Programmer, motorcyclist, pilot. Far too analytical for my own good.
Joined February 2009
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3,872 Photos and videos
Jun 8
There was a time I hung on every word of WWDC and Apple events. Half the time now I don’t even notice they’re on, and the other half I don’t care. The products have over-served me for many years. I’m typing this on an iPad Pro I bought in 2015. My Apple Watch is from 2018 and still works fine. My Mac Mini is from 2020. Even my iPhone SE is the lowest end model from 2022 and really I didn’t need it and the 2020 model was fine too.
Jun 8
It's almost time for WWDC 2026! Just a half hour to go. We'll be sharing all of Apple's announcements as they happen here at MacRumorsLive if you want to follow along.
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Jun 3
Charts for the last 24 hours from the Pecron app, showing a nice average cloudy-with-breaks early winter day. I used cheap night rate grid power to maintain 58% SoC all night until the start of peak 7-9 AM rates, then used no grid power from 7 AM until my Free Hour of Power at 9-10 PM (at the end of the 5-9 PM peak pricing) which restored me from 30% to 56% ( 1.6 kWh). I'm now using night rate power to maintain that 56% until 7 AM. Beautiful.
Equipment: Pecron E3600LFP plus one EP3000-48V expansion battery (total 6144Wh), built in 3600W inverter and 1800W AC charger, 6x 440W solar panels.
Powering: everything in the house that normally plugs into a wall socket: fridge, Starlink and assorted computers, LED lighting in the main room, portable Dimplex "4KW" air conditioner, dehumidifier, E61 espresso, air fryer, toaster, kettle, microwave, clothes washer (not used today).
Not powering: hot water heater (separately run only in the Free hour of Power), oven (very seldom used now), water pump, LED ceiling lighting in little-used rooms.
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Jun 2
Now it’s officially winter, and last night’s storm is gone, I decided to try four blocks high for more slope on my solar panels. My iPhone “spirit level” says that’s 20° on the rear set and 23° on the front set (because the ground slopes). I’ve had them at 7° and 10° (two blocks high) for eight months, and 13° and 16° for about two weeks — until I put them back down late yesterday when it got very stormy. Yes, I should have the panels ballasted down, not just their own weight, but while they’re not I can adjust the slope by adding or removing concrete blocks in literally 1-2 minutes (not counting putting my shoes on).
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Jun 2
I'm seeing brief peaks of 2200W (into 2x 1200W MPPTs) and long stretches of 1850W, up from 1900W peaks and lots of 1600W at the lower angle. So that might be as much as 1 extra kWh a day. The ideal angle today is 58º and at the solstice 59º, but I'm not going to be doing anything like that with this kind of setup. Also that's with direct sun. Flatter is actually better in overcast / rainy conditions.
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Bruce Hoult retweeted
Jun 1
Over the first eight months, this small and inexpensive setup has decreased grid kWh used by a third compared to previous years, and more than halved the cost, despite rising prices. It may be worth getting more solar panels (the ones I have now cost NZ$776 US$400 total) keeping everything else the same, especially the battery size. The opportunity is the number of days on which I can't completely fill the existing battery because of ether lack of sun or in Dec-Feb high aircon use. Further improvement is limited, while staying on-grid, because I'm already at 44% fixed charge, 56% electricity cost compared to 15% fixed charge, 85% electricity cost in previous years. Even a couple more solar panels will probably take the fixed charge to 60%-70% of the total, the electricity to 30%-40%.
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Bruce Hoult retweeted
Jun 1
April-May update. An uptick in cost in May (but much smaller than in 2022 & 2023) as weather gets colder and solar generation less. Unlike in previous years, I have not yet used any firewood. I actually used 8% more kWh than in May 2025, but the cost was 24.4% less despite 43% increase in daily charge and 5% increase in kWh prices. The variable (kWh) cost was 37.8% less in May 2026 than May 2025 due to avoiding using power in peak pricing times (battery) and daytime shoulder 9-5 times (solar panels).
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2 Nov 2025
Just finished my first full month of electricity with 2.6kW of solar panels (US$400) deployed on a Pecron E3600LFP (US$999 Halloween special at the moment) plus one extra battery for 6kWh total. Result: $48.70 (US$28), down from ... well, see the graph. That should flat-line (or even a little lower) from now until April. Notes: my fixed daily charge went up by $10/month in August, and per kWh by 5%. Jan22 was a partial month (moved in), and Apr24-May24 I was overseas with only the fridge running. I had the panels out for about half of Sep.
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Jun 1
April-May update. An uptick in cost in May (but much smaller than in 2022 & 2023) as weather gets colder and solar generation less. Unlike in previous years, I have not yet used any firewood. I actually used 8% more kWh than in May 2025, but the cost was 24.4% less despite 43% increase in daily charge and 5% increase in kWh prices. The variable (kWh) cost was 37.8% less in May 2026 than May 2025 due to avoiding using power in peak pricing times (battery) and daytime shoulder 9-5 times (solar panels).
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Jun 1
Over the first eight months, this small and inexpensive setup has decreased grid kWh used by a third compared to previous years, and more than halved the cost, despite rising prices. It may be worth getting more solar panels (the ones I have now cost NZ$776 US$400 total) keeping everything else the same, especially the battery size. The opportunity is the number of days on which I can't completely fill the existing battery because of ether lack of sun or in Dec-Feb high aircon use. Further improvement is limited, while staying on-grid, because I'm already at 44% fixed charge, 56% electricity cost compared to 15% fixed charge, 85% electricity cost in previous years. Even a couple more solar panels will probably take the fixed charge to 60%-70% of the total, the electricity to 30%-40%.
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May 31
Major blunder on the part of Sweden to depend on a US engine for the Gripen, and one they must correct ASAP independent of any Canadian deal. That would be appreciated by customers ranging from Ukraine to Brazil to Thailand to potentially India.
May 30
I’m told, the USG has made it clear that if the CDN gov reneges on the contract signed by the Trudeau gov in Jan 2023 to purchase 88 x F35A’s in 4 batches, in order to buy a number of Gripen E’s, then 3 things will happen quickly.
1. LM with the full backing of the USG will launch a lawsuit to recover lost funds. When the Chrétien gov did the same thing with EH101 purchase, the CDN gov paid AgustaWestland nearly $1 billion in compensation.
2. CDN based businesses that exist solely to provide various components for the 3 variants of the F35 will have their future parts orders cut by 50%. This will cost them roughly $1.5 billion in revenue.
3. The USG will notify Saab & the Gov of Canada, that they will veto the export permit for the GE F414 engine, making any sale of the Gripen E to Canada impossible.
The Biden admin, threatened this when the sale of the Gripen E to Columbia was announced, the Trump admin followed through with the threat & formally vetoed the use of the engine, which killed the deal.
When the Columbia challenge occurred Saab engineers looked at the cost of using a Rolls Royce engine & concluded it would add $3-5 million USD to the flyaway cost to each Gripen E & add 5-8 years to the delivery timeframe while the airframe was modified & new testing & certification was completed.
Last point, the RCAF has made clear their position, 1 fighter jet & the best option is the F35A, why exactly should short term politics play a roll in a $20 billion dollar purchase that will not be finalized until long after Trump is not just out of office but likely deceased.
Perhaps they should just honour the contract they signed just 3 years ago & as recommended by the very people who risk their lives using the aircraft, no?
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May 22
Today I took my car into Whangarei (pop 56k) for a service. While I was waiting I looked for a cafe and found one I hadn’t been to before. It turned out I got to try to remember how to speak Russian, eight years after I stopped (brief) living there. My lunch…
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May 20
Shipments of SpacemiT K3 RISC-V boards (comparable to Pi 5 or RK3588) have been going out for a few days. I received one today and have written a little helper that makes it easy to run any standard Linux program on the 8 A100 "AI" cores. They're about 40% the speed of the 8 main X100 cores which makes it silly to ignore them — the A100s together are more powerful than any previous RISC-V SBC under $1000. They run the same programs, but you can't migrate already-running programs due to the difference in vector register lengths (256 bits vs 1024 bits). #spacemit #k3 github.com/brucehoult/k3_ai
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May 20
Oooh, rural post just left me a SoacemiT K3 16GB 2.4GHz 8 8 core RISC-V computer comparable to Raspberry Pi 5 or the RK3588 Radxa Rock 5 or Orange Pi 5 etc. Not as fast as a CIX P1 but almost no one has one of those. Excite excite excite.
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May 20
With my first RISC-V microcontroller board, received just 9 1/2 years ago. Huge progress! Next year: Apple M1-class.
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May 20
There was something rattling around inside so I opened it before powering it up. Turned out it was the retaining screw for the 2242 slot (seen here sitting on the power switch/ 3.5mm board). The one for the 2280 was very loose too. Another user reports both those screws had come out on his one. Potentially destructive! Not good.
Other than that Bianbu OS is preinstalled on a 118.8G partition on the UFS drive (like eMMC but faster) so there is no need to open it.
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Apr 17
Those panels are JUST far enough away from the house shadow on April 17. The sun is already 34º lower at noon than in December when it's straight down onto the gentle panel slope. The sun will be another 13º lower in June. I might have to move them back a little. Still, 2240W into a "2400W" solar controller is not bad for 34º off-axis. The most I've even seen in summer was 2330W. That's 96%. I guess that's what 10% over-panelling does for you: 6x 440W = 2640W in theory. The problem in winter is not that the panels are pointing the wrong way, it's that the days are short and it's usually overcast and/or raining. No snow problem here :-) A flat 10º panel angle should be better than the theoretically best 59º winter slope (to point at the noon sun) in overcast conditions.
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May 14
Ok, let’s see how that goes for the next six weeks. I cut the gap between the two arrays down to 85cm (about 2’9”). My mower is 50cm wide so that should just be one pass in each direction now, with a good overlap. Still need to tidy up the fringes under the (old) edges, and also I temporarily have just one stack of concrete blocks under the high side of each panel, not in the corners.
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May 14
9 AM vs 10 AM. I didn’t quite get it parallel to the house. Pretty close. Should now have good sun from 10 AM to 3 PM, which is the important hours. Will be a bit less in June. Hard to avoid. At 9 AM the far panels are still a bit shaded by the citrus trees.
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May 13
Crud, that was actually a kind of cool and harmless place. A couple of random photos from one time I went there.
May 13
🔥 Russia: Izmailovo Kremlin, a tourist attraction located 9 km from the real Kremlin in Moscow has burned down. 3,000m² on fire - 0.75 acres.
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May 8
I plotted the area Ukraine has promised not to attack, approx 320m long. In 2015 I watched the parade from just outside the Dinamo metro station, 6 km from Red Square on Leningrad Ave, and of course they assembled even further from the centre. But there will be no display of equipment this year.
Original decree: president.gov.ua/documents/3…
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