1 Year with the Chevy Bolt It has been about 1 year since I got the Chevy Bolt. It's time to reflect on this revolutionary EV. First, I have to say - this thing is still awesome. Instant torque,
Things I Learned While Trying To Solve Euler Project Problem #3 Euler Project problem 3 took me way longer than I expected. While I am not a real programmer, I thought I was good enough to script this in bash quickly. My life as
Getting Laid Off Sucks - And Then it Doesn't Of course getting laid off sucks! Duh, right? It bruises the ego and makes you question your own abilities. I was laid off recently about a month ago. Ouch. I went through the
ESP8266 DeepSleep Mode Button I ran across this neat idea on Random Nerd Tutorials that is basically a way to make your own Amazon Dash button with a customizable action. While you can certainly get your own
HomeGenie - A Look at My Home Setup HomeGenie is what I have been running for my Home Automation needs. It does a lot, but I mainly chose it for these features: Z-wave support. Multi-platform. It's an app coded in C#
DIY Digital Pool Pump Control Most of the motivation behind my projects comes from being cheap. There are usually easy solutions out there to problems I want to solve, but they are expensive. For this blog post, I
Stumbled Across Something Neat - vutil So, since I'm trying to blog more, let me share some little neat thing I found tonight. It's called vutil. It does a few things, but the neat thing I found is being
DIY August Smart Lock Wi-Fi Bridge I briefly mentioned the Wi-Fi bridge used for my August Smart Lock in my Control Practically Anything with Alexa post. I'm writing this post now to describe it more in detail. The August
Control Practically Anything with Alexa Alexa is great. I'm not talking about the silly stuff you see on TV or strange skills available from Amazon. I'm talking about it's simple ability to control things in your home. Physical
Cheap Wall Sconce Conversion - Part 2, The Software Continuing my post in part 1, now we will look at the software side of things. As I mentioned, the heart of the controller is the ESP8266. It is a very popular MCU
Cheap Wall Sconce Conversion - Part 1 A few years ago, I picked up 3 sets of cheap, AA-battery powered wall sconces for my home theater. You can pick these up anywhere including Ebay for good deals. Here is one
kodi Some Neat Kodi Automation I use Kodi for my home theater management. There are a couple of neat plugins I want show off. The first one is the PseudoCinema Poster plugin. This neat plugin lets me show
It's That Time of Year Again! This is the time of the year where I resolve to blog more. I just updated a bunch of stuff on the server and hopefully this motivates me to write and take pictures
Voice Control Airfoil (aka, my home audio rube goldberg machine) So, I've always wanted to control my home audio setup via voice. Sure, there have been solutions for voice control in the past, but nothing has really worked well for me. I use
My 2016 Predictions In the Blu-Ray release of The Martian, an alternate ending shows Sean Bean dying as the Hermes lands right on top of his house. Someone on the internet will do a mashup of
Wiring Up the Coin Door So I got a good deal on a coin door for my MAME cocktail cabinet. I'm waiting for some other parts to wire up control, but I grew impatient tonight and wanted to