Why I stretched my Land Rover

Someone asked me why I rebuilt my long-wheelbase Land Rover longer than it already was. I came up with the idea when I was trying to hang on to an academic career. I went back from industry (software) to do a postdoc, then some research assistantships while waiting for a lectureship opportunity, and I was […]

Building a trailer to accompany my Land Rover

My first idea for building the rear platform was to cut down a hi-cap rear tub, but that turned out to be much heavier than I expected, so I built the platform another way, and kept the rear tub with a view to building a trailer. That’s still in progress, but I thought it was […]

Adding a rear platform

I’d always liked the idea of a pickup body at the back, but hadn’t wanted to use up the length of the 170 for it, as I also wanted lots of interior space. But the maximum overhang allowed at the back is 60% of the wheelbase (in the case of multiple rear axles, measured from […]

My second trip to Albania, and OSCAL

I took a liking to Albania on my first visit, and met up with the local hackerspace, Open Labs, who invited me to come to their annual conference, OSCAL (Open Source Conference Albania). I happily booked transport and hotel for this, including a few days either side of the conference for general holiday and OpenStreetMap […]

Co-ordinating and logging informal runs and rides

In my post about Little Stoke Parkrun, I suggested that a computerized system for co-ordinating and recording informal runs, so that people could do something like Parkrun, but without anyone being able to demand anything from them on the excuse of them being an “organization”, would be useful. I’m a programmer, and have some ideas […]

Building a recumbent carrier

Sometimes I go on trips where I want to use my recumbent trike, that are further from home than I can reasonably cycle to. The trike can fit inside my Land Rover’s loadspace, but getting it in and out is cumbersome (particularly now that I have started to develop rotator cuff problems), and for some […]

A quick update on Land-Rover work

I haven’t been doing much work on my Land Rover recently, because of the cold weather and lack of available dry daylight hours. I’ve been doing some wiring (still in progress), but as you can see, there’s some tidying-up to do on that before I regard it as “done” for a while. At least the […]

At last, I go to the Taizé meeting in Prague

Soon after I heard of the Taizé movement, I saw a notice about the New Year’s meeting in Prague in 1990. Unfortunately, the local contact was someone in my parish who didn’t like me (OK, I fancied her, and she didn’t fancy me back and didn’t want me to be able to go) and she […]

More Land Rover work: the tandem wheelarches

With a bit of subcontracting (for TIG-welding of aluminium, as well as the folding of it in a brake press), I’ve got Marmalade’s treadplate wheelarches built, and a lot of treadplate rivetted onto the sides of the vehicle and welded to the arches to stabilize them. With a bit of brachiation, it’s now possible to […]

EMFcamp (and some geek clothing)

I attended my first geek festival earlier this year: EMFcamp. I really enjoyed it, and will definitely go again. As I was travelling, and camping, in Marmalade, my six-wheeled Land Rover, I helped Makespace (the hackerspace of which I am a member) by transporting several people and lots of stuff there, including a marquee. Only […]