Departing Australia was a bit more chaotic than usual. We had to turn back as mum forgot her address book. This lost us a bit of time. However, the most annoying part was the queue for the Tourist Refund Scheme. It clearly hasn't kept pace with its success. There were many disappointed and angry travellers, mainly Chinese and on our flight, who were told to board as the departure time was nearing and the claims wouldn't be processed in time. The queue was in excess of thirty minutes and there were only three staff processing claims. Perhaps a lack of communications caused the excessive delay [a la "not food; sweets" lady on Border Security].
Anyway, I don't think the scheme is a good use of resources. $300 is probably a bit low, compared to the postal declaration limit of $1000. There must be a better way to encourage spending locally while avoiding such excessive processing. It's a bit like Woolworths Dickson though. There's no incentive to add staff at Dickson since there's no real alternatives to the queues there for inner Canberra. In the same light, you must queue for TRS as it's the only way to get your money back.
Oh, I also managed to lose my phone's battery cover with integrated antenna. Lameness.
Awaiting Sam's comments...
Monday, August 29, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Bike light phase 1
Finding the right combination of price, brightness and battery configuration can be difficult for a bicycle light. I started off with one from here:
http://www.buyincoins.com/details/white-led-head-bike-bicycle-light-flashlight-w-mounting-access-02-product-379.html
It came with a pretty useless reflector and LED.
My next step was to replace the LED with a Cree XM-L. It's a bit excessive but oh well.
I had read about the epoxy layer being too thick on the board so I followed some steps to make the thermal interface more direct. My tubes of Arctic Silver thermal epoxy had gummed up so it was a bit of trouble gluing it down!
Running off three rechargeable AAA cells directly, the LED draws around 350mA. I'd say this is about the minimum I'd go with for now, with about 1W output. I'll take the XM-L module to phase two and swap in an older module for this torch... I think I still have an XR-C somewhere that I haven't blown up yet.
http://www.buyincoins.com/details/white-led-head-bike-bicycle-light-flashlight-w-mounting-access-02-product-379.html
My next step was to replace the LED with a Cree XM-L. It's a bit excessive but oh well.
I had read about the epoxy layer being too thick on the board so I followed some steps to make the thermal interface more direct. My tubes of Arctic Silver thermal epoxy had gummed up so it was a bit of trouble gluing it down!
Running off three rechargeable AAA cells directly, the LED draws around 350mA. I'd say this is about the minimum I'd go with for now, with about 1W output. I'll take the XM-L module to phase two and swap in an older module for this torch... I think I still have an XR-C somewhere that I haven't blown up yet.
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