Ed Davies

Programmer who likes science/astronomy, etc.

For the last 8 years I've been building an off-grid house in NE Scotland but have since given up on the project.

#yes #stopBurningStuff

#nobot #noindex

Home: https://edavies.me.uk/contact.html
PGP: 92533CA2D4DDE4CD9C6524830071582E53798481
Pronouns: He/him/they/them
Blog: https://edavies.me.uk/blog/
Location: Caithness, NE Scotland, Great Britain (and, regrettably, UK)

Last Notes

2026-05-31 17:10:41 CEST

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Is it not a case of bytes is bytes and ed(1) don't care, it just passes them though to the terminal.

2026-05-25 20:59:07 CEST

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Thick stone walls here almost line of sight from you (well, the furthest E along the Moray coast I can identify for sure are the hills behind Buckie though I can see a bit further along). Temperature in my study (the warmest room in the house) peaked at just less than 21.5°C about an hour ago. Cloud only broke for an hour or two this afternoon.

2026-05-09 12:45:13 CEST

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The press coverage of this is pretty spotty. I don't care how wet that field is, it's not a “ditching” ;-) Some reports say it landed in the water and was recovered to land which sounds more plausible. Any idea what the sequence was?

2026-04-19 15:43:51 CEST

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You're thinking of @npub1sv0…rq9x @npub1ydw…yrfd
Founder and managing director: @npub12hz…ynw4
General manager: [@bloor](https://bloor.tw/@bloor )

2026-03-20 11:05:59 CET

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This is something which causes me not a small amount of resentment. Surrounded by wind farms here but the most expensive electricity in the UK, even when it's blowing a hoolie.
The government insists on keeping a single wholesale electricity price for the whole of the UK because regional pricing would harm consumers. What they probably mean: it'd harm consumers in the south of England who are likely to vote Labour or Tory rather than those in Scotland who'll probably vote SNP or LibDem anyway [¹].
[¹] Yeah, around where you are the Tories have a chance, sadly, but that' a bit of an exception.

2025-10-29 13:53:39 CET

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“An SSH config file is compromised…”
ITYM “comprised”. A compromised SSH config file would not be good.

2025-10-11 11:24:22 CEST

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It doesn't so odd to me.
Legionella in domestic plumbing is largely theoretical anyway (AIUI, there's never been a case that's been proven to come from private domestic plumbing - obviously there might have been unproven cases but they must be very rare) but there is a possibility.
When researching the plumbing system for the off-grid house I was building I looked into the maximum temperatures for storing cold water. The only rules or guidance I found were from the Hong Kong health authority which said a maximum of 20°C.
The cold supply underground in the UK would never come close to that temperature so the chances of even comatose Legionella spoors arriving in the supply would be minimal. In Queensland, however, I could imagine the supply being warmer than that so there might be a sufficient load of spoors arriving that weekly pasteurisation wouldn't be sufficient. At least in theory.

2025-03-19 15:38:58 CET

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“I don't know (enough) about them” but from the little I have read I'm deeply suspicious that the design has (maybe not so) hidden motives not compatible with a secure system which is convenient for users, which kills any motivation I might have had to find out more.

2025-03-16 11:03:13 CET

@npub13dg…khqg Your stream of Elon posts, while individually quite reasonable, are just getting tedious. Unfollowed.

2024-10-07 14:20:49 CEST

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Something I've not seen mentioned explicitly in this case but maybe you, having taken more interest, might know: did the original contract the train operating company signed for these trains specify any obligation to get the maintenance work done by Newag?
I assume not as it should have been mentioned but most of what I've read has been anti-Newag so I'm not sure.

2024-09-07 12:23:22 CEST

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Andrews and Arnold: https://social.aa.net.uk/@aaisp
Managed by https://toot.me.uk/@revk and https://bloor.tw/@bloor
Little bit more expensive than most other ISPs but very good service - if you call or email them you get to communicate with somebody who actually deals with the matter rather than just reads a script. E.g., when I moved into my current rental house things were a bit complicated with the previous tenant not cancelling his BT connection and the exchange being out of ADSL lines and being in the process of being upgraded but they spent quite a bit of time on getting it all sorted out for me as quickly at BT's bureaucracy could plausibly allow.

2024-09-06 11:02:23 CEST

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Thanks for the “Highland Broadband” name - apparently they have “exciting plans” for fibre where I am in Caithness. Will look into it more later.
(A tiny bit of the regret on giving up on my house build was that they'd already put fibre in to the entrance to that site: https://edavies.me.uk/2022/04/fttp/ )

2024-08-27 15:22:50 CEST

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No, the flight plan does not list the people on board, just the number of people (for search and rescue purposes).
The passenger name record stuff is separate and, AIUI, only applies to commercial flights.
@npub1ay2…exel