@www.bentasker.co.uk@rss-parrot.net
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The website of Ben Tasker, IT Manager, Linux Specialist and software developer. I'm based in Suffolk in the UK but work with customers worldwide
Site URL: www.bentasker.co.uk/
Feed URL: www.bentasker.co.uk/rss.xml
Posts: 10
Followers: 1
Plug-in Solar: Our Performance So Far
Published: August 29, 2026 11:10
On 27th August, SI 2026/848 came into effect, legalising plug-in solar in the UK. Shops like Argos now offer them (though rumour has it that Lidl will soon start stocking at about half the price). Earlier this year, we had plug-in solar installed. Although…
Looking At Tarpit and LLM Maze Stats
Published: August 8, 2026 21:28
About 4 years ago, I looked into how effective my SSH tarpits were. Since then, I've also deployed an AI crawler tarpit (technically a maze - it generates an endless number of pages) to serve "content" up to crawlers who ignore my "No Entry" signs. I…
Building A Bench For Our Campervan
https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/house-stuff/building-a-campervan-bench.html?utm_source=rss
Published: July 27, 2026 21:42
Recently, we acquired a campervan conversion - a 2009 Citroen Relay with an interior originally installed by Olive & Oz (actually, it was their run-around). The van itself has done a lot of miles, but the interior really is quite beautiful. A few weeks…
Generating A Static HTML Archive Of Forgejo Issues
Published: July 12, 2026 13:28
Over the years, I've come to use project management systems quite heavily even for things with no code involved. I maintain projects to track things that need doing round the house, maintaining cars, the LAN and even financial planning. The ability to add…
Migrating From Gitlab to Forgejo
Published: July 10, 2026 13:57
About five years ago, I migrated my project management from JIRA to Gitlab. There were some initial teething problems but, over the last half decade, Gitlab has served my needs pretty well. The urge to replace it, though, has been growing. Gitlab is pretty…
Replacing The Fan Resistor On A Citroen Relay
Published: June 25, 2026 16:47
I recently acquired a 2009 Citroen Relay van. Driving it home, though, I discovered that the cab cooling fans didn't work. Turning the switch to 1, 2 or 3 did nothing, going to 4 led to a whiney fan noise with very little output from the vents. There are…
Deduplicating My VictoriaMetrics Data
Published: June 14, 2026 12:13
Although most of my time-series data still lives in InfluxDB, I also have VictoriaMetrics running and playing host to daily todo list stats along with a few other things. However, I recently realised that I screwed up when deploying it: I'd assumed that…
Our Third Year Of Solar
https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/house-stuff/third-year-of-solar.html?utm_source=rss
Published: May 31, 2026 11:13
Our main solar install has now been active for three years. Although the beginning of this year under performed compared to the same time in 2025, we're currently in the middle of a heatwave and the pounding sun has driven yields up at the last minute.…
Saab 9-3: Battery Charge Warning Despite Healthy Alternator And Battery
Published: May 23, 2026 14:32
My Saab recently started to throw a warning when first starting the car: To clear the warning, I had to turn the ignition off and on again - the warning didn't fire the second time. The warning itself is triggered by the battery's voltage dipping too low…
Changing The Way I Calculate Solar Value
Published: May 19, 2026 15:01
Over the last few years, I've put quite a bit of work into our solar generation stats, tracking generated electricity value and calculating when the install will break even. The calculations marry each kWh generated with the Octopus Agile import cost at…