zog blog mk II

Institute for Cultural Diplomacy and wikipedia - interesting article on blatant self promotion and wikipedia, and threats of legal action.

As referenced by good ol’ boingboing

Slamming the door on Jehovah

also:

Jehovah’s Witnesses ‘a cruel cult’

Saudi preacher who ‘raped and tortured’ his five -year-old daughter to death is released after paying ‘blood money’

This is an intriguing theory:

A very interesting theory:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

via boingboing:

http://boingboing.net/2013/01/03/leaded-gasoline-and-the-20th-c.html

some skeptical views:

http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/04/leading-poisoning-causes-crime

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/looney-gas-and-lead-poisoning-a-short-sad-history/

possibly more a polished demo than a fully realised release, but I thought it worthwhile making these experiments with guitar and timestretch software available on bandcamp.com:

ZOGAM - Melbourne Suburban Winter 2012

I just quickly dropped in the 36V 9AH LiFePO4 battery pack I got from Value E Bikes and was pleasantly suprised it was a close, though not perfect fit.

It did fit well enough that I felt confident going for a short test ride, and all was good.
For a longer ride I’ll fir it more snugly with some rubber matting and ratchet straps, but the fit is quite close. The “rail” the battery has to slide into place is quite differently sized from the greenewheels rail however.

Next step, range tests, after a visit to the $2 shop for mounting hardware.

I did have to remove one of the cable holders as the battery is taller, so that the DC out lead would fit.

update 1 week later
We’ll I’ve clocked up 80k in a few rides to work and the battery is working great so far. I would have ridden more except its been rainy. Havn’t done a full range test but no apparent loss of power after 22km, so looking good.

Some quick notes:
Battery contains 10 cells strapped together with blue heatsrhink plastic stuff.
Cells measure 4.2V (no load) so I’m guessing 3.7 V when loaded.
Sticker on it contains phone number from which I am able to determine the battery was sourced from here.

Info is:
Model: JX-6 JX-6
Brand: Xin power
Operating current is 6A; maximum discharge current of 15A; size of 32 × 55 × 70mm (length × width × height); weighs approximately 310 grams. May form a 7.2V/10Ah (2 series), 10.8V/10Ah (3 series), 14.4V/10Ah (4 string), 24V/10Ah (7 string), 36V/10Ah (10 strings) and other forms of power.

The dimensions mentioned also match the right dimensions from measuring one of the cells after peeling back the plastic wrapper. Still havent been able to get the whole pack of cells out as they seem to be glued in hard!

Googling around I see these cells available, which might be a very close match? the ones listed as LT-325570

Peeling back the plastic wrapping on one of the cells it just has a barcode and the numbers “070806B 325670 0115″.

Another option is to get a 36V 10AH pack from Ping. The one listed is too square, but this blog post indicates these packs work perfectly with the greenewheelsbike, and the comment indicates Ping will pack the batteries in a longer narrrower packing if requested:

I did write to Ping to see if he could make me one that would fit in the battery space better, to accomodate my narrower shimano bottom bracket. He was most helpful, and wrote back with this:

[Yes, we can make it in different size. We can make the 36v10ah pack in size of 300×105x80mm. Is it suitable?

I noticed these pictures of a very well upgraded green-e-wheels bike linked from the endless sphere forums:

- from Sydney endless sphere member “magneto” - great stuff.

Well my battery eventually faded.. first to the level where I had to charge at work.. but then to the level where I don’t have the range to get to work.. i.e. less than 11km.
This is fine as I have clocked up the amount of charges well into what the stated life of the battery is, but now I note GREENEWHEELS don’t sell anything on ebay any more - well his store doesn’t exist.

But I noticed FLEW ELECTRIC CYCLES appear to be selling the same or similar bikes as the greenewheels ones, including replacement battery packs.

I’ve tee’d up a meeting just to verify that a FLEW ELECTRIC battery pack works.. but if so this could be very good for other GREENEWHEELS owners, having a Melbourne located source of replacement battery packs, and other parts.

The folding bikes on the site look cute as well.

UPDATE checked out the battery pack thanks to the very helpful Tom of FlewElectric, but unfortunately the battery pack is a different design and dimension. Tom is checking out to see if he can source ones like mine, but in the mean time I will suss out what kind of cells are in the greenewheel battery pack.

A MELBOURNE youth church leader said he was possessed and couldn’t control his “sexual demons” when he raped a 14-year-old girl, poured petrol on her and set her alight.
Herald Sun link
The Age link