In my post about ordering a home car charger I mentioned that I was using the same electricians to install the charger at the same time as they install another product that I’m super excited about – well I’ve order a Tesla Powerwall!! 😀 When I picked up my car …
I’ve now had my car for a week and a half and have clocked up 600 miles. It’s been an interesting week since I wrote the last post and there’s a few things I’ve noticed with the car over that time… The drivers sun visor is seriously small compared to …
I’ve kept track of the price I’ve paid for petrol since mid 2008. I started collecting the data when I noticed the price of petrol had risen a fair bit from when I got my first car. Here’s the full spreadsheet for the anyone who wants to look at the …
Follow on to my post yesterday about my Leaf 2.Zero. I’ve ordered my home charger. It’s a Rolec, black with grey inserts, 32A tethered type 2 device. I researched a number of devices and companies when looing for a home charger and landed on this device because I liked the …
I bought myself a new car this year and after two years of looking at electric cars, I’ve finally bought one! As of Tuesday, I now own a Nissan Leaf 2.Zero in black. Why did I buy an electric car? I’m a fan of green tech, so at some point …
This is a review of the UI and functionality available on the M&S Internet Banking website. I have not reviewed the app as I’ve never bothered to download it. I opened my first M&S Current Account in 2015 and the internet banking platform hasn’t changed – that I know of, …
Please note that switching your current account multiple times in a short space of time will affect your credit rating and should NOT be done if you’re looking to take out a mortgage in the next two years! Two weeks ago I posted about how I’d managed to make a …
Please note that switching your current account multiple times in a short space of time will affect your credit rating and should NOT be done if you’re looking to take out a mortgage in the next two years! Late 2015, I was looking at my accounts wondering why I’d made …
Last year I cancelled my ADSL connection and went 4G only on my EE 64GB contract. It’s been an interesting three months, so I thought I’d post this info in case anyone else was considering going 4G only. Background to why I went 4G only In August 2017, I noticed …
As you probably know from my blog, I have a number of Arduino’s around the house for monitoring household and weather metrics and I’m always looking for ways to add more devices and data sets. My dad happened to find a map one summer on blitzortung.org to view live lightning …
A few weeks back I received a request to add in the ability to select half days in the Retirement Countdown Clock app (https://blog.v-s-f.co.uk/2016/02/retirement-countdown-clock-app/) and I decided that this was a quick change that wouldn’t take too long, so why not 🙂 Well I made a complete mess up of …
I used to have a Microsoft Lumia 550 phone, which although basic just worked and really well. Unfortunately I’m a little clumsey and managed to drop it around a dozen times when getting out of the car at work (yeah, you’d think I’d learn). It managed to survive those drops, …
As mentioned in my previous post (see https://blog.v-s-f.co.uk/2017/04/home-monitoring-upgrade/), the first task I have is to migrate from HSQLDB to MySQL. Because the system logs data every minute while I have power in the house and I want to minimise downtime when I actually have a fully working upgrade, I’ve experimented …
I’ve been monitoring stats from my meter, weather and hotwater tank for over two years now (see https://blog.v-s-f.co.uk/2015/04/home-monitoring-home-made-reborn/) and the application now needs an upgrade. I now want to log more data from the weather station (temperature and humidity). This should be as simple as adding two new columns to …
There’s a headline on the BBC that has caught my eye today – “Tesco Bank blames ‘systematic sophisticated attack’ for account losses” – and I’m not at all surprised given my experience back in 2009 when I had a Tesco Bank credit card account. In 2006, before I got my …
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