Urban development of my local community

My local municipality is struggling with getting the population to accept that the future needs to be planned. Population growth in general, and our closeness to Oslo in particular bears promise that we will be a popular place to live - if we succeed at combining the demands of urban living with good services like public transport and schools.

Years ago I came across a map from 1914 over the area, called "Fet - rektangel 15C" in mappese. The image on the right shows the place where I live, with surroundings. Already a hundred years ago the area was industrialized, but now the major employer is a shopping center. An up-to-date birds view is available in Google Maps, while the Norwegian Mapping Authority has a 1883 version of "Fet - rektangel 15C" here.
The black lines in the map are railroad tracks, and the local industry even produced railroad cars and locomotives. So rail is deeply rooted in the local culture, but should that keep us from getting better solutions?

So what will this area look like in the future - will the development be linear or exponential? One question I find interesting is whether the railway will continue to be the backbone of local transport or whether Bus Rapid Transit will take over. In my opinion rail is OK for people living along the line, but once you live some distance away the hassle of getting to and from the train benefits the use of cars. And that may not be future proof. As I understand, the local transport authority is replacing a system of direct bus lines with using buses to feed passengers to the trains. And it doesn't work too good. Maybe it would be better to use the area set aside for tracks for a BRT system. If this works for growing economies in the New World, then it could work for us as well.

Whether buses or trains make the needs for transport scale into the future remains to be seen. But the future also requires homes for the growing population. That is a more sensitive topic for the community. A significant number of people live in their own houses, with a garage and a garden. This needs a lot of space and makes it difficult for everybody to be close to transportation services. So the politicians want to build high rise buildings for more efficient housing. But the people don't like the prospect of having their view polluted by human constructs. So suddenly the politicians turned around, maybe because we are having a local election later this year!

Internet of Things on the High Seas

In the beginning of March I travelled to Gibraltar to board a LNG tanker. My task was installation of temperature sensors in the engine room so that key parameters could be monitored remotely, via satellite link wherever the ship is sailing.

A LNG tanker is a tanker for Liquid Natural Gas, the fossil fuel of the future. Not only is LNG a key ingredient in industrial processes and an important energy source - new regulations are also helping LNG becoming an important fuel for ships in order to reduce the pollution profile of international shipping.

On a LNG tanker the cargo is also used as fuel for propulsion. Although the cargo is kept liquid at the boiling point of the gas (-161 degrees Celsius), there is always some liquid that turns into gas, and this gas is used for energy production. The alternative could be to have separate fuel and use energy to convert the gas back to liquid, but that is both more complicated and more expensive.

Anyway, the development of LNG based propulsion in general and LNG tankers in particular is eager to understand how the energy in the gas is converted to useful work or wasted as heat. Traditional installation of temperature sensors rely on electrical wring. This can be both costly and time consuming. Therefore wireless technology can be very interesting, but a wireless sensor network can meet significant technical challenges deep inside a metal ship.

But the installation was successful - everything worked (and works) fine. In addition to making the temperatures available remotely, the information is also available in the vessel’s control room. This way it will no longer be needed for a member of the crew to walk around to take readings at each sensor.

The "Internet of Things" (IoT) is a popular technology topic nowadays. Many hobbyists are experimenting with instrumenting their homes, semiconductor companies are developing new and better components, and traditional industry are joining the IoT bandwagon. Compared to the popular image of IoT the size of the sensor and the transmitter in the picture may seem bulky. But this equipment is meant for an industrialized environment with high temperatures and vibration, so good packaging certainly seems to be a good idea!

The Drywood picture

Last year we changed the color of our house. Originally it was painted red with yellow frames around windows etc. But last year we concluded that we were ready for a change.

Part of the story has been covered already, but there is more! Because the Norwegian representative for the Dutch Drywood paint arranged a photo competition. They asked their customers to submit pictures of their use of Drywood paint, and the winner would receive a stay at a spa resort for two.

I felt that we deserved to win so I submitted the picture on the right. It shows my wife standing on stacks of empty paint cans while pretending to paint. Compared with the other entries I saw I felt pretty confident, but in a show of strength I added a Limerick:

Byggfruen vil gjerne på spa
Hun sier til utførende da
Du får stable opp spann
Så jeg male litt kan
Slik at jeg æren kan ta

Google Translate fails at making a good translation. Norwegian words like "byggfruen" and "utførende" combined with rhyme is not trivial.

Of course we won, and she invited her sister along. This was during the schools' autumn break, so I won quality time with the kids.

Eldhuset

Ascensio  tend to come on a Thursday(!), and that makes it easy to take the Friday off for an extended weekend. So the excuse for a boys on tour was there for the taking. This time we aimed for the Håøya island in the Oslo fjord.     


Håøya is interesting in many respects:

• largest island in the Oslo fjord
• unique plant life
• White-tailed eagles nested there this year, for the first time in a very long time
• part of the Oscarsborg Fortress until modern times

So we hired a cabin from the local recreational council and took the boat from Oslo harbor in beautiful weather.

I was there on a school camp when I was a kid, and coming back brought back memories. As with other parts of the Norwegian countryside Håøya is also suffering from the absence of cows, goats and sheep. They used to keep the landscapes open, but now every nice view is disappearing in shrubbery and forest.

But at Håøya they are trying to do something about it. A goat farmer brought his herd to the island to manage the vegetation, and produce goat cheese. We were too early to enjoy the cheese, but maybe next year!

House of MOS Technology

Around Easter I started the process of changing the color of my house. We renovated and extended the house around the turn of the millenium. It used to be covered with Eternit, but we replaced that with wood paneling in red and details in yellow. But making sure the house looked OK when the coloring was an oil based wood stain proved challenging. As a consequence we decided to change to paint instead.

Well, the wife suggested that we use the same colors as we used on a new garage we built in 2012, but I was skeptic because I thought the result would be too dark. But when I noticed the NCS codes for the colors I changed my mind!
In the picture I have indicated how the new colors 6502 and 8502 are used. You can also see the original colors (after wire brushing and washing). I had to remove the rain gutter to get the scaffolding in place. That is why the edge of the roof does not look right.

So why did the codes of the colors mean so much to me? Well, when I was a kid in the seventies the microprocessor revolution was happening. I never had a Apple II but its processor, the 6502, was one of the technological wonders of that time, and I read everything I could find about such things. And the 8502 was based on the 6502 with special functionality for the Commodore 128.

Both of these processors were made by MOS Technology, and I fear that having these colors on my house will be as close as I will ever get to this technology.

Call me a nerd, but it is my House of MOS Technology.

Beha #10603

Back in 1988 I bought an apartment that contained stuff that the previous owner didn't care about. One of the items was this electric convector heater produced by the Norwegian company Beha.

Since I have a weakness for old stuff I brought the heater with me as I moved, although it always ended up stored away. I guess it didn't fit with my style or meet elementary WAF standard, and its electrical wiring wasn't up to modern standards either.

Earlier this year I started a long overdue clearing out of my basement. Stuff was thrown away or recycled, but what to do about this charming, pre-war piece of Norwegian industrial history?
Well, I offered it to three bodies that I thought could be interested in giving it a good home.

It turned out that the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History had a similar one already, the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology declined politely, while the company was very interested. I suspect that they lacked this part of their history in their collections.

So we agreed on shipment and off it went, the Beha #10603 to Beha's facilities in Porsgrunn. Hopefully its lion's paw-like feet and old fashioned appearance will not keep it from being put on display there. 

Øystein's Twine

My house is partially heated by circulating water in the floors, and this hot water is generated by a heat pump. This pump, the hot water tank and the rest of the distribution system is meant to require minimal attention. But when I found myself looking for a target for my Twine, I found that monitoring the heat pump allowed me to maximize my use of its sensors.

Embedded in the Twine there are sensors for temperature, vibration and the device's own orientation. To this I added a moisture sensor, so that I can monitor:

• the temperature of the water pump
• the vibration of the water pump
• any water released to control the pressure in the system

Before activating the Twine I had to rely on observing the heat pump to get its status. As I frequently have business in the basement this was no big problem, but I had to be at home. With the addition of the Twine I can now get the status over the Internet, whether I was elsewhere in the house or somewhere with Internet access.

Access to the Twine goes via the services of Supermechanical, so I depend on they staying in business for the setup to work.

By the way, the use of solutions like Twine is included in the concept of Welfare technology, applied to finding ways to reduce the burden of the elderly boom that is expected in the future.