Author: Alan Cole

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Aquarium Algae

I let my aquarium slip a little after my heart attack. I wasn’t really up to maintaining it as lugging heavy buckets of water around was out of the question. It did OK as it is quite self-sufficient, but it did suddenly get a little overwhelmed with algae after a while. Balanced Ecosystem The tank...

Is Clotting the Problem? 3

Is Clotting the Problem?

I’ve been wondering about clotting recently. First some background for context. As you may know, I was super-fit, super healthy and the last person on Earth that anyone expected to have any heart issues. Despite that I had a major heart attack earlier this year and have been recovering since. As is often the case,...

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Free Electricity

We’ve been a little obsessed with our electricity usage lately. All prompted by the fact that we’ve had solar panels and battery storage installed. This came with the ability to track our usage a little easier and I built a nice addition to this website that shows how our solar panels are performing. I added...

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Time to Rebuild

I wouldn’t say I’ve been ‘training’ yet, but it is time to rebuild. I don’t know if I’ll be competing in any triathlons, quadrathlons, cyclocross races or other events yet, so there’s nothing to actually train for anyway. I have however been very gradually increasing the amount of exercise I do. Rebuilding The volume and...

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Building a Solax WordPress Plugin

I couldn’t resist building a Solax WordPress plugin as a project following the installation of our new solar panels and battery. The Solax Inverter has a Wi-Fi dongle that uploads data to Solax Servers where we can see various stats about the usage on the Solax Cloud portal. There is also a Solax App that...

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Solar Battery Storage and Force Charging

Our new Solax solar system seems to be working well. There were a few teething problems and plenty to configure to get it all working in what we think is the most efficient way, so here’s the deal. The solar panels started working straight away. Even on cloudy days they were pretty much covering our...

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Hibernation for Hector and Harriet

Hector and Harriet our robot lawn mowers have been busy since Spring. They head out several time a day whatever the weather to mow the lawns. They’ve done well, and have kept them looking constantly neat and trim. We decided over the weekend that it was time for them to have a rest and to...

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Gradual Improvements

Sunday morning was a perfect morning for running, cool at 10ºC, overcast and still. After a quick walk to the beach where the surf was looking perfect I headed off along the flat straight road to Borth. I haven’t been back in the sea yet since my heart attack but with surf like that it...

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RPE vs Performance

Recent conversations with people have generally revolved around the recovery from my heart attack. People say hello, ask how I am and ask how my recovery is going. Generally it’s going well, if a little slowly for my impatient self. I’ll tell them that I still have some ongoing chest pain, although even that has...

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Solar Panels

In our ever increasing bid to be green we are now the proud owners of a 4kW Solar array and a 5.8kWh battery. The panels themselves were installed last week. Steve and Dan from Pure Electrics were here today to wire everything up, install the battery and the inverter and get it all up and...