bertilak.ca has been running a neglected WordPress install behind Apache for years. The landing page was literally a black page with a 170KB Fraktur logo PNG as a background image. No links, no content, nothing. The blog had 36 migrated posts sitting in Pelican locally but never deployed because …
2026 Brings new interests, new skills, and new goals. First draft Post.
Originally Drafted on Nov 28, 2018
12+ years ago I went looking for home automation tools. Misterhouse was a suite of tools written in perl (my preferred language at the time) that enabled a firecracker serial device to control X10 RF smart plugs. Not much has changed.
The required technical …
Healing is an art, Medicine is science. Healthcare is business
I can imagine a successful future for civilization but I don't know how to explain to normal people, without the economics understanding, that making hard choices sooner than later pays dividends in saving us from exponential lost/wasted utility. And that isn't even asking people to change behaviours for the …
Good practice dictates a disconnect of sensitive information in the configuration.yaml that defines homes assistant, by design into a secret.yaml file that is excluded when synced to external version control systems (aka github). While in development it isn't always done that way and therefor a commit to github …
Is it feasible to design a blockchain based system that signs inputs and outputs of an agricultural enterprise and pays out chain investors (in-kind, suppliers, labourers, land owners, etc) with a contracted fixed, per-unit price plus a bonus based on the success of the venture?
I think so.
The already …
Sometime before the winter holiday we decided that cultivating our own legal cannabis indoors would be a super way to try different methods of cultivation and hone in on the best methods for self sufficiently producing the products we use for recreational and medicianal cannabis usage. I …
The article, Housing Can’t Be Both Affordable and a Good Investment, raised some good points regarding how polar those two needs are in regards to pricing. San Francisco was used as an example of modest growth on home prices of 2.5% and look at the state of house …
Honestly, I believe our entire problem on earth is human under-utilization not stupidity. We are metabolic machine systems designed to provide a stable environment for a very complex, highly parallel, neural network to run pattern matching algorithms that are our literal evolutionary advantage.
That we use them to play Bejeweled …
I was motivated to write the post below on social media in response to the emotional response by other farmers in the Farm the Kootenays FB group to a local egg …
This theory is being written down here, because of the sensational nature of bringing it up on social media or elsewhere improving the PC Party of Canada's (PCP) chance to form the next Government of Canada. As much as Justin Trudeau doesn't impress me the CPC damn well scares me …
Previous related posts:
Part I: http://bertilak.ca/blog/idea/the-role-of-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-in-education/
Part II:http://bertilak.ca/blog/idea/the-role-of-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-in-education-part-ii-proof-of-concept/
From the initial moment this idea of using Mastodon as an educational tool plopped into my head I've been concerned with the one weak point in my grand scheme, the buy …
The proof of concept for this project will be two complete units serving a Mastodon/Pleroma instance with auto-federation on the same local network.
Hardware is specified by bounds on RAM required by Mastodon/Pleroma and the hard drive requirements calculated with this tool indicate a larger hard drive …
Social networks have far reaching effects on students, at home and school, have been a concern of parents and educators since the phenomena has taken hold. Mastodon is structured in such a way that it could be an important tool in educating youth in the appropriate and healthy use of …
I've been spending a ~~little time~~ shit-tons of time exploring the social networking alternatives that are currently emerging and the philosophical underpinnings that that back them. As a true believer in the power of open and free software to make the lives of all humans better, I feel like the …
You spend a lot of time looking at logs while setting up zigbee devices, or any devices really, in HA. The current log is hidden in the developer tools info button, with a click to expand the log past a few recent lines.
Our household has embraced DIY and budget home automation; the lynch pin in this setup is the the little Raspberry Pi sitting next to me. Of the more mature HA tools that exist, Home Assistant and OpenHAB both have a RPi deployment, Hassbian and OpenHabian, respectively.
I'm not …
Philips Hue reset tool: https://github.com/vanviegen/hue-thief/
Having now played with OpenHabian on a Raspberry Pi 3 for a month or two, I'm ready to make some statements to the build and quality of the software architecture.
Originally I was more impressed with the flat config structure (json) and and adoption of linux file and folder …
In an effort to move services off my PC has led me to offload several services we rely on to the various Raspberry Pis we have laying around. Which is more than you'd likely guess as I use them for all sorts of tasks. Mostly Kodi boxes for playing media …
Building a new UGV platform is daunting business. The development environment still reflects the level of novelty in emergent drone technology, with many options presenting themeselves as viable options to connect a Raspberry Pi to the Pixhawk stack for the higher processing component required for achieving the complex …
Exploring the benefits of IFTTT has been difficult given the limited nature that most of the services have exposed APIs and the "If this then that" Syntax of ifttt. I'm not sure if the "services" have determined if they have totally bought in to the idea of interoperability honestly; all …
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Conclusions
Click edges of picture to see overlay with drone.
This is a safety based solution and thusly a master cut-off for both 5V from USB and voltage from battery packs (in the case of Y6, a 14.4V) would immediately stop …
Build a base that flight platforms can be attached to and have their maximum load bearing output tested in various ways in a controlled bench test environment. Ideally this could serve as a prototype for performing the same range …
...for the sweepstakes!
I could definitely use a new GPS.
http://www.podcacher.com/current-podcacher-contests/podcacher-contest-win-garmin-oregon-750t/
Original post:DIY LED Grow Light Wire up and Testing - Part I: The Plan
First off, I'm going to state that I can see several sources for error in my calculations, which are skewed toward higher efficiency. I'm sure the distribution approaches a beautiful inverse F-Distribution. I am ignoring efficiency …
Previously:
Now I just need to finish wiring up the other two panels... and order another set of drivers. well, I'd rather DX just credit my account and ship me another three drivers, that …
http://fafdl.org/gmobb/answering-the-3-most-common-internet-objections-to-gmos/
Fantastic summary of where arguments for genetically modified organisms and their role in food and technology.
So..... I had a few ways to interpret this input voltage:
Boy was that a BAD choice. It let all the …
We've been looking at the different ways of meeting our needs as a family. We don't bring in much income and we are always looking for ways to make the small amount we do have stretch to its maximum efficiency. We grow much of our medicinal and edible greens …
So the news has hit the UAV community that we have suspected for ages. 3DR, the made-in-the-USA player in the multirotor game, has officially left the drone business to pursue evaporating segments of the image capture, management and analysis. This smacks me of the same basic hubris they fell into …
Method of generating believable random maps by multivariate analysis of known geospatial features including: Altitude, production, population anchors, and historical political boundaries
By analysis of historical maps we can use image processing to identify areas of high information density (well known) and low information density (poorly known). First order business …
They are so alike I found the debate last night somewhat disappointing. Obviously both are strategically selected, not on merit (both are likely second string choices), but on their ability to win a segment of the voting population that I am not part of. It's a weird spectacle because I'm …
This election year has been crazy in the US. Election year. As a Canadian, that sounds almost absurd. We had our longest election run-up ever in the last Liberal win and it was measured in weeks, not months.
I can't tell of Donald Trump is serious or not, which seriously …
List of links:
Ok,
Well this kind of fell by the wayside. But more so because I was busy doing other things, which, if you think about it is a pretty lame excuse if you blog about doing stuff.
I commit to writing a post daily, with a digest about automation for sharing …
I've been meaning to do this for while. I need a place to collect my thoughts and record all the shit I'm doing. I'll be keeping various bits of my life here and I'm really going to do it this time dammit.
Seriously,
R