Nick Smith

* I meant to post this in January but a backlog in data gathering and a spreadsheet overhaul delayed that.

I now have a shiny new google sheet so plan to keep collecting data. I might also post export numbers and payments from the energy company, but that’ll take a bit more working out

Solar install update. Our first year.

The year to December ended as forecast.

We generated 4.5 megawatt hours over the year which was 91% of the energy we used 🎉

We saved roughly £1,100 on energy we didn’t draw from the grid. We also exported a bunch, so made money too.

bsky.app/profile/skyn...

It seems it was February 2026 when MS Teams finally started supporting threaded discussions. At least, that’s my experience

UPF doesn’t equal bad. But some UPF are high risk (eg Pringles). Many are lower, or no risk. Some are even healthy. There’s science that’s proved there’s an issue, there’s science happening now to refine where the issues exist

Don’t believe the fake gloom about London [FREE TO READ] The UK capital is subject to more than its fair share of misinformation

The doom and gloom about London is ridiculous and harmful. Team FT is Team London - as.ft.com/r/19d3d36d-e...

Aaah

Fair

You do have to trust the people running the service. If it’s connected to 9to5Google that gives me hope it’s trustworthy (they’ve been around a while). I guess you’d also want to know what instructions it’s giving your Nest. So not for the novice

The unintended consequence of asking "what can we say we've done?" is the focus it can create on comms as the primary strategy.

Comms _is_ important, it takes time and energy to get right, but it's not everything. Changing the question, focussing on delivery unlocks so much (inc comms, ironically).

15 years and Amazon "never validated [their] core assumptions". The sad thing is that this still seems pretty common in the tech industry. aka HIPPO (highest paid person's opinion). I've also heard it called "vibes and shiny".

bsky.app/profile/leti...

Receipts: a brief list of prominent articles proclaiming the death of the web. They say AI will replace the web as we know it, and this time they mean it. Here follows a short list of previous times they also meant it, starting way back in 1997. Wired: March 1, 1997: “You can kiss your web browser goodbye” – Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf, The Big Story. 1Inspired by the success of PointCast, a clever application that displayed news headlines as a screensaver, our "Push!" story argued that Web browsers were about to become obsolete. 

They say AI will replace the web as we know it, and this time they mean it. Here follows a short list of previous times they also meant it, starting way back in 1997.

For what it was going for, I liked it! Lots to visually stunning set pieces. Nice references. The IMAX sound was immense

The word Tron in blue neon projected onto a wall with Philips Hue lights beneath in matching colour.

Last night I rewatched Tron Legacy and am ready for Tron Ares tonight at the IMAX. Based on reviews I’ve set my expectations low but am looking forward to the nostalgia and escapism

Regularly used image showing the importance of graphic design. The sentence 'You will read this first' is big and bold in the middle. Visual users will indeed read this first. Then there are other sentences: 'and then you will read this'; 'Then this one'; 'And you will read this last'. To make the point, the last sentence you read is the first a non-visual user would have read out on the page, it's at the top.

It's buggy and the interfaces look like they were designed by a drunk monkey. Everything I look at reminds me of this graphic (as in, I wish they'd seen it and internalised the point).

Life finds a way

Oh, that makes sense. I've seen a few 404s. Yes it could fail much more gracefully / usefully

*somewhat (not someone)

URLs (or URIs *) are someone second class citizens in MS world, it seems.

* feel free to have that discussion elsewhere.

Therefore in Google Workspace it's easier to trust linking between documents. To create a web of documents.

You can imagine what this is doing to me, having grown up on the web. This is how my brain works

So if the culture of your org is used to how the web works, vs desktop publishing, and you regularly link out to guides from wiki pages, be ready for lots of links to break regularly as (quite rightly) folder structures change

My understanding is, and nobody seems to talk about this, a big difference between how Google Workspace and MS Sharepoint works: files in Google retain a canonical link. So moving a file between folders in Google, the link to the file stays the same. Move a file in Sharepoint and the link changes

Photo of a 30 day calendar pinned to a fridge. Each day is crossed out. It’s a record that I took a supplement each day. The calendar is printed and has QR codes with info from the supplement manufacturer, Zoe.

I just started #Daily30 (a food supplement) and can say I have more energy and am eating less. It’s part of attempting marginal gains to improve my diet and lose weight

This post sent with the smugness of someone who, after 5 months, has finally switched off all of the ways Microsoft services like to play sounds with notifications

I’ve heard this before where English wasn’t someone’s first language

Why use 'whilst' where 'while' will do? 'Whilst' doesn't make your sentence more formal

Oh no. Best wishes to her and you all, hoping for a speedy recovery

Pollinator Pathmaker Design and plant gardens for endangered bees, butterflies and other pollinators using the algorithmic tool - an artwork by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg.

So interesting. Pollinator Pathmaker. Design your own garden for free. An art project using code to design gardens for pollinators (and humans). Art, code and gardens, right up my street. Featured on BBC Gardener’s World last night: pollinator.art

Agile delivery manager ≠ project manager.

There's crossover in what they do and they can learn from each other, but they are not the same. Assuming they are devalues them both.

I worked for them in Greenwich in the late 90s, early 00s. Back then it was a public private partnership. The council owned the buildings, GLL ran the services. They expanded across London in the 00s, then went national following that. IIRC it was skilled and tightly run, hence their success

What happened when we stopped having meetings and sending emails We took advantage of the switch to remote working and tried new working practices in GOV.UK Pay. Our aim was to help people find a balance between work and life that works for them. Here’s what happen...

Here's a thing @visitmy.website and Xander wrote about: gds.blog.gov.uk/2020/10/07/w...