I pushed the accelerator of the Peugeot 3008 to the floor, as I slammed it from fifth into third to accelerate up the hill and around the corner while the rock wall on the passenger side caused the proximity sensor to light and the lorry passed within inches on the driver’s side. Lock one, lock two, Loch Lomond on the right and an ancient wall on the left.
Bathrooms at Loch Lomond
… Read more »On the morning of 7 Oct Sarah and I headed to the Stansted airport to fly to Glasgow. It’s fairly easy to get to the airport, there’s a train out of the Liverpool Street station that takes you right there. I got tickets in advance, and they’ll take them right from your phone screen. We cashed in the remaining funds on our Oyster cards before heading out - the normal Oyster machines at the station will give your remaining money back.
… Read more »Sarah on the Tower Bridge’s Glass Floor
One thing I questioned before we got here was the wisdom of using this thing called The London Pass. It’s a card you purchase for 1, 2, or 3 days of entry into a ton of attractions. On our first partial day here I realized it was probably a good deal for us, in part just so that I wouldn’t have to constantly wonder if any one place’s entry price was really worth it. Obviously there are many things in London that aren’t covered, but there are so many common tourist attractions that are covered, and it makes sense to use this card if you’re going to do those things for three days. In all, we saved almost £20, saw at least one thing we probably wouldn’t have otherwise, and didn’t have to wonder once whether an entry price was worth it. Let me run you through our trip.
… Read more »Jolly old England!
Time for a bloggie postie! A bloggie-do! A postarama bloggy style!
Sarah Waiting for Dinner
Cheerio pip pip and wotnot ole chap!
Tower Bridge Illuminated
Ok, enough of that shit. Sarah and I are in London, England!
This is the end of our second full day here, and I’m pleased to say we didn’t sleep in too much. Today we got going around 930, down to Silvia’s Corner, a real foodie’s breakfast place near our Airbnb. Well, the foodiest place nearby. This was a great place to stop for both of us. Sarah got a juice and this eggs and chorizo and toast thing that was fantastic, and I got a greasy ass plate of buttered toast, bacon, sausage and eggs. Delicious.
… Read more »META: Part 1 describes the problem I’m trying to solve here.
I need a way to monitor water flow through my water filter over several days, and I don’t want to sit and watch it.
So - I took a Raspberry Pi I’ve got and a little Python and hacked a solution together. The basic idea was that I’d position a plastic cup below the output stream of the waste water, I’d put two wires into the cup, I’d put a voltage on one wire and attempt to see the voltage on the other. I’d use the Raspberry Pi to check for the voltage once per minute and log the status to a file with a timestamp. Later, I could graph the state of the voltage - DETECTED or NOT DETECTED - over time, and produce a graph showing when the waste water was running. With that I could even get an approximate flow rate waste water, if I wanted, by measuring how long it takes to output a liter of waste water and multiplying by run time.
… Read more »META: This first part is about the problem that caused me to build the solution. Part 2 is about the solution.
My new place has an awesome feature that was disabled when I moved in - a reverse osmosis water filter! It’s not a whole-house hookup, it’s just for the refrigerator and a dedicated tap on the sink. We definitely wanted to use this thing! At first, I just turned it on and it seemed to work fine. However, with a little time, I noticed that the output water from the filter never seemed to stop, and there was a small leak on the “filtered water” side…
… Read more »I’ve wanted to have a VPN setup for a while - I’ve never been entirely comfortable when using public wifi, even secured public wifi… Open wifi? I feel a little crazy every time I connect. But I usually console myself that I’m not a target, I can make sure important connections are encrypted, and I can just avoid doing some things while on public wifi.
A VPN though, that could make things much easier! All communications would be encrypted between the device I’m using and my VPN endpoint. If I set it up myself, the VPN endpoint would be my home Internet connection. This essentially makes all my browsing look like it’s coming from home, with solid protection between the coffee shop and home… I could do any browsing I wanted without worry! Also, I would essentially be connected to my home network, giving me access to all my devices there.
… Read more »This is one of those Saturdays where I’m finding it hard to focus on what I want to focus on. Ok, so that’s a pretty regular problem for me on Saturday. I’m trying to focus on programming for this volunteer activity I’m supposed to be leading in September. I’ve got to build some software for the event, and make some decisions, and wrap it all up at some point. It’s not too far from being done, and I guess this is the first time I’ve had to just sit and think a bit this week, so maybe that’s why I’m not too concerned about being unproductive, and I’m just letting my mind wander.
… Read more »This article proposes a pretty crazy sounding idea - remove the Van Allen Belts.
Simplified Explanatory Summary: The Van Allen Belts are a natural phenomenon, electrons and protons flying around the Earth at high speed. Electrical current is essentially electrons moving around, so when astronauts or satellites pass through these regions the effect is shocking. Passing through the proton regions is even worse because they’re comparatively mass-ive. Electrons and protons are normally flying around in space, but these ones are trapped by Earth’s magnetic field.
… Read more »This article in The Economist summarizes most of the issues relevant to this whole Edward Snowden debacle. Their attitude is that the amount of secret surveillance going on in the US, as suggested by the current news cycle, makes democracy difficult. It’s worth a skim just to make sure you’re not missing some chunk of the debate and recent history. The Economist is about as much a disinterested third party as I can think of.
… Read more »