Yep, my home page. Just a collection of bits and pieces.

Email Me

Links

Latest talks

  • Home networking
    In this talk, we look at home networking. We’ll cover broadband, Wi-Fi, standards, speeds, firewalls, in-bound connections plus some additional options. The presentation is : The talk was previously recorded on U3AComminities :
  • Real Time Bidding (how targeted ads work)
    In this talk we look at the Real Time Bidding (RTB) system – this is the mechanism that provides targeted ads to your web pages and devices. We’ll cover the basic mechanism, what data is held, how do they know it’s you, main companies involved, pros & cons and what can be done. The presentation… Read more: Real Time Bidding (how targeted ads work)
  • Installing GNU/Linux
    In this talk we look at why you might want to migrate from Windows to Linux, a demo of actually doing the migration and finish with some special cases. The presentation is : ( use https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1w7C1EPCxPOL9T_AdQCl-IHhIII7GTqkhV_IPAoV9LT4/edit?usp=sharing to add comments )

Latest blog

  • u3a.social update
    Overview In February 2025, I started presented my talk Is it time to move to the Fediverse ? to on-line and local u3a groups. Whilst the main goal of the talk was to describe how the Fediverse worked from a technical point of view, I added the question … Should we, u3a worldwide, create a… Read more: u3a.social update
  • Home electricity – 1 year update
    A year or so ago I presented How to reduce your electricity bill to zero talk (initially over on u3acommunities.org computing group) – it’s now been running for a year, so time to check progress. General approach After getting my solar + house battery installed, I’ve tried to reduce my electricity (£ and carbon footprint)… Read more: Home electricity – 1 year update
  • Getting RSS feeds into your Fediverse account
    Here are some ideas to get RSS feeds into your Fediverse account. Sites that provide RSS Many sites already provide an RSS feed … look for the RSS symbol. Use your browsers Copy Link facility to get the link. Finally, in your Fediverse account, do a private mention of @birb with the link you’ve copied.… Read more: Getting RSS feeds into your Fediverse account
  • ISP’s
    This is my recent experience with ISP’s. VirginMedia over cable Link broadbands over CityFibre 4th Utility over CityFibre Toob Research For 900Mbit/sec to 1,000Mbit/sec. CityFibre require 2 weeks to switch. Name Link Price / month Public IP Comment Link Broadbands https://linkbroadbands.com/ £30, 1 month contract free Very slow in evening 4th Utility https://the4thutility.co.uk/ £25 (black… Read more: ISP’s

Daily power use

Yesterdays electricity grid consumption was 54.3kWh, costing £3.84 + standing charge £0.44.

Yesterdays solar generation was 4.2kWh.

Yesterdays export was approx 4.1kWh earning £0.62.

Total electric £3.66.

Local air quality

Data is from a SEN5x module.

On Tue 16 Sep 23:08:33, PM10 was 90.5 μg/m³ , PM4 was 89.6 μg/m³ , PM2.5 was 87.8 μg/m³ , PM1.0 was 129.5 μg/m³ , VOC was 498.0 and NOx was 1.0

Broadband speed

Recent fediverse posts

Scroll to Top