2024-04-22 09:00
At the weekend, I took our 8-year-old to see Butterfly Tale at the cinema. It was only released in the UK on Friday, but has been on general release elsewhere as early as October. It’s… Read More
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Blogging about technology and randomness since 2002
2024-04-20 09:00
I’ve been getting a little obsessed with the song Melodies of Hope by Patty Gurdy. Imagine folk-pop music, but instead of a guitar solo, there’s the sound of a Hurdy-Gurdy inst… Read More
2024-04-18 09:00
Whilst we currently still have a traditional gas boiler for our heating and hot water, should it ever break down or need replacing, we’ll get a heat pump instead. Heat pumps use electr… Read More
2024-04-16 09:00
For the past year or so, we’ve had a Panasonic bread machine that we’ve used to bake our own bread. We eat bread most weekdays – usually, I have home-made sandwiches for lu… Read More
2024-04-14 09:00
Last week, Christine and I went with a group of friends to see the Unfortunate Musical at Bradford’s Alhambra Theatre. It’s a musical parody of The Little Mermaid, but told from… Read More
2024-04-12 09:00
If you’re lucky enough to own your own home, and are paying off a mortgage on it, then you may want to consider signing up to Sprive.
Sprive is an app for iOS and Android, that lets… Read More
2024-04-10 09:00
On Good Friday, we went to East Riddlesden Hall, a National Trust property not too far away from us near Keighley. It wasn’t quite our original plan – we went to Cliffe Castle in… Read More
2024-04-08 09:00
Okay, so it’s fair to say that I write a lot about Home Assistant and the smart home – I have a whole category of blog posts about it. Whilst it’s probably a sign of a mid… Read More
2024-04-06 09:00
If you go to York (my home town) between now and the 25th April, you may encounter several large painted fibreglass monsters reading books dotted around. They’re the Snooks, and they&r&hell…Read More
2024-04-04 09:00
The Central Line of the London Underground is not having a good time at the moment. We experienced this first hand on our recent trip to London. As the Young V&A is close to Bethnal Gree… Read More
2024-04-02 09:00
I’ve recently bought a pair of Meross energy monitoring smart plugs (sponsored link), and by integrating these with Home Assistant, I now get notifications when the washing machine and… Read More
2024-03-31 09:00
I hope you’re having a restful Easter break. We’re staying with my parents in York for a couple of days, as per usual (barring 2020 and 2021) and I will no doubt consist of at le… Read More
2024-03-29 10:00
It’s time for the fifth instalment of my playlist of the month. Whereas last month was a mostly upbeat selection of songs about alcohol, this month is a little different.
Please not… Read More
2024-03-27 10:00
Last week, the game Rollercoaster Tycoon turned 25 years old. There’s a good retrospective from The Guardian, including interviews with two people who played the game in their youth an… Read More
2024-03-25 10:00
I write this at the weekend, after picking my car up from our local garage for the fourth time in as many months for repairs.
We’ve had our current car for almost five years, and it… Read More
2024-03-23 10:00
A couple of weeks ago, I stopped using the Jetpack plugin for WordPress, and switched to Toolbelt instead.
Jetpack is one of the most popular WordPress plugins and is developed by Automa… Read More
2024-03-21 10:00
I’ve mentioned that I have a few Tuya smart plug sockets around the home. It’s possible to convert these to run on open source firmware called Tasmota, to gain some additional fe… Read More
2024-03-19 10:00
This is the fourth in the series of blog posts about places we went to in London – you can also read about the Bank of England Museum, the Cute exhibition at Somerset House, and the Yo… Read More
2024-03-17 10:00
This is the third in the series of blog posts about places we went to in London – you can also read about the Bank of England Museum and the Cute exhibition at Somerset House.
The Y… Read More
2024-03-15 10:00
If you’re reading this blog post today or tomorrow, then I’ll be at Sci-Fi Weekender XV in Great Yarmouth, along with Christine and a large group of friends. As usual, I’m… Read More
2024-03-13 10:00
There’s a new album out by queer folk singer Grace Petrie this week, called Build Something Better, and I think you should buy it.
Grace is someone who I’ve seen live a couple… Read More
2024-03-11 10:00
After we spent the morning at the Bank of England Museum, the second place we visited on our trip to London was Somerset House for their Cute exhibition.
Like previous exhibitions at Some… Read More
2024-03-09 16:21
The first place we went to on our trip to London last weekend was the Bank of England Museum. Which is pretty much what you would expect it to be – a museum based at the Bank of Englan… Read More
2024-03-07 11:50
We’re back from our trip to London. We got there a bit later than planned, due to action short of a strike by the drivers’ union ASLEF resulting in our planned train from Leeds t… Read More
2024-03-05 10:00
Have you ever wondered if there was a list of benches with public dedications on them? Well, I haven’t, but there is one and it’s called OpenBenches.
It’s similar to Ope… Read More
2024-03-03 10:00
Have you ever been frustrated that some older music isn’t available on digital platforms like Spotify or iTunes? You’re not alone, and Pop Music Activism is trying to do somethin… Read More
2024-03-01 10:00
There’s now a CarPlay app for the Home Assistant Companion app on iOS. This means that it’s possible to control (some) of your devices connected to Home Assistant whilst driving… Read More
2024-02-29 10:00
It’s the 29th February today!
Well, actually, I’m writing this on Saturday 24th. I tend to write blog posts in bulk at the weekends, and then schedule them to go live every ot… Read More
2024-02-27 10:00
Time for the fourth instalment of my Playlist of the Month, and this month, it’s all about alcohol and drinking seeing as Dry January is over. Unlike last month, this was a relatively… Read More
2024-02-25 10:00
Last week, we cancelled Disney+. Our annual subscription was due to renew, and at over £100 for the year, we could no longer justify it.
We’ve had a subscription ever since Di… Read More
2024-02-23 10:00
I’ve recently started using AdGuard Home as a way of blocking advertising and tracking on my iPhone and iPad, when on wifi at home. It works as a replacement DNS server, and re-routes… Read More
2024-02-21 10:00
When it comes to reading magazines on a computer or tablet, you may well have heard of Readly, seeing as it’s widely advertised. But there’s a competitor, PressReader, that&rsquo&hell…Read More
2024-02-19 10:00
On Friday, I found a bat on the floor of our cellar. There’s a photo of it above.
This was a problem. Bats are well-known for being mammals that can fly, and when they’re not… Read More
2024-02-17 10:00
I’ve recently started using Nginx Proxy Manager to act as a reverse proxy for the various web services that I have running on my Raspberry Pi. It’s a frontend to the nginx web se… Read More
2024-02-15 10:00
If you sometimes find doing things overwhelming, or need help converting some disparate thoughts into something coherent, then GoblinTools may help you. It was recommended to me by someone o… Read More
2024-02-13 10:00
One of the biggest benefits of running Home Assistant in your home is its powerful automation tools for controlling your smart devices. In this example, I have a smart plug socket which I wa… Read More
2024-02-11 16:27
Northern Rail has started playing videos with announcements in British Sign Language on some of its trains. It’s a trial at present, and I happened to see one last week.
This is in… Read More
2024-02-09 10:00
One of the benefits of our kitchen renovation in 2022 was that it gave us space to install a tumble dryer in our cellar. Previously the cellar was inaccessible, and so our washing machine wa… Read More
2024-02-07 10:00
On Monday, I wrote about Omar’s Balti House in Bradford. But before publishing it, I also asked ChatGPT the following:
Write a 300 word blog post about Omar’s Balti House in… Read More
2024-02-05 10:00
I’m sure I must have written about Omar’s Balti House on Great Horton Road in Bradford at least once before, although I don’t think I’ve ever written a whole blog pos… Read More
2024-02-03 15:34
If you use Home Assistant, and have an existing device that includes a Thread Border Router, then it should automatically add the Thread integration so that it can communicate with Matter de… Read More
2024-02-01 13:27
Good grief, that was a long January. As I remarked to my wife earlier this week, it felt like the Januariest January that ever Januaried. I don’t think I’ve been so relieved that… Read More
2024-01-30 21:05
When I started this, I thought that thinking of 10 songs each month on a common theme with a bit of context would be easy. It turns out that it’s not. I can easily think of 4-5 songs t… Read More
2024-01-28 10:00
If you’re a Home Assistant user, and want to connect your Zigbee and Matter devices, then one option to consider is this Sonoff ZBDongle E. I bought one a couple of weeks ago, and it s… Read More
2024-01-26 10:00
I’m a little late to the Goodreads review scandal. Late last year, an author whose debut book was due to be published, wrote several fake reviews of books by other authors that were du… Read More
2024-01-24 10:00
Over recent weeks, I’ve been plagued by calls from numbers not in my contacts. Sometimes, as per the screenshot, I’ll get three calls from three different UK mobile numbers w… Read More
2024-01-22 10:00
Although it’s currently the bleak midwinter – and I mean bleak, with sub-zero (Celsius) temperatures last week and Storm Isha this week – we have managed a few days out. So… Read More
2024-01-20 10:00
If you’re in the UK, and have a smart meter, then your home probably has a Zigbee network that you may not know about.
What is Zigbee?
Zigbee is a wireless mesh networking protoc… Read More
2024-01-18 10:00
Back in September 2002, I bought this multi-device Bluetooth mouse from Amazon (sponsored link). As a multi-device mouse, it can be used to control three separate devices.
I bought it so… Read More
2024-01-16 10:00
When I re-started blogging regularly again, my aim was to post a new blog entry every other day – so 3 or 4 new entries per week. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been posting… Read More
2024-01-14 10:00
It’s been 22 years to the day since I wrote my first blog post. Which is a very long time in technology.
Last year, I referred to the blogiversary as a ’21st-ish blogiversary… Read More
2024-01-13 10:00
It’s a little while until World Backup Day on the 31st March, but I’ve set up UpdraftPlus to create automatic backups of my WordPress installation to my Dropbox account.
It&rs&hell…Read More
2024-01-12 10:00
If you want to make backups of your DVDs or Blu-Ray discs, or watch them on a device without an optical drive, then MakeMKV is a tool that you should consider.
MakeMKV takes the content o… Read More
2024-01-11 10:00
I’m gradually bringing back some of my old blog posts that were lost. You can have a look at part one and part two, and here’s the list of latest posts that I have brought back:… Read More
2024-01-10 14:50
There are several ways to install Home Assistant. The easiest way (besides buying a dedicated device such as Home Assistant Yellow or Green with it pre-installed) is to use what is known as… Read More
2024-01-09 10:00
Last year, I decided to switch my go-to note-taking app to Simplenote. For years, I’ve used Evernote, which is a very powerful app that lets you capture web pages, scan documents, save… Read More
2024-01-08 10:00
So last month, we switched our broadband to Vodafone, which also meant that our internet speeds increased from about 30-40 Mbps to around 70-80 Mbps (as per the above Speedtest.net result)… Read More
2024-01-07 10:00
Today I want to share with you an app called SoundPrint, which is an app for finding quiet spaces to eat and socialise.
You can install the app on your phone (iPhone and Android), and… Read More
2024-01-06 10:00
Over the Christmas period, we watched a couple of films at the cinema – Wonka, and Wish.
Wonka
Wonka is set up as a prequel to the 1970s film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factor… Read More
2024-01-05 10:00
Recently, I’ve started using the above image as my ‘avatar’ – the photo of me that I use online when prompted to upload a profile photo. It’s a photo of me from… Read More
2024-01-04 10:00
You may have heard of Matt Mullenweg – he co-founded WordPress, and is now the CEO of Automattic, which owns WordPress.com and contributes to WordPress.org (the downloadable version th… Read More
2024-01-03 10:00
Now that the year has started, I’m going to make some predictions for the rest of 2024. If only because it’ll be interesting to look back in a year’s time to see what actua… Read More
2024-01-02 10:00
Okay, so we’re in 2024 now, but I’m taking inspiration from Diamond Geezer‘s Summing Up 2023 blog post to post some statistics on things that I’ve done during 2023… Read More
2023-12-31 10:00
So, it’s the last day of 2023, and so it’s time for a review of the year. Here’s my review of 2022.
January
The main event to happen for us in January was getting our… Read More
2023-12-30 16:51
There’s only 32 hours of 2023 remaining in my timezone, so it’s time to review the things I’ve consumed this year and pick out my favourite content.
Note: all links belo… Read More
2023-12-29 17:38
For a little while now, I’ve had some issues with installing and updating plugins in WordPress. Trying to do either of these tasks has resulted in the process hanging for a long time… Read More
2023-12-27 22:00
Now that I’m blogging regularly again, I’ve decided to start a new monthly feature where I post a playlist of 10 songs, all around a theme. Last month was guitar heavy indie rock… Read More
2023-12-25 10:00
I hope you have a good Christmas, if you’re celebrating today. We’re with my parents in York, as usual, and planning a relatively quiet and relaxed break after an eventful year… Read More
2023-12-23 10:00
Last month, we switched to Vodafone as our new Internet Service Provider (ISP) at home.
We’ve been with Now Broadband (Sky’s budget brand) since autumn 2018, who, at the time… Read More
2023-12-21 15:46
When I started blogging regularly again in October, I planned to post a new blog post every other day (so, 3-4 new blog posts every week). As this is the first time I’ve posted since t… Read More
2023-12-10 10:00
Last month, I wrote about how I started wearing glasses in the summer of 2021. And, as if there was any further indication that I’m getting older, I wear hearing aids now too.
I&rsq&hell…Read More
2023-12-08 10:00
You may have noticed that several of my recent blog posts have featured custom AI art work related to the topic. I’ve generated these using Microsoft’s Bing AI Image Creator, whi… Read More
2023-12-06 10:00
I’m gradually bringing back some of my old blog posts that were lost, and here are links to the latest batch that I’ve made live again:
Create a Safely Remove Hardware shortcu… Read More
2023-12-04 10:00
When you need to buy a present for someone, and aren’t sure what to get them, gift cards seem like a good idea. With Christmas coming up, I’m going to explain why they’re n… Read More
2023-12-02 10:05
As you’ll be aware from my regular posts about it, I have a Raspberry Pi 4 running Ubuntu Core, which acts as a server for Home Assistant, Plex and Calibre-Web. Here’s how I&rsqu&hell…Read More
2023-11-30 19:25
Now that I’m blogging regularly again, I’ve decided to start a new monthly feature where I post a playlist of 10 songs, all around a theme. With a few hours to go until the end o… Read More
2023-11-28 09:23
Something that I’ve become more concerned about in our household is our consumption of so-called ‘ultra-processed food’. My wife has had a few health issues over the past 1… Read More
2023-11-26 10:06
Welcome to the latest chapter of getting Home Assistant working on a Raspberry Pi using Docker. Last time, I’d managed to get it working in Docker, but only over a regular HTTP connect… Read More
2023-11-24 10:03
So you may have noticed that I have a thing going on with Docker at present. I’ve set up Home Assistant in Docker, and more recently also set up calibre-web with Docker. Between these… Read More
2023-11-22 09:22
If, like me, you’ve picked up a number of e-books over the years, you may use Calibre as your e-book manager. It’s a desktop application with an optional web interface, but it ha… Read More
2023-11-20 10:00
So now that I’m blogging again, it’s the return of comment spam on my blog posts.
Comment spam has always been a problem with blogs – ever since blogs first allowed comm… Read More
2023-11-18 10:00
A couple of years ago, I asked my Facebook friends a question – what animal do you think our child wants as a pet? And as an incentive, whoever guessed correctly could nominate a chari… Read More
2023-11-16 10:00
Last month, I wrote about how I had found peace with myself regarding losing over a decade’s worth of blog posts.
Well, I’ve already sort-of changed my mind. I have already br… Read More
2023-11-14 10:00
There’s a few life developments that have happened in the years since I stopped blogging regularly, and one of those was in July 2021 – I started wearing glasses.
I hadn&rsquo&hell…Read More
2023-11-12 16:30
So, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’ve set up Home Assistant (HA) to control the various smart devices that we have around the home. At the time, I just used a snap package, bu… Read More
2023-11-06 10:39
I’ve deployed a new theme on the blog. If you’re reading this in your feed reader, firstly, go you, because so few people do nowadays, but also, please click through and have a l… Read More
2023-11-03 09:21
You know those old painted adverts you sometimes see on the side of buildings? York, where I grew up, has a famous one for Bile Beans, due to its prominent location, but there’s also o… Read More
2023-10-29 11:15
A recent project of mine has been to set up Home Assistant, as a way of controlling the various smart devices in our home.
From bridge to assistant
You may remember, back in February… Read More
2023-10-28 16:21
Hello – if you can read this, then the server upgrade worked!
I’ve wiped the previous server image (yes, I remembered to do more than one type of backup this time), and instal… Read More
2023-10-13 18:30
There are some of you who have been subscribed to this blog’s feed for many, many years. I started writing a blog way back in 2002 – back when Web 2.0 was just starting to become… Read More
2023-10-01 15:09
Good grief, has it really been almost 6 months since my last blog post?
I mostly dropped by to link out to a couple of additional social media profiles that you can follow, should you wis… Read More
2023-04-12 08:55
For the first time in a long while, I’ve uploaded photos to my Flickr photostream. These are mostly from various days out since August last year.
Speke Hall
Speke Hall is a Nati… Read More
2023-04-11 08:10
A photo of my new iPhone 13 MiniLast week, I bought myself a new iPhone 13 Mini. This is the fifth iPhone model I’ve owned:
iPhone 4 (black, 16 GB), bought in autumn 2010
iPhone… Read More
2023-03-28 08:57
Speaking of cars, a few weeks ago I was driving along the M62 towards Manchester, when I was overtaken by someone driving the same car as me, a first-generation Peugeot 3008.
This wouldn… Read More
2023-03-27 09:17
A photo of my new, freestanding CarPlay screen in my carI’m someone who always has my phone doing something passively in my car whilst driving – whether it’s listening to m… Read More
2023-02-01 11:39
A screenshot of the Homebridge web UI.A recent project of mine has been to get Homebridge up and running. It’s a server-based program that acts as a bridge between smart devices in the… Read More
2023-01-23 09:04
A photo of our solar inverter and battery system in our cellar.So, after spending thousands of pounds on a new kitchen, you would think that we’re done with home improvements for a whi… Read More
2023-01-14 08:19
Today marks 21 years since I started my blog, on the 14th January 2002. Back then, I was 17 years old, in the sixth form, a few months away from taking my A-levels and living at home with my… Read More
2022-12-31 17:11
Seeing as it’s the afternoon of the 31st December, I suppose it’s time to do a review of the year.
Fireworks projected onto the ceiling at Castle Howard, December 2022Overall… Read More
2022-12-05 14:17
Back in 2019, my grandfather passed away, a few weeks shy of his 99th birthday. Whilst he had generally been in good health, considering his age, he had been taken to hospital with an infect… Read More
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