I challenged myself to explain Monads whilst keeping it within a Medium “10 min read” — In lockdown, I wrote a rambling series of articles, where in reality I was just trying to get my own head around monads once and for all. Now I’m going to try to explain the concept more succinctly. Function application I’m going to assume you understand two concepts already. The first one…

Scales — In part 1, I looked at how chords are constructed, in particular the importance of the third and the seventh. This leads to four very important chord shapes: if the root note is C, then you get: C∆ (major 3rd, major 7th) C7 (major 3rd, minor 7th) Cm7 (minor 3rd…

Chords — When I was growing up, my musical education was entirely classical: classical piano, classical violin (played very poorly I should add!) and classical music theory. All that time, I could hear the harmonies in pop music and jazz, and they sounded great, but I wasn’t able to make sense of…

…or, why clip-on power meters can give wildly misleading readings — Before I installed my solar PV system I wanted to get an accurate idea of how much background power I was using, to decide how big a battery I needed to cover overnight usage. …

Is it worth it? — In this final part, I discuss the economics of solar, the various optional extras you can choose, and whether it’s worth the investment. How much does it cost? The total cost of the system will depend on a number of factors, most obviously the number of panels, but also the optional extras you buy. Interestingly…

System Performance and Troubleshooting — Once my solar PV system was up and running, I was able to watch how it performed. Inverter monitoring This system has a 6kW hybrid inverter from Ginlong Solis — a mid-range, work-horse Chinese brand — and includes a wifi module that connects to the Internet. …

The Installation — Getting the system installed by a professional installer was straightforward. These are the steps involved. Outline design You should contact several installers — I recommend at least three. Ensure they are registered with the relevant trade bodies, such as the Renewable Energy Consumer Code. Tell them your outline requirements and get them…

Introduction — I’ve recently had a solar panel system with batteries installed — and I’m very pleased with it. In the following series of articles I’ll note some of the things I learned along the way. How it works There are now three sources of electricity for our house: the sun, energy stored in the…

In a previous article I wrote about using Hashicorp Vault as an SSH certificate authority. As of version 1.9, Vault has gained the ability to act as an OpenID Connect Identity Provider as well. This is an exciting development which greatly increases the scope and utility of Vault. The feature…