Archive for category Personal

Can Anyone Explain My Gas Bill Power Discrepancy

Posted by darkskiez in Personal on August 22, 2010

I’ve been trying to figure out how much my gas / heating / showers were costing me, but I’ve hit a fairly big discrepancy that I can’t explain.

I have a brand new 28kW/h rated boiler, with 98% efficiency rating, and according to the service manual it will consume 28.57kW/h max worth of gas, or 3.02 m^3 per hour.

I have found through measurement of having a 7 minute hot shower that the boiler was running full whack, consuming exactly at the rate claimed by the guide, 3.02 m^3, but this equates according to my bill to be 34 kW/h.

Where is the extra energy going / being wasted?

Boiler Stats Value Units
Gas Max Flow Rate 3.02 m^3/hr
Max Heat In: 28.57 kW/h
Max Heat Out: 28 kW/h
(Calculated Efficiency) 98.0049002450122 %
Meter Readings
Used 12.5 ft^3
Duration 7 min
Metric Conversion 0.35375 m^3
Flow Rate 3.03214285714286 m^3/hr
Gas Qualities / Constants
Calorific Value 39.7
Conversion Factor 1.02264
kW/h / MJ 3.6

kW/h at Max Flow = Max m^3/h (3.02) * Calorific Value (39.7) * Conversion Factor (1.02264) / kWh per MJ (3.6)

kW/h at Max Flow = 34.0578889333333

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Chili Beer

Posted by darkskiez in Personal on July 5, 2010

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With Chillies in! Yum.

Where: Byres Road Peckhams
Cost: £1.89
Strength: 4.2% Vol
Verdict: Better than expected, light lager with subtle and warming chili taste. Small Bonus for screw top, slightly overpriced. 7/10

The first two bottles had only one chili in, this one has two, same strength of chili flavour though it still feels like winning a little prize.

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Barclaycard RFID Exploring

Posted by darkskiez in Electronics, Personal on July 2, 2010

Waived my card over my Arduino Powered SM130 RFID reader to see what it would say..

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Student Card: Mifare 1K(2) : 2ADEXXXX

Barclay Card: Unknown Tag(FF) : 09A1XXXX

It’s compatible with the usual RFID standards to some degree, enough to give the same serial number every time, unlike my passport which randomises its ID each activation, but not surprisingly it doesn’t read on my basic reader, probably a more advanced one would get further..

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IPv6 Sage Certified

Posted by darkskiez in Personal on May 31, 2010

Yay, thanks to their new free DNS service, I have been able to complete Hurricane Electrics IPv6 certification course, and they are sending me a T-Shirt!

Highly recommend working your way through their course if this interests you.

IPv6 Certification Badge for darkskiez

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New RFID Barclaycard

Posted by darkskiez in Electronics, Personal on May 20, 2010

Got a new barclaycard with RFID in the post today

I wonder if the RFID bit is MiFare compatible.. will try my reader later, not sure I’m happy about it.

The chip/pin bit seems to be compatible with my co-operative/Smile.co.uk card reader too, which surprised me but pleases me that I wont need lots of incompatible bits of junk for two-factor authentication.

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Hello World

Posted by darkskiez in Personal on May 19, 2010

Just getting started on this blog. Cant even think of a good name for it yet, nevermind a caption =]

Don’t expect this to be wordy or regularly updated, and I expect will probably be more of a tech diary than a personal blog, but we’ll see how things develop, as I would rather facebook did not own all data about my life.

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