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End of an era – the coffee machine died

Back in 2013, on the back of a bonus payment, I bought a fancy Jura coffee machine.

Over the years I have serviced it, repaired it, replaced parts.

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Today it finally died. Brittle plastic, valves and manifolds that are old and leaky.

I bit the bullet and bought a new shiny machine.

Cronicle as a simple scheduler/orchestrator

I’ve been looking for something a tad more sophisticated than cron for a while.

Key criteria:

  • simple to use/install
  • lightweight infrastructure needs
  • web interface
  • ideally open source
  • maintained (not bitrotted)

I found Cronicle (github)

It seems to meet these requirements. I just installed this on an openSUSE LEAP 16 box. That was another learning curve! (Where did my Yast go!)

Focus, Pomodoro, Freedom

On 1 January I started another Masters program at WGU, and really needed to double-down on writing, and GSD.

I’ve used the Pomodoro Technique successfully before; short, intensive, 25 minute bursts of focus time.

Following some recommendations, I have augmented this with the Freedom app; which blocks apps and web usage (i.e distractions).

I’ll report back, but several days in this has really helped with GSD.

Solar Power Update – August 2025

I am really pleased with the solar panel/battery installation.

It’s not quite perfect – but we are banking enough power to only get billed during the dark, dark months.

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One body of work over the coming months is to analyse a few years worth of data, and see if additional battery capacity would help this at all, and most critically whether it would give any return on investment.

During the summer we are generating during the day, filling the batteries, selling to the grid for credits, and then running off battery over night.