Holy moly…it’s perishingly cold this morning…genuinely feels like winter again🥶

Brrr…a bit chilly last night up North🥶

@wgoodf.bsky.social Have you seen this before? (Seen originally in Twitter)

Another day with a long period of negatively priced energy. We did so much yesterday that we almost have no spring cleaning left to do😳. Washing curtains, running the dishwasher (again) & pyrolytic cycles on the ovens is the plan de jour.

Can you tell we’re being paid to use electricity from mid-morning today (until 4pm). Washing clothes, running the dishwasher, roasting two joints, baking a cake, TV on, two computers running, charging the car & running some central heating is the plan de jour

The 555 timer IC chip is 55 years old this year, and I’ve been building circuits with it for almost 50 years😳 Time flies!!

KitKat can presumably afford to hire an EM testing lab to make proper measurements. I want to see a dB rating as part of the nutritional label!

I finally have coax access through my wall. This has been something I’ve been wanting to do for ages. Thanks for mentioning the Roxtec cable entry stuff @rdavies6.bsky.social their kit is exactly what I’d been looking for. I now need to think about what sealing blocks I need to buy #hamradio

Blimey…still cold enough to get a frost this morning near Oxford

Beautiful day along the Thames

Definitely my style of operating setup…ultra light & portable👍

Wife is having a Noodle Crisis…went to usual Chinese supermarkets to stock up on boxes of ramen…but very few types available in any of the supermarkets. I’m wondering if the supply has been limited due to tensions in the Middle East? Fortunately she did snaffle a box of Buldak 2xSpicy chicken ramen😈

Ooo…postie’s just delivered new toys. Sadly can’t play with it until this evening though😖

Oh yes, they have salty licorice or is that the netherlands ? Not to my taste nor the red licorice. However the Barratts sherbet fountain with its licorice "straw" was a perfect combination.

@bakeliteguy.bsky.social I suspect we’ve been to more than a handful of these places londonist.com/london/drink...

Mmmh…I wonder if my wife would be upset if I treated myself to a retirement project www.homeandworkshop.co.uk/stock-item/b...

Someone has documented the entire source code for Elite and explained how every line works, plus included deep dives into various functionality. Covers all main versions like BBC Micro, Commodore 64 and NES. You can also play online in browser. elite.bbcelite.com

The Cardputer Zero looks interesting … shop.m5stack.com/pages/m5-car...

Not a bad average unit electricity cost for the week…took full advantage of the negative pricing last weekend. Daily energy usage is now hitting around 17kWh/day after all the heating has been turned off

Long queues outside of Casbah Records in Greenwich this morning…National Record Store Day 2026

Just spent a super exciting minute watching the thetenthwatch.com experiment to see if the drop of pitch wanted to fall whilst I was watching (spoiler: it didn’t…). I know Aussies will bet on anything….but come on, there have to more exciting games of chance😉

OMG! I am absolutely in love with the Basqye cheesecake from www.lamaritxucheesecake.co.uk absolutely the worst thing for my waistline, but the best thing for my taste buds and mental health😋 Incredibly yummy, fabulous coffee, and great service too!

We use ~2.5x electricity than the national average for our property size (electric central heating!). Using the right tariff improves our average electricity unit cost; the current rate cap cost is 24.67p/kWh but our 30 day average cost is 13.64p/kWh & 3 month average is 17.77p/kWh

@wgoodf.bsky.social looks like another day of extended periods of negative pricing - although the amounts are lower. I’ve now got to figure out how to optimally use the energy…the house is already quite warm!

We are on Octopus Energy’s Agile electricity tariff…where unit price rates change every half an hour & between 4pm & 7pm the rates can be expensive. For us, an average family that uses electricity normally, the Agile tariff has constantly proven to be significantly lower than the standard tariff.

This is definitely weather for my cocktail of choice - a pint of Bacardi and coke (a Cuba Libre). Always Bacardi too 😋

Important life lessons…How to pick up a duck youtube.com/shorts/03A7j... (shamelessly stolen from Mastodon)

This is an awesome 3D printed case for the QMX+ from Dan OK1HRA (originally shared on Twitter) www.printables.com/model/154188...

My wife likes spicy food - this pot of ramen, with some extra sui mai thrown in, is her idea of a perfect lunchtime snack

Indeed!

Moving to surface mount construction was really easy - and it’s so easy to store literally tens of thousands of parts in a very small space. The Aidetek BoxAll storage boxes come in a variety of configurations and are super well constructed, with no leakage of the flyshit sized parts

Hot damn…more toys that I never knew I needed, that I need to treat myself too…

It’s been free electricity since 11pm last night…and we’re running out of things to do😳. One oven on a pyrolytic cleaning cycle at the moment. The house is toasty warm too. Car charging, cooking and cooking reserved for later today when we’ll be paid 11p/kWh to use the electricity

My wife has had a number of rolls of 20cm wide duct tape delivered…it’s bloody ginormous! No idea what she had planned for this stuff…but mummification seemed a viable use case😳

Wow! Tomorrow’s electricity tariff is just wild…every kWh I use between Midday & 3pm will earn over 10p😳. It’s not too difficult for us to use over 15kW each hour too

Absolutely brilliant half hour watching two voice nerds absolutely geeking out to Wing’s incredible track, “Dopamine”. Their enthusiasm and excitement is absolutely infectious 10/10 youtu.be/SQsWPpgkxlI?...

@ryo.net I miss the new translation tools available on Twitter… but in general BSky is a nicer place (as is Mastodon). But many Japanese hams & KPop bands still like Twitter so I keep using it but avoid the politics and ‘noise’ and just follow my interests and passions

10/10, no notes.

Just seen a comment in Mastodon describing users of AI tools as ‘prompt fondlers’ lol

The new auto translate functionality on Twitter has really caught me out in the last week. I was wondering why so many Japanese hams were writing tweets in English🤦‍♂️. I have to say it works very well!

Had a few days off…and my body has already switched into sleeping a solid 8-9 hours a night. Going to be a chore to wake up early for work tomorrow morning…😱

@minus2c.bsky.social what sort of speed do you already get? IIRC you’ve a pretty amazing link…

Just watched tempura scraps being used in the cooking of takoyaki! It’s like fish n’ chip scraps raised to almost Michelin levels imho youtu.be/K2T2QJ-VaLk?...

G4DBN on today’s latest Veritasium episode, talking about Theramin’s bug hidden in the US Embassy seal in Moscow en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thi... youtu.be/YSJY3DvnybE?...

A few days off…so time to finish tweaking a RX888 skimmer for a friend, 3D print a home for a bias-t pcb, and resurrect my own RX888 skimmer

Old-fashioned computer programming and ‘hard disk’ for storing the ‘programs’. This is how weaving looms have operated since the 1800s

Interest analysis and deep dive into WSJT-X 3.1 improved and its FT8 decoder behavior by Yoshiharu Tsukuura / JP1LRT www.asahi-net.or.jp/~vj5y-tkur/f...

Lunch at the Tea Shop at Rannoch Station - gorgeous cakes and toasties. A break from the bitterly cold wind; definitely snow in the air

Sharing breakfast with a pair of Norwegian Forest friends who are recovering from an energetic evening of exploration and hunting