Tag: electricity
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F-Day plus 130
A hundred and thirty days since we got flooded out of our home, and remedial works are starting to ramp up. Today an electrician, tracing a fault that's developed in the wiring, cut a hole through a wall to repair it and threw up so much dust that it's hard to see anything!
I was nearby, helping a restoration company assess the damage to the ride-on lawnmower that was in the garage and whose motor hasn't started since (the garage saw some of the deepest water that hit us), when I heard the fire alarm and went to check on them. All is well: we don't need to add 'fire' to the list of disasters befalling our house this year! -
Tonight I learned that when my electric car gets down to 5% battery, it sounds an alarm.
And that when it gets down to 4% battery, it sounds a louder alarm.
And that when it gets down to 3% battery, it engages 'limited performance' mode and shows a picture of a tortoise.
And that when it gets down to 2%, and you've already turned off the heating and the radio and you're wondering how much power the windscreen wipers are using... that's when it stops showing you it's estimated range.
Fortunately, I then only had half a mile left to go. But for a while there it felt a little bit hairy!
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Electronic car dashboard showing 3% battery, a 'limited performance' warning, and an icon of a turtle in a yellow circle.
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Even when you're not remotely ready to think about Christmas yet and yet it keeps getting closer every second.
Even when the house is an absolute shambles and trying to rectify that is one step forward/one step sideways/three steps back/now put your hands on your hips and wait, what was I supposed to be tidying again?
Even when the electricity keeps yo-yoing every few minutes as the country continues to be battered by a storm.
Even when you spent most of the evening in the hospital with your injured child and then most of the night habitually getting up just to reassure yourself he's still breathing (he's fine, by the way!).
Even then, there's still the comfort of a bacon sarnie for breakfast. π
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Brioche bun loaded with thick cut bacon rashers, plated, on a wooden surface.
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Google turns to nuclear to power AI data centres
As Google invest in next-generation nuclear generation to provide electricity to their energy-hungry AI datacentres, so they can keep providing shit answers to everyday questions, I'm optimistic that maybe after the LLM fad fizzles out we'll be left with new power technologies that can benefit all of humankind.
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Power's out yet again at my house (though not for the last reason nor because of our weird wiring: this time it's for tree trimming), so here I am in my favourite coworking-friendly local cafe with The Signal And The Noise (which I've talked about before) in my ears and a whole lot of sprint planning at my fingertips.
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Dan sits at his laptop in a cafe; his phone is playing music to his earbuds.
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Zap
This week, a live-to-earth fault on the grid resulted in me getting zapped with mains electricity. Unfortunately, it didn't give me superpowers, just a mildly-interesting anecdote and a partially-shaved chest.
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If you enjoy a bit of "cable gore", let me introduce you to the fusebox cupboard at my house, with its plethora of junctions, fuses, breakers, switches, timers, and cabling everywhere! Banana for scale.
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A cupboard the height of a fully-grown adult containing several fuseboxes (two large, one medium, and a handful of single-fuse ones, with a mixture of traditional fuses and RCD breakers), a large switch toggling between mains and a generator, a mains timer, and copious wiring. There's a banana in there too.
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How to date a recording using background electrical noise
Robert Heaton shares some specifics of EMF forensics, and Dan reconsiders an idea he had years ago for a hardware spoofer.
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Needed new UPS batteries.
Almost bought from @insight_uk but they require registration to checkout.
Purchased from @SourceUPSLtd instead.
Moral: having no "guest checkout" costs you business. -
What can board game strategy tell us about the future of the car wash?
Factory Manager is one of Dan's favourite board games. Can it explain why there's no longer a car wash at your local filling station?
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Swiss startup Energy Vault is stacking concrete blocks to store energy Β Quartz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmrwdTGZxGk
Thanks to the modern electric grid, you have access to electricity whenever you want. But the grid only works when electricity is generated in the same amounts as it is consumed. That said, itβs impossible to get the balance right all the time. So operators make grids more flexible by adding ways to store β¦ -
New Tesla charging stations could compete with Starbucks
As Tesla expands its Supercharger network, the automaker intends to up its game, building higher-end, retail-rich locations that CEO Elon Musk has called "Mega Superchargers" but that we'll call just Megachargers.
CEO Elon Musk has speculatively described them as "like really big supercharging locations with a bunch of amenities," complete with "great restrooms, great food, amenities" β¦ -
Solar Power, part 2
Last year, Dan had solar panels installed on his roof. Four months on, he takes a look at how much money they're saving (and generating) for him and his tribe.
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Solar Power, part 1
Solar power is awesome. That's why Dan looked at the roof of the house he co-owns with Ruth and JTA and said, "You know what this needs - solar panels."
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Dan Breaks The Internet⦠Again
Whoops. You'd have thought I'd have learnt my lesson when I fucked around with BIND last year, and 'broke' a small portion of the internet, but no. I managed to 'break the internet' again while playing with the Domain Name System settings on big. That's why Scatmania was inaccessible for the last day or so β¦