whatever grabs my attention
TL;DR: The Lutron Claro (or Diva if you want dimming) Smart Switch is the best HomeKit compatible wall switch there is, period. I’ve been playing with smart home devices since x10 came out in the 1990s. And every house I’ve had since 2005 has had a few smart switches hard-wired into my walls. I’ve tried …
Continue reading “The one good HomeKit-capable wall switch you should get”
A couple years ago, I started seeing ads for “cell phone booster” antennas for cars and trucks around the off-roading/4×4 world as a way to stay connected while out in the middle of nowhere, but I was deeply skeptical. How much better could your phone signal be after paying a few hundred bucks for a …
Continue reading “Surprisingly good tech: The weBoost Drive Reach cell signal booster”
Way back in the pre-pandemic times, I backed a Kickstarter project for a very good idea: Bird Buddy. It’s a bird feeder but also has a camera that takes photos and lets you stream live video, plus WiFi, and a battery. Mine finally shipped and showed up, so I set it up down the hill …
I am pretty sure I first found out about these little reusable wire tie things from an interview at Cool Tools where someone mentioned how much they loved them. I bought a set solely based on the strength of recommendations made on that site. Once I got them, I started using them. And using them. …
Continue reading “The best stocking stuffer is these little wire ties”
Just turned my ballot into a box downtown. This year feels especially important, like if we get everyone we know out to vote then maybe just maybe 50.1% of the state will vote to retain our own bodily autonomy, while 49.9% vote to trample on everyone’s rights. This is my 10-15th time voting over the …
I’ve been meaning to write a post for the past few months on the select group of things I actually enjoy over email. I still go through 100 or so messages every day and most of them are either things I ignore or things that require attention and work from me, leaving very few that …
I wrote up my favorite technology bits of 2012 over at Medium (Medium itself should have made my list, it’s quickly becoming my favorite place to write longer pieces).
With the recent news of a new version of the smart thermostat Nest coming out, I figured I should finally write up what it has been like living with the first version of the product since last November, when mine arrived. Overall, it's been a great little tool, smart in lots of smart ways and …
The app Satellite Eyes is a great little addition to any traveler's mac laptop. It automatically figures out your location then fetches map tiles of where you are located at that moment, and makes them your desktop background. It offers several options of mapping, either full satellite photos, terrain maps, simplified black and white line …
For the last year I've been using my friend Ben's app Sendtab to manage all the different places I find interesting content. He originally built it as a way to send anything from his laptop to a mac mini attached to his home TV (he cut cable and was constantly watching online video). I started …
Continue reading “SendTab: a great simple app for managing screens”
A Whole Lotta Nothing 