RobiNZ Personal Blog

The wheels on AHBART go round and round...

Probably didn't need to do a blog post about this but thought of the title and seemed a shame not to... AHBART had slight vibration at certain speeds (at least two multiples of 45 km/h) from the rear, felt like, L/H side. After getting the tyres/balance checked turned out to be a slightly buckled rear wheel. There was no rim damage (as in a dent) but it wasn't quite round anymore. May even have been a legacy of last year's 3000km road trip as did have to get the front one fixed after I hit a pot hole. Seems 40... Read more →

The Pencil and the Battery Electric Vehicle

Had a chance, and interesting, coincidence today in my podcast playlist. Pocket Casts has my favourite podcasts set to auto-download and add themselves to ‘Play next’. Two episodes were ready to play when I left for the morning commute. The power of graphite; in pencils First up a new season of The Boring Talks* kicked off with ‘Pencils’: Brian Mackenwells on why we should all appreciate the pencil. Part of it (~0:05:00 onwards) told how a limited source of pure graphite (needed for pencils) in the 16-18th century made the British Cumberland graphite deposit a strategic asset. From its discovery... Read more →

Retyring today

Today's bike maintenance was to replace the Giro Rob's Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres fitted back in April 2018. They have done about 8,000km of road, trail and gravel riding. The rear was pretty smooth, the front not bad (photo right compares them), but I replaced both. Will keep the used front tyre as a spare, in case of carcase damage, as they are typically only available to order, so take a week or so to get. Although heavy they are great for touring, commuting and general use thanks to extreme puncture resistance; as proved by the last day of the... Read more →

The best active headphones? | Aftershokz Aeropex (or Shokz Openrun)

UPDATE 12-01-2022: Since this was written Aftershokz have rebranded to Shokz and renamed the Aeropex to Openrun. They have also added a Openrun Pro above them which is more refined, has a phone control app and 10+ hour battery life. Both now have a quick charge '5-min charge for 1.5 hours of usage' feature. I dropped, more like flung, my first set at ground when they tangled in my bike helmet on removal. They still work but had a rattle in one of the transducers, so I purchased another pair. That set developed a button fault and were replaced, with... Read more →