Um, Amazon’s algorithm needs some tweaking.

So it's the end of the year. Again. I have no idea where the year has gone. Lots of changes in various things (which I won't go into) and yet a lot of things stayed the same (COVID). But we made it! So, happy holidays, and may the new year bring you peace, happiness, prosperity, and whatever else new years are supposed to bring you.

I don’t have any allegiance or interest in the football team, but Coach Niumatalolo is a class act, and it’s disappointing he was fired.

www.washingtonpost.com/sports/20…

The Thanksgiving holiday was good. I was able to visit family and catch up on things. Involved a lot of driving, but it was fine. The better half approved of the music playlist this year, so that was a huge plus.

About a week after returning from the holidays, I contracted COVID. This is my first time. And I have to say I'm not a fan. I'm fully vaccinated and boosted and all that, and it still sucks. Not hospitalization/ventilator level of suck, but it still sucks. The residual effects are still with me. Sinus issues, coughing, and the fatigue. I could nap several times a day (and have today). Anyway, I'm slowly recovering from that.

And that's about all the energy I have for a quick update. Here's a dog.

Interesting to see people flock to micro.blog and Mastodon given what’s happening on that other site. Fascinating. Need to find more accounts to follow on both to improve my feeds…

So, I started playing with home automation and such a couple months ago. SmartThings was the hub system I used to connect all my Zigbee and Z-Wave devices together to create these automations of turning lights on and off, fans on and off, mood lighting and scenes, etc. But…

SmartThings is going through a transition from a mostly cloud based solution through its hub to running a lot of the automations locally. This sounds great in theory, and it is. However, the transition to the new drivers, apps, etc. has been less than ideal. It’s been kind of bumbled, dates changed (earlier and later), and you still need to have a cloud connection in order to get to the hub for any reason, even if you’re on the same network. So it’s still dependent on the cloud. And there seems to be increasing number of issues with their online component. No idea if it is related to all the migration activities or not, but it was frustrating.

So I’ve moved to Hubitat. It’s a local first solution. It tries to do everything locally, including connecting to the hub to manage it. Remote access is available for a subscription, but it’s completely optional. Other than the optional recurring subscription as a cost, it sounds like a great solution. And for the most part, it is. Not a whole lot of devices officially support it though. But, that didn’t stop the company or the community at large from writing drivers to interface. It’s been wonderful.

Some things I’ve gained are local access to my Hue hub, a kind of Netatmo integration to see my devices (this is a cloud integration, unfortunately), and dashboards that allow me to arrange/group devices and other things however I want.

What I lost was a connection to the fridge, which I never used, and connection to my garage opener.

Overall, it’s a net win. I’m happy so far with it, even if it is a small player in the space. The community is fantastic, and there are frequent updates, which you can choose to apply or not.

Other that that, not a whole lot going on lately. The weather has been fantastic, for any season and just amazing for November. Today I installed a squirrel feeder. Wife wanted to fill the bird feeders, and they never end up being mostly bird feeders with the squirrels. So I’m hoping that installing a dedicated squirrel feeder (with dried corn and peanuts and such) will save the bird feeders for the actual birds. It took the furry critters a little over 2 hours to actually find it, but they seemed to make a dent in the food in it. Here’s hoping this works.

And with that, here’s a dog, taken today as I was trying to photograph squirrels.

Based on my experiences this week, when on an airplane (or anywhere with lots of people in confined spaces/close quarter), please don’t be an inconsiderate jerk and have a conversation on speakerphone.

It’s the end of September, and the year is 3/4 of the way done. The weather is turning cooler here, though the trees have not start turning any sort of color yet. It’s just nice and cool weather where the A/C is not running all the time (or ever lately), and it’s been remarkably dry here in terms of any rainfall. The occasional shower, but I think we’ve had something like a quarter inch total in the past 3-4 weeks.

The “smart home” experiment is chugging along, with automations based on motion, doors opening, and just time of day working as desired. Haven’t done much in adding anything new. Just making use of what I already have. Still trying to standardize on a platform, and mostly it’s working on SmartThings. Alexa still has some voice control for switching scenes and routines managed by SmartThings and will continue since that’s the only real option at this point, unless I invest in Google Home stuff and essentially throw out all the Alexa stuff I’ve accumulated over the years. Not likely to happen.

I got my Covid-19 bivalent booster and flu shot yesterday. I haven’t had the same “hit by a truck” feeling that I had with the original vaccination process or the first booster. Slight headache and my arm hurts like heck, but otherwise pretty good so far. A lot better than I was expecting at least. Let’s hope it proves effective.

Bought a new vacuum cleaner after the Dyson I bought 5-6 years ago just stopped sucking. (Ironically, this is bad for a vacuum.) I got a Shark because it had washable filters, had good seals, and was rated rather highly. It lasted 3 vacuums and then the carpet head stopped working. It still works really well as a standalone canister/extension type thing, but on carpet it does not work. So I bit the bullet and bought another Dyson. The Ball Animal 3. Hoping this one lasts 5-6 years as well. I was happy to see that the filters are washable and easily accessible now. Fingers crossed this one last longer than 3 vacuums.

And that’s pretty much the update. Not a whole lot has been going on otherwise.

Back in the dog’s rebellious teen years…

Or something like that.

The month is speeding by. Days are noticeably shorter, and it’s nice that the sun doesn’t stay up past 9 any more. Makes it easier to get to bed at a decent hour. Weather is turning ever so slightly. Actually had some mornings in the 50’s, which was refreshing. Daytime highs are generally in the 70’s, with a little stretch in the low 80’s for the next few days. All in all, quite pleasant. No rain or bad weather for something like 10 days is expected. It’s weird.

The smart home and automation is pretty much complete. Some tweaking here and there, maybe a new component to swap out for what was probably bad choices. But all in all, working mostly well.

I bought a couple air quality monitors to place around the house. The particulate matter (PM 2.5) is low, which is nice, and CO is holding strong at 1ppm. VOCs are generally under 10, closer to 1 or 2 most of the time. And humidity fluctuates with the weather and how often we open the windows. But nothing crazy wet or crazy dry.

One thing that really surprised me was CO2 levels. They were elevated. Today, they hit above 1200ppm in what Netatmo considers to be “moderate” territory. So, I was wondering, “Why?” I did some theorizing and noticed that when the AC kicked on, the CO2 levels went up. AC off, they slowly dropped a bit before the AC kicked on again and sent them up. So, I did some thinking.

CO2 is a heavy gas and it sinks compared to other typical air components (N2 and O2). Half our HVAC air return is upstairs. Other half is floor level in the basement. Hmmm. So, I decided to do the less than pragmatic energy conservation thing and just open the basement door. Placed a couple of fans to kind of suggest where air should go, and waited. I did this for over 2 hours. But the CO2 levels steadily dropped and dropped, and we’re now around 500ppm, solidly in “green” classification, at least according to Netatmo. For reference, 400ppm is considered the baseline as it’s supposedly the average CO2 levels in outside atmosphere for the world or something.

What is really surprising to me is that my house is not exactly air tight. Lots of air gets in. Lots of air gets out. But I guess since most of that air exchange happens on the upper levels and not downstairs where CO2 probably tends to flow, it was collecting in the basement. I should have put one of the sensors in the basement to measure a before and after, but I was more concerned about getting the normal living spaces back into the green. I think I succeeded. Moral of the story is, use the basement door more often rather than just the upper level ones. Or maybe open a window or something down there. Or get some sort of smart fan powered vent that kicks on when there are elevated CO2 levels. If one exists, I’ll likely find it.

So, that’s been my evening. Thanks for visiting. Here’s a dog.

If you sell a dried cranberry trail mix product, I believe it is illegal to also sneak in raisins. Nobody wants that.

And this is when I decided that maybe my Hue light system is something I should look at just phasing out for more device agnostic options.

It has been a long time since the last update. Not a lot has happened in my world. Work continues to be extremely busy, occupying a lot of my days and about 95% of my mental capacity, sadly. Doesn’t leave a lot of time for blogging. But it’s been a month, I took a day off. Let’s provide some quick updates.

Fish tanks

The fish tanks have been rather stable. A few fish fatalities in the older tank, which is honestly to be expected at this stage when the fish have been around for so long. There doesn’t seem to be any root cause I can find, and the vast majority of fish appear to be fine. The new fish tank is showing a good talent for growing algae. I adjusted the number of hours the light is on, and that seems to have helped a bit, but it is a constant battle. Nothing running rampant, but I do have to scrape the glass at least once a week.

Todo lists

Everyone’s favorite topic. (That was sarcasm.) I’m still using Todoist for most things. Best characterization is “it’s working.” And I suppose that’s all you really can hope for in a task management solution. I have not had the energy to look at anything else (see above spare mental capacity statement), and frankly, that’s fine. Due continues to nag me for my daily routine items, and it does that quite well.

Notes

Still using Obsidian for most of my brain dumps and PKM related items. It’s fine. It does the job, and there’s something comforting about having everything in platform agnostic file format. So it might actually stick around. The mobile component is a little weak if I’m being honest. It’s serviceable for looking at notes, but it’s not really all that great for any on-the-move capture. Luckily, I still don’t leave the house much, so the laptop is usually nearby. If I do need to capture something when mobile, I can use Drafts and then shove into Obsidian via an action when I get back to the laptop. I’ve also started carrying around a tiny notebook and pen for that old school feel. The pen is great, and the little field books are actually quite resilient; they’ve survived going through the wash and dryer, amazingly enough. And the notes were still there and not blurred or washed away. I’m impressed.

Smart home

And now the new thing I’ve been working on this past month, especially in the past week or two. I’ve decided to redo my smart home setup.

I had been using a mix of HomeKit items (cameras, sensors, lock), HomePods, Alexa devices, Ring cameras, and Hue lights. It was ok, but as one might expect, not exactly efficient. So, I’ve been revamping things.

HomeKit is pretty much gone at this point. Some things are still hooked up; a couple of cameras pointing out windows and the Hue lights are integrated to be controlled from it If I want. But for the most part I don’t use HomeKit for anything now. I found the app on the laptop to be a mess that hung or crashed 50% of the time. The devices available for HomeKit are very limited, and they usually carry the “Apple tax” to make them more expensive than everything else on the market. Additionally, camera performance was bad and they went offline a lot. So wasn’t really a reliable solution.

My main thing was lighting, and the ability to turn off lights when not at home. I can do that with the Hue lights, but we don’t have Hue lights in everything, especially those fixtures that are controlled by switches. So, just adding more Hue bulbs was not really an option. I needed a better solution.

Enter SmartThings. It’s a platform that allows for some interesting automations. You can trigger sequences of events based on multiple conditions. For a simple example, if it’s after sunset and I open the front door, then turn on the front porch light, send a notification, and turn it off after 5 minutes. It seems so straightforward and easy to say, but it’s amazing how complicated or impossible some platforms make this. Really is mind boggling.

SmartThings in my house is all based on using a SmartThings Hub. It is the brains of the operation, and it can connect to either of the dominant smart home protocols - Zigbee and Z-Wave - natively as well as integrate with other services like the Hue lights, ecobee, etc. Through it, I’ve connected door sensors, smart light switches, and motion sensors. All work in tandem to turn on or off lights based on what triggered it, alert me when certain doors open after certain hours, etc. I’ve only scratched the surface so far, but I’m having fun with it. The main “wins” as far as my better half is concerned is that the kitchen counter lights turn on when she enters the kitchen first thing in the morning and triggers a motion sensor without having to fumble for the switch or use the really bright, jarring overhead lights. Same thing with the living room lights when motion is detected in the early morning hours. And the basement lights as well.

The few annoying things I have with SmartThings is around integrations. The Ring integration is kind of basic and poor. I can use cameras for motion detection, but that’s about it. The Hue lights integration does not include all the “scenes” that we’ve added to Hue over the years, so they either need to be recreated manually or just plain done elsewhere. So I still use Alexa for controlling the Hue lights. Scenes from Hue populate just fine into Alexa. Good thing is that Alexa can integrate somewhat into SmartThings, and devices that get added to SmartThings are available to use in Alexa routines. Bad things is this can result in duplicates that need to be disabled/renamed/managed when you have Alexa and SmartThings connected to the same services (like Hue).

I plan on adding more smart things over the coming months. My next step will be to add a smart switch to the attic light so I can automatically make sure it’s turned off at least once a day when someone cough flips that switch instead of the hallway switch that is unfortunately right next to it. Replacing the attic bulb is not a fun experience based on where it is and how dark it is up there when there is no light. I’m also thinking about hooking something up to the garage lights, though I am limited by the ridiculously slim junction box that was used there when the house was built, so I may be out of luck with that. And if I ever figure out the secret sauce to 3 and 4 way smart switches which are not as straightforward as 3 and 4 way manual switches, I may work on the hallway and entryway lights. We’ll see what other fun stuff I can conjure up.

Just a note on smart home connectivity and devices. There is a new “standard” that hopefully will be released into the wild later this year. Matter is being pushed by most of the major smart home platforms as a way to achieve an interoperability and common framework so users don’t have to look for “works with Alexa” or “HomeKit compatible” or other things. If it does get traction, that would be a huge step forward for most consumers that just want things to work. HomeKit, Alexa, and SmartThings are all signatories of the Matter standard, so the hubs I have now should be able to support devices in the future.

And that’s the end of my September rant. And here’s a dog who thinks I spend too much time in the office chair and not enough time playing with him, trying to fix that situation.

So here we are in the first week of the hottest month. This week started out ok, but later this week it's supposed to top 90. So, will the electricity grid hold up? We shall see.

Fish Tank Update The office fish tank is churning along. Algae is growing and requires somewhat regular cleaning. It was inevitable, I suppose, but kind of annoying nonetheless. The water parameters seem to be stabilized, but I'll need more plants to help keep the nitrate levels from growing faster than I would like. It doesn't seem to be too bad right now, but if/when I move more fish over to the bigger tank, it will get more problematic I feel. Maybe not. But I need a contingency plan. Water is mostly clear, but I'll need to do a gravel vacuum in the next week or so. And I should probably clean the pre-filters at some point as they do seem to be collecting some debris.

The living room fish tank is fine. There might have been some elevated ammonia levels a few days ago, but they don't appear now. Something probably died in the plants, but heck if I can find anything. Water is very clear, fish seem good. The algae doesn't seem to be growing at the extraordinary rate it had been a month or two ago. Fish seem to be happy, or whatever it is that fish are considered when they aren't stressed or dying.

Task Management Task management system is currently in Todoist, and I'm not really putting much effort into exploring options. I just don't have the mental capacity to undertake that. Also, with Linux being a current plaything, it makes sense. Most of the other tools I've used recently were macOS only. Lock-in to a service is one thing. Lock-in to a platform (Apple, Windows, Linux, whatever) is a completely different beast. Easier to swap out a service than it is to swap out an entire ecosystem. I'm pretty much locked into Apple for things like music and videos, unfortunately, but at least there are apps and such to access those specific parts in other operating systems and devices. But I don't want to make it even more difficult if the time ever comes that I need to divest myself of all things Apple.

Notes and PKM Notes and knowledge management are one area I've been focusing on lately. Obsidian is a cross platform tool that's been getting a lot of attention in the PKM sphere. In previous posts, I mentioned that Obsidian was something that I should be looking into. And so I have been. It is available on a lot of platforms, but it was built with being local only first. The idea of storing everything as a text file on my local drive is very appealing. If Obsidian disappears or becomes something I don't want, the data is just a bunch of text files, readable in a lot of different apps, using a public and free formatting idea. So, there is data integrity. I'm not dependent on any one vendor.

The challenge with a bunch of text files on the local computer is how to sync those to other devices I might use, like a phone or tablet, or in my case, also to a different computer running a completely different operating system. So what are my options? First option was using iCloud Drive and its native sync. Issue is with other platforms outside of Apple. Another idea would be to use something like Dropbox. Issue with that is it's just another OS level service that would be running, taking up resources on any device. Plus, I just have issues in general with the whole Dropbox service. It's not end to end encrypted, which isn't necessarily an issue given that I'm not putting confidential or sensitive data in these notes, but Dropbox privacy protections seem weak.

One thing I did try was using GitHub to operate as the backend, using private repositories. This seemed good on one level. Rather platform agnostic, but mobile is a pain in the neck. There is no background syncing within the app or as part of the mobile device. It required another app that needs to be run before opening on the mobile device, and then running the app again and pushing any changes. If that is not followed strictly, bad things happen. Using git is not exactly seamless or straightforward. It has its challenges. It's not end to end encrypted, but seems a little more trustworthy than Dropbox. But the usability is what's problematic.

So what I ended up using in the meantime is the purchased Obsidian Sync service. It's expensive for what it does. Too expensive in my opinion. But it is seamless. And it just seems to work, regardless of which platform I'm on. Took a little effort to get it set up since I already had stuff, but in the end it was easier than using git. We'll see if I renew when the period is up. I'll have to really use Obsidian, and I'll have to see if I still continue to use non-Apple devices like Linux and/or Android. If I retreat back to an Apple only ecosystem, then I'll probably just go back to iCloud sync, even though that means lock-in to a platform. But if I'm not using anything else, little reason to pay that money. Plus, I can always just re-instate it. That's the beauty of text files. You just need to decide how to synchronize them. The rest is agnostic.

And this is pretty much enough for this entry. I wrote this in Obsidian instead of Ulysses. The publishing to Wordpress is a little more involved. (Ulysses really is nice in this regard even if it is a proprietary database in an Apple only app.) But since I don't do this daily, it should be fine.

And here's a dog, which I'll have to upload separately.

I can’t believe it’s the end of July already. This year has been a blur.

I started playing with Linux again last weekend. I tried Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Kubuntu, but I settled on Fedora, the KDE spin. This is on my old laptop, but it works quite well. Faster than Windows, and just something to toy around with. I settled on the KDE desktop despite having more recent experience with GNOME. KDE just seems lighter and quicker. GNOME is cleaner, but it just seems a little heavy for some reason.

Just some updates based on the last several posts.

My task management process is still mainly focused around Todoist. I’m kind of surprised that I’ve stayed with it since the last time. I think it’s mainly because I just haven’t had the mental capacity to think about moving to another system. I’ve achieved “Master” karma status on it, for what it’s worth.

The office fish tank is humming along. I’ve had one fish death (out of the 40 or so I put in there). No idea why, but it didn’t look diseased or anything. Just dead. I also now have 4 new fish that “appeared” at some point in the past couple weeks. Darn mollies are like rabbits.

Vacation starts now. No plans; not traveling anywhere. Just taking a break before I go crazy. Anyway, supposedly vacation.

That’s about it. I don’t have much more to add.

And the dog, 2 seconds after I step outside and before I can sit down.

It’s been a couple weeks since I last posted. Nothing earth shattering has happened as of yet, which is probably a good thing. The new fish tank seems to be doing quite well, though algae or the like is cropping up a lot. Not thrilled about that, but it was inevitable. Water has cleared, and nitrogen cycle seems to be established. I have not moved any more fish into the tank, but with the stability of the tank, I might add a few more from the other tank in time.

I’m hoping this weekend is rather uneventful and restful. I’ve been feeling stressed for various reasons, and I need a break.

No dog picture as this doesn’t seem to be a real update. If I have time and the inclination, maybe I’ll post a more thorough fish tank update or a pupdate.

Interesting article. www.nytimes.com/2022/07/1…

Here in the US, it’s a holiday weekend, and one that the dogs fear the most. Here’s hoping we get through it unscathed. That is, without claw scratches from the furry beats trying to crawl all over us when the loud noises outside happen.

The new fish tank is still in the process of fully cycling. I have not noticed any kind of appreciable ammonia reading, despite having around 40 fish, mostly smaller, transferred over. I have, however, gotten a bloom from the bacteria that break down organic material in the tank. These are different than the nitrifying bacteria which I assume are at least present and working since no ammonia readings. So, trying to get the cloudiness cleared up, which unfortunately, just takes time and making sure not too much organic matter accumulates. I cleaned the gravel a bit and added some finer filter media, but to be honest, there isn’t a whole lot of waste to clean up.

The plants are not doing much of anything. I’ve been fertilizing and adding plant growth hormones to the mix to help them, but they’ve been just siting there, looking poor. If I see any more degradation, they’re being pulled. I’ll just have to figure out something else if that happens.

Short entry this time as it’s early, and I’ve been neglecting my normal household chores to “play” with the fish tanks. No updated fish tank pictures yet as I want to wait for the water to clear a little more, so here’s the requisite dog picture.

Today’s fun power issues are brownouts instead of the full on blackouts. Which is actually worse because it reaches certain voltages and then things die randomly.

The greatest trick the devil ever played was getting companies to think styrofoam is great as a packing material. Little ******* balls of foam everywhere…

Happy 25th of June! Which is apparently celebrated with loud fireworks or gunfire? (My dogs are not happy.)