Power Cut Friday

/

Of course this might not be what caused it

First thing that happened was that the shower failed. It was producing nothing more than a low buzzing sound. Not what you want if you are stood naked underneath it. I’ve had this happen before. The usual solution is to fit a new shower (after you have got dressed). I’ve done this several times over the years. Once with jetlag. But I was hoping for a bunged up filter. I took the shower to bits and I was just removing the filter cover when the 3D printer stopped with an alarm. And wouldn’t power on again. I was just wondering what the third thing was going to be (problems like this always come in threes) when when the washing machine flashed up a fault code.

Then everything went off and I relaxed. It must be a power thing. I put the shower back together. And then the mobile phone signal vanished. I was expecting that important things like cellular networks to have some kind of battery backup, but apparently not. That was kind of worrying. We were completely out of contact with the rest of the world. This is how we must have felt in the seventies. Except that in the seventies our landline phones still worked.

The power came back after about twenty minutes. We did eventually get a text telling us that the power had gone off (in case anyone hadn’t noticed) but that was all. I reckon that for about twenty minutes before the power failed we had been running on a low mains voltage. Anything using a “switched mode” power supply would have kept working. But anything with a motor in it would be suffering. So computers and screens all worked fine. Showers not so much.

I always thought that the power companies tried very hard to provide either 250 volts or nothing, but it turns out that this is not the case. The good news is that everything has come back fine and so all we had to do was reset a few clocks and throw away a half completed 3D print.

A few weeks ago the UK had a test of an “emergency broadcast” thing where most people’s phones buzzed with the message “Do not worry. This is a test”. This made us all feel much safer (except of course for those who didn’t get the message). However, if It turns out that at the first hint of trouble our phones are all going to be disconnected it makes all that effort seem like a bit of a waste of time.

Coronation Curtains

/

We watched the coronation today. At least, we watched the interesting bits. One thing that struck me is that Marvell do a much better job with their costumes that we do. The Guardians of the Galaxy have much better threads than this lot. I suppose that back in the day the outfits of all the great and the good seemed much more impressive. Most of the things I saw people wearing today left me thinking that someone’s front room curtains now have great big archbishop shaped holes in them….

Bins and Binnability

/

The new kitchen bin arrived today. The old one broke and the type of replacement was the subject of some heated discussion. At one stage I said “But I’m not sure any of these will do exactly what we want” to which the reply was “But at the moment we don’t have a bin”. Fair point. It is always important to remember that with some things, including bins, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

We got the new bin out of the box and put it in the kitchen. It’s perfect.

ChatGPT and my existential crisis

/

Last week I discovered that ChatGPT can write “In the style of Rob Miles”. I’m not sure if it will do this for everyone. The internet creates bubbles of personalisation so that our searches find the kinds of things that we like, and perhaps ChatGPT does that too. Perhaps if you ask for something “in the style of Rob Miles” you’ll get the version that fits with your interests. Even so, ChatGPT knows about a version of me.

ChatGPT knows me because I’ve been blogging and posting stuff for over 20 years. There’s a lot of Rob on the internet. Although I must admit that all those years ago when I decided to put up a blog post every day I didn’t think that it would be a step on the road to creating a computerised copy.

It is a tiny bit worrying. Do I need to exist any more, now that there is a freely available version online? People have been known to pay me to write things “in the style of Rob Miles” but now anyone can do it. Where will this lead? Folks might get ChatGPT to write horrible things in my style. Even worse, they might get paid instead of me. When I put my blog up I don’t remember ticking a box that said “I allow companies obsessed with shareholder value to mine this data and use it to create machines that can imitate me.” Oh well. Welcome to the modern world. It is a form of immortality I suppose. At least until ChatGPT finds a better Rob Miles

Coding with Covid

/

I had lots of plans for the next week or so. None of which included catching Covid. But there you are. Apparently there is a lot of it about at the moment. I’m the only person in the family who has tested positive so far, which means that I’m confined to upstairs and can only eat things which can be slid under the door. Fortunately I like pizza. The good news is that I’m getting a lot of code written at the moment.

Mudfall

/

Today was going great right up to the point where I fell on my back in the mud. I was just about to shout “Careful, it might be slippy” to our six year old charge when I illustrated this fact to great effect by falling over. Fortunately no lasting damage was done, although I did have to spend the rest of the trip walking round in a slowly solidifying coat and jeans.

Video payoff

/

I’m recording video walkthroughs for my Begin to Code Cloud book at the moment. I’m really pleased I’m doing this. Today I found an horrendous issue with a setting which broke a bunch of demos in the book text. Moral of the story folks: don’t just use your main machine for demos you want to give away; it will have configurations that make things work for you that won’t work for anyone else….

Smart Meter - Dumb System

/

Today was going to be the day they installed our new smart meter so that we can watch our money go up in smoke in real time from the comfort of the kitchen. So I was up first thing in the garage throwing stuff into the car to clear a path to the meter ready for the swap.

The installer turns up, takes one look at the electricity meter and says he can’t fit a smart gas meter. Apparently my electricity meter is smart, but not smart enough. It is a SMET 1 when it needs to be a SMET 2. He leaves having done nothing and I headed off glumly to the tip .

I have really no idea why the installation of a smart gas meter is dependent on the electricity meter. I’m also annoyed because I deliberately waited until I knew that SMET 2 meters were being installed before getting our electricity meter done. Then they installed a SMET 1 meter anyway. I guess they had a warehouse full of the things.

Anyhoo, I’ve emailed the electricity company to ask for a meter upgrade. Let’s see how that turns out.

Golfing for real

/

I’ve played a lot of golf recently. Or something. Most weeks you’ll find us firing up Walkabout golf for nine holes of fun and games. Today I got to find out if any of my Oculus Quest skills have transferred to the real world when we met up for a round of real crazy golf at Puttstars Leeds. I think my practice has made me a bit better, I can swing and hit the ball at a repeatable angle, which is nice. The major difficulty was that the greens played a lot slower, so lots of my shots fell short.

But it was still great fun. I can recommend Putstars Leeds, the folks there were friendly and they also had a whole bunch of video games. Great fun.