Wesley's Tool-Box

While I've personally witnessed several solar eclipses before, none of them were total. So when I found out that one such occurrence would take place near a direct flight destination - Madrid, Spain - I seized the opportunity. Because Madrid was just outside the path of totality, I went to Segovia, a city about 70 km to the north, a day after my arrival. I scouted for a good location to observe the eclipse and eventually settled on a spot near Alcázar of Segovia. As you can see above, it was an excellent vantage point.

Since Segovia was a bit off from the "optimal" location, the totality would last just short of a minute, compared to nearly 2 minutes in some places. So that left less margin for error and thus I came prepared. Fortunately, my efforts paid off, and ended up shooting 35 photos of the totality, as well as several hundred of the partial eclipse. And I was able to do continuous shoots for the most part, except for a brief break where I had some issues with the tracker I brought. The entire sequence has been uploaded to YouTube.

Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers (KIEE) held its 57th Summer Conference at Mona Yongpyong Resort in Pyeongchang-gun, Gangwon State, Korea on July 2026. This event provided me with an opportunity to present a follow-up to my Bolt EV battery thesis from 5 years ago. I had originally planned to write up on the results of the battery degradation after 8 years and 160,000 km of driving. But due to the battery recall that took place 4 years ago, I had to modify the topic slightly.

The result was a comparison of degradation trends between two sets of batteries, each going for roughly 4 years an 100,000 km. While I will probably still get the newer battery up to 160,000 km point eventually for yet another thesis, the one I presented this time was meaningful in that the trends were starkly different despite keeping the driving patterns more or less consistent. For those who are interested, here are the original paper and the video of the presentation I gave.

Thesis: 'Comparative Analysis of Real Life Degradation Trends Between Original and Improved Batteries on Bolt EV' - submitted for 2026 KIEE Summer Conference (PDF file)

Video: 'Bolt EV Battery Analysis thesis - 2026 KIEE Summer Conference' - YouTube