Recent content in Welcome to spod.cx - Ben Charlton's website on spod.cx
I cycled along a 10km scale solar system in Cambridge back in 2022 and really appreciated the sense of scale and how empty even our local bit of space is. When the space theme for EMF 2026 was announced I decided that EMF needed a scale solar system. I first wrote a tool to calculate the scale sizes and plot the orbits on a map to see how viable it was for a ~800m scale. This has evolved a fair…
In April 2025 I took UK Parking Control (UKPC) to court. They’re one of the private parking companies that are famous for aggressively pursuing consumers for large payments for the most trivial breach of their parking terms. In my case, there was no breach - the mistake was theirs and they inexplicably failed to accept this, forcing me to put together a detailed appeal to the independent…
Takata? Starting in 2013, many vehicle manufacturers recalled vehicles fitted with faulty airbag inflators made by Takata Corporation . Over 100 million airbags have been affected, so this is a pretty common issue, with most manufacturers issuing safety recalls to arrange for the replacement of the faulty airbags. In June 2025, Stellantis (the parent company of Citroen) issued a Stop-Drive recall…
This is my variation on Kenji López-Alt’s recipe for Texas-style Chilli adjusted for someone who has very limited tolerance to spicy heat and issues with most vegetable textures but loves the flavour of chilli. This is texas style, so it’s not made with tomatoes or beans. It’s worth watching Kenji’s original video as there’s lots of useful tips in there. Main…
OUR brave new world. THEIR timeless worlds of space. OUR microscopic allies. THEIR minds immeasurably superior to ours. OUR sound of shunting trains. THEIR alien sounds of hammering. OUR bows and arrows against the lightning. THEIR walking engines of glistening metal. OUR silent grey ironclad ’thunder child’. THEIR savage, unearthly heat ray. OUR beloved carrie. TOM GAULD and A HANDFUL…
I finally got round to updating from my old 2006-era DIY static site generator Meek to hugo, which is much more flexible and has far nicer support for image handling. It’s also given me the opportunity to update to a design that’s properly responsive. URL preservation I wrote a small script to parse the markdown .page files that Meek uses and turn them into hugo compatible markdown.…
Last September we visited the West India Dock Impounding Station as part of the London Open House Festival . The need to pump (impound) water into the docks arose due to the silty water of the Thames flowing in at high tide when the locks were open, resulting in the need for regular dredging. As ship sizes increased keeping the water level high and the docks free of silt became ever more…
Carrot and Coriander Soup. This makes a thick and carroty soup. I recommend using a decent blender for smoothness, but a stick blender works well enough. Ingredients 1 kg carrots 1 tbsp olive oil 1 brown onion 1 tsp ground coriander 900ml water (or stock) 2 knorr chicken or vegetable stock pots (if not using stock) leaves of around 1/4 of a 25g pack of fresh coriander, but adjust to taste. black…
With thanks to Kelduum for this recipe. I make this in a Panasonic bread maker, and prefer it to the standard recipe which is too sweet. Ingredients 10ml / 2 tsp yeast 500g extra strong flour 35g butter 16g milk powder 8g salt 8g sugar 330ml water. Method Put everything in the breadmaker pan. Bake rapid (the ~2h loaf), large size.
I was lucky enough to attend Electromagnetic Field this year, a camping festival for those with an inquisitive mind or an interest in making things: hackers, artists, geeks, crafters, scientists, and engineers. I had an amazing time. The EMF24 sign Arriving I packed up far too much stuff into my small car and arrived mid-afternoon on the Thursday. As a first timer I wasn’t too sure what to…
Back in 2021 I bought the very cheap Aldi Kamado ceramic BBQ/smoker. It’s more basic than some of the competitors but excellent value for money. I’ve upgraded some parts over the years and I thought it worth posting about them for anyone else considering upgrading theirs. Divide and Conquer This is one of the new things I bought this year, and allows split level cooking. It’s the…
This was an attempt to put together something approximating a Butter Chicken / Murgh Makhani for someone who has very limited tolerance to spicy heat and issues with most vegetable textures. It’s very mild but extremely flavourful and blending the onion and using passata instead of chopped tomatoes solves the texture issues. It takes around 30 minutes to cook and makes a great midweek meal…
I think this is the easiest way to get reliable RTSP video out of a Pi Zero with a camera attached. I use this for the Shinobi DVR software to stream video from a Pi Zero 2 W, but it should work fine with an original Zero too as the RAM and CPU usage are very low. I’d also recommend setting a static IP in /etc/dhcpcd.conf. Install the software dependencies: sudo apt install libcamera-apps…
Ingredients 500g passata / chopped tomatoes 1 onion 3 cloves garlic basil and oregano to taste 500g pasta 400g pack of meatballs 3 heaped tablespoons of mascarpone Instructions Start heating the water for the pasta, and add the pasta when it reaches a rolling boil. Fry meatballs in olive oil until they’re soft and slightly browned, set aside in a bowl. Finely chop onion and garlic, fry in…
Slightly different to the pancake batter, a bit richer and rises better for toad in the hole. Ingredients 100g plain flour pinch salt 225ml milk 3 eggs Instructions Combine egg, salt, flour, half the milk, mix thoroughly with a whisk Continue to whisk while adding remaining milk until mixture is smooth and surface covered with small bubbles.
I backed the kickstarter for the MOCHAbin back in 2021 and mine arrived towards the end of 2022. I didn’t do anything with it for a little while assuming there’d be some more documentation and updates for the slightly crusty Ubuntu 18.04 image and custom kernel it shipped with, but this hasn’t appeared, and there’s been very little in documentation which is a shame. Most…
Writing this down because it’s handy. I double-click things in gnome-terminal all the time to select them, but the default excludes the colon character so things like URLs and IPv6 addresses don’t select correctly. To fix this, you’ll need the UUID Profile ID by opening the preferences dialog, then clicking on the profile you wish to change - it’s listed at the bottom. You…
I removed the broken Google site search and replaced it with Pagefind which is really neat.
This rub goes really well with pork, I’ve used it with pulled pork and ribs so far. This is comfortably enough to do a ~4kg pork shoulder or 4 decent size racks of ribs. 40g dark brown sugar 7 tsp smoked paprika 3 tsb ginger powder 2 tsp cumin powder 2 tsp garlic powder 2 tsp onion powder 1.5 tsp salt 1 tsp ground black pepper Measure out ingredients, mix with blender to ensure smooth lump…
A spaceman came travelling on his ship from afar, ‘Twas light years away from his home planet start, And over a village he halted his craft, And it hung in the sky like a star, just like a star. He followed a light and came down to a shed, Where a mother and child were lying there on a bed, A bright light of silver shone round his head, And he had the face of an angel, and they were afraid.…