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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →