From bentasker.co.uk
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I recently installed Arch Linux on a Lenovo Ideapad. This post talks about some of the more minor tweaks that I've since made to the system.
on Wed, 10AM
From bentasker.co.uk
Dog Proofing The Bottom Of A Chain-Link Fence
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One of our dogs started escaping through one of our fences, apparently in pursuit of some freshly laid cat poop. To do so, she dug up part of the bottom of the fence and the stretchiness of chainlink
on Mon, 10PM
From bentasker.co.uk
Supporting auto-rotation and undocking on Ideapad Miix 320
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Earlier this month, I installed Arch Linux on a Lenovo Ideapad MIix 320-10ICR convertible tablet. At the time I configured a fixed rotation to make the display work in laptop mode. In this post I impl
on Dec 16
From bentasker.co.uk
Moving my 2FA Codes from Authy to Aegis
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I recently moved my TOTP tokens from Twilio's Authy to Aegis Authenticator. This post talks a bit about how (it was a pain) and why (it had to be done) as well as the tooling that I'm now able to use
on Dec 14
From bentasker.co.uk
Adding Encrypted Swap and a Userspace OOM-Killer
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I've noticed that it's quite easy to accidentally demand too much memory and cause my Miix 320 to hang, so I've added some (encrypted) swap space along with a userspace oomkiller (earlyoom)
on Dec 7
From bentasker.co.uk
Mini runs rough and misfires after driving for a while
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We had some issues with misfiring and rough running on a Mini Cooper 1.6. Checking the engine over revealed oil in one of the spark plug wells as the result of a failed PCV valve causing pressure to p
on Dec 5
From bentasker.co.uk
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The retirement of my Asus TF101 EEpad is long, long overdue. It's running a version of Android which can no longer connect to most services and can't even get app updates from the Play store. Although
on Dec 1
From bentasker.co.uk
Mini Cooper: Removing Valve Cover
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Documentation detailing how to remove and replace the valve cover from the engine of an 2012 mini cooper (R57) One with a N14 engine.
on Nov 30
From bentasker.co.uk
Mini Cooper: Resetting Fault Codes
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Resetting fault codes normally requires you to put the ignition into position 2, however Mini's don't have a turnable key. This post details how to put the car into the mode which allows you to clear
on Nov 28
From bentasker.co.uk
Making the Eyes of an Image Follow The Mouse
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A blog post detailing how to use javascript and a html canvas to animate the eyes of an image. Also includes other examples such as having an image follow the cursor around the screen
on Nov 7
From bentasker.co.uk
Saab 93: Alternator Replacement (1.9 TTiD)
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Post detailing the process of replacing the alternator/generator on a 2010 Saab 9-3 1.9 TTiD
on Oct 31
From bentasker.co.uk
Using OPNsense with a 1Gbps FTTP Connection and PPPoE
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We recently had 1Gbps fiber internet installed. For various reasons, I built an OPNsense router to help connect to it, only to find that it's PPPoE support was only able to achieve half that speed. Th
on Oct 27
From bentasker.co.uk
Building a Scheduled Toots System
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I decided to get around to building a system which would allow me to schedule toots for sending later. This post talks about the setup that I built as well as minor issue I ran into when trying to use
on Oct 22
From bentasker.co.uk
Counting Home Assistant Automation Triggers For My Fingerbot
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The fingerbot that I added to our dishwasher stopped working recently, turns out the battery has gone dead already. In this post I look at setting up a way to count how often the automation which fire
on Oct 21
From bentasker.co.uk
Creating a In-Home-Display (IHD) to view real-time energy usage
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A month or two back, I put up a post detailing how I was capturing information on our energy usage into InfluxDB. The natural extension of that was to create an In Home Display (IHD) that displays cur
on Oct 20
From bentasker.co.uk
Trying Out A Far Infrared Heated Poster
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I decided to take a chance and try a far infrared heated picture as a secondary heat source in the living room. This post talks about how we got on with it.
on Oct 17
From bentasker.co.uk
Using JSONFeed Support To Drive An On This Day Module
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I decided that I wanted to create a simple module to list out posts made on this day in other years. The functionality is driven by the output of a simple JSONFeed plugin.
on Oct 6
From bentasker.co.uk
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A website that I created for Claire's Canine Services - a dog walking and pet sitting service based around Leiston in the UK.
on Oct 6
From bentasker.co.uk
Creating Recurring Gitlab Issues
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One of the features that Gitlab lacks is the ability to create recurring issues - tickets to track things which need repeating periodically. Whether that's updating the base image used for a container
on Sep 30
From bentasker.co.uk
I'm a Pylontech Recommended Technician... Wait, Wut?
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This week started with a GDPR breach of an email landing in my inbox. Not long after, it was followed by another. This blog post talks about the day that Pylontech unilateraly decided that I was a bat
on Sep 24
From bentasker.co.uk
Unclogging A Washing Machine When The Pump Cover Is Jammed
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Our Bosch Series 4 washing machine clogged. When I went to open the pump cover to clear a blockage I found that it was stuck. This post details the process of unblocking the machine
on Sep 14
From bentasker.co.uk
Building a Raspberry Pi Cycling Computer
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I bought myself an under-desk exercise bike, which had a small cycle computer attached. The problem is, if you're going to track stats you really should *track* them. So, I decided to use a Raspberry
on Sep 3
From bentasker.co.uk
Migrating a HTML based site to Markdown
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In 2014, I wrote a small Static Site Generator (SSG) in PHP. At the time, Hugo had only seen a few public releases and both it and Jekyll were written in languages (Go and Ruby, respectively) that I
on Aug 29
From bentasker.co.uk
Mini Cooper: Tire Pressure Warning Reset
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Short post detailing how to reset the tyre pressure warning on a BMW Mini Cooper
on Aug 26
From bentasker.co.uk
Should've Bought A Playstation
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I recently had the misfortune of having to use the Xbox Live store, only to find that it wouldn't let us spend money on the thing we'd credited the account for. As part of a succession of embarassing
on Aug 24
From bentasker.co.uk
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I've built an automated workflow to watch for external links in my blog posts and then preserve a copy in a private Linkwarden instance. The aim is to provide a form of insurance against link rot - wh
on Aug 12
From bentasker.co.uk
Running Linkwarden in Kubernetes
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A short walkthrough on deploying the Linkwarden collaborative link preserver into a kubernetes cluster.
on Aug 11
From bentasker.co.uk
Ben Tasker (@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk)
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New #Blog: Building my own #TV station After a conversation with someone, I decided to build my own linear #video channel, streaming content from our local library. It means, rather than having to choose something to watch, I can just flick the telly on and be guaranteed something that I...
on Aug 8
From bentasker.co.uk
Building My Own Streaming TV Station
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I was recently having a conversation with a colleague about a youtuber who built a home cable-tv channel. It occurred to me that having an always-on broadcast of stuff I like would greatly simply the
on Aug 7
From bentasker.co.uk
Deploying InfluxDB and Telegraf to Monitor Kubernetes
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I've run kubernetes at home for quite some time, but because I was only using it as a sandpit didn't bother setting up monitoring. I've started using it for more productiony stuff though, so I decided
on Jul 28
From bentasker.co.uk
Laravel Image Validation Fails on Large Images
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Last week, I deployed ShotShare - a php application written using Laravel. However, I started to encounter validation issues when uploading an image from my phone. Troubleshooting showed that the issu
on Jul 20
From bentasker.co.uk
Deploying ShotShare into Kubernetes
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I spent part of today figuring out how to deploy ShotShare into Kubernetes so that I can easily share screenshots and the like with others. This post details the headaches I ran into (self-inflicted a
on Jul 13
From bentasker.co.uk
Perplexity.AI Is Susceptible to Prompt Injection From Arbitrary Pages
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After reading an excellent blog post last week, followed by some news stories, I decided to have a play around with Perplexity.AI to see whether I could reproduce what was reported. However, I got a l
on Jul 3
From bentasker.co.uk
I'm Doing Nothing This Weekend
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I'm knackered and so am taking a (belated) weekend of not doing anything around the house. That's being helped along by having seen a toot about a game earlier in the week - so in a short break from p
on Jun 26
From bentasker.co.uk
Migrating from HomeAssistant OS to HomeAssistant Container
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We make a lot of use of HomeAssistant and had previously been using HomeAssistant OS. However, haos hasn't been a great fit for our needs, so I needed to look at migrating us over to HomeAssistant Cor
on Jun 25
From bentasker.co.uk
Getting Bamboo Out of Our Garden
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We had a patch of bamboo next to our house. I recently learned that this can be a very, very bad thing and so I set about removing it. This blog post talks about how I did it and what a pain it was.
on Jun 25
From bentasker.co.uk
Dealing With Dishwasher Tablets Leaving a White Residue On Glasses
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After switching from pods to dishwasher tablets our glasses started getting cloudy and were covered in white residue. In this post I look into why the tabs do this and how to resolve it
on Jun 24
From bentasker.co.uk
Building a Metadata Search Engine
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My note taking habits have meant that I've long needed a self-hosted search engine to help with finding old stuff. However, because my searches were generally quite specific, I started to find that fu
on Jun 8
From bentasker.co.uk
Looking at our first year of Solar
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We've now had our solar install for a full year, so I thought it was worth looking at how it's performed over that time. In this post I look at the performance of the panels and the battery as well as
on May 31
From bentasker.co.uk
Dealing with Water in Vauxhall Corsa E Passenger Footwell
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Our Vauxhall Corsa E started suffering from water in the passenger footwell, though the first noticeable sign was water dripping from the cabin light. This post details the various things checked in t
on May 20
From bentasker.co.uk
KATE text editor hangs on opening
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My text editor started going unresponsive as soon as it had opened, even if it wasn't asked to open any files. It would just sit with a loading wheel forever.
on May 16
From bentasker.co.uk
Lenovo ThinkPad x280 Won't Power On or Charge
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I recently needed to fix an x280 which had stopped working. It was completel unresponsive and wouldn't even illuminate the charge LED when plugged into a power supply. In this post I walk through the
on May 15
From bentasker.co.uk
Ben Tasker (@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk)
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New #Blog post: Spending an Afternoon in the Sizewell Control Room Simulator I'm a bit late in writing something, but @popey@mastodon.social, @8none1@fosstodon.org, @sil@mastodon.social got to spend an afternoon in the operations training centre at #Sizewell B #nuclear power station T'was an...
on May 6
From bentasker.co.uk
Spending an Afternoon In The Sizewell Control-Room Simulator
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I was recently lucky enough to be invited along on a trip to Sizewell Bs operations training centre to see and try their control room simulator.
on May 6
From bentasker.co.uk
How a Heater Killed An Extension Lead
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We temporarily plugged a heater into a switched extension lead. It ultimately killed part of the lead, so I've taken it apart to see what went wrong.
on May 4
From bentasker.co.uk
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Today we had our worst Octopus powerup to date. Various things combined meant that we only pulled a little over a kilowatt from grid (and then exported some). This post looks at what went wrong
on May 2
From bentasker.co.uk
AITA: Ex-Owner Wants To Walk The Dog On His Own
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Bonnie's ex-owner has been in contact, wanting to take her out for a walk around the town on his own. From the moment we heard it, we thought it was strange and inappropriate request but when we said
on Apr 28
From bentasker.co.uk
Nextcloud News Stopped Syncing My Feeds
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I use Nextcloud News in order to subscribe to RSS feeds from my phone. Recently though, I noticed some feeds had stopped updating - including one which I knew normally published quite regularly. In th
on Apr 21
From bentasker.co.uk
Removing and Replacing the Keyboard on a Lenovo X280
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Documentation detailing how to remove and replace the keyboard from a Lenovo Thinkpad x280 laptop
on Apr 19