Farcebook

Month: May 2024

  • Mowing grass by hand

    Mowing grass by hand

    I’ve got a grass problem on my plot, the grass grows better than anything else. It’s a constant battle trying to keep the grass short and has so far caused the end of a petrol mower. I took my battery mower from home one weekend, but the batteries need charging half way through and I get the feeling the mower isn’t really designed for mowing such a large area. The batteries get quite hot.

    I also tried using a strimmer, it’s awkward and takes ages. So while randomly watching TV one night I saw a YouTube video of someone explaining how to service their push mower. Turns out these things aren’t just a prop you see on old cartoons, but really do exist. And they’re super cheap.

    Mine came from Amazon and actually cut the grass really well. It seems to eat through long grass pretty easily and doesn’t really get stuck. You do need to push it with some force to make the blades spin, and it locks up if something thicker than grass gets in the blades but otherwise works really well.

    There is a little grass catcher on the back, but I found the grass comes out so fast it often misses, and it’s awkward to remove to empty it. The thing fills pretty quickly too and after detaching it twice in two minutes I gave up and took it off.

  • Power Cut 3 – Fall of the machines

    Something’s very wrong with the power here. It went off again this afternoon for about ten seconds. Just long enough to mess up all the computers and screw the Internet.

    Then it worked for an hour, before doing it again twice. So now instead of sitting in a dark room with no power, I’m in a lit fully working room just with no working network.

    I’m writing all this on my Remarkable 2 with its keyboard case. It’s quite pleasant to type on, I should do this more.

    Last month I switched my mobile phone from Smarty (budget Three) to Lebara (budget Vodafone) since I noticed our cheapo work phones on Lebara always seem to have signal, and my phone on Three/Smarty didn’t. They do seem better, but it feels like Lebara gets a lower priority on the network than Vodafone. Earlier my phone had a signal but no data, the little signal meter had an exclamation mark in it.

    I get to go home in 20 minutes. Today hasn’t been the most productive really.

    Update

    So it turns out where I work has quite a severe power supply issue. The main cable connecting us to the local substation has failed and it’s causing the power company some issues finding the fault.

    We have been running off generator power since the weekend, and the network failed because none of the switches in our building have any power. I’m guessing they use PoE from another part of the building that currently doesn’t have power, or has tripped offline due to the repeated power cycling that’s been going on.

  • Power Cut Part 2 – Electric Boogaloo

    So I’ve been thinking, this power cut is a bit inconvenient since I’m at work and supposed to be working. Ultimately though I don’t really care, it’s not my problem to fix. It’ll come back on and in a day or two we’ll forget it even happened.

    The school is a bit like a scene from a horror movie though, all the magnetic fire doors have released and the corridors are lit by emergency lighting. Lurking in the shadows are small fast-moving shapes, but I’m told that’s just the little kids.

    At home I rarely get powercuts caused by things beyond my own doing. If the power goes off at home, it’s usually followed shortly by me going “ohshit. Well the RCD works then, good”. The estate is new, the substation was upgraded about two years ago and for a weekend the entire estate was being run from a single large generator.

    In my house is 10kWh of battery power and 3kW of solar panels. I have a lot of battery devices, and on my driveway is my car with its own 50kWh battery pack.

    Except I can’t easily use that to run anything. It’s not wired up to power the house in a powercut. None of that energy is available outside the device containing it. The house solar doesn’t run without a grid connection either. My shed has its own batteries and solar panel and can work off-grid, but not for that long and it’s no good having power in there and nowhere else.

    Is this how you start out on the path to becoming some sort of crazy prepper? One minute you’re looking at generators on Amazon, next minute shotguns and tinned ex-Russian ration packs?

    It’s warm in here with no AC running, and the open windows do nothing to create air flow. Briefly I considered bringing a fan from home, but that wouldn’t be any use!

  • Power Cuts

    Currently there’s a powercut at work. This is a bit awkward considering I teach computer science. No power, no computers.

    Except it’s not so bad, everyone has a laptop. I’m writing this on my Remarkable 2, next to me is my work Surface Pro. And in my bag is my personl Chromebook. They’re all battery powered, and fully charged.

    Oh right yeah… we use MS Teams for everything, so while I can work on my own device I can’t access any of the online content because the wifi and Internet have shut down.

    My Chromebook is a Chromebook, so without access to the Google hive mind that’s no use.

    Never fear, I can teather to my mobile phone and use its data connection. Except everyone in the area is trying to do the same thing so while I have quite a strong 4G signal, there’s no data connection.

    So we’re all just sat here waiting with nothing to do. Can’t even get water because the drinking water machines are electric.

    At least the magnetic door locks fail safe and we’re not locked in. But we are sat in our separate rooms, spread across a wide area unable to find out what’s going on because everyone communicates over Teams or WhatsApp and you need a functional Internet connection for that.

    Fortunately I charge my car at home. There’s staff that use work’s chargers. I wonder if they have enough power to get to the nearest public charger about 10 miles away.

    Isn’t modern life wonderful. I’ll report back when the riots begin, not that you’ll be able to read this of course. I can’t get online to post it.

  • What a load of farmyard manure this gardening thing is.

    What a load of farmyard manure this gardening thing is.

    It’s only taken half a year, but my greenhouse is now finally ready for things to be planted in it! It has all its windows, won’t blow away and after a trip to Wickes the ground is now suitable for growing plants again.

    Can confirm the manure is real manure, from real cows, it might take a bit to get the smell out the car. The compost is some sort of weird fluffy nonsense full of sticks and a random nail. It’s not very good. I’ve used it to plant some beans and peas so they can germinate out the reaches of hungry pigeons. It’s not even pretending to be shredded wood or the other poorly composted garden waste they normally sell in bags.

    The greenhouse now stinks a bit, so I will leave the manure to rot down a bit more. I’ve dug it into the soil so hopefully the worms and things will get at it too. This is a before photo, I didn’t think to take an after one.

    Here’s the green manure I sowed the other week. It’s rained a lot recently so everything is starting to grow really well.

    There’s a small weed problem over on the bit where I am trying to grow carrots and parsnips. I can’t tell what anything is, and without picking out individual weeds this mess is just going to have to fight it out until nothing is at risk from an unexpected hoe slicing its leaves off.