It is the same in the UK.
But because we have a smart meter, our energy price can change every 30 minutes. So if our provider predicts that tomorrow lunchtime will be expensive for electricity, it could charge us more. Or it could tell the battery to take over.
August is meant to be full of gloriously hot days. An endless parade of sunshine and drinks in the park. This year it seemed mostly grey, miserable, and prone to pissing it down at a moment's notice. We all know that solar panels' efficiency wilts in the heat, but do they get a tan work [...]
A blog post about my London-based solar panels and battery.
You can get 15% off this and other equipment with discount code EDENT15 https://zybervr.com/?ref=ZQSV8dU4RVvSbz Full blog post coming soon!
I got sent this unit to review. It's pretty good if you want a neat way to store and charge at the same time. Nothing revolutionary, but gets the job done. Happy to answer any questions about it.
To be clear - they also work with data transfer (well, except the power bank and neck cooler).
I copy ebooks to my reader over USB, transfer photos off my camera, and print photos - all via USB-C.
All my gadgets use USB-C. Bluetooth headphones, eReader, laptop, printer, power bank, 360 camera, they all charge via USB-C.
Hell, even my neck cooler runs off it.
Has anyone here read the book? I enjoyed the film and wondered how they compared.
Yup! That's my official photo from the ceremony - I had to swap back to the stock headstrap so it would fit under the cap.
OK... OK... the entire programme wasn't dedicated to VR - but my final project was called "Exploring the visualisation of hierarchical cybersecurity data within the Metaverse".
I mapped a large amount of information into a Directed Acyclic Graph, made it interactive, then conducted experiments to see if people could understand the information - and whether VR made them feel sick.
So, I decided to get my official graduation photo taken while wearing the Meta Quest 2 headset. I wasn't quite brave enough to walk across the stage wearing it!
FireStick is somewhat hackable. You can sideload Android apps onto it. For example, I got Apple Music running on it https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/06/yes-you-can-run-apple-music-natively-on-your-android-firestick/
You don't have to subscribe to Amazon Prime to use the other TV services. You can also install Kodi if you want to play back local media.
The FireStick will use USB power - so you can use your TV's USB ports rather than a separate plug. It also has an Ethernet adapter - I think only the more expensive Apple devices use Ethernet.
"Kill It With Fire" which is a great look at dealing with legacy computer systems.
"Lessons In Chemistry" which is a delightfully draft novel about fifties feminism.
Spent the weekend watching my wife grind through all the TOTK side quests.
Meanwhile I plowed through two ebooks.
Win for both of us!
We recently upgraded our home solar storage to 4.8kWh. The battery has sensors to detect how much solar power we're generating, and how much electricity we're buying from (or selling to) the grid. That means... GRAPHS AND STATISTICS! Our battery was commissioned just after midday. This graph shows: ...
I've just installed a bigger solar battery - so I thought I'd share some statistics from it.
Why do communities exist for - to pick an example - atheists? In lots of parts of the world, there is huge social pressure to conform to a specific religion. If you decide not to, or leave the religion, or have questions, it can be a terrifying and lonely experience.
It's the same here. Lots of us feel huge pressure from family, friends, co-workers, and society to do something that we don't want to do. So it is nice to have a community where we can discuss that and reassure each other. Because it is difficult to do what is right when everyone is telling you you're wrong.
Just got a new solar battery installed, so I'm going to spend some time poking it and making sure it's working. COME ON SUNSHINE!
The drive itself will work with any processor. If all you have is data on there, it will work.
Or do you mean you want to swap the drive which has the operating system on it?
That's what the law says.
The MP might not be selected by their party to stand in the next election. But there's no law about MPs behaving in a way contrary to the wishes of their electorate.
Indeed, how could an MP do their job properly if there was? If they've got a slim majority there would be almost endless recall petitions from opposition parties.
If they voted against their party, they could be fired by the party against the wishes of the voters.
What bar so you want to set for voters' votes to be invalidated? At the moment we have criminal acts and suspension. What other thresholds would you add - and how would you stop people from abusing them?
A recall petition is only available under very limited circumstances.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05089/
Nadine has neither been suspended nor convicted of a crime. So there's no petition.
Even if there were, the threshold for the petition succeeding is only 10% of registered voters. And you can bet that opposition parties would easily he able to drum up that level of support.
Yes, there are magnetic USB cables which do data. Here's my review of one https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/10/gadget-review-subbytech-magnetic-charge-sync-cables/
I enjoyed Portraits of Childfree Wealth - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/03/book-review-portraits-of-childfree-wealth-jay-zigmont/
The book is free and has a fairly realistic look at the (American) childfree experience.
Six years ago today we launched https://openbenches.org/ - it is a crowdsourced map of memorial benches from around the world.
Uses OSM for displaying the maps and letting uploaders pick the exact right spot.
There's an API and data-dump so it can be incorporated into OSM - but our data isn't always as precise as needed. I'm still trying to work out a way to map an OSM bench ID to our ID.
If you're out mapping and spot a memorial bench, please do submit a geotagged photo to our site :-)
Magnets. (How do they work?)
I replaced all my USB-C and Micro-USB connectors with magnetic ones. No more orientation worries, no more fumbling in the dark, no more not-inserting-it-hard-enough. Just bring the two into proximity and them magically snap together.
Bliss.
Discord is where information goes to die.
Please just stick things on a website. I'm happy to help you set one up.
Yup - I quite agree. I have a portable powerbank which will also charge gadgets using USB-PD. I fill it up from solar and use it when I'm out and about.
Even my eReader has USB-C. Makes going on holiday much more convenient.
About digital and technology projects in government.
I wrote this for my (previous) employer. I thought you might find it interesting. SPF is a complex beast.
I recently read Darek Kay's excellent post about styling RSS feeds and wanted to do something similar. So, here's my simple guide to styling your WordPress blog's RSS / Atom theme. The end result is that if someone clicks on a link to your feed, they see something nicely formatted, like this: Prereq...
Last week, this strange mention appeared on my Mastodon feed. After a bit of clicking around, I figured out what had happened. A user on the Kbin social network had linked to my Mastodon profile. Thanks to the magic of the ActivityPub protocol, it filtered into my mentions - even though I've never e...
I've been on the Fediverse since 2016, and I still get a little mixed up by how things work.
I'm not thick. I know it doesn't sound like much of a boast, but I'm pretty competent at this whole adulting lark. But it appeared that I had forgotten a 4 digit number I'd set up less than a minute ago! The security guard smiled wearily at me, "It happens to everyone!" She said. Which, [...]
A little rant for this Saturday about a stupid usability problem which will never get fixed.
Anyone got a modern guide to getting NFC payments working with the latest version of Lineage?
I've got a OnePlus 5T (dumpling) running LOS 20.
Got some of my banking apps working - but Google Wallet just won't work.
The QWERTY layout is, I grant you, an illogical mess. I'm happy to hear your arguments that Dvorak is the one true way. Or that Colemak is several percent faster. But QWERTY is a standard now. Everyone uses it on their laptops and phones. It is used everywhere. Except, it turns out, streaming servic...
I've written a blog post about the most important technological issue of our time - why every streaming service has its own weird keyboard.
Apple have an Android version of their Apple Music app. The Amazon FireStick runs Android. So you can run Apple Music on the FireStick, right? WRONG! The official advice is to link Apple Music to the Alexa Skill - with its justifiably low review score. But we're hackers, we can do better than that, ...
I've written a quick post showing how to run Apple Music's Android app on your Amazon FireStick.
I hope a little bit of self-promotion is allowed?
My wife and I run "Open Benches" which is a crowdsourced collection of memorial benches. We've got about 25,000 in the UK!
If you're out for a walk in the sunshine this weekend, please take a photo of any memorial benches you see. You'll need to turn on location tagging on your phone's camera - that way we can accurately place the benches on the map.
Enjoy!
