So, about those Eid prayers in London... "What's the highest thing in Trafalgar Square?" "Nelson's column, innit?" "And the highest thing on the column?" "Nelson." "And on Nelson?" "His hat." "And the highest thing on his hat?" "That bit that sticks up." 1/8

Doing some Sunday afternoon paperwork. Filling up my car has cost me £74.32. That number is for the whole of the last 6 months and got me 2,752 miles. #EV

I had a job to do in South Queensferry yesterday , and I left home in brilliant sunshine. However, when I arrived in South Queensferry, it was shrouded in haar. Not to be deterred, I went back to North Queensferry, found a nice vantage point, and waited for this to unfold in front of me.

lol I'm old enough to remember the Sinclair C5 www.britannica.com/technology/S...

This shows fantastic progress with UK renewables. And it doesn't even include the 1.6 million homes with their own solar panels. www.sunsave.energy/solar-panels...

I was asked to give my thoughts on generative AI usage in games - here they are!

52% of U.K gas consumption is for heating and cooking (mainly heating). The Government committing to the simple task of delivering a heat pump, electric oven, and induction hob at every home in the land, to reduce emissions and increase energy security, should be a strategic national priority.

This is very nice to hear. For those who don't want to sign in Instagram:

Turns out net zero is cheaper than a single fossil fuel crisis. 🤷 The sooner we build on clean, home-grown energy, the sooner we stop handing the keys to foreign gas markets. But we also need market reform now - so customers, not just corporations, actually reap the benefits of renewables.

Reaching net zero by 2050 is often framed as a cost burden. The UK Climate Change Committee’s latest analysis suggests the opposite. The real risk is fossil fuel dependency.

I hope this means that new builds get a roof-full, and not just a token two panels that are thrown on as a box ticking exercise like they are around here.

Everyone has a test system. Some of us are lucky enough to have a separate production system.

Advice from someone who has spent years doing backup and storage: Three copies of backups. On two different types of media. Test your restores. Often. RAID isn't backup.

If anyone is friends with any Georgian air traffic controllers, buy them a nice bottle of wine. As guardians of pretty much the only narrow gap still available between Europe and Asia that avoids both Iran, the Gulf, Ukraine and Russia, they are under some substantial pressure.

The whole of the UK could be powered by covering 0.5% in Solar Panels, the whole of the USA with just 0.3%. Instead they force you to buy THEIR fossil fuel which THEY have started a war to profiteer from. Can you understand?

The European Commission have a hard rule: you retire at 65 from official functions. That should be universal in politics and public administration. Everywhere. You can be an advisor. A part-timer. An NPC. But you cannot be the main character. That date should increase with the retirement age.

Yup, LLMs are so woefully bad at history, so I'm never trusting them with anything else... but I keep meeting smart people who "ask ChatGPT" for so many things, and it's driving me to despair

This week’s reflections at #CanaryWharf taken on a wander at lunchtime on my #iPhone15Pro I love reducing these office buildings to abstract art :)

As requested, here’s the secret door in action! It’s hard to film one handed, but I did my best. It leads through to another room and we kept the door for warmth. Really the back should be painted green too, but it took @alexmilway.bsky.social long enough to do the rest of it! Maybe one day…

The first five words of this are enough to induce an anxiety attack in anyone who knows even a little bit about cobol and the systems that still run on it.

“if 60% of the electorate believe that energy prices are too high because of an energy-eating monster called glorbo, you can either try to persuade eleven per cent that they’re wrong, or you can promise to kill glorbo”

See also parking your car where the first sun will be in the morning so it gets defrosted on cold winter days. ❄️

The worst thing about a Peter Pancake is that if you toss it in the air it Neverlands. 🥞

mom they’re roasting the US economy on mastodon again

Happy Valentine’s Day, from us to you. Tag your exes. Xoxox

that’s it, i’ve finally taken my best photo of all time 😅 (this chubster is an unapologetic beggar so don’t feel bad for him) 🧪🌍 #bird #birb

Your definitive guide to the sports of the Winter Olympics

One of the easiest ways to shoot down the idea that "AI" is an expert is to show how it deals with something people know about. Younger readers may not get this as most appliances come pre-wired, but anyone 35+ can see these are chaotic fire hazards. From Mastodon, AI asked how to wire a plug:

people who say that all creative endeavor can be replaced with AI probably need to reckon with the fact that all televised sports events with human athletes could easily be replicated by high-definition computer-animated simulations….and yet we don’t do this and no one seems to want to.

Do you live in a bothy on a remote island? You need a wood burner. Do you live in a shepherd's hut high on a hill far away from mains electricity and gas? You need a wood burner. Do you live in a city, town or village? You don't need a wood burner.

The UK had a cloud provider (called UKCloud) that was entirely focused on the public sector, with everything physically hosted in the UK (Hampshire & Wiltshire). It went out of business 3 years ago when govt departments moved services to Amazon as they thought it would save them money.

Some of you really need to step away from the news and go out and get some fresh air or something. It's not healthy to be constantly immersed in and drowning in horrors. Go and fuss a cat or pet a dog, for the sake of your sanity.

The cardboard tubes in toilet rolls should have jokes printed on them like lolly sticks used to.

Well that's an interesting turn of phrase for grid scale energy storage! ember-energy.org/latest-insig...

Right Wing parties: we hate the sight of solar farms and wind turbines, let's frack instead! What fracking actually looks like:

This is one of the Royal Observer Corps posts where two or three observers would monitor blasts and fallout around the UK in the event of a nuclear war. Instead, we're all watching climate change unfold on our phones and TVs.

“Martin angrily challenges Sir Keir Starmer to clear up social media scam adverts cess pit” Courtesy of @thismorningitv.bsky.social

This is a really cool piece about how the Tube has been cabled for mobile signal - nerdy for those who like nerdy, but also accessible for non-nerds.

For Brits, an American will also be assigned to you to misunderstand your specifically UK posts and to shout at you for posting about frivolous things like #TheCricket or #TheFootball when America is going to shit.

People want 'technology' to save them from climate change but we have most of the technology already. Solar, Wind turbines, Batteries, Heat pumps, Public transport, Electric vehicles. It just isn't the "sexy" sci-fi technology that some people fantasised.

We've removed the paywall from this guide so everyone can access it. 👇 Stay safe.

Today's headlines in the USA and UK are ICE and ice, and this seems to neatly sum up our differences.

My pettist of pet air pollution peeves: log burners on foggy days. You are literally gassing yourself and your entire neighbourhood in dense air pollution trapped at ground level. It is where the word smog (smoke + fog) comes from. Should be banned. Until then, just don't.

I'm so delighted that I complied with the Online Safety Act, blocking an accessibility feature on my site from UK users to 'protect the children' while Elon Musk's site can just generate CSAM with total impunity.

Blackadder Goes Forth. Amazing poignant ending for a comedy series. I saw it on the initial broadcast in 1989 and think about it each November.

Did you know you can sing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” whenever you feel like it? It’s literally a whim away.