Status:
I fitted the tiny solar panel on the shed roof and it’s been powering the extractor fan for a few days. I think it’s made a difference — while the shed is not cool it’s definitely cooler when the sun it as its height.
The panel says it generates 10w at 12v and I’ve been wondering what else of that voltage I can power from it. The bilge pump needs 36w but I knew USB starts at 5w so I ordered a cheap charging port like you’d install in a campervan. (I still haven’t got watts, volts and amps straight in my head so don’t @ me, I’m working on it.)
It arrived today so I hooked it up and plugged in an old USB battery pack. I now have a solar power bank running in my shed, albeit in miniature. Clearly it’s of no practical use unless there’s a catastrophic power cut and we need to run a lightbulb off the battery, but as a proof of concept it’s surprisingly exciting. Just need to scale it up now.
Meanwhile our neighbours have hired a bouncy castle for their kid’s birthday which is currently inflated in their back garden running of a rather loud fan. They don’t use their garden much it’s a bit of a shock suddenly having this giant blue structure whirring away next to our normally peaceful zone. But it’s just for the weekend and any annoyance on my part can be chalked up as karmic payback for the hours I’ve spent out there with power tools, fabricating compost bays and building camera obscuras and geodesic domes.
I was joking last night that I’ve spent so much time outside this summer that indoors has become a bit alien. Indoors is going to get quite familar again this weekend.
Reading:
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- Paul Graham Raven has a go at defining Sam Kriss whose verbosity I find veers between enchanting and irritating. “The aesthetic of an encounter with history for a generation that has been raised to assume that everything prior to the advent of digital cameras is probably just backstory."
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Burnham Week One: This is what a professional political operation looks like
- Ian Dunt is very happy with how our new centrist dad PM is settling in, which is nice for him, but this is worth reading for his deep dive into what actually happened.
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How the wrong kind of nostalgia can endanger a society
- “Unreflective nostalgia can breed monsters." I’ve long been skeptical of nostalgia so I’m primed to agree wholeheartedly with this. It’s slippery though. You can’t ignore the past and should definitely learn from it, but romanticising a time when if you were even alive you were young and stupid is hugely problematic. The present might be tricky but the past was always worse, even when there were shards of light.
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AI mania is eviscerating global decision-making
- I confess I skimmed the crap out of this as it’s aimed at people working in software. What I did read strengthened this notion I have that this is not a technology problem as much as a management one. I’m reminded of Cory Doctorow’s idea that incompetent bosses are terrified that they’re irrelevant and AI lets them “wire their toy steering wheel directly into the drivetrain of the car”.
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The ten greatest failures of Orson Welles
- Welles remains a fascinating character, someone who kept reaching and failing, partly because he had no industry support, but also because he had to. I really should read a proper biography of him sometime.
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Understanding large numbers: It’s our ethical duty
- The perennial explainer of how a billion is significantly larger than a million and how we just can’t wrap our tiny human minds around how much larger is it. Essential reading for anyone who thinks an individual owning a billion dollars is absolutely fine actually.
Watching:
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Kermode on Andy Serkis' Animal Farm (13:11)
- Rather annoyingly I may have to watch this now, though I’ll put it low on the list.
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Star Trek to Strange New Worlds (2:06)
- If SNW is a prequel then it really should be done as a 50’s style TV show.