Good Morning, Home!

We’re on the verge of 2021. Sci-Fi films had us driving flying cars by now. Unfortunately, we’re not quite there yet. That does not mean we have not progressed.

Smart homes used to be a rare thing. You’d hear about them only in shows following the lives of the rich and famous. This is no longer the case. Google’s assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri (and others) made smart homes accessible.

Having done my research, I decided to go with Google. Most reviews agree it is the most advanced of the three. We currently have three Google Home minis around the house (one in each bedroom and one by the entrance), one Google Nest Hub in our Kitchen and one Google Home in our living room.

The advantages are many. We can now play music throughout the house. With Google sunsetting Google Play Music, we switched to a Deezer subscription. So far, we’re quite happy with the results. We can also control different devices from anywhere in the house by using voice commands. Smart routines automate your everyday menial tasks – you can have Google play a bedtime playlist and dim the lights when you tell it good night, for example.

We replaced all our light switches with smart ones. We also have Lifx bedside lights as well as a floor light. This means we can turn all lights around the house on or off without getting up or walking around the house.

In the living room, we have a Samsung Smart TV which also has a Google Chromecast dongle attached to it. This means we can turn the TV on or off using voice commands. We can also play content, pause and stop it the same way.

Every home is different, and the possibilities are endless. There is no doubt this is the future, and it’s tangible. It’s still rough around the edges, true. But your life can become a bit easier with a little work and some initial spend.

Keep in mind having so many wireless devices around the house can degrade your WiFi stability. We tried fixing it with a strong router – but that did not solve the problem. We finally found a solution for this recently in the form of an eero mesh network (more on that in a separate post).

Ok, Google. Publish this post.

I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

The Life of a Software Developer

For a long time, I was quite happy with reading fantasy and sci-fi. I’ve always enjoyed a good Terry Pratchett book or a Douglas Adams one.

At some point, I felt it stopped being the best use of my spare time. I suddenly had an urge to improve myself in any way I could. To start off, I decided to read what those who took this path before me had to say.

One of the first books I picked up was Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual. This is an interesting one. This is not yet another programming book. In fact, it couldn’t be farther from that. If you’re a software developer, the Manual is your guide to all aspects of life other than development.

From career progression to passive income to productivity, this book covers it all. The advice it contains is practical. Of course, if you want to explore any of the topics in the book in depth, you’ll want to get other books later. This book is a great starting point.

In fact, it is this book that planted the seed of writing a blog in my head. Admittedly, it did take me a couple of years to find the muse. But the book gave me the drive. In my humble opinion, this is a must read for any software developer. I’ll keep saying this, because I truly believe it: keep reading, keep getting better.

I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Will it Blend?

The small kitchen appliance I spent the most time researching is the blender. Finding a good blender is not as easy as it seems.

My requirements are fairly simple:

  • Has good capacity
  • Can crush ice
  • Is easy to clean

My first model cracked the first time I tried blending ice in it. I then got a luxury model with a super thick glass pitcher. Sure, the glass didn’t break when ice slammed against it. But it did not crush the ice.

Then I gave the Ninja a spin. Well, before that, I unboxed it. I was pleasantly surprised by the rich offering of different accessories: four blade types and four different pitchers/cups. While accessories are nice – does it do the job? Yes, it does. It crushes ice with no effort. It produces perfect smoothies without breaking a sweat. It grinds sugar and almonds to powder in seconds. Nothing I threw at it defeated it or even challenged it.

The Ninja parts are dishwasher safe, so cleaning the Ninja is as easy as it gets.

Given its relatively low price, the Ninja Professional Plus is my go-to blender without a doubt.

Photo is a frame from a video by ScotDDW.
I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Wear Protection

When we surf the net, we are constantly being watched. Google is watching. Facebook is watching. Amazon is watching. Perhaps worse than that – unknown parties are watching. They are keeping track of our browsing habits. They are looking for breaches to hijack our machine. These are real threats.

A new browser usually has quite a few security flaws. These are regularly taken advantage of. Thanks to some diligent developers, it’s easy to improve our browser security.

Whenever I install a new browser, these are the free extensions I install.

I start with Privacy Badger. This extension blocks a wide range of trackers. It supports a broad range of browsers, and is simply a must.

I then install User-Agent switcher. There are many versions of this extension. There is one for Chrome, another for Edge, and another for Firefox. The user-agent is information your browser sends to all websites you visit. It contains the browser type and version, as well as your operating system. This makes it much easier for the bad guys to attack your machine. Switching the user-agent confuses the hell out of them.

Lastly, I install uBlock Origin. It is currently the best ad blocker around. It is open-sourced, lightweight and it supports a wide range of browsers.

If you followed my earlier advice about updating your hosts file, and you install the above extensions, your browsing will be much, much safer.

Get to Work, Money!

I dream of one day being able to focus on my own projects. There is so much I want to do: apps, computer games, mobile games, board games. These all take time. With a full day job, time is a luxury.

So I’m trying to work on a retirement plan. My current idea is to try and diversify. I considered cryptocurrencies. I’m looking into real estate investment. The easiest option, in the UK, at least, seems to be ISAs (Individual Savings Accounts). In short, the gains from these savings are tax free. If I care about the returns (and I do), stocks and shares ISAs seem like the way to go.

My current savings are with Nutmeg*. I’ve been with them for two years now. I am quite happy with the results. I’m looking at a 5.6% time-weighted increase. Not bad! There was a dip when the pandemic hit (around March), but they’ve recovered well since.

There are other brokers offering similar terms. You can check out HL. Contracting colleagues of mine recommended them, but I haven’t worked with them yet.

If you have better passive income suggestions, please do share them with me!

* If you use the link above, we will both be rewarded by Nutmeg. How exactly may vary based on Nutmeg’s policies.

The Sound of Silence

Before the pandemic, I used to commute on a daily basis. I also travelled a few times a year.

I like reading when I travel. I find it to be the best use of my time. It’s an opportunity to improve myself while waiting to arrive at my destination.

One thing I found challenging when commuting is the deafening ambience. The horrendous sound of the train taking a hard turn in a tunnel. The crying of a baby throughout a flight. These were sounds I could not ignore.

And then I bought the Bose QuietComfort 35. Ah, the serenity. This has to be one of the best investments I ever made. It turned almost any background noise into silence. I could enjoy music instead of the thunderous rumble of the train echoing through the tunnel.

I have since bought the Bose 700 and my wife inherited my QuickComfort. The 700 has some nice features. When taking a call, the other side enjoys noise cancelling too. It has an interesting touch interface: you tap the headphones instead of buttons. It also has built in smart assistant (Google Assistant, Alexa) support.

If budget is a concern, I’d recommend the QuickComfort. It’s still an incredible headset. If you like gadgets and gimmicks, you would probably like the 700 better.

There are headsets out there with superior sound quality. But none beat Bose at the moment when it comes to noise cancellation. So if you want some peace and quite, you know what to do.

I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Block the Meanies

There are plenty of active ad/spam/virus blockers out there. Quite a few of them are decent. I will likely even write about some of them at some point. But if there’s something I appreciate, it’s an elegant solution.

When it comes to blocking all the meanies, stopping them at the source is as smart as it gets. One way of achieving that is blocking their web addresses. I’ll explain.

Each website has an online address, called a URL. You may know this already. Those are the addresses starting with http:// or https://. Google has google.com, gmail.com and quite a few others. Amazon has amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and so on. Well, it turns out meanies have their own addresses too.

When your device (phone, computer) wants to access a URL, it has to translate it to an address it understands. We call that address an IP address, and usually looks something like 192.168.0.1. So four numbers in the range of 0 to 255 separated by dots. Your device does the translation via something called a DNS lookup.

DNS lookup is done against what we call a DNS server. Your ISP (internet service provider) provides one, Google has one, and there is a host of others. Some protect your privacy better than others. Some are faster. Some are free, others charge a fee.

But, operating systems (so Windows, MacOS, Android etc.) have a local DNS map they look at first. It is the hosts file. This is where the elegant solution comes in.

MVPS HOSTS is a project that’s been running since 1998 and is still maintained regularly in 2020. Wow! What they provide is, quite simply, a hosts file that blocks all evil address lookups. You download the file and move it to right folder. Once done, all requests to evil addresses will be automagically blocked. To be exact, they will all be sent to a dummy address where the evil data cannot be found. This is much nicer than downloading the malicious content and then blocking it.

If you appreciate the effort by the MVPS HOSTS team, consider donating to them. They deserve it.

Weight a Minute

As a developer, I don’t really exercise much. That is, most of my days are spent sitting in front of a computer. It means I have to really be proactive about burning those calories if I want to keep in shape. I do have a few close friends I trust to tell me when I gained a bit of weight (thanks, guys!). But really, I find it’s my responsibility to keep track of my weight.

For the past few years, I’m been doing it using the same scale. I’ve not seen a better one yet. It gives me consistent, accurate results. It identifies me and my wife separately. It syncs with my phone to provide me rich data. I can look all the way back to my first measurement. I can see body composition trends. It even tells me the weather!

It is important to note the ability of a home scale to measure your body composition is limited. It can only run the current through your lower body. So any improvement in your torso upwards will probably not be accounted for. Better focus on trends rather than actual measurements.

Knowing my weight and weight trends helps me keep myself in check. I try to exercise daily, eat healthy and generally control my intake. For the most part, it works. It definitely helps to see the trends improving when I work hard.

If you care about your health, I’d recommend getting a scale. While you’re at it, get a good one.

It’s Toasted!

In an earlier post, I mentioned how I believed in investing at higher quality appliances. This time I want to talk about toasters.

I usually approach the buy of a new appliance with little knowledge. What features should I look for? What features exist? So I start reading a few “top 10” articles. Pretty soon a limited set of interesting features emerges. Quite often, one or two brands catch my eye.

I always perform this initial research. I intend to live with each appliance for quite a few years. I want to enjoy the product I purchased.

So when it comes to toasters, I found a few interesting features. First, I learned I had to choose between a two slices and a four slices toaster. To save space on my counter, I went with two. Bigger families may opt for four. You have toasters with sensors that detect when the toast is ready, so you get consistent results. There are cool gimmicks such as the bread being lowered and raised automatically. Other features to look for include: long slots, removable crumb tray, clear view window and even touch screens.

Things to look out for: heating up of toaster, toasters that don’t let you lift the bread enough, slow toasters.

Having taken the above into account, I ended up buying the Sage Die Cast 2-Slice Smart Toaster. I’ve had it for quite some time now, and I am very pleased. You may also find the same model under the Breville brand. If four slices is what you’re after, there’s a 4-slice model as well.

Photo: Michael Hession
I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Give Me More JUICE!

It was the autumn of 2015. A very excited young (well, young-er) me arrived in Essen, Germany. It was time for the annual Essen Spiel, and my first time attending it. Essen Spiel is the world’s largest board game convention.

I arrived at Essen the evening before the event started. It was dark. I got off at the seemingly deserted train station. I took my phone out, launched Google Maps, and started walking. Google led me into a pitch black forest. I had to turn on the phone flashlight to see where I was going. It was quiet, with nothing but the sounds of night.

With the flashlight on and Google Maps reading my location, my battery was draining fast. I have to say, this was getting scary. I started imagining spending the night in the middle of the forest. Alone. In the dark. In a foreign country. It was not a pleasant notion.

I did end up finding my hotel, and the convention was spectacular. I lived to tell about my adventure.

Why am I telling you this? Because one of the first things I did when I got back, after unpacking all the games I brought back, was to buy a portable charger. I always have one on me now, always fully charged.

The power bank I bought back then is no longer available. My current one, which I bought recently, is an Aukey. To keep this post relevant, here’s a link to the search on Amazon, and here’s one for AliExpress. Make sure to get one with sufficient power for your device. Make sure your phone doesn’t die on you.

I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.