When I charge my (2015 S) Leaf up to 100%, you can see the input AC current/power draw slowly decay as the car finishes charging, and then a little while later 3 little spikes of current draw as it finishes balancing.
Maker Faire Orlando (2021) had a lot of interesting exhibits.
Here are a few that drew my attention:
We have reached the end of the Delta Surge. The October 29th 2021 weekly DOH report shows that Orange County only had 834 infections in the last week, and the case positivity rate has dropped to 2.9%. The OC Mayor has dropped the state of emergency, and the OC Public School District has removed the mask mandate in schools. (Faculty, Staff & adult Volunteers are still required to wear masks, as are students, but now a parent note is enough to excuse students from the mask requirement.)
In the last month the OCPS dashboard has reported only 690 new cases.
We have had nine weeks of decreasing case numbers and are now back to a level similar to that of the June/July timeframe before the Delta variant surged. Orange County currently has 75% of the 12+ population vaccinated, and the Pfizer vaccine has just been approved for use by children aged 5-11 years old.
Deaths
In the last month, Orange County has only had 140 deaths from COVID-19. Overall, Orange County FL had 2,185 COVID-19 deaths out of a population of 1,457,445 (149 deaths per 100,000 residents). This is better than the state of Florida average of 285 deaths per 100,000 residents. However, 149 deaths per 100,000 residents is a per-capita death rate higher than the countries of South Korea (5), Australia (6), Iceland (9), Japan (14), Norway (16), Egypt (17), India (33) and the Philippines (36) combined.
I purchased an old (1977 manufacture date) AMF Alcort Sunfish 14 foot sailing dinghy. It was mostly complete and almost “ready-to-sail”, except for the broken auto-bailer, and cracked rudder, but the price was right.
Since I had to repair the crack in the rudder, I decided to go overboard and completely restore the entire rudder and tiller assembly. And once the rudder looked nice, I had left-over varnish and decided to go ahead and re-surface the daggerboard as well.
I also added a ratcheting mainsheet block, replaced all of the lines and purchased some necessary accessories (deck cover, beach dolly).
After the first sail I drained all of the water out of the hull (which MIGHT have already been in there…..maybe….) and purchased a better drain plug and rigged up a solar powered fan to dry things out. If I find water inside after the second sail, I’ll probably be doing some fiberglass hull repair.
You can see all of the details by watching the (multiple!) videos in this YouTube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmHP4lUqxKmv13lkNpPqG2FbnV9L4aaL0
I’ve found that the Better Boat Mini-Paddle fits perfectly into the rear cubbyhole on my 1977 boat.
Android version 12 has a lot of under the hood improvements, and I especially appreciate the privacy preserving features (green dot visual notifications when the camera or mic turn on, and finer grained permissions controls).
However, the new notifications system has traded visual appeal for utility. Specifically, the total screen area (width) used to display notifications is significantly narrower than in Android 11. The notifications are displayed with a white space frame around them, and even within that area, each notification is inside a rounded corner “bubble”, so that the actual content is only using 70% of the phone screen width. This is especially noticeable to me on notifications from the Ring app, which show a photo preview of what caused the motion alert to fire.
KODAK Digital Still Camera
Also, they combined the “wifi” and “cellular data” quick action tiles into a single “Internet” one. So instead of two actions to enable or disable wifi (swipe down / click) I now must make four. (swipe down, click internet, click wifi, click ‘Done’). Also, I don’t appreciate the design of the two line clock on the lock screen, but whatever (no am/pm indicator, really?).
I reviewed the VECYS CR18 Car refrigerator.
This is an 18L fridge/freezer (it can get down to -14C / 6.8F) that runs on 12-24 volts DC (although it ships with an AC adapter that allows you to use it off of mains power).
At refrigeration temperatures (0c/32f) it takes 190 watt hours to maintain temperature for 24 hours.
At freezing temperatures(-20c on the control panel, -14c inside), it takes 520 watt hours to maintain temperature for 24 hours.
It takes almost 24 hours to fully freeze a 1L / 1kg / 2lb water gel pack.
You may also be interested in the (much larger, 60 Liter) VECY’s CR60.
Amazon Affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3mfW5zc
We are nearing the tail end of the Delta surge. The October 1st 2021 DOH report shows that orange county had “only” 2,365 cases in the last week, and our 7 day test positivity rate has dropped down to 5% (for the first time in 3 months…).
The number of cases per day are still as bad as in January/Feb, April/May, so COVID is definitely spreading in the community, but “74% of those 12 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine” according to Mayor Jerry Demings. Although breakthrough infections are possible, being vaccinated gives strong protection against infection, and extremely strong protection against getting sick enough to need hospitalization or dying.
Orange county schools have reported 5909 student cases (and 1,114 employee cases) since August 2nd, and are still enforcing a mask mandate through the end of October.
Deaths
So far, Orange County FL has had 2,045 COVID-19 deaths out of a population of 1,457,445, or (140 deaths per 100,000 residents), which is a per-capita death rate higher than the countries of South Korea (5), Australia (6), Iceland (9), Japan (14), Norway (16), Egypt (17), India (33) and the Philippines (36) combined.
Ring sells a “Mailbox Sensor” ($29) which tells you when somebody opens your mailbox. (i.e. it notifies you when the mail is delivered, or picked up.)
Really, it’s just one of their ring outdoor light motion sensor modules with an extra external antenna jack. (The small round object near the white square in the photo below.) It is powered by 3 AAA batteries, and lasts about 2.5 months under “normal” usage (e.g. opening the mailbox twice a day six days a week) using generic AAA batteries. Continue reading
For the week ending August 27th, 2021, Orange County Florida had an average of 1,292 new cases per day. This is worse than the highest previous peak in January. The exponential growth can be blamed on the Delta Variant and the relaxing of masking and social distancing.
However, the number of new cases each week appears to have plateaued, and the test positivity rate, at 14.9%, while still very high, has gone down from a peak of 20%, so it appears that we may have reached the peak of this delta variant surge.
Historically, Orange County has had a case fatality rate of near 1%, so that would indicate we are due to see about 12-13 deaths per day in the near future, but as death numbers are no longer part of the FDOH weekly reports for counties I have no way of knowing if the case fatality rate has started to drop due to vaccinations of high-risk groups or has increased due to the Delta variant.
We have vaccinated (at least a first dose) 858,281 people (out of a population of 1,457,445), or 59% of the total. If you discount children 12 and under who are not yet eligible for vaccination, Orange County has vaccinated 69% of the eligible population. We vaccinated 77,829 people in August (Compared to 62,349 people in July, 65,206 in June, 88,482 in May and 151,176 in April.)
Hospitalizations
Although the FDOH is not reporting county level hospitalization numbers, we can assume that the admissions curves for Orange County are similar to the entire state of Florida. We currently have more people hospitalized with confirmed covid-19 cases than ever before. Elective surgeries are postponed, hospital morgues are full and portable morgue units are being deployed.
Deaths
The FDOH is not reporting death numbers directly for Orange County, but judging from the graphs for the entire state of Florida, deaths are also at an all time high.
The “actual date of death” data lags behind the “reported date of death” data, but as you can see from historical trends, the reported death data is indicating that the actual date of death data will set new records in Florida.
Orange County Public Schools
In the entire 2020-2021 school year (when around half of the students were remote) OCPS reported a total of 5,072 student cases of Covid-19. (and 2,216 employee cases).
So far, in the first three weeks of the 2021-2022 school year (with the majority of students in-person) the OCPS dashboard has reported 2,599 student cases of Covid-19. (And 624 employee cases.)
Have we reached the peak?
In other countries surges driven by the Delta Variant have peaked hard and then receded quickly (after natural immunity is reached in the un-vaccinated population via infections) so we we may see a sharp decline in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in September.
I own three 7.5AH Ego batteries. My earliest had a manufacture date of 2014 (although I purchased it in 2017 with a mower manufactured in 2016). I now have four years of operation on this battery.
As shown in the graph, the capacity dropped off over time (down to a low of 260 watt hours in year 3, which is 63% of the original 410 watt hour capacity), but in year 4 it has actually increased a bit to 290 watt hours (70% of the original capacity).
My 2nd 7.5AH battery was purchased in July of 2018 (manufactured in May of 2018).
As you can see, its graph has gone down, and so far hasn’t popped back up. At the three year mark it is also down to a 260 watt hour capacity (63% of it’s new capacity).
My third 7.5AH battery has a 2019 manufacture date, but it’s still in its first year of “use”, so I don’t have a fancy graph for it yet, although I have started to include it in the comparison bar graph below:
So far, all three of my 7.5 AH batteries have followed a very similar capacity vs time curve, and you can expect one of these batteries to retain an average of 90% capacity in year 1, 72-75% capacity in year 2, and 63% capacity in year 3.
[Plus, they MAY bounce back up to 70% capacity in year 4, if the other two follow the path taken by my first battery.]