Category Archives: General

Feats of Tweet

The old twitchhiker, the guy who got half-way around the world in 30 days (i.e. all the way to new zealand), just through people providing help on twitter for free, has started a new project. He’s called it “feats of tweet”. It looks like it could be quite impressive, and powerful. Here’s a brazenly stolen snippet from his sites FAQ:

What is a Feat of Tweet?

A Feat of Tweet is a goal, ambition, target or wish realised through the goodwill of the Twitter community.

Whose wishes and goals are we trying to fulfill? Yours. They may be personal in nature, or charitable. It may take the actions of dozens, even hundreds of tweeps to achieve a feat… or it it may take just one.
Continues here: http://featsoftweet.com/feats/faq/

They’re just getting started now, the website is still under construction! If you’re interested, you can find the site here: http://featsoftweet.com and the twitter feed here: http://twitter.com/FeatsofTweet. Right now, they want as many followers as possible, before the project goes active, so the first few feats have a good chance of getting off the ground 🙂

Current Cost – watt hours and pachube

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This is an email i sent to JT so I apologise if it doesn’t make sense to y’all. Please ask questions if you don’t get me!

So we have this ‘Current Cost’ meter thing (free from Southern Electric) at the house. It’s a small wireless electricity meter. Well it’s more of a monitor or display actually but you get me….[insert pic].

Long story short, I’d noticed the RJ45 on the bottom and it’d got me wondering. A few google searches later and whammo i’d found what I needed. A bit of hardware, a bit of software (links on manyfacturers website!) and whammo….

I wired up the current cost (enegry meter) at the house to my laptop and it’s uploading to this Pachube (bless you) website:
http://www.pachube.com/feeds/2196

The graph is a bit useless atm (no history or dates on it 🙁 ) but the program here:
http://apps.pachube.com/google_viz/
Could probs snazz it up a bit.
There seems to be a binary pattern from some device that is turning on and off at regular intervals and using ~100w… i wonder if it’s the compressor on the fridge/freezer as it goes on thru the night lol.

Graph of peak watts and temperature from current cost and excel

The long jittery spikes are the washing machine/dishwasher/tumble dryer (the last being the biggest draw lol).

One guy is even trying to record signatures for each appliance and then work out from the data which appliance is causing the spikes.
http://chrishodgins.tumblr.com/post/33810511/via-chart-apis-google-com-so-its-the-bank
The idea behind this is if you can work that out, you can make a pie chart of the biggest consumers…

I have more results than are uploaded; i created a funky excel file which Should update from the mdb created from one of the apps i’m using but atm i think the file is locked or summat :(. Made a pretty graph to! Also predicting the future temperature based on a polynominal curve or something lol.

All gd fun. Now i jus want one of these tiny minuture computers:
http://www.fit-pc.co.uk/fit-pc-slim.html
or this awesome plug pc:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/258238/plug-sized-pcs-arrive-in-uk.html (sweet) (Ubuntu on a plug [ via Youtube])
to record/upload the results, although it would make more sense to use the ipcop or home server since they are always on and the current cost device is wireless. (unfortunately our model does not have internal data logging 🙁 ). Don’t know how to work out kwh from current usage of watts every 3 seconds… i might be able to put something from averages tho. Any suggestions anyone? I might just be being dumb lol.

Now all we need is the x10 plug thru devices to monitor electricty usage (by appliance) and bobs your uncle – we know exactly where the electricity is going.

IMO (as a soon to be Building services engineer in training) this technology should be wired into all new houses in the actuall plug sockets. Want to know which of your kids (or indeed partner) is using the most electricity? 😉

The trickle usage these measuring devices could be designed to run on could easily be offset by a small(ish) solar pv installation too! (i’m talking around 10-30wh/day here 😉 ).

Oh and here’s how to connect the current cost to pachube:
http://community.pachube.com/?q=node/100

On the upside i’ve also unplugged the fancy pants MPPT solar charge controller and hooked the install back up to the basic on/off controller, and now it’s definetly shifting amps! I was a bit worried that in full sun 53watts of panels was ONLY putting through 0.3-0.1a @11.7 (i know, discharged). Hmm gonna have to find out whats wrong with fancy pants, he wasn’t cheap! :'(

Youtube Comments…

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Johnathon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqUfPhMxmAg&feature=related
Paul: Q Ruled
Paul: There’s something very impressive about that clip
Paul: read the comments.
Paul: they’re youtube belmer free!! That’s stunning no “WAT IS THIS? THATS GAY!”
Johnathon: Probably the vidoes uploader has been doing some filtering
Paul: maybe
Johnathon: well, what’s the likelyhood that youtube has suddenly become a haven for well-spoken, well-mannered individuals? 😉
Paul: Some combination of incredibly unlikely events
Paul: a pig flying through hell as it freezes over during a blue moon at midnight
Paul: on feb 30th during a centenary leap year
Paul: the last bit is only once every 400 years

Is “administrate” a real word?

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This has been going round the office for the past day… so, dear lazyweb, is “administrate” a real word?

Red Alert 3

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My new computer’s been running for a couple of days now, and its very nice. CPU’s running cool (26 degrees C, all 4 cores flat out and over-clocked.) Still, the main reason I caved into building it, was so that I could resume playing RTS’s. (The interface is a bit too sluggish on the 360…)

Red Alert 3: Got to the allies campaign… to hear a lot of (mostly) fake British accents. We’ve got a cockney tank, posh British spy (as normal), American commando and French laser-artillery (inference much?!). The standard ‘posh fake British accent’ that hollywood seems to think we Brits all speak provided by ‘Eva’, the lieutenant who gives you your orders. Which reminds me: EA Los Angeles – We don’t say ‘bloody’ that much. Leave off on them next time, please?

Just as well I’m just playing it to blow stuff up, rather than for the (bad) plot and (atrocious) acting. I wish it was made by westwood 😉

Strange contrasts

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Went out after work today to go to a bible study, in Soho, London. To get to the study, I walked through one of the red light districts, my first time anywhere near one. After the lights, obvious moneyed chain stores and almost permanent daylight of the area just outside the tube station, the red light district was a massive contrast.

Reminds me of a conversation I had with a taxi driver yesterday evening. He was amazed that I refuse to have sex before I get married, even wanted to take me to a red light district, and not with the purpose of walking through it.

Was interesting standing outside after the study, handing out ‘tracts, watching the people hurry past. You get a lot of different types of people using the shortcut through the red light district, as well as people going into it to use it. Money, hard-worker, foreign, prostitutes, friends, family, partners. A real mix. Kind of describes london – a melting pot, but one that is more segargated by cultures than the words ‘multi-culturalism’ suggest, even in our own, existing class boundaries.

Day 17 – Failed

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Argh! I failed the challenge. Managed to get caught up watching a film last night, and before I knew it, it was past midnight.

Had a good day yesterday though. Apart from someone’s computer refusing to install / run Ubuntu (looked something like memory errors. Should probably do a memtest on it).

I probably will drop my posting now – there’s not much point now that I’ve failed. I can’t belive I failed over half way through. So frustrating 🙁