Pupdate

The boys got a new bed, which they seem to love.

EMFcamp

I’m writing this post from inside the camper van I rented for EMFcamp. As usual the WiFi is amazing, and it’s great to hang out with friends.

Previous trips suggested that having a ‘live in vehicle’ was the way to go, and after a decent first night’s sleep I’m enjoying the extra luxury. We got a Swift Edge 464 Motorhome from Ocean Trail.

Whisky (and whiskey) tasting at the Food Hacking Tent was good fun, and the Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) bottle of that I took seemed to be well liked. Even better, we were joined by another SMWS member who brought another nice Speyside along :)

The event spills over into June, so maybe more to follow then.

Travel

It’s been a busy month for work trips, with Open Network Users Group (ONUG) in Dallas followed by IoT Solutions World Forum in Barcelona.

Dallas was one of those trips where I barely made it out of the conference hotel. ONUG Spring was a great event though, and well worth the trip though – maybe the best trade show experience I’ve ever had :)

My Texan friends told me I should get some BBQ whilst in town, and as luck would have it, there was a BBQ truck at the closing drinks.

Tripit tells me that Barcelona is my most frequent destination, though I got to visit some parts of the city I’ve not spent time in on previous trips, which was nice.

Cross Trainer

My ‘new’ Horizon Fitness Andes 7i cross trainer started making an awful squeaking noise. After dismantling it the problem was easily localised to the flywheel, and after dismantling that it was fairly obvious that one of the bearings was broken. I guess in one of the moves from original owners house to storage, to different storage, to my car, to the garage etc. it’s had a knock that maybe squished one of the balls. In general the machine seems well engineered, perhaps even over engineered in places, but all the mechanical load ends up being put onto a couple of little (10mm x 22mm x 6mm) 6900Z bearings. Luckily they’re cheap and easily available.

Putting the whole thing back together was a job I’d be happy to never do again, but the return of smooth and (nearly) silent workouts is welcome.

Solar Diary

May brought some nice sunny days. It was briefly dry enough for me to get my motorbike out again.

But also the succession of Atlantic weather fronts that have been bashing us almost non stop since mid Oct resumed, leaving the month almost 100 kWh down on last year.