kph] or my Playstation. I’ve upgrade to a six speed manual stick for the PS4. I had been pretty good at heel-and-toeing and matching engine revs to new gears when selected. Now I’m worried my left foot will whither away through lack of use in the new car.
I spent some time in Essex this weekend and I can never be sure if I feel like I am home or whether Kent is now my home. I’ve been down here mostly since 1996 and so while not all of my life it certainly consists of quite a bit of my life. I don’t think I identify as an Essex-boy any more, but I’m not sure I was to start with.
I had a very nice run along the A1060 while in Essex.
It was good until the last mile when my left knee decided it didn’t really want to run and all I could do was hobble along keeping that leg straight. While it continued to ache through the day it turns out that a day later the upper part of my right foot hurts a lot climbing stairs. It is quite possible that my body is starting to fall apart due to age and wear and tear.
While running I spent some time directly under the flight path for the approach to Stansted Airport and I have to say I stopped twice to watch the aircraft fly overhead. It’s a lovely sight. I’m not sure why I like planes but I do.
EGSS Approach
Since I got home I have learnt of an update to No Man’s Sky. I am looking forward to seeing what that is like. I really enjoy a good hour of time exploring planets. I’ve tweeted a few things from this game, it’s nicely relaxing [as long as you don’t die].
So I am currently waiting to decide a new name for the car and enjoying the knowledge that I should get 70mpg, because, you know, the planet is fucked.
