Project creep (and my parts still aren’t in the country)
I’m sitting with the wife one evening talking about the wall. She mentions that a friend had a deep red accent wall and it looked great.
The entertainment center is going on the only wall in the room that works as an accent wall, now I have to paint it. Of course, the other walls in the room are a pale yellow and they will look terrible with red, so I have to paint the entire room.
Continue reading “Living room update (part 2)”We are an unapologetic Apple house. Phones, tablets, computers, even an AppleTV in the family room. When you use Apple products in the manner which they are designed they really do just work.
That being said, when you start to do things that the folks in Cupertino hadn’t planned on, it gets challenging. This is also probably true for Windows environments, but Mac users are really accustomed to things that just work.
Continue reading “Cleaning up the (music) library”Lots of curse words and money thrown about unexpectedly.
It seems that my wireless router had reached its effective end of life, or at least the end of my fault tolerance.
Whenever my wife and I watched television, the router would go for about five – ten minutes and then require a reboot. This didn’t happen to the kids. It may be because our shows are high def, and theirs are cartoons. It is about six years old and doesn’t support all the latest protocols, so I decided to upgrade.
Continue reading “Happy New Year. Happy New Network.”I’m not even sure.
I’ve got some lights that turn in when my alarm sounds in the morning. I’ve got some lights that turn on when the sun sets, and others that turn on when it rises. My thermostat knows to adjust the set point when no one is home, and my front door unlocks when I pull into the driveway.
Does that meant my home is smart? I’m not so sure
Continue reading “What makes a smart home?”A place for the grownups
The new house has both a family room and a living room, where the old house only had one, so I’ve been one entertainment system short since we moved. Also, my wife and I like to watch some things that a bit too adult for the wee ones, so it will be nice to be able to watch an episode of Vikings while they are playing on the Switch in another room
When I bought the seating last Christmas (we got volunteered to host and had ZERO furniture in the room) I decided that I was going to decorate this room.
I don’t believe there is a single room in the house that doesn’t have hand me down (or road side found) furniture. I want a room that looks designed & planned.
This is going to be a room for the grownups.
Continue reading “Living Room Update (part 1)”When you finally start looking at home automation, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of technology, platforms, protocols, and marketing hype. The goal is to make sure that you spend money on equipment that will work together and continue to be supported in the future.
As of January 2021, there are three major platforms – Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit. There are probably hundreds of manufacturers who support some combination of these platforms. Personally, I use HomeKit with equipment from probably a dozen manufacturers.
Continue reading “Smart home platforms & protocols”This summer, as I invoked Siri to light up the dinner table on the patio, my father-in-law’s girlfriend said, “You have a smart house?”
I’ve never really thought about it, but I suppose I do. I’ve got lights that are tied to sunset & sunrise. I’ve got lights that turn on if the wife or I come home after dark. I can control the HVAC system from anywhere in the world.
It’s not something that I consciously set out to do, it just slowly happened over a course of several years. In this post I’ll describe some of the lessons about “smart homes” that I’ve learned the hard way over the years.
Continue reading “Adding smarts to an old house”Shortly after we moved to the new house, I spotted this stone in the woods behind my house. Originally, I planned to haul it out of the woods when we replaced the fence, but since the fence was down for the mulberry tree, I moved up the time table.
It took me a few hours with the come-along to get this stone out of the woods, now I need to get it to the front yard
Continue reading “Getting stone(d)”This didn’t work out as well as I hoped. I’ll probably end up modifying the design to improve the performance. It may also be that the gutters were too clogged and that this tool will work fine if it’s used on 4-6 months worth of debris as opposed to several years.
Decided to make a nice chair for my wife to enjoy her garden. I did a google search for Adirondack chairs and asked her to pick the one she liked best. Thankfully she chose one that was within my abilities.
The fine folks at Lowe’s have the plans on their site.
Modern Anachronist 