Earth Notes: The Earth Notes Podcast @Home

The podcast started in June 2019. The first two episodes were created to support a local naturalist who leads guided walks around our local council housing estate.

Episodes are typically:

• 'snackable' at just a few minutes long
• on a green, or energy efficiency, or energy data topic
• based at home

Some episodes are a little more tangental, such as listening to the temperature of your radiators for a whole year in one second.

Some episodes are longer. Watch out for video too!

There are also ambient episodes with little or no commentary.

Episodes

• 2021-09-08 English River August Ambient (2021-08) 11 min
• 2021-09-05 Microbrewery Ambient (2021-09) 11 min
• 2021-08-28 Direycast - I'm All Right Jack (2021-08-28) 4 min
• 2021-08-22 On Being a Hardware Developer (2021-07-30) 12 min
• 2021-08-01 Herne Bay Ambient (2021-07) 24 min
• 2021-06-27 Wren Loud and Bold Ambient (2021-06) 2 min
• 2021-06-14 Diarycast - March Warm, April Snow, June Xmas (2021-06-14) 3 min
• 2021-03-21 Diarycast - Smoke and Snow to Census Jab (2021-03-21) 4 min
• 2021-02-07 Soundscape - Going Postal in Audio 21 min
• 2021-01-14 Diarycast - Interview Snippets (2021-01-14) 4 min
• 2020-12-31 Statscast - Load Profile (2020-12) 4 min
• 2020-12-22 Soundscape - Solstice Exercise Mile Walk 20 min
• 2020-12-21 Diarycast - Solstice Lockdown Edition (2020-12-21) 8 min
• 2020-11-13 VIDEO Smart Radiator Valves - EcoHome Lab (2020-11-12) 17 min
• 2020-10-10 Statscast - Baselines and Bats (2020-09) 9 min
• 2020-09-26 Weymouth Ambient (2020-08) 22 min
• 2020-09-25 Diarycast - Summer Catch-up (2020-09-25) 5 min
• 2020-09-21 Soundwalk - an hour on the Cambridge Road Estate (2020-09-12) 61 min
• 2020-09-18 Bats Around our Home aka 16WW 38 min
• 2020-07-26 Diarycast - Conscious Uncouping - Travel (2020-07-26) 9 min
• 2020-07-12 Diarycast - Conscious Uncouping (2020-07-12) 7 min
• 2020-07-05 Statscast - Normal-ish June, Heating Re-viewed (2020-06) 9 min
• 2020-06-10 Statscast - Lockdown Changes, Log Noises (2020-05) 11 min
• 2020-05-23 Diarycast - Urban Dawn Chorus (2020-05-23) 24 min
• 2020-05-13 Diarycast - Ambient Sound of a Graveyard (2020-05-13) 11 min
• 2020-05-10 Diarycast - Lockdown Patently Workable (2020-05-10) 4 min
• 2020-05-03 Statscast - PV Up, Travel Down, Weakly Weeklies (2020-04) 11 min
• 2020-04-22 Diarycast - Blue Skies PV High (2020-04-22) 3 min
• 2020-04-19 Metacast 2: Podcast Specs and Workflow 5 min
• 2020-04-13 Diarycast - Lockdown Lawnmowing Sadly Allowed (2020-04-13) 3 min
• 2020-04-10 Metacast 1: Blue Yeti, Shy Eurasian Footwear 4 min
• 2020-03-21 A Short Coronacast for March 2020 2 min
• 2019-12-30 Sign-off for 2019, Hello 2020! 7 min
• 2019-11-09 VIDEO OpenTRV Movie Mashup 1: Video Out-takes and The Rest! 2 min
• 2019-10-29 Water Music: How Does Tap-water Temperature Sound in Time-lapse? 5 min
• 2019-10-28 The Green Existence of Adam Hart-Davis 6 min
• 2019-10-19 PV Sounds: How Does PV Grid-tie Generation Sound in Time-lapse? 3 min
• 2019-10-13 Battery Sounds: How Does a Battery Sound in Time-lapse? 3 min
• 2019-10-12 Rad Sounds II: Attempting a Higher-fi Home-heating Time-lapse 3 min
• 2019-09-22 Greener travel: Why We Should Cut Car-bon Miles 4 min
• 2019-09-15 Rad Sounds: How Cool is your Home Heating in Time-lapse? 3 min
• 2019-08-28 Aircon On, Windows Open! 3 min
• 2019-06-21 About Our Greenish Home aka 16WW, with Bonus Bats and Sparrows 4 min
• 2019-06-15 Solar Panels in My Garden 2 min

Other Ways to Listen

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This podcast is also available via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, and Listen Notes.

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Plans

Here are some vague plans for future episodes. Don't hold your breath!

• Diary of EOU HQ and notable events/stats...
  • 2021-09-13: I'm generlly in favour of utility metering, but I've been discouraging our retailers from going full smart meter on us even though I'd like the data, as our house is due to be torn down soon and we're low/careful users. Thames Water is out fitting new water meters in the street at the moment, which seems to me a waste of resources. But in any case apparently we've fallen off the end of their list as at the very awkward end of the wet piece of string...
  • 2021-09-03: 220Ah 12V gel off-grid battery bank replacement.
  • 2021-08-31: sale of Ixaris, my previous start-up, finally went through.
  • 2021-08-30: enough of a chill in the air for me to put a nightshirt on for the first time since spring; I'm hoping that our heating will be off for at least another two months.
  • 2021-08-15: I put the bat detector at my study window this evening for the first time in a long long time, and heard a couple of passes. Pettersson detector this time.
  • 2021-08-10: cold enough (and possibly clear enough) overnight for condensation on the outside of the triple glazing this morning.
  • 2021-08-03: Green Economy Transition: taskforce that I have been helping
  • 2021-07-24: Herne Bay holiday.
  • 2021-07-16: the first 'summer' day this year IMHO; sunny all day, I sat out in a pub garden in the evening sun in a t-shirt without shivering, and slept under a sheet rather than a duvet! Also, hair actually long enough to form a shrt ponytail, a mere ten-ish months in.
  • 2021-07-12: thunder and lightning and heavy rain here, from the same system that caused flooding in west London but nothing in Maidenhead, and that went on to cause extensive flooding and loss of life in NL/DE/BE a few days later.
  • 2021-07-09: whoops! I just noticed that the monthly gas and electricity use graphs had not yet been updated to show any of 2021 — now fixed! The abnormally high electricity useage of lockdown is clearly visible.
  • 2021-07-07: substantial demand pickups reported by the (GB) National Grid ESO: #ENGDEN saw our control room register steep half and full-time pick-ups of 1400MW and 1300MW (the ad breaks meant fewer people staying put during half-time). We also saw a third pick-up at extra time.
  • 2021-06-27: very dull and overcast day today, and last couple of weeks have been in a similar vein, as visible in generation data (one day getting a nominal '0' off-grid, for example).
• Build a beat from eg 4 daily cycles with overlay on first beat, or interleaved beats from another source, and slower arc eg from annual cycle. BPM 120 (2Hz), 135-145?
• Brief video open house tour of green features (and link clips to existing articles).
• Fairphone 3 review, possibly as a video episode, and possibly including audio/video recorded by the FP3 itself.
• Sonify mains voltage fluctuations as seen by the Enphase.
• Sonify change in GB electricity generation before and after lockdown.
• Sonify change in GB transport use (eg TfL journeys) before and after lockdown.
• Capture weekly cycles, though that means running faster than 1 year to 1 second (day = 365Hz, week = 52Hz) to make week audible.
• Discuss eg reduction in peak-time weekday imports with Enphase ToU, and sonify, and discuss other Enphase featues and foibles.
• Turn snippets of sonified data into sampled notes and form tune / percussion. Maybe have note frequency be the mean for the data set.
• Mains water temp to midi note; poss play all years in parallel.
• Audify the fridge/freezer (W -> midi note) and other appliance.
• A take on the daily treadmill getting Radbot to market, eg including fundraising (maybe with some video clips spliced in).
• Interview (audio only, or video) over Skype or SquadCast or Zencastr or similar.

More

You may be interested in nitty-gritty tech updates and daily learnings while keeping the Earth Notes site up and running.

Some documentation of my set-up and workflow is in episode "Metacast 2".

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