Pupdate

It’s been mostly warm and dry, so plenty of opportunities for longer walks :)

Milo is now on the final cycle of his 4th chemo protocol, and it’s proceeding OK.

Toronto

We started the month in Toronto, which was a really fun trip deserving it’s own post.

Eyes

My cataracts are gone, and I now have a pair of Johnson & Johnson TECHNIS PureSee(TM) extended depth of field (EDoF) intraocular lenses (IOL). The procedure to fit them was as straightforward as I was told it would be; though I was glad that Charles Stross went a little ahead of me and provided the tip to take any sedation on offer.

It takes a while for things to heal and settle down, but I’m already pretty happy with my distance vision. Computer work and reading is another matter, and I’m still figuring out which glasses I’ll need. EDOF lenses are supposed to work down to intermediate distance, but I fear my home office monitors are just a little too close. That’s maybe not so bad, as I quite like having blue filter lenses when doing computer work. I just need something better than the cheap readers I got for reading restaurant menus whilst wearing contact lenses for skiing.

I may also be in the market for some new sunglasses (maybe even some varifocals for reading books outside), as I seem to be much more sensitive to bright light than I have been for the last 20y or so[1].

Complications

Everything seemed to be going fine until my one week check, where they picked up high intraocular pressure (glaucoma). They wouldn’t let me go home until it was normalised, which meant taking some pills, and a new eye drop regime for the next few weeks.

OpenWrt

I missed the release of OpenWrt 2025.12 at the end of last month, and it’s already at a .2 patch.

Upgrading has become really easy with ‘Attended SysUpgrade’ (ASU). I was able to go from 23.05.x on my router and WiFi access points in a matter of minutes. All the config and packages carried over without a hitch :)

Even better, the manual install of NoPorts I had on my router got automatically replaced by the csshnpd and luci-app-csshnpd packages that are now in upstream :)

Gemini Pro

I mentioned last month that I’m using Gemini CLI a fair bit, which was a good reason to take up the offer of a free year of Gemini Pro for Google Developer Experts (GDEs). But… I first had to move my GDE account from Atsign’s Workspace to my personal gmail. I’d say the migration has been worth it, as I get much better access to premium models.

Solar Diary

The sunniest April since the system was installed :)

Is iBoost worth it?

As part of the install I got an iBoost device, which diverts excess production into the hot water tank immersion heater (rather than it going for export). It’s quite a complex bit of kit, doing pulse width modulation (PWM) in order to work over a wide power range. I paid £428.57 for mine (though it seems the newer iBoost+ is available online for a little less).

I’ve been meaning to build a payback model, but instead I got Gemini to write me a Python script. The outcome isn’t great… the whole thing is predicated on expensive gas and miserly export tariffs. Running the numbers for the present gas price and my old ‘smart export guarantee’ (SEG) rate it takes about 70y for the iBoost to pay for itself. With the SEG rate I’m presently getting I’m better off exporting the electricity and using the money to buy gas for heating water :0 That’s not very eco, but that’s where we are in a topsy turvey UK energy market :/

Note

[1] Until my 30s I’d wear sunglasses pretty much all the time outside, but then I switched to baseball caps. Seems like I might now favour both.