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For the past 4 years we've been using a cheap Android tablet as a digital photo frame. It was going great, but over the years, it became apparent it wasn't an ideal solution:

• The app would pull many gigabytes over the network each day, because it scanned all of our photo files directly from our photos' network share, and displayed the original full-resolution photos (despite its own low-res screen).
• The automatic night shutdown and morning boot of the tablet started being very unreliable.
• And most worryingly, having the tablet plugged in 24/7 meant that the battery had started slightly

Unfortunately, I'm no longer with a workplace that subsidises new phones every two years, so it's meant that I've waited over three years for a new phone.

If I'm being honest, I haven't really needed to upgrade. Once you get to the upper-mid-range phones, upgrades these days are very iterative. There's not much that gets me excited about new phones these days.

The main thing that was really prompting me to replace my now-previous Pixel 7 was the below-par optical under-screen fingerprint sensor (which never worked well in full sunlight), combined with Google's policy change a year into the … Read more →

Other than viewing the photos taken on my Android phone, I've never used Google Photos for cloud storage/backup of my photos. Generally, I've never been comfortable hosting my private documents/photos etc. in a cloud that is controlled by proprietary profit-focused companies (email being the only exception).

However, one thing that Google Photos does really well is presenting your photos in a very nice way. Since the dawn of digital cameras, I've always manually managed the organisation and storage of our photos and videos. We have them stored on our NAS in a year folder, then a month/event folder.

I've never … Read more →

Of all the tech fads/hype/coolness over the past decade, I have previously avoided getting into two of them: crypto (including NFTs) and 3D printing.

I don't ever see myself getting into crypto, so 3D printing was the only remaining one. I'd held off for a while because of three main reasons:

1. Needing something actually practical to print.
2. Affordability.
3. Ease of use for a time-poor middle-aged professional with kids.

The last thing was definitely a big one. Gone are the days when I could spend a lot of spare time on a hobby (see the recent frequency of posts on this … Read more →