Historic Energy Price Cap Data (FOI success!)
Ofgem, the UK's energy regulator, publishes the current energy price cap per region. Note that it is only the current price cap. I couldn't find the complete historic data on their site. So I sent a
Terence Eden’s Blog
Regular nonsense about tech and its effects 🙃
Game Review: It Takes Two ★★★★★
A couple is facing the devastating prospect of divorce. Their young daughter is understandably distraught. In her fear, she doses both parents with a powerful hallucinogenic drug in the hope that
Unstructured Data and the Joy of having Something Else think for you
I'm sure we have all met a person like this: People who have an AI habit use it by default. I have watched someone ask ChatGPT the weather for tomorrow rather than simply open the weather app.
Book Review: There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm ★★★★★
Apparently I reviewed the previous version of this book four years ago but have no real memory of it. Did you ever have a dream which was vividly realistic yet somehow slightly askew from reality?
What's the source of Einstein's "citizen of the world" quip?
I like digging through old archives and tracing my way through quotes. Here's a particularly good one from Albert Einstein which is often peppered around the Internet without any sources. If my
Book Review: The Electronic Criminals by Robert Farr (1975) ★★★⯪☆
What can a fifty-year-old book teach us about cybersecurity? Written just as computing was beginning to enter the mainstream, The Electronic Criminals takes us into a terrifying new world of crime!
Firmware Update for the Treedix TRX5-0816 Cable Tester
Last year I reviewed the Treedix USB Cable Tester - a handy device for testing the capabilities of all your USB cables. I noted that it had a few minor bugs and contacted the manufacturer to see if
Book Review: Katabasis by R. F. Kuang ★★★★⯪
I'm a fan of R.F. Kuang's books - but this is the first which I've found laugh-out-loud funny. What if your University advisor died and the only way to graduate was to descend into hell and bring him
How many hours do you need to work to afford a pint of beer?
I dropped into a pub in central London and ordered two pints of draught beer. Obviously the price of everything is nuts these days - and doubly so in London - so I only winced a little bit when the
Game Review: Unravel Two ★★★⯪☆
My new year's resolution is to play more video games. Specifically co-operative games. I hate playing competitively; it's rubbish to achieve victory at the expense of someone else. So I asked for
Adding "Log In With Mastodon" to Auth0
I use Auth0 to provide social logins for the OpenBenches website. I don't want to deal with creating user accounts, managing passwords, or anything like that, so Auth0 is perfect for my needs. There
Book Review: Under Fire - Black Britain in Wartime by Stephen Bourne ★★★★☆
Everyone knows that Black people didn't exist in the UK until recently, right? Despite mountains of evidence of everything from Black Tudors and Victorian actors, some myths perniciously persist.
30 months to 3MWh - some more home battery stats
Back in August 2023, we installed a Moixa 4.8kWh Solar Battery to pair with our solar panels. For the last year and a half it has chugged away slurping up electrons and sending them back as needed.
Book Review: Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops by Jen Campbell ★★☆☆☆
Remember back in the early 2010s when any moderately popular Twitter account could become a book (or even a TV series)? This is a collection of Tweet-sized "overheard in" stories. All set in book
This time is different
3D TV, AMP, Augmented Reality, Beanie Babies, Blockchain, Cartoon Avatars, Curved TVs, Frogans, Hoverboards, iBeacons, Jetpacks, Metaverse, NFTs, Physical Web, Quantum Computing, Quibi, Small and
Book Review: Of Monsters and Mainframes - Barbara Truelove ★★★⯪☆
This is fun, silly, charming, and much better than The Murderbot Diaries despite being superficially similar. Imagine you are an interstellar ship and, of course, your AI is conscious. What would
Adding OpenStreetMap login to Auth0
So you want to add OSM as an OAuth provider to Auth0? Here's a tip - you do not want to create a custom social connection! Instead, you need to create an "OpenID Connect" provider. Here's how.
Book Review: A Geography of Time by Robert V. Levine ★★★☆☆
This book doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a sociology textbook, travel guide, history book, or guide to the mysteries of the world? Subtitled "the temporal misadventures of a social
How close are we to a vision for 2010?
Twenty five years ago today, the EU's IST advisory group published a paper about the future of "Ambient Intelligence". Way before the world got distracted with cryptoscams and AI slop, we genuinely
OpenBenches at FOSDEM
At the recent FOSDEM, I did a very quick lightning talk about our OpenBenches project. Sadly, despite the best efforts of the AV team, the video had a missing section. I took my own audio recording