Bril Fountain Pen Ink From India

Bril is a manufacturer of fountain pen inks based in Southern India. I believe that they are headquartered in Bangalore, but also have a regional office or factory in Chennai (Madras).
I was in Chennai a few weeks ago, so had the opportunity to buy a couple of bottles of Bril Ink to bring back with me to London. I now regret having bought only two bottles (Blue and Red) and wish I had bought a dozen or so. Given how cheap they are, they are perfect for use in mixing colours and experimenting to produce interesting colours.

Bril Royal Blue
60ml glass bottle
Manufactured in 2012
Price: INR 14 (Around $0.25)

Bril Red
60ml glass bottle
Manufactured in 2008
Price: INR 12 (Around $0.22)

Now that is what I call cheap, specially compared to the ~$6-7 I pay for the cheapest fountain pen inks in London. And these are good quality inks mind you, they may not be the best in the world but are more than good enough for the pens that I use on a daily basis (Lamy Safari, Hero 616 and Reynolds Grippy). I also see no reason why they wouldn't work well with my Waterman or Pelikan, but I haven't used them in a long time so cannot confirm.

I am not an expert in inks at all, so might find it difficult to describe them. The Bril Royal Blue is a very dark blue, as dark as (and actually quite similar to) the Diamine Imperial Blue that I have been using for the last year or so. I was hoping for something lighter so I could have some variety, so I might mix it with a little bit of green to get a lighter blue. The Bril Red is actually quite light, almost pinkish in hue. I am not sure if this is because it is originally so or because I bought a 2008 manufactured batch that may have lightened over time. The Bril Red made a great mixer to mix 50:50 with the Diamine Poppy Red (which is very dark), to give me a good medium red.

Bril also produces a number of other colours such as Black, Turquoise Blue, Green, Pink, Purple etc that the shop I went to did not have. Bril itself has a long history in India, mainly based in Southern India for several decades. They have faced a great challenge in the last few years with almost everyone switching to using ballpoints, but I sincerely hope that they continue to have enough demand to stay in business for the next few decades to come.

The address of Bril that I found on the bottle was:

Industrial Research Corporation
#32 (Old No. 148), L.B.Road, Chennai - 600041
Consumer Care Ph. No. +91 44 2491 1266
Email: brilinfo@brilindia.com

Studying Spanish in Spain

I have been doing a little bit of research into studying Spanish in Spain and I thought it would be useful to share it in case this could be of help to anyone looking to make a similar decision. I have looked specifically at Spain for geographical reasons, so could not possibly comment on the advantages of Spain vs. Latin America, though Latin America is clearly an option for most people. For my analysis I have also considered a study period of around 3-6 months, with intensive classes (i.e. daily classes of 4-5 hours), enough to jump 3-6 levels in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

The reason for looking to study Spanish in a hispanophone country is obvious, one can learn a lot faster when studying an intensive course in a total immersion environment than when studying a foreign language in your home country. Now normally I would consider the national language and cultural institute to be the gold standard against which other options would have to be compared, e.g. Goethe Institut for German and Instituto Cervantes for Spanish. Strangely enough, while there are multiple Goethe Institut branches within Germany aimed at foreigners, Instituto Cervantes seems to have branches only outside Spain. This leaves private schools and public/private universities as pretty much the only organized options for studying Spanish in Spain.

First question: Private School vs. University

Private Schools: There are a number of private schools across Spain, which specialize in teaching foreign students, mainly for short courses. Better known examples include Don Quijote, Berlitz, Cactus, Enforex etc.

Universities: A number of universities conduct specials courses of Spanish as a foreign language, run by their department of foreign languages but often run separately from the main university. They award diplomas or attendance certificates rather than degrees, much the same as a private schools.

Between the two options, I have a strong preference for studying Spanish at a university for a couple of reasons:

• I quite like the idea of studying in a university with the academic atmosphere that it comes with. Now I know that most of the Spanish schools are somewhat cut-off from the main uni, but in most cases you would still get the benefit of using the uni libraries, computer centre and in some cases the sports facilities as well, giving you a chance to interact with the local students. This compares quite favourable to the private schools which tend to be smaller with just a few classrooms and an office in a small building, with interaction limited to other foreign students.
• I think it sounds better later in life to say that you spent 6 months studying Spanish at the University of Salamanca than it does to say that you spent the same time doing short term courses with Don Quijote. Even if the course are quite similar in content and quality, presentation does matter and I think time spent at a uni makes a better impression.

Second question: Which University

This was the hard question, with most of the universities having something or the other to recommend them, so I think ultimately the decision will be different for each person based on personal circumstances. What I have done below is list some of the main characteristics of each of the universities so each person can decide whether this is something they are looking for. My personal opinion of what is a pro and what is a con is also here but your opinion might of course differ.

University of Salamanca

• Salamanca university is the oldest uni in Spain (established in the 14 or 1500s) and one of the most prestigious as well. Having studied Spanish in Salamanca looks good to other people I believe. (Pro)
• Salamanca seems to be a uni town specializing in teaching Spanish to foreigners, and so is full of Spanish schools in addition to the uni and thousands of foreign students through the year. Accordingly the town seems to be a bit overwhelmed and have lost a bit of its localness (Con)
• Salamanca is a relatively small town with no airport of its own. The nearest airport is in Madrid and is a 2 and a half hour bus ride away, which could be a real pain if you plan to fly back home for a few days every month or so. (Con)
• Salamanca is in the middle of nowhere with little around the city for hours worth of bus travel other than dry scrubland. There may be places of natural beauty around, which I have not yet looked into. (Con)
• The locals in Salamanca are supposed to speak with what most Spaniards seem to consider the “best” Spanish accent. (Pro)

University of Malaga

• Malaga University is one of the newest in Spain, set up in the 1970s, so does not have the gravitas of Salamanca for example. (Con)
• Malaga is bang in the middle of the Costa del Sol and it the main transit point for tourists, so perhaps comes across as not so serious. (Con)
• Malaga airport is only half an hour away from Malaga town and has numerous connections all over Europe due to Costa del Sol tourism, making it the 4^th busiest in Spain. (Pro)
• Malaga is a mid-sized city making it big enough to have all the facilities you are looking for while at the same time being small enough to get around easily in. (Pro)
• While Malaga will provide a very local experience as it is not iteslf a magnet for tourists or foreign students, the accent of the locals in the province of Andalucia (of which Malaga is the largest city) is quite hard for a beginner to understand and sounds a bit different from the rest of Spain. (Con)
• Malaga is by the sea and Malaga University's Spanish school is very near the very nice beaches of Pedregalejo (Pro)
• Malaga seems to be quite cheap – the course itself is around 2/3rds the cost of those in others such as Salamanca and Madrid, and living costs including rent seem to be lower as well (Pro)

Autonomous University of Barcelona

• Barcelona is a wonderful city to live in though a little on the larger side (Pro)
• Barcelona is expensive compared to some of the other cities to live in as a result of its size (Con)
• Barcelona is by the seaside with excellent beaches (Pro)
• Barcelona airport is very easily accessible from the city (around 30 minutes travel) and is very well connected with the rest of Europe (Pro)
• The local language spoken in Barcelona is not Castillian Spanish, but Catalan (Con)

University of Alicante

• Alicante is in the middle of the Costa Blanca and Alicante Airport (30 minutes away from the city) is well connected to other parts of Europe (Pro)
• Alicante seems to be a good sized town and is by the sea with reasonably nice beaches (Pro)
• The local language spoken in Alicante is not Castillian Spanish at all, but Valencian, which is a dialect of Catalan (Con)

Granada University

• Granada is a historic town in Andalucia and is supposed to be one of the more beautiful places in Spain (Pro)
• Granada has the same issues with Andalucian Spanish as Malaga does, without the countervailing conveniences of the beach or a well connected airport (Con)

Antonio Nebrija University of Madrid and Complutense University of Madrid

• Madrid is the capital of Spain, with an excellent airport around 30 minutes away from the city centre, with flights connecting it to places all over the world (Pro)
• Being a large city, it is more expensive than most of the other options in this list (Con)
• Madrid has excellent nightlife and cultural attractions including museums (Pro)
• I have been to Madrid several times on work and personally do not care for it much. It just seems to be a bit cold and business-like to me. (Con)

Other Universities

There seem to be a few other universities such as Sevilla, Gran Canaria and Santiago de Compustela that seem to offer Spanish courses but do not seem to have organized themselves enough to offer a wide veriety of courses, so are unlikely to suit the majority of students. However if you are looking for a short course, specially a summer course you could get lucky and find a course at the time you are looking for. I would love to spend some time in Gran Canaria if I could.

My Choice - Malaga

After taking all the above factors into account, I would say that if I were to do such a course I would almost certainly choose the University of Malaga on account of the airport connections (I would like to fly back to London often), the beach and the lower costs. Regarding the accent it is true that the Andalucian accent is hard to understand so it would be difficult to interact with locals, but I figured that if I can ultimately learn to understand it, I will be better off as I would have no problem with standard Spanish, but will in addition be able to understand one of the hardest accents, which people who have studied in Salamanca/Madrid might struggle with.

Useful Links

http://www.unispain.com/Spanish-University-Courses-Spain.htm

http://www.topspanishschools.com/scgi-bin/Spanish-University-Courses-Spain.htm
http://www.cursoextranjeros.uma.es/

http://www.facebook.com/cursosdeespanol.uma.es

Installed The SAE Connector On The Yamaha Vity

So I finally got around to doing everything I needed to do to make the Vity SAE-ready to allow me to connect the Garmin Zumo 660 directly to the scooter battery for power on long rides. First thing I had to do was to solder the positive exposed negative insulated SAE end to the exposed wires on the Zumo handlebar mount, which now looks like this (see below). After soldering I covered it with heat shrink tubing as well as red and black tape respectively as my soldering was a bit jagged.

Next, this part had to be fixed to the battery:

The two ring terminal ends get screwed on to the two terminals of the battery, which wasquite easy. However, the problem I came up against was how to get the SAE end (positive insulated negative exposed) out of the battery chamber so that I did not have to unscrew the battery cover each time I wanted to connect the zumo (and ride with the battery exposed). Luckily my Zumo was due for its first service so the very helpful workshop guy at George White's helped me out for free. The wire now goes out on the right side of the battery chamber (see the pair of wires on the right side of the photo below) and comes out of the right side panelling of the scooter, just in front of the exhaust.

I have put a polythene cover with a rubber band on the terminal to keep it dry when not in use. It is barely visible, which makes it convenient and hopefully vandal-proof.

Here's a picture of the whole setup. The Zumo is on the handlebar on the left, could not put it on the right as the right handlebar is the throttle. The wire from the handlebar mount with a soldered-on SAE end goes diagonally across to the right side panel where it connects on to the SAE end of the fused wire connected to the battery.

Finally it is all done and ready to use. Looking forward to long rides on the Vity without getting lost, finally!

[First Published 21 February 2010]

Adopting The SAE Standard On My Yamaha Vity

So having decided to adopt the SAE connector as my standard for powering my scooter accessories, I have gone ahead and ordered a number of different parts from the interweb which will make my Garmin Zumo (and other accessories) fully functional on longer rides.

Here's a list of everything I have ordered, hopefully they should get here soon.

Battery Tender Terminal:

This is a common trade name for a SAE lead with ring terminals on the other end. The reason is that this is one of the shipped components of the Battery Tender battery charging system. This part goes on to the battery to allow easy connection and disconnection of the Battery Tender without unscrewing the battery covers each time. One end of the lead has ring terminals on both the positive and the negative wire (helpfully marked red and black).

These are attached to two terminals of the battery itself - simply unscrew the terminal screws which keep the battery electricals in place, add the ring terminal and put the screw back on. This keeps the lead firmly connected to the battery at all times. The other end is the SAE hermaphrodite end. While theoretically I could make either the exposed or the insulated half the positive, it makes sense for the insulated half to the be the positive side to prevent short circuiting. Helpfully, the SAE end does come with a waterproof cover to further prevent chances of a short circuit. In between is an in-line blade fuse placement in the wire with a 15amp fuse in it already. This is very helpful as the fuse will blow if more than 15amps is being drawn (e.g. in case of a short circuit), preventing a nasty fire.

SAE wire:

This is just a plain old wire with a SAE terminal on one end and bare wires on the other. The wire is rated at 5amps which is more than enough for the Zumo 660. The Zumo 660 handlebar mount itself comes with a pair of bare wires. So what I need to do is strip all the wires, connect the two positives together and the two negatives together - either crimp them together in a butt splicer or solder them up.

SAE to cigarette lighter female:

As mentioned in the previous post, this is really useful as it will feed off the Vity battery when connected to the SAE output from the battery and I can plug in ipod or mobile travel chargers when needed.

More SAE wires:

Have also ordered 6 SAE power side wires and 6 SAE load side wires to use in the future with any other accessories I may want to connect to the battery. Now given that SAEs are hermaphrodite, I would have thought that there shouldn't be separate wires for power and load. However, the place I ordered them from has coloured wires (red for positive and black/white for negative). So on the source side, the red wire is attached to the insulated half and on the load side the red wire is attached to the exposed half. You can of course use one for the other as long as you don't then confuse them afterwards.

[First Published 3 February 2010]

External 12v Power for the Zumo 660 GPS

So I have been struggling with how to connect my GPS to a source of power so that it doesn't run out of power while I am riding. Quick recap on this: the Zumo 660 has a ~6.66Wh Lithium battery which runs the Zumo for ~2 hours on full charge after which it goes dead. Since I want it to run for longer, I need to run power to the Zumo from my scooter alternator, i.e. Alternator-> Rectifier-> 12V Scooter battery-> GPS.

So what I need to do is the following

1. The Zumo handlebar mount comes with two bare wires (see previous post), which need to be connected to the scooter battery.

2. However, due to the number of vandals in London I cannot connect the mount directly to the battery. If I did, I would have to leave the mount on the scooter all the time, which would almost certainly result in someone tearing it off out of spite or to sell it. Therefore, I need a detachable connector between the Zumo and the battery of the Vity. Someone could still vandalize the bit of wire and the female end of the connector I leave on the Vity but it hopefully will not stand out enough for that to happen.

3. Find a suitable DC connector to use. Had a look on the net - Wikipedia has a fair bit of info but there aren't really any other good resources on the net. I used sed what I could find on the net and in Maplin to do an analysis of my options, which is below.

Things I'm looking for in the connector

• Waterproof: The connection itself will not be protected from the elements, the connected wires will be in the front pocket of the scooter, so being waterproof is important.
• Sex: Most connectors are male/female but hermaphrodite connectors are a big plus in my view as this increases flexibility with what you can connect to what when dealing with leads.
• Availability: I am sure the US military has the world's most advanced 12V DC connectors, but I need something available off-the-shelf in electrical or DIY shops for cheap.

Options for 12V DC connectors to connect my Garmin Zumo GPS to my Vity battery:

Spade terminal: Normally used to for DC connections in home projects. Downside is that the insulation is not very good (i.e. risk of shorts) and not even water resistant let alone waterproof. Big upside is that it can be crimped onto wire which saves the effort of soldering - I am a big fan of not having to solder if it can be helped.

Molex: Normally used in computers. Downsides are it is not waterproof and has two positive wires (12V and 5V), which is more than I need.

Tamiya: Normally used in remote controlled planes and cars. Downside is it is not waterproof. Otherwise is easily available and not too expensive.

Cigarette lighter: Normally used as a 12V output in cars. Downsides are that it is not waterproof and apparently does not stay well fastened on bumpy roads. Big upsides are that male and female leads are widely available and cheap as are other accessories such as car ipod chargers, car usb chargers and car 12V-230V invertors for running AC equipment.

SAE: Normally used for motorcycle accessories such as battery chargers (e.g. battery tender), heated gloves etc. Seems like an obvious choice given that other motorcycle accessory manufacturors must use it for a reason. Can't see any obvious downsides, though connector leads are expensive in the UK (though very cheap in the US). Massive upsides are that they are waterproof, hermaphrodite connectors (which means more flexibility since no separate male and female leads) and not too difficult to find on the interweb.

Conclusion is that SAE connector is the obvious choice, though I must also buy a SAE to cigarette output (female) converter (see below) since so many travel accessory options are available with cigarette lighter male leads (e.g. ipod charger and blackberry charger). This way I can charge my ipod or mobile when I don't have the Zumo hooked in.

First Published 30 January 2010

Zumo 660 GPS for my Yamaha Vity Scooter

I'm not a big fan of blinging vehicles and generally prefer to keep them as minimalist as possible, same as my house. On the other hand I am a big of adding accessories with function and utility. The first thing I realised within the first one week of riding my new scooter and getting hopelessly lost in London repeatedly was that I really needed a GPS. Unfortunately it is not easy to use a regular GPS on a scooter for a number reasons like

1. The GPS needs to be waterproof

2. The regular windscreen suction holders can be used on the instrument panel but are useless as they come off on bumpy roads

3. The GPS needs to have bigger buttons to allow gloved hands to operate it

4. The GPS needs to have superior shock absorption capability due to being jerked around more on a motorcycle than in a car

Due to this, there is a separate range of motorcycle GPSs, which cost about twice as much as car GPSs. The leaders seem to be the the Tom Tom Rider and the Garmin Zumo. I bought the Garmin Zumo 660 as it had better reviews on Amazon and was the most recent of them so likely to have the fewest bugs.

This is what the Zumo 660 looks like:

The Zumo fits on to the handlebars using a ram u-bolt fitting which comes with the Zum.

This is what the Zumo mount and the RAM u-bolt fitting look like:

 

This is what the Zumo 660 looks like after being fit to a bike (not my bike!)

Having the GPS has massively improved my riding experience, my average journey time is now about half of what it used to be. This also means that I am looking forward to making slightly longer journeys to the outskirts of London and neighbouring counties once spring comes around. Need to prep out my scooter to do longer journeys. Not sure what that involves actually. In India people seem to be quite happy doing fairly long journeys on regular journeys and motorcycles. In the UK however, there is a whole different range of touring scooters and motorcycles, which are much larger than the regular sort and a lot more expensive. The regular (indian sized) scooters and motorcycles here seem to be confined to urban commuting.

One thing I do need to do is find alternative power supplies for my GPS. The Zumo 660 has a Lithium battery with ~6.66Wh (1.8Ah @ 3.7VDC) of peak storage capacity. To be conservative, let's use 6Wh of usable power. The Zumo 660 runs at ~3W of power usage (surprisingly low), which means that the GPS only ever runs for ~2 hours on its own battery, which needs to be supplemented for longer journeys. Now Garmin seems to have thought about this because the motorcycle mount includes a pair of bare wires which can be connected to an alternative power source, which would have to be DC and >3.7V. It seems that the mount is meant to be connected to the motorcycle battery (12VDC) so that it is powered off the motorcycle's alternator and can effectively keep going as long as the motorcycle is running (as long as the alternator is producing enough power - otherwise I would just be draining the battery).

Challenge for me now is to connect the GPS to the scooter battery. I could take it to a workshop to get it done, but where's the fun in that?

[First published 28 January 2010]

About This Page

This webpage is not my blog. I have tried writing a blog/online journal before but it was clear to me pretty quickly that I have neither the discipline nor possibly the activity of thought to come up with posts regularly. I knew I had to give up my blog writing when I started to begin every post with a variation on “I know it has been a long time since my last post”. By declaring this as not a blog I have now abdicated any kind of responsibility to post regularly.

How do I then define this webpage is the question. This webpage is my own little corner of the vast internet where I can publish (if I may call it that) my observations on things that I think others might find useful, specially where I have not found this information on the internet myself before posting. Hopefully this way I will be able to share with others my research on the subject and save them some googling effort and/or help spread my own views. That being the case, I expect that almost all visitors to this page will either find it when googling a subject covered by me or stumble upon it in some manner I cannot currently foresee.

Regarding content, I expect I will cover mainly topics of particular interest to me, such as 12v electrics, travel, languages, some literature/music and what I would like to call “how to get about in life”. I expect to rarely if ever cover politics – though I am quite politically aware I am still in the process of forming my political views and opinions.