iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 28/09/2026

Rampion seems to have been significantly upgraded and relocated on-shore to the Gatwick area? Rendering issue with Gecko based browsers (e.g. Firefox) I think?

Screenshot showing the Rampion offshore wind farm located approx 50 km North of it actual position.

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 18/09/2026

See also @xkcd.com "Land Mammals" m.xkcd.com/1338/

Infographic comic by Randall Munroe that visualizes the total global biomass of all living land mammals on Earth.

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 18/09/2026

Rising gas prices have led to more calls for the UK govt to approve new gas extraction license applications in the North Sea. UK gov estimates between 100 and 200 billion m³ (bcm) of gas remain in the UK areas of the North Sea. More optimistic industry estimates are of up to 450 bcm.

A chart showing EU natural gas prices (TTF) which have risen from around €30 / MWh before the US/Israeli attacks on Iran to around €80 / MWh today.

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 08/07/2026

No idea who did this, but this is my favourite rendering.

Farage in path clothes sitting on a pile of cash in an oak panelled drawing room. with the caption, "the count of murky crypto".

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 29/06/2026

...before finally falling (as forecast) by dawn.

This image is a screenshot of weather observations from the UK **Met Office** website for **Shoreham (West Sussex)**, providing historical data across Thursday 25 June and Friday 26 June 2026.

### **General Info**

* **Daylight (Fri 26 Jun):** Sunrise at 04:49, Sunset at 21:19.

---
Thursday
Time,Temperature
18:00,34.4°C
19:00,33.3°C
20:00,31.1°C
21:00,29.1°C
22:00,28.0°C
23:00,27.7°C
Friday
Time,Temperature
00:00,28.7°C
01:00,29.7°C
02:00,25.5°C
03:00,26.4°C
04:00,23.9°C
05:00,22.7°C
06:00,22.1°C
07:00,23.0°C

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 29/06/2026

...in a house without aircon, in part by employing the high-tech solution of putting a scrap of carpet on the outside of the roof window. Hopefully the least controversial and lowest cost type of solar radiation management.

A strip of carpet on the outside of a roof window, tucked over the top edge to prevent it moving whilst the window is closed.

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 29/06/2026

As someone who takes an interest in building physics, I'm infuriated by how little talk there is of passive solar gain management techniques. We kept this bedroom loft conversion in SE England below 28°C for all but a few minutes last week (despite outdoor temperatures in around 36°C) ...

Graph showing temperatures varying between approximately twenty one point five and twenty eight degrees over several days.

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 26/05/2026

Arctic sea ice extent at record low this year (source: www.meereisportal.de/en/ )

Graph showing arctic sea ice extent on the same date of each year across multiple years, including averages and Min/Max bands.

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 25/03/2026

Gas providing <4% (1.37 GW) of GB electricity grid generation just now. I haven't been keeping track, but this might be a new record low? The remaining gas is only there for grid stability reasons, and grid-scale battery storage is gradually eating up this market for gas generators too.

Graph showing the past 24 hours or UK grid electricity mix - with Gas making up 1.37GW at 08:30 am, and always below 3.5GW. Wind dominates at 22.7 GW with greater than 20 GW of generation for the entire 24 hour period. Source: https://grid.iamkate.com/

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 18/03/2026

Front cover of this weeks' Private Eye magazine. Also check out their podcast if you haven't already!

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 12/08/2025

If you're in France then check out the IECharge network. They install grid-connected battery reinforcement at electricity substations and tack on EV charging. As a result, they are able to offer the cheapest prices. The locations can be a little bit urban fringe, but the price is right!

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 11/08/2025

A £15 Bluetooth to ODB2 adapter plugged into the car's diagnostic port (behind the cover by the driver's right knee), and the £5 "Car Scanner" mobile phone app (free version available). Here's an updated screenshot at 96k miles. Some cheaper ODB2 adapters don't work, so LMK if you'd like details.

Screenshot for the "Car Scanner" Android app, showing various statistics on lifetime use of the battery from the Battery Management System.

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 16/05/2025

@octopus.energy posted me a 321 page electricity bill printed out on A4 paper as a 5cm thick parcel (on their "Agile" tariff the rate changes every 30mins, so 48 line items per day). They'd tried emailing it, but at 15 MB the email exceeded my server's size limit, so they posted a hard copy instead…

321 pages (A4) of paper electricity bills folded in half, printed both sides wrapped in an elastic band.

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 25/04/2025

Last week we piled our family into the used EV that we bought last year and took the overnight ferry to Dieppe in Normandy, then drove the 600 km to my brother's house in Dordogne. The "IECharge" rapid charger network only cost €0.25/kWh, I assume they keep costs down by connecting to the HV grid.

The IECharge rapid DC EV charging station near Dreux at sunrise - in the foreground is an EV DC rapid charge point. In the background are a large amount of electrical switch gear beyond that groups of 4 high voltage electrical transmission pylons.

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 25/02/2025

Apparently only 48% of Americans. Not sure what sort of miracle they are (and the whole 2% who've changed their mind were previously) expecting. At least the disapproval number is shifting more rapidly (up >5%).

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 26/01/2025

@bmweu.bsky.social (amongst other organisations) has announced they'll stop posting on X. Can't say I'm in the market for a new car, but I'm happy that at least some movement which financially harms this fascist appears to be resulting from these actions.

"We’re no longer posting on X.

Don't worry though, our Customer Support team is still here if you need us.

You can also see all the latest BMW news by following us on Facebook and Instagram at BMWUK."

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 23/12/2024

Works OK in the UK via energy retailers (principally Octopus) but I think this isn't how most of the US is set up (Texas being an exception I think?

Screen grab of Octopus mobile app showing retail price per kWh graph which changes every 30 minutes. For today the price varies between £0.00 and £0.40 per unit (kWh).

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 12/11/2024

... always a great conference and well worth a visit. Large enough that it usually spawns 5 to 10 fringe events (usually preceding). Every time I go, I seem to find some unexpected gem of a talk - 2024's was probably Scott Chacon's "So you think you know Git" archive.fosdem.org/2024/schedul...

The 1500 capacity Janson auditorium full during the FOSDEM'12 welcome and opening talk" - Enrique Ayesta Perojo, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 15/09/2024

Some aspects of the UK govt presentation are good - it calls out thermal power station conversion losses explicitly (and they fall off the bottom of the chart in an illustrative way) - it would be better if it did the same for transport conversion losses tho' (edited repost - fix serious typo!)...

Image from UK gov Energy Flow Chart 2023 (Sankey Diagram) showing national annual energy imports, exports, uses and losses.

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 03/09/2024

I may well be preaching to the choir here but have you seen Michael Liebreich's similar "Hydrogen Ladder"? V5 included below... His "Cleaning Up" podcast also includes a few hydrogen focused episodes (e.g. on the economics of moving the stuff around).

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 12/06/2024

Firefox 115 (ESR) on Linux

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 15/04/2024

"between 9:00am and 9:30am on 21st December 2023 British wind farms averaged a record 21.81GW of generation" source: grid.iamkate.com It might have been a record for lowest proportion of fossil generation tho'. Not sure if it got lower, but that's when I happened to look today...

Screenshot of "https://grid.iamkate.com/" showing GB grid fossil fuel generation at 2.7% at 15:00 BST on 15 April 2024.

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 13/02/2024

Check out this local crime against form-factor (with added bonus thermal bridge cringe points).

Photo of a block of apartment with a highly serrated front (viewed on plan).

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Tim Small @buttersideup.com · 09/02/2024

The I have some Xiaomi ones which I like. About £10 each with Sensirion T+H sensor, and e-paper display. Runs off a single CR2032 for about a year (depending on sampling frequency), and transmits data via Bluetooth Low Energy for central logging.

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