So if you fancy making me an offer for it first - I’ll throw in the mount - send me an email and we’ll see what we can do. It works very well, but when I can have 5G backup for the hopefully rare fibre interruptions at £0 ongoing cost, it’s hard to justify a tenner a month plus the ongoing electricity to keep the dish and router going.

I must commend the poor sod for working outside on one of the hottest days of the year - it took him nearly two hours to fish through the freshly laid duct from the street and clip the fibre round the outside of my house in such a way that it isn’t visible unless you get down on your hands and knees to look for it.

Here’s the ONT sitting neatly out of the way in the garage near my networking cabinet:

Unfortunately the nasty little PoE splitter I purchased months ago turned out to limit the speed to 100mbps - a problem when you’ve paid for an internet connection that runs at 500 - so I’ve got a better one arriving tomorrow.

Much to the confusion of myself and the Openreach guy, this particular ONT seems to take over an hour to mate with the exchange after being powered on. It does get there in the end though, and the whole point of feeding it over PoE is that it will benefit from my UPS, so I’m not too fussed.

I’ll end with the obligatory speed testing screenshot, although this is just hanging out in the garden using the outdoor WiFi access point - all that work last year getting ethernet up to my desk means I can enjoy the full 500 (or sometimes more) from there reliably.

I ended up having to complain to the Openreach CEO’s office after one too many “computer says no” responses from the email handlers, but - fair play to Kathryn Milligan - I finally got a call from a human who could see how silly the situation was, and with the power to do something about it.

“Major civil engineering work required” turned into “there is a fibre distribution point in the relevant manhole, and we just need to power it on”. 48 hours later, they have, and I’ve been able to place my order.

It’s going to take another three weeks for the appointment to come around, but I think this might finally be the end of the saga. Who knows what I’ll blog about after that!

Could the second finally be getting some FTTP internet at home?

I discovered this week that Openreach have now made FTTP available to every house on my street except me and two of my immediate neighbours.

Andrews and Arnold used to have a legendary reputation for chasing BT/ Openreach to get the best outcome for their customers, but their reply to my sales enquiry can be summarized as “nothing we can do mate, try asking Openreach yourself - here’s the link”.

How the mighty have fallen.

I had already filled in Openreach’s form - to be fair to them, they do have an enquiry route for “my neighbours can get FTTP so why the hell can’t I?”, and I gather they’ve had to pass it to another team … here’s hoping they’ll get it fixed soon so I can stop shelling out for Starlink.

That really would make it a good week.

Update, 17 June - I got a “computer says no” response back from Openreach, so I tried complaining to their CEO and I have been promised an update next week. Apparently the fibre distribution box is in the manhole at the foot of my garden, it’s just not powered on. Come on, Openreach.

And while they technically have been for months, I’d yet to find a single provider who had actually done the work to connect to them.

Quite why there has to be per-provider per-bank work when it’s a standard is a question for another day.

The good news is that GoCardless have finally gone and done it:

… it still goes bang if you try and fetch data for a too-big date range, and it will need tediously re-authorizing every 90 days, but having machine-to-machine hands off access to this stuff is a long, long overdue leap forward.

Regular readers will have heard this rant before, and really, I ought to be finding a specialist who can actually find and fix the leak, not just fill it up again for over £100 and hope I’ll be far enough away in time and space before it all leaks out.

However, being a busy man, I decided to take a punt on a self top up kit:

The instructions were easy to follow (but do read them carefully as the valve is the opposite of what you might think) and to my surprise and delight, the vents started blowing cold again and the system has held for a week now. Not bad for less than half the price a garage charges, and I still have a half full can for next time.

This is a drop-in replacement for the ordinary shaver socket that your bathroom possibly has (don’t forget to safely isolate before you get knee deep in electrics).

It’s an indulgence, sure, but there is something very satisfying about eliminating yet another charger and set of trailing cables, and the brushed steel faceplate looks the business. As you may be able to see in the photo, this model also has a 240V shaver socket on it too for any non-toothbrush devices. No 115V, but when was the last time you saw anything requiring that in the UK? Exactly.

This does of course mean that I’ve committed to using a Philips toothbrush forever after, but mine has been great for over a year now and the battery life is excellent, so why not?

And don’t even get me started on the mad mix of levels and the odd gravel filled “flower beds” that it featured. All sorted out now:

Yes, the crappy concrete path in the foreground isn’t great, but one expensive garden change at a time…

Oh, and if you’re in Oxford(shire), White Oak Landscaping are the people to call. They ain’t cheap, but they are good.

Despite the rage-bait title it did end on an optimistic note. Thanks to the Oxford CompSoc for hosting me, and here are the slides.

Had a very enjoyable week walking in the north of England (if we’d been any further north, we’d have been in Scotland).

No, seriously, just because my only photo is a distillery doesn’t mean we didn’t get some exercise. This was our rainy day activity.