I'm hooking my solar panels up to Twitter! Installation Inverter Fronius provide a comprehensive API guide - I wish more companies did this. There are lots of unofficial libraries in a variety of different languages. I've written this code in Python3. This is a general tidy-up of the code I wrote several years ago. Here's…
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Having solar panels on your roof is great - but you need something to turn their wicked DC electricity into pure and godly AC. This bit of kit is called an "inverter". It's a big box which lives in your roof working magic. This is what ours looks like: We chose a Fronius Primo inverter…
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A few years ago, we installed solar panels on our roof in Oxford - I've enjoyed blogging about them. I've released open data from them, inspected them with a drone, and measured what happened during a solar eclipse. They've even been on the BBC! But the best thing I did, was release this little Twitter…
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At a recent Staff Away-Day, we were encouraged to write a "Manual of Me". A quick summary of the general ways that you like to work. I don't spend much time on introspection and I found it disturbingly personal. So here's mine for you to enjoy! Excuse my crappy drawing and even crappier spelling. Here's…
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Once in a while, I'll see someone Tweet a "link" to file:///C:/users/... - that's the Microsoft Windows way of representing a location on a filesystem. Usually this means that the user has tried to either drag 'n' drop something, or copied a link from their file explorer. There are some (mild) infosec risks you should…
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*sigh* These scams are really common. And pretty easy to pull off. Renting an expensive sports car for a day is relatively cheap. Drive it to some fancy locations, wear a couple of rented designer clothes, perhaps pay for a pretty model to pose as your girlfriend, take a load of photos and you can…
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Dark times, my friends. Dark times. It's up to all of us to pull together. And that means making vital health information accessible. One of the easiest things you can do is make your Twitter content accessible is by adding descriptions to your images. Go to twitter.com/settings/accessibility and turn on "Compose image descriptions". Here's why.…
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In British culture - the handshake is the default greeting. It's as ubiquitous as a hearty "good morning" or offering to buy people a round of drinks in the pub. To deliberately not shake hands is rude. It indicates that you are breaking normal social behaviour. Handshakes are political. Back in the 1990s, the Prime…
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One of the (many many many) things our team worked on this week finally went live: You can now access most NHS services from your mobile, with no data charges.In awe of the team who pulled this together very quickly. https://t.co/ogLzCc8z97 — Terence Eden (@edent) March 18, 2020 All the UK's major mobile networks have…
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Back in the 1980s, when my family first got a micro-computer, there were only limited ways to program your machine. The Internet was basically non-existent for domestic users. You could buy thick computer manuals, swap cassettes with other enthusiasts, or build a light pen and point it at a flashing square on your TV (Really!)…
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