This’ll likely make me sound like a lunatic, but when I go abroad from the UK, hedgerows are one of the top 3 things I miss (the other two being beer and tea). They’re just so ubiquitous when travelling here, and they make the world feel a bit smaller.
As a wildlife photographer I probably take 75% of my photos of birds in hedges. I don’t have to camp out for hours - I just walk along the hedgerows aimlessly.
Also, if other countries don’t have hedges, what happens to the grotty pornography magazines that dwell natively in the hedgerows? Are they in some sort of meta-state of quasi-existence? A theoretical hedgerow porn mag?
One of my earliest memories was on a road trip to the Devon with my parents. The family got out of the car and went up to a hedge to try and pet a cow, and there were porno magazines propped up along the hedge as far as the eye could see.
> Also, if other countries don’t have hedges, what happens to the grotty pornography magazines that dwell natively in the hedgerows? Are they in some sort of meta-state of quasi-existence? A theoretical hedgerow porn mag?
In other countries porn mags tend to nest in the woods. In japan i understand the endemic porn mags generally live under bridges, more rarely in small bushes.
I live in Australia, which doesn't have hedgerows but does have large areas of native forest, normally called the bush. The bush (at least used to) contain unusually large amounts of pornographic magazines
I've had a lot of success with z-wave devices in my home, hooked into Home Assistant. They seem more resilient than zigbee (and much more reliable than any of the bespoke wifi stuff) and are largely all interoperable. I've got a bunch of z-wave devices like plugs and thermostats, but it comes at a high cost.
For lights I do use zigbee ones just because they're cheaper, but my Hue and IKEA mix do have communication issues sometimes (I have them both on a Deconz stick attached to my server).
But all of this relies on Home Assistant. I honestly can't imagine trying to use smart home devices as a "normal" consumer, relying on the software of specific companies. They're all largely terrible walled gardens, and I'm constantly surprised by how bad they actually are.
Comparable here, using mostly Zigbee (Hue, IKEA, Xiaomi and others) with Deconz RaspBee, which works great, although I do see communication issues from time to time. I have Zigbee lights and door/temp/motion sensors. I added Shelly modules behind my 'normal looking' wall switches on a local MQTT. This all comes together in a local NodeRED (on a Pi that also contains the RaspBee and runs the Deconz software and MQTT server). I use a few plugins heavily for input / output (MQTT, Deconz, etc), but I've got quite a few (reusable) function nodes as well with my own code.
Like you said, I can't see a 'normal' consumer do something comparable, locally without a technical background. It's all too fragmented, closed, clouded.
It'd be interesting to see. At the moment Europe is largely dominated by the US tech industry (bar a few notable exceptions, like Spotify). One of them leaving would open a nice big gap for new/existing EU alternatives to compete in.
This website doesn't even run smoothly on my overpowered gaming desktop. Back in 2000 I'd have never thought we'd be at the point where I can run games in 4K happily but not scroll through a website without it lagging up.
I have two Topre keyboards. I love my RealForce whole-heartedly, but my HHKB is nowhere near the same typing quality. The HHKB is still nice, but I only use it as a portable alternative (I have a bluetooth model). The RealForce feels easy, fluid, and solid, somehow.
I have the RealForce R2 with variably-weighted switches and it is such a pleasant experience to type on that I don't even bother looking at other keyboards any more - there's nothing else I want from a board.
I've had this idea knocking about for a while so it's really nice to see that I wasn't the only one who thought it might work. This looks like a nice implementation - I'm excited to give it a go!
I've always thought it a bit of a shame that Ruby isn't more popular for Raspberry Pi projects. I mean, I use it, but the standard is still Python. And Python is great, don't get me wrong, but Ruby is just so much fun for hobby projects.
I used to try to write things in the most popular language for those things, like writing Prometheus exporters in Go. But I eventually realised I just didn't care that much, and now I write them in Ruby, and everything is sunshine and happiness again.
I've just ordered an Amcrest AD410. It has RTSP support! I handle my video footage through https://frigate.video hooked into Home Assistant, and the Amcrest cameras are pretty open and compatible with this setup, apparently. They have a (somewhat hidden) API, with some open source solutions like https://github.com/dchesterton/amcrest2mqtt about which expose it to more common standards, and Home Assistant has an official integration for them too.
I've been really happy with my Frigate setup and previously wrote a few words about the switch: https://senryu.pub/afternoonrobot/articles/replacing-unifi-v.... It has taken me ages to find a viable doorbell, however, which is why I've only just ordered the AD410. I'm pretty hopeful for it, and a colleague already has one and really likes it.
Wow. Thanks for posting about Frigate - that looks amazing. Just getting into Home Assistant and have been struggling with the video stuff but this looks like it will simplify a bunch of stuff.
Just subscribed to your blog in the hope you do another write-up about the Amcrest camera!
Ooh thanks! Yeah Frigate is fantastic and has saved me so much hassle. The Coral device is pretty much a requirement for performance but it does work really well :D
I’ll definitely be writing up a few more things soon! I tend to go through bursts of sorting my Home Assistant stuff out.
Probably not, but I don’t have a need for that - I’m really just after the video and notifications. I imagine it could be possible with some hacking but I haven’t got it yet.
Hadn't heard of Eternal Terminal before, but I use mosh quite regularly - for portability I remote into my home network via Wireguard on an iPad Pro, using mosh inside Blink shell (https://blink.sh) to connect to my machines. Over 5G and 4G it works very smoothly, but does lag a bit if I drop down to 3G speeds. I very much do not regret getting the 5G version of the iPad as it's super useful, and I prefer this setup to carrying around a hefty workstation laptop. With the magic keyboard attached I basically have a tiny but comfortable laptop, albeit quite top-heavy.
Having to use tmux isn't a hassle for me as I would be using it anyway, and it has the added benefit of being able to connect to my active sessions on another machine and pick up where I left off.
I've been using Termius https://termius.com/ios paired with Wireguard for a long while on my iPhone and generally I am happy with Termius as it has very pleasant to use touch interactions both for selecting text and scrolling and performing arrow keys up/down.
However, the big drawback of Termius is that in the free version it will terminate the connection after quite a short while as soon as you put the app in the background. They offer a subscription to have it not behave like this but I don't want to pay a subscription for that feature. (The subscription includes additional features as well, but I don't want any of those features.)
When I read about Blink shell now, I was kind of hoping that it might be a good replacement. I tried it out on my phone, but I am a bit bewildered about how to select text using Blink shell.
I am wondering if maybe Blink shell is mainly suitable for use on iPad, and not as great to use on iPhone. At least, my initial impression is that it is probably fine for use with a keyboard but that it is not made for touch interactions to the same degree that Termius is.
Edit: I figured out how to select text with Blink shell; double tap and drag [1]. Unfortunately it feels quite clumsy and awkward to me compared to Termius. Not just the motion itself, but also how the resulting selection is handled. I will keep trying to use Blink shell for a while though. After all, Blink shell is open source and so if I like it a lot I could maybe rewrite the touch interactions to be more in line with what I'd like them to be.
As a wildlife photographer I probably take 75% of my photos of birds in hedges. I don’t have to camp out for hours - I just walk along the hedgerows aimlessly.
Also, if other countries don’t have hedges, what happens to the grotty pornography magazines that dwell natively in the hedgerows? Are they in some sort of meta-state of quasi-existence? A theoretical hedgerow porn mag?