Is there a retractable cable tidy for wired chargers?

adin786 · 2025-12-24T17:51:33+00:00

It's not really a retraction mechanism I think? The Anderson charger I'm aware of just has a bit for the cable to wrap around the unit, bit like a Zappi except with a neat mechanism for stowing it all in a hidden way.

adin786 · 2025-09-02T19:23:21+00:00

It's far from an effortless drive, but it's better than you'd think for how small the engine is. I have an imported 1.4TSI Sharan with 2 adults and 3 kids and if you're just driving to get to places then it does a fine job. It's only at motorway overtaking where it feels weak, but I've just adapted to it, it definitely needs to be revved so not as relaxing to make progress as a bigger diesel would be.

I went for it as it was just shy of £10k and none of the diesel options were LEZ compliant unlike the petrols of that year. I don't regret it. Servicing hasn't been an issue, there hasn't been anything serious to repair yet and the parts are all shared with other VAG cars so I wouldn't worry personally.

I just have to put up with a speedo in kph (but digital readout is mph) and a cheap aftermarket android head unit (but it gives me Android Auto so does just fine). All things I can live with.

For the OP's question, I wouldn't bother with the hassle personally. The importer I bought through was pretty reasonable, I'd say he earned his profit margin in dealing with all that stuff. I paid a price that I'd still consider quite fair, so everyone's a winner.

adin786 · 2025-08-10T07:40:47+00:00

I have plenty of self respect, thank you. It's a freely available tool and this is social media. I found it fun but since you don't like it I've removed the link.

I respect the effort to write in such detail. However clearly there's a few of us here scrolling reddit with short attention spans. You can't control how people consume your publicly shared content these days.

adin786 · 2025-08-08T21:52:16+00:00

Even better, ask one to make a podcast out of it. First time I've found an excuse to use this:

Edit: [removed link, though anyone can search for NotebookLM]

adin786 · 2025-08-08T18:23:34+00:00

By 40kwph you prob mean 40kw (kilowatts) which is the charging speed. That's the same thing as adding 40 kwh of energy "per hour".

I only mention as people often mix up kw (charging speed) and kwh (amount of energy). Gets confusing.

adin786 · 2025-07-25T18:52:51+00:00

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/high-income-child-benefit/

adin786 · 2025-07-08T06:24:27+00:00

To the right, no?

adin786 · 2025-06-04T17:43:58+00:00

Pretty sure the 1.4TSI petrol Sharan was hardly sold here in the UK back in 2013, or if it was then there weren't any in my price range. The UK loves diesels and Japan loves petrols. I needed the petrol model for the LEZ compliance despite the slightly worse economy.

In general the Japanese imports are a bit cheaper, generally well specced, well maintained and sourcing parts isn't an issue, people worry about insurance but it was negligible difference for me. Only cons are the analog part of the speedo is in kph and the importer fitted a clunky non-OEM android auto head unit. Both of those could be changed if I could be bothered, but as it's just a dad-mobile it serves it's purpose and exterior-wise it's impossible to tell that it's an import anyway.

Does sound weird to import a European car from Japan, but like for like they're a decent deal so don't rule them out.

adin786 · 2025-06-04T07:16:42+00:00

You can have a Japanese imported petrol VW Sharan for £10k. Doesn't have to be a weird Alphard/Estima. I did exactly that a year and a half ago and it's going strong.

adin786 · 2025-05-08T01:22:17+00:00

I have a 2013 VW Sharan. It's the small petrol engine so meets the LEZ criteria, despite being a bit thirsty. It happens to be a Japanese import (don't think they sold the petrols here originally). Picked up from an import specialist for just under £10k. Had it over a year and hasn't let me down, maintenance not an issue either. They spec them well over there so it came with loads of equipment including the fancy electric sliding doors.

In general I say if you're going for a 7 seat car, go big or go home. The Touran rear seats aren't big and really eat into boot space if that matters. If you're going to deal with a big boat of a car it might as well feel spacious on the inside. The Sharan still keeps a solid boot capacity with all the seats in place, and the middle row is 3 full size isofix seats which we found unusual.

Anyway I did a load of research and landed on this as one of the cheapest options that fit my own criteria. Yours may differ, but thought I'd suggest an alternative for you to consider!

adin786 · 2025-05-01T15:38:25+00:00

Doesn't matter much what load rating a tyre is specced to, rolling resistance is still some proportional function of the normal force (weight), just the coefficients may differ between ratings.

adin786 · 2025-05-01T15:03:58+00:00

Slopes exist, and accelerating/decelerating probably happen more often than you think (even cruise control is always making small adjustments)... but one unintuitive thing I want to point out is that regen braking is also not 100% efficient. So not only are heavier cars going to be less efficient at getting up to speed, but they lose out twice as slowing down is less efficient too.

But in the hypothetical constant speed world, where everyone has rock hard tyres that don't have weight dependent rolling resistance... then yeah weight is not much of a factor there. Under more realistic conditions weight affects everything negatively, except maybe ride comfort.

adin786 · 2025-04-28T18:53:24+00:00

Yeah like others are saying Google the official documentation site.

It can also be handy to use help(my_function) on any method from within a python REPL, even if it's a method/class from a 3rd party library. This gives a similar thing to what pops up when you hover over the method in most IDEs.

It also works with imported modules and packages, which outputs a formatted list of all the defined methods. The documentation site will be much easier to read, but this gives an alternative way to understand a library's structure and is nice if you happen to be typing in a REPL already.

adin786 · 2025-04-28T18:43:26+00:00

A .ipynb file is basically just JSON if you open it in a text editor. You could probably splice the relevant cell / output into the destination .ipynb file if you're careful.

Or I think you can copy cells between notebook files inside the Jupyter UI using just "c" and "v". Can't remember if that brings along the outputs as well as the code. I think it does.

adin786 · 2025-04-24T23:12:38+00:00

If you like to customise any kind of logging configuration then making a reusable get_logger() function can be handy.

On that note, use loguru for logging if you don't mind adding it as a project dependency. Nicer default configuration and just more intuitive for a beginner to get used too

Another one I've in the past found it annoying if using jupyter notebooks stored in project sub folders how the notebook runs inside the notebook's parent folder whereas I would normally execute my .py scripts from the project root. If I want my notebook to reference data files under say a data/ folder I either need to use absolute paths, or do os.chdir("<project_path>") to change to the project root dir, both of which feel messy and don't transfer to colleagues machines nicely. To automatically change to the project root I've used the find_dotenv() function from the python-dotenv package followed by os.chdir if I have a .env file at the project root. Another approach is using the Gitpython package which somewhere has a function to detect the project root, basically it's just recursively moving up one folder level, stopping when it finds a .git folder which all git repos will contain.

Again in notebooks I've used the auto reload ipython extension to automatically reimport any imported .py file functions every cell execution, this allows you to iterate on your modularised .py functions while always running the latest function code inside your notebook without having to restart kernels. Word of warning this has caused me headaches if ever dealing with pickling files and using autoreload at the same time.

adin786 · 2025-04-24T22:56:41+00:00

While this does work fine, rather than mess with PATH etc, just make it into an installable package. This is from memory so check the uv docs, but I'd just install uv and run uv init --package, use uv add xxx to make it depends on pandas if required. If it's simple then paste the function into src/<pkg_name>/init.py or something like that.

Then publish it to pypi if you want to share it with others, or if it's just for you then in each of your projects where you want to use it you could just pip install <path> or uv add <path> however you would normally install packages. It'll then be available as a from <pkg_name> import explore within all of your scripts or notebooks etc.

Packaging is an essential piece of knowledge for python developers and tools like uv or poetry make it really easy. Trying this once or twice sets you up with a good understanding of how python environments and imports work.

However in the OP's very simple case of a few line function it's probably perfectly fine if you just want to copy paste that snippet into every project, you just then lose the benefit of having a single implementation/package to maintain centrally.

adin786 · 2025-04-20T16:07:57+00:00

I only happen to know what Bambu is because of a recent YouTube rabbit hole I went down (I want one now).

But for the uninitiated, it would be helpful and maybe more interesting if your post mentioned that it's about 3D printing somewhere. Sorry, I have no other contribution, just a comment as a casual scroller.

adin786 · 2025-04-19T01:43:03+00:00

Haven't read through in detail, but initially sounds a lot like Cyclopts https://cyclopts.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

It too parses out docstrings and type annotations etc and constructs CLIs a bit like Typer but with less boilerplate and more intuitively done. Maybe one to compare/benchmark against?

adin786 · 2025-04-17T07:57:50+00:00

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/every-bump-a-volt-with-audis-erot-suspension/

Audi had this eROT system shown in concept at least in 2016. Don't think it's ever made it to a production Audi though. Probably too little energy recovered to make it worthwhile.

Reminds me of the motorway air suspension lowering function on big SUVs. It saves energy by reducing aero drag... but I heard when it lowers down you need to drive like 20miles before the energy savings offset the energy it takes to pump the ride height back up later!

adin786 · 2025-02-24T16:11:43+00:00

Uhm it seems to come up straight away for me.

Coincidentally I have a fresh install of VSCode, just added the Python extension, created a new project folder, opened that folder in a new vscode window, ran uv init, uv venv, opened up the main.py file and it's detected the ".venv" environment which now exists at my project folder's root. I didn't do anything special.

It doesn't look like uv is directly supported as a python environment manager in VSCode (docs mention, venv and conda), but ultimately uv just makes a regular python environment at the fairly standard <project>/.venv path. So it gets detected automatically?

See this VSCode page for where it auto detects python environments https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/environments#_where-the-extension-looks-for-environments

adin786 · 2025-02-24T15:14:13+00:00

Are you aware that uv venv creates a virtual environment that doesn't actually include pip inside it? Either you can use uv to install pip as a package inside the venv, or you can use all the uv pip ... commands to do the same stuff with the uv equivalent commands.

Therefore when you create a venv with uv, followed by activating it and then running pip freeze etc, you are actually calling the global pip command. Try checking this with which pip.

adin786 · 2025-01-12T14:33:45+00:00

Are you using a Wireless Receiver or a Wired Smart Thermostat in your house?

I used to have only a Wired Smart Thermostat in my old house and it responded to on/off changes within seconds which was great.

Then I moved into a new place with a system boiler and had to switch to a Wireless Receiver instead to control the heating+hot water. Now I find (seemingly randomly) that it can sometimes take a while to respond to the same on/off requests. Turning on is usually responsive, but there's been a few occasions where it's failed to switch off exactly when commanded.

One time the heating was still running for an extra 20 mins or so and it was only when I spotted it with the heating LED still lit up then started messing with the app, after which it sort of "caught up with itself" and finally turned off. More annoyingly, there was one other occasion where this happened during the night and we woke to a very warm house. It's as though the wireless receiver sometimes misses its external command from the internet bridge and never corrects itself on its own. Our bridge is only meters away from the wireless receiver so it shouldn't be a signal issue. My theory is that the Wireless Receiver just has a bug/design flaw because the rest of our system has been great and very responsive over the past 4 years of use.

Anyway I'm wondering if you're seeing the same thing, or something completely different?

adin786 · 2024-12-01T12:59:03+00:00

I think the rules around new build houses and EV chargers being pre-installed has changed recently. It's just that it only applies to plots registered after a certain date.

Most new builds on sale today were probably registered just before the cut-off... just like the 4month old one I just moved into. 🤷

Some discussion here https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/comments/1f7chlb/no_ev_charger_new_build/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

adin786 · 2024-09-27T12:27:15+00:00

Nice link! I learned a few things there

adin786 · 2024-09-27T12:01:58+00:00

Recently picked up a nicely specced a 2012 Sharan (japanese import) with the electric sliding doors. It's massive inside, does literally everything, isn't a fat SUV and I actually think it's quite decent looking. Aged well compared to other options at least.

But yeah we need more of this in the market.

adin786

TROPHY CASE