I.T. – Page 30 – Ben's blog

January 7, 2016March 19, 2018

IT rant

I don’t know why it is that every time I want to download the simplest of modules I’m asked to download this great new package manager to end all package managers. Which results in this glorious 3 fold install sequence:“Installing is easy, Composer will take care of all dependencies! Ooops it doesn’t but PECL will! Oops just kidding I guess we’re back to apt.”

Not to mention all 3 package managers are independent from one another so changes in one don’t percolate to the others; thus throwing out the window their mission to resolve dependencies.

I’m flabbergasted by this trend and its unquestioned acceptance.

November 6, 2015March 19, 2018

A solar powered blog

This blog is now powered by a Raspberry Pi using 100% solar energy. Nicole instrumented the Phidgets sensors so we would gain some visibility into our electricity production & consumption. This has already given us some great insights. We can see the effect that each device we use has on the system: how much the LED lamps take to charge, the hole that the inverter blasts through the battery when turned on. We can tell that not all sunny days are created equal in their ability to give a charge. We can even tell the increase in electricity consumption that rsyncing a whole bunch of data to the Pi has: 0.03A.

The sensors

solar panels volts (a good indicator of sunlight)
input amps (indicates when the charge controller uses produced electricity)
output amps / load (what we consume with various devices)
battery volts (whether this blog will make it through the night or not)

For now I’m only graphing using the Gnuplot one-liner from Hell. More to come…

It blows my mind way too hard that I have a system in which sunlight comes in and organized information comes out. And by organized information I mean lolcats.

September 23, 2015November 13, 2018

House – plans

Since the modifications I’m making to the house now are quite specific to our living arrangements, I’ve stopped updating the 3D model I made to design the house. I’ve also gained in confidence and experience such that I don’t need to do everything virtually before I grab a hammer.

Before launching into this adventure, I spent a good deal of time online reviewing designs, techniques and best practices. In case this is useful to someone else I’m publishing the core design here. This design was critiqued over multiple iterations by many carpenters, builders, furniture makers & all around smart handymen.

A few points:

it is very modular
a few features are specific to us
the gambrel design is balanced (every angle 22.5 and equal lengths)