Pupdate

The whole of July has been hot and sunny (more on that later), so quite often the boys have been having an early morning walk in the shade of the woods before it gets too hot.

The apple tree seems particularly bountiful this year, so they’ve both been enjoying the windfalls (particularly Milo).

Bath

$daughter0 has completed her degree in Chemistry with Management, so we returned to Bath for the graduation ceremony and some celebratory dinners and drinks.

The ceremony was in Bath Abbey, which is right in the heart of the city. It was a fantastic place for the event, and it was great to see so many (former) students around the city in their gowns.

Dinner in Raphael was fantastic (as it always is), and that’s one of the places that will likely draw us back to Bath even though we won’t have a family connection there any more.

EMFcamp

Since I was already in the South-West of England I didn’t return home from Bath, and instead headed to Bristol to pick up a camper van called ‘Blubelle‘ that I’d found on Quirky Campers. From there it was a short trip to the Eastnor Castle site, and I picked up $son0 from Bristol Parkway station on the way. Not spending many hours on the motorway in a huge unfamiliar vehicle turned out to be a much better way to kick things off, and might well be part of future plans.

This was my 4th EMFcamp, and it’s become one of my favourite things to do every other year. Getting tickets this year was harder than ever, and I’m very grateful to my friends who helped me out with that :)

Running later in the year offered the possibility of better weather; but the reality was that we caught the run on of the third 2026 heat wave making it dry and hot throughout. So no need for wellies and waterproofs :) The weather made for a slightly different experience versus previous events, with fewer people cramming into the big tents for presentations and much more just hanging out and chatting.

I spent most of my waking hours in talks or hanging out with friends. We were a little more organised this time, and had a village for ‘Homebrew, Historical and Retro Computing’; though we likely spent more time together at the bar than in our official location. Once again a highlight for me was the ‘whisky leaks’ event run by the Milliways village, and I took along a decent bottle from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS), It was scheduled to run from 2000-2200, and I found myself calling it quits sometime after 0100 :0

Volunteering

I signed up for volunteering in ’24, but too late to find a shift that I could do. That meant I didn’t have early access to tickets for ’26. So when volunteering opened up this time around I grabbed a couple of shifts in the hope of securing tickets for ’28.

I did a stint as ‘herald’ for Stage B, which is a bit like being a conference track host, but without all the months spent finding speakers.

I also did a 2h shift at the bar. It was Sunday afternoon, and so not too busy; though sadly we’d run dry of many things :(

Sadly I didn’t get to use either of my Meal Token’s, as dinner didn’t start until 1930, and I was hungry (for a burger) at 1830 (and joined some friends for a bite to eat and a chat before the screening of The Princess Bride, which I’d never seen before).

New TV

We (finally) moved back in to our bedroom after getting a new en-suite, and it quickly became obvious that the old 27″ TV didn’t really fit in properly. So I looked up what size TV we should have and it came out at a somewhat ridiculous 75″.

We ended up compromising on 50″, which I think fits pretty well.

I had a nice set picked out, but $wife objected to it being too thick (at something like 74mm). It turned out that the #1 aesthetic driver was ‘as thin as possible’, and that took me to the Samsung QN90F, which is 26.9mm thick!

In the past I’ve avoided 4K and ‘smart’ TVs, but those things seem to be pretty much unavoidable now, so I’ve simply not connected it to the network or activated any services. It works just fine with digital terrestrial channels and a Fire Stick[1].

TV mount

A very thin TV needs a very thin TV mount. Samsung make one, the ‘slim fit wall mount‘, and charge silly money for it. Thankfully there seem to be plenty of clones on Amazon, and I went for the VIVO Micro-Gap Flat TV Wall Mount, which is £100 cheaper than the sticker price for the official one. Amazon wouldn’t let me generate an affiliate link for that, because apparently it’s a ‘frequently returned item’; but I’m very happy with mine, as the build quality seems excellent.

The tricky bit is that you’re supposed to ensure that both mounting plates get secured to wall studs (rather than just plasterboard)[2]. That’s helped by those plates having numerous holes, but I needed a stud finder (affiliate link) to locate wood to secure them to. For each side I was able to put 2 screws into wood, and the other 2 went into the supplied Fischer DuoPower plugs (which are excellent).

I’m happy with the result. The TV looks good from the side, and it looks great from the front when it’s powered up :)

The hunt for a new scooter

Last month brought (More) Scooter Bother, with the engine on my Vespa ET2 losing compression (again). I wasn’t in the mood for another engine rebuild.

But… finding a replacement has proven to be more difficult than expected. When I had to rebuild the engine last year there was a plentiful supply of Piaggio 1 Active electric scooters, with new ones typically £1899 (due to government incentives) and (lightly) used around £1199. That supply has since dried up, but also reviews suggest that they’re not especially reliable (and maybe a smidge underpowered).

I took a look at a 125cc Vespa ET4, which has the advantage of being the same size and shape as my ET2 so accessories could be ported over. But there was something wrong with the immobiliser, and it didn’t seem to go past 30mph (where it should easily do 60mph).

Then I found that Honda have got a serious entry into the e-scooter market with the CUV e:, but because it’s so new the cheapest examples are selling for £3299; and that’s a bit rich for the small mileage I do (mostly up and down to the station).

So… after maybe too much time trying to find a new(er) scooter I’ve decided it’s probably just as easy to fix my old one (again).

A/C

It’s been a VERY hot and sunny July. I don’t know whether we’re officially on heatwave 7, or whether it’s actually heatwave 3D because this one just kept rolling on.

When the heat pump was installed $wife complained that the unit over her dressing table was ugly. That view changed the first time she needed to get ready on a (too) hot day. And now the heat pump is basically the best thing we ever bought. Being able to keep the temperature in the low 20s indoors when it’s mid 30s outside is a good thing :)

I finally got around to attaching the head units to their mobile app (and the devices network on my WiFi), which means that I now have data on power consumption etc.

But… the app isn’t great (compared to my solar inverter app), so I can only see charts for this week and last week rather than going back further. Somebody will hopefully be along in the comments to tell me how to get better data export via Home Assistant or similar.

What I can see is that a heavy day of A/C is using around 8kWh whilst the solar panels are making more than 3x that, so I’m sacrificing about £1.20 in export tariff to keep cool, which seems worth it :)

Solar diary

Unusually hot came with unusually sunny, making July 2026 the sunniest month since I got the system installed, (just) beating the previous record of 794.9kWh set in June 2023. At one stage I thought it might exceed 800kWh for the month, but the final tally was just short of that mark.

Notes

[1] Yeah – I know I’m selling myself out to Amazon with the Fire stick, but I already did that (many times over). I just don’t want to sell myself (again) to Samsung and…
[2] This, along with some shelves I needed to put up sent me down something of a YouTube rabbit hole on various options to secure things to plasterboard. Fischer DuoPower plugs are really good, and the Duotec toggles (affiliate links) are even better. But ultimately a better mounting will just pull a bigger chunk of plasterboard out of the wall, leaving a larger hole to be repaired :0