Blog

The thoughts, opinions, happenings, and just plain ramblings of a seemingly boring person.

New Mobile: Google Pixel 10

Categories Geekery, Technology
Google Pixel 10 front/back

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 →

Immich: Self-hosted Google Photos Alternative

Categories None

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 →

New NAS. Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying, Became a Hypocrite, and Bought Another Synology

Categories Geekery, Rants, Technology

After being vocal about Synology's new (hopefully temporary) drive compatibility restrictions for their 2025 NAS models, I've gone and bought one anyway. I got the Synology DS925+, which has replaced our trusty DS418play that's been faithfully serving our home since 2018.

Yes, I'm aware of the hypocrisy. No, I'm not proud of it, but after looking at alternatives and weighing up the options, I decided that at the current stage of my life, pragmatism won over principles in this instance.

Goodbye to another workhorse

Our DS418play has been an absolute workhorse for the past 7 years. It's handled … Read more →

Presenting: The Admiral Ackbar ‘ACK’ Emoji

Categories Geekery, Work

I'm sure that someone else has thought of this before, but after a quick search, nothing turned up, so I'm going to provisionally claim credit for this lightbulb moment I had today.

I was going about my usual work day on Slack. When acknowledging a request or fyi from someone else, I usually choose one of the many custom 'ack' (i.e. acknowledged) emoji reactions. BUT, this morning I just realised that Admiral Ackbar's name from Star Wars (revered and famous for "IT'S A TRAP!") starts off being spelled the same way! 🤯

So thanks to ChatGPT's newish image creation … Read more →

3D Printing Stuff

Categories Geekery, Technology

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 →

2024: Year in Review

Categories Life

5 blog posts this year, which kinda reflects how busy it has felt. As the kids have grown, spare time spent on anything but relaxing or recovering is a premium!

2024 has been a pretty decent year. It's gone by so fast, I've barely been able to keep up, but it's felt like the most 'normal' year in quite a while.

Again, there's no 'List of Tweets' blog post this year, because I've largely moved off Twitter. Although Mastodon was promising for tech nerds, Bluesky has emerged in recent times as the successor for a lot of people (especially since … Read more →

Going Down the Smart Home Rabbit Hole

Categories Geekery, Life, Technology
AI generated image from the prompt: image that represents going down a rabbit hole of Home Assistant. It should contain the Home Assistant logo and feel like going down a rabbit hole, ala Alice in wonderland. (logo added by me)
AI-generated image of going down a smart home rabbit hole.

I've long resisted the idea of implementing smart home 'stuff' in our house. It's never been that attractive to me. Use an app to turn on a light? No, thanks!

The doorbell 'gateway drug'

That was until recently, when I got a Ubiquiti doorbell to go with the rest of our Ubiquiti stuff. The catch was that to get notifications of doorbell rings on mobile apps, you currently have to enable full remote access to the whole Ubiquiti system.

That kind of stuff exposed to the internet doesn't make … Read more →

Astro Bot: Pure Joy and Happiness

Categories Gaming
Astro Bot game banner

Some of my favourite games of all time are the Mario Galaxy games. There haven't been that many 3D platformers that I've played over the years that live up to the variety and fun of those games, especially around their level's tight design and mechanics.

That's until the recent standalone Astro Bot game came along, almost out of nowhere. I liked the previous 'demo'-type games that previously introduced us to the cute little robot, but this standalone feature blasts it out of the park.

This game was made for me. Cute character, check. Finely tuned platforming, check. Awesome theme, check. … Read more →

5 Years Post-Transplant

Categories Life

On Monday, I marked the significant marker of 5 years since my liver transplant.

These past 5 years haven't exactly been what I'd hoped post-transplant life to be: getting through a global pandemic notwithstanding, I'm yet to go a calendar year after the transplant without a hospital admission. Nevertheless, I'm still continuously and enormously grateful to be here with my donor's liver, continuing my—and my donor's—journey.

These five years have gone by so quickly, but I just have to look at how much the kids have grown to see that passage of time. They've changed from infants to little … Read more →

Next-Level Networking

Categories None

At most of my jobs, there has been a certain amount of peer-pressure or peer-induced purchases. Early on it was for video game consoles and video games, and later it was other video game consoles and reading material.

At this current job, it's been homelab setups, and recently, networking gear.

The networking gear of choice for many prosumers recently is from Ubiquiti. It's definitely overkill for most use-cases, but pretty cool nonetheless.

So, with some WFH equipment allowance, I've bought a Ubiquiti Dream Machine SE (UDM-SE) router, and a WiFi 6 access point (U6-Pro).

The router

I've … Read more →