Mad Mike Magee’s Musings

APRIL 2007  was unusual for the UK. The whole month was dead hot, and then the rains set in.  The swifts looked unhappy, two months of rain after the first of May doesn’t give them much chance to feed their little chicks.

But this April is far more like a regular English April. We append below a pic of how the  Sanyo solar panels have done so far this month. Of course, fuel prices have gone up since we took advantage of the Department of Trade and Industry’s “generous” 50 per cent grant.

THE LADS AND LASSES at nikkei.net have an interesting wee story about a breed of music players that offer far better quality than your average IC based gizmo.

The article said Sanyo and other manufacturers are rapidly moving into producing linear pulse code modulation (PCM) players. They apparently have the advantage that the technology does not compress data, with sampling frequencies of between 48 to 96KHz/sec and sampling bit rates are 16-24 bits.

They also are affordable, with prices under ¥50,000. There’s more here (subscription required).  ♣

A WHOLE YEAR of solar panels on the top of what used to be INQ Central, and these charts below give you an idea of the output of the 15 Sanyo solar panels on our roof.

The money we got back is slightly less than the £309 on this page below, but on the other hand we’re in credit with the electricity supplier and haven’t paid an electricity bill during all this time.

The amortisation rate is still, as we’ve said in the INQ before, about eight years. In early April we did have snow and I’m not climbing on the roof to sweep it off, so for practically a whole day the blanket of crystals delivered not particularly brilliant solar results, except back to the clear blue sky.

On the other bright side, the pigeons couldn’t poo on our arrayed panels and went skiing instead. ♥