November comes; and once more we can appreciate, if only a little, what drove Guy Fawkes in his abortive attempt to demolish Parliament. On November 8 we will be holding an election in New Zealand. Our televisions drum on about how those that don't vote can't complain. But what kind of choice do we have? The choice between a noose and a bullet?

All over the land we are seeing the election hoardings go up advertising various political parties. The three I have seen so far are from National, Labour and The Greens.

The first hoarding is from Labour, with a nice big picture of the current Prime Minister touched up copiously with Photoshop and the message "Party Vote Labour" on a plain red background. The message is simple; Helen Clark would like you to vote for her party. Sadly there is no hint of a reason why we should.

Today I made the decision to build another autonomous boat. The best way to learn is by doing; but unfortunately you can make some pretty big mistakes using this approach. The biggest mistake I made when making my first boat was choice of construction material; Balsa.

Electric cars are not yet available as viable commercial offerings in NZ. However it is interesting to note some interestings facts. First of all on a per joule basis electrical power is far less expensive than petrol. Therefore if you assumed that if every joule of power was used for motive power it would make sense to use electrical power over petrol power. But that is not true. In fact with standard petrol cars they are only 15% efficient, that is 85% of the joules are wasted as heat. With hybrids the percentage is better; 30% efficient, with only 70% of the energy wasted.