Weekstarter 43/2026

Intro

Although the above photo shows me walking on the roof of my house cleaning the gutters and the roof of moss as if I were a fit and well person, I'm still recovering from the lurgy I mentioned last week. I can't remember anything causing me this much weakness and aches and pains. Awful.

I am, however, on the mend. The reason the scaffolding has been surrounding our house since last Thursday is because today and tomorrow we're having solar panels and a battery fitted to casa Belshaw. It's overdue, I know. But we moved into this house 2.5 years ago, and last year I cancelled our order with Octopus because they were taking too long. Don't get me wrong, I've otherwise had great experiences with Octopus for our energy, heat pump installation, and EV charger, but BOXT managed to give us a slightly larger capacity system for the same price, were able to install it faster, and did 2 years interest-free credit.

For those interested, we'll end up with an 11.4kW system made up of 24x 475W panels, generating an estimated 8,118kWh per year. In addition, although I wish we had the realistic option of a different brand, we're having a 13.5kWh Tesla Powerwall 3 installed, along with a backup gateway, and inverter. We no longer have a gas supply to the property and, as we work from home and do 20,000 miles per year in our EV, are pretty heavy electricity users (~17,000kWh/year). So, according to my projections, we should save around 75% on our bills every year.

What's coming up

FIELD STATION didn't win some work that I thought we might last week, which was disappointing. On reflection, though, we might have dodged a bullet, as there were a few red flags in our conversations with the organisation. I still need more work, though, so back to the bizdev.

I'll be in Barcelona for MozFest next week, but this one is a reasonably quiet one. We've got our internal kick-off meeting for the Wildlife Trusts Data in Practice programme that Tom, Abi, and I will be working on over the next three years. Then we've got a couple of meetings with their team, and I'll be keeping an eye on the work that Yalla Cooperative are doing for my client, INASP.

Other than that, Tom and I need to do some work on the Digital Sovereignty Unconference we're planning for early 2027, thanks to Spark Grants. There's a form to share your details if you want to be kept updated.

Media consumption

I'm still wading through the The Brothers Karamazov and last night's chapter ('The Grand Inquisitor') almost made me throw my ereader across the room. Still, I'm not giving up on it for a fifth time... I finished the audiobook version of Seafire but have decided that I can't abide the voice of the person narrating the audio version of Flawless Consulting by Peter Block. I'll just read it instead.

As I've been ill and my daughter's been injured so not training or playing matches, I haven't had loads to do. So I decided to finish watching Coyote vs. Acme. Reader, it did not get better. Other than that, I've just been watching Premier League and European football.

Other updates

I've been trying to keep myself moving by going for long-ish walks most days. It was my wife, Hannah's, birthday last week which was, sadly, a bit of a miserable affair as everyone was so weak, tired, and coughing all over the place. She opened presents and we got a takeaway from M&S, but we rescheduled the pottery class we'd to yesterday. We had a good time making some cups at Kiln. They're going to post them to us after they've been fired/glazed.

Where to find me

• Social networks: Mastodon / Bluesky / LinkedIn
• Work: Dynamic Skillset / FIELD STATION
• Bookmarks: Are.na

Also, feel free to get in touch and/or book time to chat!