Earlier this month, I installed Linux onto my Ideapad Miix 320-10ICR. Inevitably, I've made a few changes since then. Some of those changes, like adding encrypted swap and a userspace oom-killer and adding autorotation/undocking support seemed worth writing about individually. A … | Continue reading
Recently, we've had an issue with one of the dogs escaping through a boundary fence. The fence in question is chainlink, within a hedgerow and was present before we moved here. Because it had been installed as dog proofing (the previous owners had a little Daxie), the bottom of t … | Continue reading
Earlier this month, I installed Arch Linux on an Ideapad Miix 320-10ICR. As part of the setup process I configured Xorg to rotate the display into landscape mode. That's fine for my primary mode of usage - as a small laptop - but far less great if I were ever to want to remove th … | Continue reading
As I mentioned in a previous post, the dipstick design on Mini Coopers is awful. In fact, it's so bad that there are videos out there in order to help people understand how to read it properly. This video shows what the dipstick looks like and how you're supposed to read it: Ther … | Continue reading
About four years ago, I stopped using Google Authenticator and moved to using Twilio's Authy. The primary motivation for that was the lack of export and sync functionality in Google Authenticator: The codes only existed in one place, so the loss of my phone could potentially lock … | Continue reading
When setting up my Ideapad, I didn't configure swap because I wanted to avoid reducing the (already unknown) lifetime of it's eMMC storage. This, however, has proven to be a mistake - the Ideapad only has 4GB of RAM and I'm quite good at accidentally using more than that. When th … | Continue reading
We recently ran into an issue with a 2012 Mini Cooper 1.6: on a journey one day it started running rough, throwing an engine-warning light and misfiring so hard at idle that it made the whole car shake. Once the engine had cooled down, the misfiring stopped. Although there was no … | Continue reading
About 10 years ago, I bought a second hand TF101 Transformer Pad. It's an Android tablet which can transform into a small laptop by docking into a keyboard (which also provides extra USB ports, a card reader and even a second battery). Although it runs Android 4 (the KatKiss ROM) … | Continue reading
Minis sometimes need a rocker cover replacement because the crankcase breather valve is built in and is known to stick, perforate or otherwise fail. The covers also suffer from failing seals, which can allow oil into sparkplug wells etc. These issues can easily develop into oil c … | Continue reading
Minis have an electronic "hockey puck" key which you click into the dashboard - they don't turn, but simply latch into place. When attempting to clear diagnostic troubleshooting codes (DTCs) with an OBD-II reader, the reader will normally tell you to put the ignition into positio … | Continue reading
Following a discussion on Fedi, I ended up looking up some javascript that I previously wrote to have webpage objects "follow" the mouse - the idea being to repurpose it so that the eyes in an image could look at wherever the mouse pointer is (or, on mobile, where the user last t … | Continue reading
I recently noticed that my Saab was making a whining sound when running. Pressing the clutch down and freewheeling led to the noise dropping, showing that it was matched to engine and not road speed. On a Saab 9-3 TTiD that generally means looking at the aux belt tensioner, the a … | Continue reading
Openreach finally started offering fiber to the premises (FTTP) connections in my area, so I placed an order with Andrews & Arnold and started the arduous task of waiting days for the install. Last Tuesday, an engineer arrived, drilled a hole in the house, poked some fiber throug … | Continue reading
I'm far from the first to do this, but over the weekend I built a system to allow me to schedule the sending of Toots on Mastodon. The underlying aim is quite simple: rather than starting the day by spamming the fediverse with my thoughts, I can spread them throughout the day. In … | Continue reading
About six months ago, I attached a fingerbot to our dishwasher so that I could use Home Assistant to help control when it starts, enabling me to target periods of cheaper electricity overnight. However, the bot's battery has gone flat already. I was a little surprised by this, be … | Continue reading
Over the last few weeks, the web has watched in horror as Matt Mullenweg has "gone nuclear" after starting his own personal crusade against WP Engine. At this point, it doesn't really matter whether Matt had a valid point or not, because in the process he's executed a supply chai … | Continue reading
Back in March, I wrote a little about the heater in our living room and how I'd probably replace it before the next winter. Inevitably, though, I got distracted doing other things and so only recently got around to properly thinking about it. A bit of online browsing led me to fa … | Continue reading
I've been a bit un-anchored this weekend: although it's felt like I should do something, I've not really known what to do with myself. After a bit of aimless wandering online, I decided to build an "On this day" module for my site: something which automatically displays and links … | Continue reading
I've long used project management software to track and manage tasks and chores at home. Although this has not always been a popular choice, I spend a chunk of my working day staring at issue trackers, so it's never really made sense to track things any differently at home. I was … | Continue reading
I've long used project management software to track and manage tasks and chores at home. Although this has not always been a popular choice, I spend a chunk of my working day staring at issue trackers, so it's never really made sense to track things any differently at home. I was … | Continue reading
Monday started most unexpectedly... with an out-and-out GDPR breach landing in my inbox. To set some context: About 4 hours drive away, there's a premises which has six Pylontech US5000 batteries. One of those batteries is faulty, so the solar installer contacted Pylontech to req … | Continue reading
Monday started most unexpectedly... with an out-and-out GDPR breach landing in my inbox. To set some context: About 4 hours drive away, there's a premises which has six Pylontech US5000 batteries. One of those batteries is faulty, so the solar installer contacted Pylontech to req … | Continue reading
I was asked to create a simple website for a Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Service in Leiston, Suffolk. It's a static one-page website, rendered with HuGo. As well as being customised with semantic markup, the site sports a contact form and links to the business Facebook page. | Continue reading
I was asked to create a simple website for a Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Service in Leiston, Suffolk. It's a static one-page website, rendered with HuGo. As well as being customised with semantic markup, the site sports a contact form and links to the business Facebook page. | Continue reading
We've got a Bosch Serie 4 washing machine (specifically, a WAN24100GB). It recently stopped draining and instead just sat with the pump running. On most front-loading washing machines there's a cover providing access to the pump housing so that blockages can easily be removed. Un … | Continue reading
We've got a Bosch Serie 4 washing machine (specifically, a WAN24100GB). It recently stopped draining and instead just sat with the pump running. On most front-loading washing machines there's a cover providing access to the pump housing so that blockages can easily be removed. Un … | Continue reading
I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a fitness fanatic. I always assumed that I'd start to exercise more with age, but rather than getting round to it I... err... got round. That said, I'm not entirely ambivalent and I've tracked my daily steps ever since my Watchy got me … | Continue reading
I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a fitness fanatic. I always assumed that I'd start to exercise more with age, but rather than getting round to it I... err... got round. That said, I'm not entirely ambivalent and I've tracked my daily steps ever since my Watchy got me … | Continue reading
In 2014, I wrote a small Static Site Generator (SSG) in PHP. At the time, Hugo had only seen a few public releases and both it and Jekyll were written in languages (Go and Ruby, respectively) that I wasn't quite as familiar with. Both were more complex than I felt I needed, altho … | Continue reading
In 2014, I wrote a small Static Site Generator (SSG) in PHP. At the time, Hugo had only seen a few public releases and both it and Jekyll were written in languages (Go and Ruby, respectively) that I wasn't quite as familiar with. Both were more complex than I felt I needed, altho … | Continue reading
One of the features that Mini's include is a Tyre Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). These use sensors in the wheel and are supposed to warn if a tyre's pressure gets too low. Unfortunately, they're known to be a little temperamental and can throw false alarms, which won't reset … | Continue reading
One of the features that Mini's include is a Tyre Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). These use sensors in the wheel and are supposed to warn if a tyre's pressure gets too low. Unfortunately, they're known to be a little temperamental and can throw false alarms, which won't reset … | Continue reading
Last year, after we ordered an Xbox, Amazon tried to leave us with the bill despite it being stolen from within their fulfilment chain. Whilst that wasn't, in any way, Microsoft's fault it also wasn't the best introduction to the world of Xbox. Admittedly, the (replacement) Xbox … | Continue reading
Last year, after we ordered an Xbox, Amazon tried to leave us with the bill despite it being stolen from within their fulfilment chain. Whilst that wasn't, in any way, Microsoft's fault it also wasn't the best introduction to the world of Xbox. Admittedly, the (replacement) Xbox … | Continue reading
As the web has aged, the issue of Link rot has increased, with links silently breaking as sites and services fall by the wayside. Although it's always been a problem, it feels like it's been more visible recently. From people abandoning Twitter to behemoths like Google deciding t … | Continue reading
As the web has aged, the issue of Link rot has increased, with links silently breaking as sites and services fall by the wayside. Although it's always been a problem, it feels like it's been more visible recently. From people abandoning Twitter to behemoths like Google deciding t … | Continue reading
I recently decided to actually do something about an idea that I've been turning over for a bit. I'll write a proper post on that later, but in order to do it, I needed to be running some form of link archiving solution (i.e. I needed some form of self-hosted Wayback Machine). Af … | Continue reading
I recently decided to actually do something about an idea that I've been turning over for a bit. I'll write a proper post on that later, but in order to do it, I needed to be running some form of link archiving solution (i.e. I needed some form of self-hosted Wayback Machine). Af … | Continue reading
Recently a colleague mentioned having seen a Youtuber set up their own home cable TV channel. This struck me as quite a good idea: I sometimes want to have the TV on in the background (the background noise helps the dogs settle) but often struggle to pick something from the myria … | Continue reading
I run a small kubernetes cluster at home, which I originally set up as somewhere to experiment with things. Because it started out as a playground, I never bothered to set up monitoring. However, as time has passed, I've ended up dropping more production-esque workloads onto it, … | Continue reading
Last weekend, I wrote about deploying Shotshare into Kubernetes and, so far, I've been pretty happy with the result. A couple of days ago, though, I ran into an issue which prevented me from uploading an image from my phone. Playing around showed that other images uploaded fine, … | Continue reading
Recently, someone tooted a link to a list of self-hosted (and mostly OSS) apps. Looking through those, I stumbled across Shotshare: a small Imgur like Laravel app made for posting and sharing images (and explicitly designed to facilitate the sharing of screenshots). The screensho … | Continue reading
Earlier this week, I was reading Robb Knight's post about the questionable behaviour of Perplexity AI and its scrapers (his post is well worth a read, enough so that it was also covered by The Verge). The claims were quite concerning - despite Perplexity's documentation saying th … | Continue reading
For various reasons, I've been running on empty for weeks. I had hoped that last weekend - fathers day - would be an opportunity to rest, but it didn't really pan out and so rather than resting, I ended up having something of a meltdown. The problem is, there's always something t … | Continue reading
The people who owned this house before us really liked bamboo. When we first got here, there were pots and pots of it along with a planted patch just to the side of the decking. I never really thought much about it. At least, until recently. I was having a conversation with a fri … | Continue reading
Ever since we moved into this house, we've used dishwasher pods - the dishwasher was here when we moved in and we've pretty much just been re-stocking the pods that were with it. However, I've become increasingly keen to stop using them because they contribute to micro-plastics i … | Continue reading
I write things down a lot. Whether it's in the form of a blog post, snippet or a simple markdown note, I try and record things whilst they're fresh in my mind so that I don't have to worry quite so much about being able to remember them. Apparently, it's quite a longstanding habi … | Continue reading
A year ago this morning, I was waiting for an electrician to come back in order to do the last bits of our solar install. Unfortunately the install surveyor had rather underestimated the manpower required, meaning that the work couldn't be finished on the arranged day (not that t … | Continue reading