Blog

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

Geekery

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 →

20 Years of Blogging!

Categories Geekery, Internet, Life, Rants

It just felt like yesterday that I posted the 10-year commemorative post, but here we are at 20 years already. 😬

Yep, 20 years ago today I posted my first ever blog post (although, back then I used the term blog 'entry').

The 'recent' post commemorating my 40th birthday did a good job of summarising most of the big events of the past 10 years, so I won't repeat them again. 🙂

Also, for the record, this post is number 980! 🚀… Read more →

2.5Gb Networking

Categories Geekery, Technology
The new 2.5Gb switch sitting under our older gigabit switch

One of my greatest tech disappointments over the last decade has been the stagnation of consumer-level network speeds.

Over the last decade, gigabit networking has remained the standard, which is so disappointing compared to the fast and regular increases up to that point. From the late 1990s to the late 2000s, it felt like quick and routine jumps as we went from 10 megabit hubs, to 100 megabit switches, then to gigabit (1Gb) switches.

When we built our house in 2011, I wired it up with Cat 6 cable. … Read more →

Electrification

Categories Geekery, Technology
The new panels on one facade of the roof

We recently upgraded to an electric car. As we'd be using a lot more electricity, our plan was to also review our home energy use to take better advantage of Australia's (and particularly Brisbane's) wonderful solar-ideal sunny climate for our overall energy use.

Our house has had a ~ 3 kW solar system since it was built 12 years ago, but it was time for an upgrade to take better advantage of our roofspace and over a decade of efficiency improvements in solar panel technology.

On the list of things … Read more →

Clamshell MacBook Touch ID

Categories Geekery, Lego, Technology
An incomplete Lego enclosure for the Touch ID sensor and control board from an Apple keyboard.
Building the Lego enclosure

I have a fingerprint reader for my Windows desktop computer (a Kensington Verimark FIDO key) that easily allows me to log in with Windows Hello without typing a password.

For my work computer, I haven't had the same luxury. I use my work MacBook Pro exclusively in 'clamshell' (closed) mode when I'm at home, as I have two monitors and a separate keyboard and mouse.

This means that I can't use the 'Touch ID' fingerprint reader on the laptop's keyboard, and Apple doesn't support any third-party fingerprint readers. The only option for users in this situation … Read more →

Building Pentium

Categories Gaming, Geekery, Technology
The finished build in place

It's been a long time between computer builds. Actually, it's been the longest interval since I started building my own desktop computers in 2007. My now-previous computer, Tetrarch, was built in 2017, so it's a 6-year gap between that build and this new one.

Continuing with the number-themed names, I decided to name this build Pentium, as it's the fifth build that I've done. The 'Pentium' name has always resonated to me since our first Windows 95 computer was a first generation Pentium MMX. It's All About the Pentiums is also one of … Read more →

Tweets for 2022

Categories Geekery, Internet, Life
Tweets for 2022

These are my tweets for 2022 (sans replies and retweets).

With all of the Elon Musk Twitter craziness over the past few months, who know if this might be the last time I do this! (FYI: you can also find me on Mastodon here: https://hachyderm.io/@lucascosti)

All the URLs are still Twitter's 't.co' ones, as the Twitter API doesn't spit out the original URL text.

  • PC vs console gaming 🧵 https://t.co/G0KDWHbHFa "When I manage to salvage an hour to relax and play video games, *that* is what I want to do. And it's really opened my eyes to why so
… Read more →

New Mobile: Google Pixel 7

Categories Geekery, Technology
Pixel 7 phone

Every two years, I have a budget from work to buy a new phone. My Pixel 5 has been a great phone for my usage, and for the most part, I've been really happy with it.

The only criticism that I did have at the time was about the screen size:

But I do kinda wish it was a tiny bit bigger.

And this did come up with some multi-day hospital stays that I unfortunately had to endure this year. Watching movies and TV shows from my bed had me wishing for a phone that had a bit bigger screen.… Read more →

New Watch: Garmin Vivoactive 4

Categories Geekery, Technology

I've worn a Pebble Time on my wrist since 2015. That's over 7 years with the same device, and probably the longest for any 'mobile' device that I've owned. Even after the Pebble company's demise at the end of 2016, it was still the most usable smartwatch for what I needed. Only now that its battery life is going to roughly 3 days have I needed to replace it, and it was a somewhat begrudging replacement.

Why it took me so long

It took me so long because none of the 'new' smartwatches would be more functional than the … Read more →

Working on a MacBook Pro (take 2)

Categories Geekery, Technology, Work

It's coming up on 3+ years that I've been working on a MacBook Pro, so earlier this year I was due for a computer refresh. I was extremely critical of the hardware of the 13" 2018 MacBook Pro that I received last time around, so I was very much looking forward to a replacement that would hopefully be better.

This timed well with Apple's migration from Intel chips to their own 'Apple silicon', but I was pretty sceptical of the architecture change. I worked in support when Apple migrated architectures from IBM PowerPC to Intel way back in the mid-2000s, … Read more →