Simon Rumble's blog

Disable power exporting when the price goes negative with an Enphase solar inverter

2024-12-18T05:30:26Z

A few weeks ago we got a Tesla Powerwall installed, taking advantage of the price drop and the NSW government subsidy. I've signed up for Amber, who pass through the wholesale power price such that in the 19 days we've had it, we're $70 in credit having consumed nearly 400 kWh of power. Admittedly we've been using the air conditioners a lot to chew up free solar and keep the house pre-cooled during the hot days.

To get the most out of Amber, you need to be able to store power and predict when you will need it. Their SmartShift app does this for you, but you can control it crudely when you need to, for example tell it to not dump power to the grid on a night you know you'll need power, say to run the oven. Otherwise it automatically works it out, and it's been pretty good for that.

However, Amber can't currently control my Enphase inverter. You need to be able to stop your solar generating and exporting power to the grid when the power goes negative. Fortunately a guy in Melbourne has written a great little script that does just this. It monitors the Amber power price and when it goes negative tells the inverter to switch to an export profile that has "0 kW" set as the export limit.

The only problem, as reported here by another Enphase user, the Powerwall reacts so quickly to any loads in the house that the Enphase microinverters see essentially no load and don't produce any power. If your battery isn't already full, your house will drain from the battery and then once empty it'll use the grid. Using the grid when it's negative isn't a bad thing but draining the battery not so much.

So I worked with Brendan to work out where I could hook in a quick check to see if the battery is full, using Home Assistant. I don't know Ruby at all so Brendan was very helpful and patient.

Here's the diff you can run against the repository to make the required change. You'll need to create a long-lived API token in your Home Assistant instance and set that as ZEST_HOME_ASSISTANT_TOKEN, then find the URL for the battery charge level resource in the Tesla integration and set that in ZEST_HOME_ASSISTANT_URL. For mine that URL is http://:8123/api/states/sensor.my_home_charge. That's it.

Thanks so much Brendan for helping me out!

With the instability in the grid these days pushing the spot prices up a lot I suspect I'll be able to pay off the battery much quicker than it'd be on a normal power plan, with the added bonus of us not having to worry about when we use power so much.

Herbie Hancock

2024-10-23T00:21:01Z

Not usually my kind of thing but my mate Damion was visiting from Melbourne and bought tickets for both nights and I'm always up for catching up with him and I'm a sucker for Opera House gigs. Cracking show and it's amazing how sprightly and nimble this 84 year old is! Lots of great tunes.

EGOISM

2024-09-08T23:56:36Z

It's been a long time since I've been to a gig in someone's front room! This gig was advertised as a "secret" location and that turned out to be someone's terrace house in Redfern. Lots of fun as they played through all their tracks including some of their very early tracks.

Belle and Sebastian

2024-08-29T23:27:38Z

Download PXL_20240822_121321123-1920.mp4

There's a short list of bands that I'll see every time there's an opportunity. Nick Cave, The Cure, Billy Bragg, The New Pornographers and... Belle and Sebastian. Always a great night out and this was no different as they played the Enmore Theatre last week and played all the hits. Big singalong for The Boy With The Arab Strap with a bunch of the crowd up on stage. Loads of fun!

Adventures in sous vide and smoking

2024-08-23T10:35:00Z

I did my second crack at sous vide pulled pork using Serious Eats' great recipe. First time was great though my smoker gave up soon after getting it going, so I finished it using a foil-wrapped packet of woodchips in the gas BBQ. Worked fine so I went all the way with that.

22 hours in the sous vide circulator, then a couple of hours in the BBQ with smoke. Brilliant. A crunchy, super tasty bark and unctuous, flavoursome meat. Brilliant taco filling! Nom.

Download PXL_20240822_223351862_1_.mp4

The Last Dinner Party

2024-07-23T23:03:01Z

I've been waiting for this band to come out for a couple of years, seeing them play Glastonbury and all the European festivals. Finally they made it to the Hordern Pavillion. Interesting crowd: lots of young women dressed up in lacy, flouncy outfits, a smattering of middle aged music fans like me, a huge bunch of the Sydney band members' family including her grandmother. Lots of fun!

Highlights: the cover of Sparks' This Town Isn't Big Enough For Both of Us (needed more gunshots) and the lead singer being convinced to do a shoey, for when you really need to cringe about Australian "culture".

Download PXL_20240723_120535494.TS.mp4

Genesis Owusu in The Tank

2024-07-07T22:53:01Z

This was a bit of an unusual gig. The Tank is a giant underground oil tank previously used for ship oil by the Navy. Now it's been repurposed as a gallery space under the Art Gallery of NSW's new modern wing.

For sculpture the space is incredible with dark corners, controlled lighting and a dramatic entry down white spiral stairs.

For music I think it's hard to get the acoustics right. It's a giant sealed box with vertical columns every few metres.

Genesis Owusu tried to make the space work for his sound, presenting a very stripped back version of his best songs. Not sure it worked though. It felt stilted and the tempos were off, when his music is usually boisterous and wild enough to break the floor.

Fun to see the space used differently though. It would work brilliantly for reverb heavy music: The xx or Portishead would be great. Dubby music perhaps?

Though what I really want is a rave in this space. Umek or Speedy J playing dark techno with a monster kick drum and minimal lighting. Perhaps a bit too wild for the Art Gallery?

Mildlife

2024-07-07T22:41:03Z

Friday night rolled around and we had Melbourne band Mildlife at the Factory Theatre, conveniently around the corner from our place.

Normally I'd take my mate Gab to this gig but he was in Japan so Holly came along. Not really her thing: a bit too much on the jazz end of the spectrum for her. When the jazz flute comes out you know shit's about to get real.

But for me, this gig was heaven. Deep, funky bass-driven grooves and a band of great skill. Their music has elements of late 1990s French filtered house. In fact one of the tracks had a bass groove that could be Pnau's 1999 Mellotron. Other tracks reference Steely Dan and the vocals and synths evoke Alan Parsons Project.

Loads of fun. Holly actually went home early and missed their best track, The Magnificent Moon.

Gig catch up: Nick Cave, The Clouds, Elefant Traks and Glass Beams

2024-06-26T03:30:01Z

I've gotten a bit behind in my gig reports so here's a big dump of what's happened since May.

Nick Cave

7th May, 2024 at State Theatre

We've seen Saint Nick of Warracknabeal many times over the years in many great venues including the Tate in London and the Sydney Opera House, but there's something special about the State Theatre. It's one of those beautiful, ornate old theatres with ornate gothic mouldings and an intimate feel. Nick playing solo with just bass accompaniment from Colin Greenwood was fantastic and he was clearly enjoying himself.

Oh and on the way home this beautiful autumnal tree presented itself.

The Clouds

25th May, 2024 at Factory Theatre

Another band I've been watching for years, first seeing there in 1992 or so at the Three Weeds in Rozelle. As always, loads of fun, though the band didn't seem so into it this time around.

Elefant Traks 25th Anniversary

26th May, 2024 at Sydney Opera House

This one is tinged with some sadness. Elefant Traks are a record label from the late 1990s who triggered a massive boom in hip-hop in Australia, launching the careers of a bunch of huge acts. Super engaged with politics and building an audience from the ground up, they did huge things. Of course the supergroup The Herd were a massive highlight. I was there at a lot of the early gigs, seeing early iterations of many of the acts up close. They were always such lovely people, humble but hugely talented.

So the sad part is that as well as being the 25th anniversary, this was also farewell from the label which is now going through an orderly shutdown. That's a true loss for Australian music, but the gig was a reflection on all that was achieved and created. A fantastic set in a spectacular venue.

Thanks for all the memories Elefants!

Download PXL_20240526_094243048.mp4

Glass Beams

21st June, 2024 at Factory Theatre

This is an interesting band from Melbourne who've been signed to Ninja Tunes. Most descriptions I've heard make much of their Indian influences but to my thinking their sound is a lot more in the direction of Turkish psychedelia from the 70s.

They're clearly supremely talented but the gig itself was a bit disappointing. They were incredibly tight and disciplined but that kinda made the gig a bit dull. They need to embrace improvisation a bit more I think. The style of music should have more wigging out, solos and craziness.

I'm sure they'll develop in time! They're playing some massive festivals in the Northern Hemisphere this year so they'll have plenty of practice!

Coming up

Lots of exciting gigs in the calendar: Mildlife, Genesis Owasu, Belle & Sebastian, Olivia Rodrigo.

How to get your stuff repaired when the retailer and manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

2024-06-17T01:59:03Z

A few weeks ago I was roasting some pumpkin for a delicious soup and towards the end of the cooking time the fan on the oven started into overdrive, making a lot of noise then it started beeping and popped up this obscure error message. I phoned the manufacturer, Electrolux, on the provided number and they told me I'd need to pay at least $160 to have their engineer come out and tell me what was wrong.

You've probably had this experience with lots of stuff. "Sorry, the item is out of warranty so you'll have to pay." The problem with this is that Australian Consumer Law gives an automatic warranty. You can expect the item to last a reasonable amount of time. Now an old fashioned light bulb shouldn't be expected to last a decade, but an oven?

Challenged on this, I went around and around in circles with the Electrolux call centre worker. "So you think an oven should only last for two years?" and eventually I asked to be escalated to a manager who could actually make a decision. After some follow up, I finally got a call from a manager who was well drilled in shutting down any idea I should expect something from them. Eventually I said okay thanks, I'll see you at the Tribunal.

How long should an appliance last?

The "warranty" companies talk about is actually an "express warranty" and if you read them you'll notice these days they now include mandatory text about how they aren't able to exclude guarantees that come from the Australian Consumer Law. Anything they offer in their written warranty is in addition to your base rights.

So you have a reasonable expectation that your appliance will last a reasonable amount of time. So how long is reasonable? Well if you look around on the web you'll find different lengths of time for different classes of appliance. And if you buy the cheapest Chinesium appliance, you shouldn't expect it to last as long as the exxy Miele model.

So my Electrolux was a mid-range model bought in 2015, so it's about 9 years old. Hilariously the retailer's parent company has a blog post that gives explicit ranges for different appliances. Electric ovens should last 13 years according to them.

Time to book a court date

NSW (and I think all the other states) has a tribunal especially for consumer claims, what used to be the "small claims court" is now the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, NCAT. It's specifically designed to be low cost and straightforward. You shouldn't need a lawyer and can turn up with your documents.

The important thing to know about tribunals like NCAT is you're paying mostly with your time. You'll need to front up on the booked date and make your case. There's a small filing fee: in this case it was $58, which is still a lot less than Electrolux wanted to charge just to tell me what the problem was.

Before you book your date, you need to work out who is the other side of the transaction. You don't ordinarily go after the manufacturer but the retailer. So I contacted Appliances Online to talk it through. They took the same line as Electrolux that it was out of warranty and so not their problem. Again: see you in the Tribunal.

I filled in the forms. They're annoyingly slow, but the online system mostly works. Paid my fee and bingo, out comes an email with a tribunal date and location.

Amazing service, just add NCAT date

And the next day I get a call from the lovely Dylan from Appliances Online, someone who's evidently empowered to make decisions that make tribunal appointments go away. He tells me he'll get Electrolux to invoice them instead, an appointment is booked and we're off to the races.

One thing worth understanding is this: if the retailer has to send someone along to the Tribunal, they lose already. Even the cost of a junior lawyer going to the tribunal is going to be more than it would cost to repair your appliance. They might do it on principle if you're taking the piss but if you have a decent case they're wasting time and money.

A couple of engineer visits

Don't go cancelling your NCAT date just yet though! First you need the problem resolved. Remember, this could have all been resolved by them applying Australian Consumer Law when you first asked, so keep that clock ticking, it keeps things moving.

I had a lovely engineer from Electrolux visit and take a look. He wasn't sure what the problem was: tested the fan and heater element and found no problem. In the end he replaced the light bulb (which hadn't worked for years, we hadn't bothered replacing it) and the message had gone away anyway.

Next day the message is back, and Dylan drops me a note asking me to remove the NCAT booking. I respond saying it still isn't resolved and magically another engineer appointment pops up.

The second visit does the trick. The engineer replaced the heating element and fan and the message has gone away. We've done a few baking projects since and all seems good!

Satisfaction, but annoyed I have to assert my rights

So my oven is fixed. Otherwise it's a great oven. It's annoying that I have to push to get my consumer rights though. It should just be standard! My hope is that by encouraging others to also assert their rights it'll become easier. Don't put up with this shit about appliances having a tiny warranty period!

Companies: why are you like this?

2024-06-12T07:30:32Z

25 years ago a bunch of Internet people cracked the shits with the inhuman, one-way corporate speak employed by the companies they interacted with, consulted to and advised. Those rants became The Cluetrain Manifesto. There's a copy sitting on my bookshelf right behind me, probably the fourth copy I've bought because I keep loaning it out to people who need to know and forgetting who had it.

25 years on it's still utterly fucking standard to get a stupid email like this one:

So what you're saying, Electrolux, is that I shouldn't reply to this email. But you're willing to receive emails from me at another email address. Somehow it's too hard to make the From address the one you want to receive replied on. Hell, if there's some dumb technical reason, you could even use a Reply-to header.

You know this makes you sound like an arsehole, right? You had an opportunity to provide care to customers, you know like a "Customer Care" function, and you fluffed it. Golf clap time.

sleepmakeswaves and Elephant Gym

2024-05-02T05:57:35Z

Last Saturday night I went to see sleepmakeswaves at the Manning Bar in Sydney Uni with a couple of mates. I have many fond memories of this gig: the epic Freaky Loops gigs, Terrence McKenna and lunchtime gigs during my brief time as a university student, I remember seeing DiG and Trout Fishing in Quebec.

The lineup for the night got moved around so that Taiwanese band Elephant Gym were moved up to slot 2, so I had a chance to catch them. I had minimal expectations but really enjoyed their set. Wikipedia describes them as "math rock" which is, of course, a terrible genre name. I'd characterise them more as jazz rock except instead of improvising onstage they're playing out the result of past improvisations, with exceptional accuracy, tightness and structure. Really good fun.

sleepmakeswaves were, as always, awesome. Dreamy soundscapes with dramatic crescendos. Brilliant.

White Bay Power Station: 700 Feel + Ryan Fennis & Voidhood

2024-04-18T06:29:18Z

I've been entering the ballots for Phoenix Central Park's music programmes for a while now and never managed to get tickets. It's a tiny venue and the gigs are free, but often artists you've never heard of. They've partnered with the Biennale of Sydney to run gigs at the White Bay Power Station. This giant industrial edifice has been closed my entire life in Sydney, so I've spent many years going past and wondering what's inside.

So of course I jumped at the chance!

The music? Yeah, interesting enough. The DJ set played before the acts were really good: a combination of DJ Vadin-style dubbed out hip hop samples and bass-heavy interesting beats. Dunno who they were though. The rest? Yeah okay whatevs.

But going around this giant industrial hulk: amazing! And the art scattered around for the Biennale was pretty cool too. I'm going to have to head back with the family for another look in daylight.

Looking forward to more music at this place though!

Floodlights: Oz Rock revival?

2024-04-18T06:16:05Z

As a kid of the late 70s, Oz Rock was my childhood soundtrack. In the mainstream in the 1980s it was bogan classics: Cold Chisel, The Angels, Rose Tattoo, Dragon, The Radiators, Australian Crawl, Barnsey. Ugh. It's blokey. It's ocker. It's got all the sexist, racist tropes. You can see why I went all in on electronic music as a teenager.

But early 80s pub rock in Australia also had good stuff that broke through: Goanna, Midnight Oil, Men At Work, Hunters & Collectors. Music with a distinctly Australian sound but without needing to drive a ute, wear a mullet and get blind drunk and beat your wife. It's technically proficient music, varied stylistically with great songs and often with a political edge.

Enter Floodlights, a band from Melbourne with a distinct sound. I don't know if they think of themselves as Oz Rock influenced, or part of some kind of revival, but their sound brings to mind bands like Goanna and early Hunters & Collectors for me. Their live performance—and the audience reaction—makes me feel this band is about to go huge.

I love seeing a band in a small venue just before they go huge. You think to yourself "this is the last time I'll see this band somewhere so small". The lead singer has frontman energy (and good looking too, which never hurts) while the band are tight, the harmonies strong and the harmonica comes out quite a bit.

Support band Sweetie were fun, and having fun, with catchy tunes. Melodrones sounded okay but a bit loose.

This was my first time at The Great Club, a terrible tragedy. It's been open years now and I haven't made it. It's a great small-mid sized venue, walking distance from home and well set up. Now that I've been, I'll be keeping an eye out for more bands playing there.

Battlesnake: metal madness!

2024-03-26T04:20:17Z

Last Saturday night I went with my mate Michael to see Battlesnake. This band have been on my radar to watch with their over-the-top stage theatrics and right-on hard rock. Think Saxon by way of Spinal Tap. This is clearly a band who have watched Spinal Tap a few times. And taken notes.

Loads of fun. Unfortunately they had some problems blowing out the venue's electrics every time they hit their big stage lights, so we got a somewhat diminished show. I'll be along to their show for Vivid in June to see what I was missing!

The show was wild. Seven dudes on a fairly small stage. Great songs with killer riffs, delivered by great musicians who clearly enjoy doing the theatrics. Check out the video here showing some truly Spinal Tap antics with a guitarist wheeled through the crowd on wheels. Hilarious.

Download PXL_20240323_125708796.LS.mp4

They're playing around places, including Europe, so check em out!

Brekky Boy

2024-03-17T09:19:45Z

My favourite music venue gains it's favour because it's so close. I can be at the Factory Theatre in about 5 minutes. Back when they only had terrible beer we used to duck home in between bands for a decent beer from our own fridge.

So their free events on weekends are particularly compelling. Low effort and worth checking out at the smallest provocation. Today's paid off in spades.

Brekky Boy are three supremely talented jazz musos playing intricate, tightly coordinated tracks very much in the techno or ambient house vein. Brilliant band.

Golden Plains 2024

2024-03-13T01:46:02Z

Holly and I have been going to this incredible festival as often as possible since 2018. It's like no other festival: amazing people and vibe, single stage with a really diverse lineup of bands and some kooky traditions.

It's the best festival I've ever been to in Australia. Not the gravitas and lineup heft of Glastonbury but certainly captures a lot of the vibe, better in a lot of ways even. Not easy for us to make it from Sydney, involving finding hosts for our kids, flights, car hire and getting tents and the like all the way there.

This year we had to deal with serious heat. 37 degrees every day and on the Saturday night it was still 30 at 10pm. Seriously hot, so there was a lot of sitting around sipping drinks and hoping it'd cool down a bit.

Strange traditions

One of the funny traditions of Golden Plains is The Boot. To show their appreciation of a show, attendees hold a boot aloft above their heads. Charlotte Adigéry was very confused until some of the crowd explained what was going on. People also dress up in crazy stuff. And weirdest of all, you're allowed bring furniture to the festival, so there ends up being a whole array of couches at the back of the crowd area.

The sunsets from the hill beside the main stage are spectacular. A big crowd forms on the hill as the sun goes down with cheers, claps and hoots of appreciation. They're really stunning sunsets.

Bands

Musical highlights this year: Elsy Wamayo played a great afternoon set in the heat that forced me up onto my feet. King Stingray's recorded music hadn't set my heart alight but live they were great fun. And best of the fest was Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul. I've been following Adigéry's music since 2017 so I was super excited she was on the bill and they were amazing. Absolutely owned the crowd. Cymande were also a lot of fun, spotting those samples that you've heard everywhere.

Minami Deutsch at Marrickville Bowlo

2024-03-07T21:52:38Z

I was willing to go see this band just because of the description: Japanese Krautrock. It's like the punchline to a joke at Pitchfork Media's expense.

But they were good. Really good. Tight, clever and with perfectly synchronised speed changes that keep you on your toes.

I think Minami Deutsch is to Krautrock what tempura is to fish and chips. In many ways perfecting the original but not just a clone. It's own thing.

Apple Vision Pro demo

2024-03-01T21:28:45Z

I'm currently in Austin, Texas for MeasureCamp so when I read you could book demos (via The Sizzle, of course) I waited until it was 7 days out and booked it in. Easily done on the Apple site, though you do need to sign up for an Apple ID.

My appointment was at a swanky mall in the Austin suburbs so it was a $15 Uber ride out and the same again back to town. Waiting outside I got asked by a Jehovah if I wanted to join a bible study. I suppose if you're camped outside the Apple Temple your chances of finding an easy mark are good.

Once my turn came up, my demo guy introduced himself and of course now I can't remember his name, but he was great. He took my glasses and put them in a machine that measures them and orders the appropriate optical inserts. Apparently there's some prescriptions they can't handle, specifically if your script has a "Prism" value which I think is people with astigmatism. My bifocals were no problem.

Next we had to measure my face using an iPhone app. A bit of a delay because I'm not in the cult and they had to find an iPhone I could use. You then do a process similar to enrolling for the face unlock feature: stare at the dot and slowly move your head left, right, up and down. Repeated again and the order for your seals around your face.

A few moments delay and out comes my demo set, ready for my head, face and eyes. Served on a platter like a fancy meal.

Detailed instructions were given of how to pick it up and put it on your head: you don't want smudges on the shiny plastic I suppose and Apple probably still feels the scar tissue from the "you're holding the phone wrong" antenna attenuation disaster.

Setup and calibration

The first phase of the demo is going through some calibration and learning the gestures. Calibration involves looking at dots and doing the tap gesture, touching your forefingers to your thumb briefly somewhere in the wide field of view of the front-firing cameras. The other two gestures are scroll which is pinching your fingers together, dragging in the appropriate direction and releasing. Zoom is two-handed tap, stretch and release. All pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

Then the magic starts. There's a knob on the top-right of the goggles they call the "crown". Pressing it functions like the home button on an iPhone while turning it dials up or down how much of the outside world you see.

Immersion

For the next bit I dialed the outside world entirely out for the full immersive experience. The environment is a stunning mountainous outdoor view with water gently moving. The windows of applications are suspended in the air in the environment. I was instructed through expanding and placing windows in that environment.

This experience is pretty amazing. I could see it being super productive: distractions dialed out and you can easily have 3 or more massive, super high res screens arrayed in front of you. Brilliant. Apparently you can bring a Mac's desktop into this environment which would be pretty sweet.

Passive immersive experiences

Next up demos of the immersive experiences. 3D photos and videos as taken by the device itself, then ones taken on iPhones. They're pretty mind blowing quality. While the 3D visuals are as expected, the bit that really blew my mind was the audio. It really comes from the point it should, even as you move your head around.

Some demos of different immersive experiences. A clip from the (execrable I hear) Super Mario film, a bunch of immersive clips of scenes from nature: a women climbing a sheer cliff, people cuddling a baby rhino, baby bears walking into a stream, sharks underwater, a singer half a metre away from you singing straight to you. All amazing.

And that's it, the demo is over and I have to take the headset off. Smart business: they definitely leave you wanting more! Yours for only $3,500 (AUD5,400). Where's a black market kidney buyer when you need one?

Wrapping up

I'm no Apple fanboi: I own a Mac because I got it from my last workplace and while they're amazing hardware, I'm not a huge fan of the OS and GUI. Better than Windows and I can bend it to my workflows with some effort, but there's clunky things I dislike,

But this? This I like. It's really quite impressive. Once they get the price down, I'd consider buying one. I'd probably want to borrow or rent one for a week or so to see what the working environment is like, but I could see it being super productive. And games are gonna be _incredible_. This is a much slicker, better rounded experience than the Oculus from the House of Zuck.

Issues

I had some minor quibbles with the device, and things I think need more exploration.

Focus for me wasn't perfect. The edges of vision were quite fuzzy. This can probably be tuned in though.
It's quite heavy! They pack an incredible amount of tech into this thing so that's not surprising, but I wonder how that goes if you wear it for hours. Ditto any visual things. I'd be curious to see how long people can use it in real world usage.
This was a carefully curated demo. The demo guy has an iPad where he can drag you back if you try to explore on your own. I bet there's nasty rough edges, bugs and probably even straight up crashes. This is V1 of the product. Remember how crap the original iPhone was: this is better than that, but there's still going to be bad bits.

Conclusion

It's a brilliant piece of tech. Apple should be rightly proud of it. It's interesting that they're doing these demos: I feel like it'd be quite hard to get across how damn well it works in a video or other method of demonstration. And people have been burnt with similar products in the past: everyone who tried the Google Glasses was surprised to see the screen is just a tiny piece in the corner which isn't clear in the demo videos at all. This isn't like that: full immersion!

But wow it's expensive. I'm keen to see how much it comes down with V2.

Russian Circles

2024-02-05T02:31:56Z

Last night's gig was Russian Circles, a "post-metal" band from the US. I've followed them since the 2000s.

It was a stinking hot night: 28° and something like 90% humidity, so of course I rode my bike in. The Metro Theatre is fortunately very well air conditioned so it was lovely inside. No zero alcohol beers available so I got a glass of tonic instead.

I caught only the last few minutes of one support band, I think they were Meniscus. Seemed quite good. Second support, Tangled Thoughts of Leaving , were a bit too clever for their own good. A cacophonous wall of noisy free jazz.

Russian Circles were great. Heavy, tight and with fantastic tracks. The lighting was particular well executed with the fog combining with lights switching between rear, front and side to great effect. You'd be watching the drummer and the lights switch to behind and suddenly he appears fuzzy, from the fog, then he's clearly illuminated and it's timed with the music. Nice one.

Fun gig. It hadn't cooled down on the way home, still sticky and hot but the roads were mercifully quiet.

Updating ContractOrPermie.com

2024-02-01T04:07:11Z

I've been a contractor rather than permanent employee for a good chunk of my working life. I started working in the mid-1990s when the business world had been clearly demonstrating that they had no loyalty whatsoever to their staff, so I've always felt the same loyalty in return. I've always been quite mercenary about it: I do good work and act responsibly in my employers' interest no matter how they employ me.

For a long time I used a spreadsheet to be able to convert between the daily rate recruiters would quote and the equivalent annual salary, factoring in the days you don't get paid as a contract: annual leave, sick pay and public holidays. Superannuation is also taken out of your day rate, so that's factored in too.

After being asked multiple times for copies of my spreadsheet and wanting to learn a new web framework, back in 2013 I created a little single-page app for the job, Contract or Permie? All zippy responsive design that resizes nicely on phones and everything!

Fast forward many years and I'm always bumping into fellow contractors and discovering they use it. I've let the thing languish a bit over the years. It still uses quite clunky code, was hosted from an S3 bucket without TLS so was insecure and had old, no longer working, Google Analytics tagging hardcoded in it. Some of the assumptions, particularly the mandatory superannuation rate, were outdated too.

I got a patch from Andrew Punch in December last year fixing a couple of these problems and I've just merged them in. Given I've accepted an external contribution, meaning someone else had to wade through my clunky code, I figure I should open source the damn thing and make the code public, so here it us.

While in there, I also tweaked a few things. It's not a secure site with support for HTTP/3 (thanks to Fastly making that super easy).

Future plans: I might rewrite the whole thing in a new, modern framework. Open to suggestions! While I'm in there I'll re-implement tagging using WalkerOS as I've been keen to play with it since meeting Alexander in Copenhagen last year and having a long conversation about it. Maybe even get super modern and do some automated tests, automated deployment?

Egoism at the Marrickville Bowlo

2024-01-03T10:30:12Z

Rounding out 2023 we saw Egoism on the 22nd December. The gig was a fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis Community Care so there were a few bands. Sound seemed a bit iffy on the night though one of the supports, Jet City Sports Band, were really great and worth checking out.

Pizza Death at The Burdekin

2023-11-12T23:17:54Z

Quite the change of pace from Kristen Hersh the night before: three death metal bands over three hours. Pizza Death have a solid gimmick, fun banter and silly songs. Supports Head In A Jar and Carnal Viscera had better music and still solid bantz. Loads of fun!

It took me a while to get with the mosh vibe but great energy, silly music, lovely crowd. Lots of fun!

Pizza for dinner, of course.

Download PXL_20231111_092908377.LS.mp4

Kristen Hersh at The Vanguard

2023-11-12T23:12:38Z

Last Friday night we got to see Kristen Hersh of Throwing Muses perform her solo work at The Vanguard in Newtown. I haven't been to this venue since the 1990s when it was "Top Gun".

Hersh was incredible. Her voice is so distinctive, ranging from gentle singing to a gravelly growl and everything in between. The sounds she gets from her acoustic guitar, the range of textures and tempos: she's a master at work. Absolutely incredible. Also really funny banter in between songs.

Quick dinner before the gig was Pappa's Stew Chilli Cuisine, a Hunanese place. We had a big hotpot that was rich, spicy and amazing. Alongside it we had what could be described as spicy spag bol: fat round noodles with a topping of spicy pork mince, kind of a Biang Biang type of thing.

Cook tech: Eat Your Books

2023-10-29T00:40:07Z

I love to cook and so I have a lot of cookbooks.

This brings about a problem. Much as I love leafing through cookbooks, sometimes you need to work out what to cook more quickly. And I'm often trying to work out what to cook with a particular ingredient we have in abundance.

I actually set myself the task of building a combined recipe index for all my cookbooks. Manually typing in every recipe and the key ingredients. Then as I looked around to see if any tools existed for this kind of thing, I stumbled upon Eat Your Books, a site that already has all the hard work done for you.

You register all your cookbooks and then you can search through all of them by ingredient or recipe name. For example, I just searched for dessert recipes with apples, cos we have a bunch right now.

https://www.eatyourbooks.com/bookshelf?q=apple

For some recipes it even includes the page numbers and photos of the result. So fast and means instead of flipping, you have a shortlist of books to pull down.

I'm cooking the Spiced apple cake from Ottolenghi Simple tonight. Perfect for what I want after tonight's roast lamb.

Update: here's the cake. It was delicious.

GoGo Penguin at City Recital Hall

2023-10-26T22:19:02Z

Last night I finally got to see GoGo Penguin, a band from Manchester I've been following for 10 years. I've been hanging out to see them live the whole time. I love their music.

I dragged along my mate Gab who's more of a jazz head than me, particularly keen on the freer end of jazz and a bunch of the 70s smoother stuff. He was commenting that there were periods when the music seemed to be repeating without someone taking the lead.

Our conclusion is that this is techno music played on jazz instrumentation, not a more jazz sensibility. There were solos but the structure of the songs is much more like techno: big build up of tension followed by dramatic release ("the drop") with all the instruments working together to that end.

A number of the tracks incorporate complicated polyrhythms with Chris Illingworth playing two and sometimes (with delays and loops) three parts while Nick Blacka shreds like his life depends on it with the double bass. Incredible complexity and discipline.

Check out some videos of this band. They're awesome.

Los Bitchos + These New South Whales

2023-10-24T00:25:27Z

Last week Sydney hosted the first edition of South by Southwest located outside of Austin. Sounds like it was somewhat successful but I think it takes a while for people to understand what it was. I've heard stories of empty gigs and packed gigs, plus a lot of tickets and wristbands being given away.

I didn't manage to make it to anything until Saturday night. Life has been busy. Though given the vibe I saw, if they run it again I'd be tempted to get work to buy me the tech pass and buy myself a music pass then spend the evenings at gigs. A week of wall-to-wall gigs sounds great!

Los Bitchos

Saturday night there was a free event at The Factory in Marrickville, just around the corner from our place. Better yet it featured Los Bitchos, who I watched on the BBC coverage of this year's Glastonbury. How to describe their sound? Latin-afro inspired psych-surf fuzz? Or put more simply, the perfect sunny Glastonbury afternoon set when you've just picked up your first scrumpy and the hash cookie is starting to kick in.

Download PXL_20231021_051047446.LS.mp4

Their set was awesome. Clearly these women love playing their music. The lead guitarist, Serra Petale the Aussie in the band, has the most intense facial expressions as she shreds. Totally lost in the music. Love it!

These New South Whales

My mate Michael suggested we head upstairs to see this local punk band I've barely ever heard of. There was a strong crowd of clearly die-hard fans. They had great energy but the sound in the room wasn't brilliant. I think I'd like to see them play their own set so I'll keep an eye out.

Coming up

This Thursday we're off to see GoGo Penguin and I am SUPER excited about that gig!

Bushfire excitement

2023-10-09T01:15:49Z

Last week we planned to travel down to our friends' property on the Far South Coast of NSW. It's a beautiful spot right on the coast with two beaches on the property and not far from the little town I grew up in.

The trip down was uneventful. Six hours of driving but the kids and dog were great and we made it there. This is the first time we've taken the dog here, under strict instructions to keep her under control to protect wildlife and stock on the farm.

Foxie loved running around on the beaches, hanging out. She really got settled in.

It's such a stunning spot. Our happy place.

Then on day 1.5, Tuesday, one of the kids spotted smoke on the horizon. This was a weird day for weather in early October: 33 degrees with a very hot wind. Earlier in the day we'd been at one of the beaches glad to be wearing wetsuits in the ice cold water, then the wind changed and we were blasted with a wind that felt like it was an open oven. Bad news for fires.

Popping down to the beach where we can get (slow) mobile reception, it looked like there was a fire up the road. Growing fast.

It was decided we'd head to the house on the farm with its satelite internet, television and power so we could keep an eye on it. We packed our dinner and planned to settle down to ride it out.

As we drove around the corner to the house, the alarm sound came on ABC South East with the news that for those up the road from us, Cuttagee and Barraga Bay, it was now too late to leave with the massive fire front bearing down on them. So we decided instead of waiting it out in the house we'd bug out to Tathra.

As we left the fire got scarier and scarier looking in the distance. With this kind of weather—especially that hot, dry wind—fires can move with insane speed and this one was evidently a big one.

We got to Tathra and it turned out in just a few hours the fire burnt through 5,000 hectares of bush and was wildly out of control. Bugging out was definitely the right move. We would have been safe and even if the worst had happened we could have popped down to the beach and been okay, but the stress of that would've been immense.

We spent a couple of nights down at a caravan park in Tathra. Had to get some emergency prescriptions for medication we'd left behind, bought some cheap clothes since we only had what we'd left wearing. We didn't even have our wallets: not something you need on a farm. Thankfully mobile payments!

This is going to be a rough Summer in Australia. After two days of huge rains, there's a lot of plant growth and we're going into an El Nino cycle which means low rainfall, high temperatures.

Lesson: always have a plan for a bug out bag and the moment anything looks iffy with what you need for a few days. Just shove it all in a pile ready to grab and go. Leaving was definitely the right decision.

We haven't had much luck with holidays this year. Our Bali holiday earlier this year saw us all get Bali Belly and spend much of the trip feeling miserable. We might have to plan a very low key holiday to get some actual downtime! This truncated holiday didn't feel particularly restful.

Download PXL_20231004_035835752.LS_2-1920.mp4

Take advantage of free solar power with Home Assistant

2023-09-18T08:11:14Z

It's that time of year when it warms up here in Sydney and I start tinkering with my home automation to make life easier and cheaper.

Background

Our house is very well insulated: the old 1920s part of the house has double brick and good insulation in the roof, the new part of the house has hempcrete walls, good roof insulation and double glazed windows. The high thermal mass means the temperature can stay very stable. Just closing the house up on hot days goes a long way to keeping it cool, but sometimes it needs a bit of help.

There's got a 6kW solar system on the roof and a Daikin wifi-connected air conditioner in the lounge room. On hot, sunny days when we're exporting lots of power to the grid and getting paid a pittance for it, I want to pre-chill the house below the usual comfort level so that when the sun goes down we keep the house closed up and turn the air con off but keep comfortable.

Home Assistant Helpers

I created two Helpers in Home Assistant, a dropdown called "Air con mode" and a numeric called "Air con target temp". The dropdown has "Manual" and "Power-driven cool" modes.

The logic I want is that when we're exporting more than 1kW of power and the air con is in "Power-driven cool" mode, drop the set temperature of the air con by 5 degrees. When we don't have excess, set it to the actual target temp. So we set the target to our comfort level, usually 24º, but when we have excess power cool it quite a bit lower.

Discussion

Adjusting the set point means we're not hard switching the air conditioner off and on, so we don't have to worry about hysteresis and the like. When someone switches the kettle or oven on, drawing lots of power, it silently switches to "keep it at the comfort temperature" and then will automatically switch back when more power is available.

By contrast, my shed/office air conditioner is a fair bit dumber so I just have it on a wifi switch to turn off and on under similar conditions, but I use a five minute average of the power and also have a condition set on the temperature so it's not flipping on/off too often.

I could probably set the excess power threshold and the amount of adjustment as Helpers too, but they're hardcoded here for now. In Winter I might do a similar automation, though there's usually a lot less excess power at that time of year.

Home Assistant Automations

The logic requires two automations that run every minute each. One for when there is excess power, one for when there isn't.

Automation for when there's excess power

alias: "Air con: Power-driven cool excess power" description: "" trigger: - platform: time_pattern minutes: "*" condition: - condition: state entity_id: input_select.air_con_mode state: Power-driven cool - condition: numeric_state entity_id: sensor.envoy_current_net_consumption below: -1000 action: - service: climate.set_temperature data: temperature: "{{ states('input_number.air_con_target_temp')|float - 5 }}" target: entity_id: climate.daikinap26021 mode: single

Automation for when there's no excess power

alias: "Air con: Power-driven cool no excess" description: "" trigger: - platform: time_pattern minutes: "*" condition: - condition: state entity_id: input_select.air_con_mode state: Power-driven cool - condition: numeric_state entity_id: sensor.envoy_current_net_consumption above: -1000 action: - service: climate.set_temperature data: temperature: "{{ states('input_number.air_con_target_temp')|float }}" target: entity_id: climate.daikinap26021 mode: single

Shed automation with a simple switch

This one uses a 5 minute average and also checks that it's uncomfortably warm before turning the air con back on. I actually leave this one running all the time: it checks that the door is closed so I'm okay using excess free electricity to keep the shed at a reasonable temperature even if I'm not in there.

alias: Shed aircon automatic on description: "" trigger: - platform: time_pattern minutes: "*" condition: - condition: or conditions: - condition: state entity_id: input_select.shed_air_con_mode state: "on" - condition: and conditions: - condition: numeric_state entity_id: sensor.envoy_current_net_consumption_5_minute_average_linear below: -500 - condition: state entity_id: binary_sensor.shed_door state: "off" - condition: numeric_state entity_id: sensor.shed_weather_temperature above: 25 - condition: state entity_id: input_select.shed_air_con_mode state: Excess power action: - service: switch.turn_on data: {} target: entity_id: switch.shed_aircon mode: single

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

2023-07-25T00:52:56Z

Busy week for gigs! Last night was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Hordern Pavillion. Amazing band, visually stunning sound. Karen O has a pretty unique stage presence.

Their sound and show is definitely on the "art school" end of the spectrum, but that means great visuals. They were a lot of fun!