Home Network Updates

Nick Momrik2 Comments

My router had been flaking out, so I picked up a Eero with 1 beacon. Setup was smooth and painless. I decided to use a new Wi-Fi network name, which was not one of my best ideas; reconfiguring about 30 devices was a pain in the ass!hass-io-install

While I was working on my network I took the opportunity to do a fresh install of everything on the Raspberry Pi server running Home Assistant and Pi-Hole. Instead of installing Raspbian and all of the software myself,  I took advantage of Hass.io, which is a preconfigured image and works well. When I first started using Home Assistant, the project was pretty immature so I didn’t use it.

Installing Pi-Hole as a Hass.io add-on is slick. Due to issues with my old router I’d been living without ad blocking for a few weeks and it was horrible. It’s hard going back to a web littered with ads when you’ve been living without them.

Figured I might as well keep going, so I also made a bunch of improvements to the Raspberry Pi Temperature Monitor I use in my garage. Seems to run much more stable, which may also have something to do with the fresh Home Assistant install. Changed a few things with home-assistant-pi as well.

Another big change I made to the server is connecting it to my network via ethernet instead of WiFi. It’s wired in through an AirPort Time Capsule, which is connected to the Eero via a really long cable running through the basement. I bet this has done more than anything to improve the stability and consistency of my system. A bonus of this connection change is the Speedtest reporting inside HA is much more accurate.

Now I need to make time to get more automating done in Home Assistant and publish part 2 and 3 of my home automation series. It’s coming up on a year since part 1, so long overdue.

Link Dump – 2018/02/12

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  • How thick is a three-sided coin?
    Math is fascinating.
  • Meet the hardware startup trying to save athletes’ heads ⇒
    In 10 years I doubt football will look the same as it does now.
  • Jesus Coin ⇒

    Jesus Coin is negotiating with churches to outsource sin forgiveness.

    Can’t tell if this is a joke or not.

  • The Psychology of Inequality

    …poor people engage in riskier behavior, which is why they are poor in the first place.

    Preschoolers, brown capuchin monkeys, California state workers, college students recruited for psychological experiments—everyone, it seems, resents inequity. This is true even though what counts as being disadvantaged varies from place to place and from year to year.

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

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Last month I learned about drill bit gauges in a YouTube video and knew I’d get use out of one, so I ordered my own from Amazon. Ever since I’ve been seeing them at estate sales. I started to wonder if they really were just showing up all of a sudden or if I just started “seeing” them.

Then there were several instances at work where we started running into situations that were clearly explained by some articles we’d recenctly read. Sounded like the same type of thing. I figured there had to be some type of phenomenon to explain this, so I Googled and sure enough, it’s a thing.

…you’re experiencing “frequency illusion,” somewhat better known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

Stanford linguistics professor Arnold Zwicky coined the former term in 2006 to describe the syndrome in which a concept or thing you just found out about suddenly seems to crop up everywhere. It’s caused, he wrote, by two psychological processes. The first, selective attention, kicks in when you’re struck by a new word, thing, or idea; after that, you unconsciously keep an eye out for it, and as a result find it surprisingly often. The second process, confirmation bias, reassures you that each sighting is further proof of your impression that the thing has gained overnight omnipresence.

– THERE’S A NAME FOR THAT: THE BAADER-MEINHOF PHENOMENON

Tesla Model 3 Delay

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On Wednesday I received an email form Tesla.

Thank you again for your continued support as a Model 3 reservation holder. In the past few months, we’ve made significant progress in production and have started delivering Model 3 to customers in over twenty states.

As we work hard to meet demand, we wanted to let you know that your estimated delivery timing has been adjusted to a slightly later window. You can log into your Tesla Account to view your current delivery estimate at any time.

Thank you for your patience. We can’t wait for you to get your Model 3.

I can’t wait either! The estimate in my account is Aug – Oct 2018, which is 2 or 3 months later than it was. Quite the wait considering I placed my reservation on October 29, 2016.

It doesn’t look like I can extend the lease on my Ford Fusion, which is up near the end of May. I guess I need to get a second vehicle in the next few months that can serve as a primary set of wheels when I turn in the Fusion.

Streaming TV Update

Nick Momrik5 Comments

A year after I cancelled cable TV, I’ve made more changes. My friend Casey had been using DIRECTV NOW and told me about an offer where they were giving a free Apple TV 4K if you prepaid for the first 4 months. I looked into it and noticed the service provided ABC, CBS, and NBC, which is something Playstation Vue was lacking. PV had On Demand, but not live TV, which is kind of important for watching sports.

So switching was no-brainer, especially since Playstation Vue raised their rates. I was also able to get rid of the Tablo DVR and antenna I was using to pick up the 3 main channels. The Tablo app for Apple TV was disappointing and I was never able to get the antenna placed right, so some of the channels didn’t work very well when I did try to watch something. I’m going to use the 5 TB hard drive for video storage because I’m always filling up the drive on my MacBook when editing in iMovie.

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So far DIRECTV NOW is fine for the TV I watch and I hear a beta version of their app is pretty solid. The Apple TV app for Playstation Vue was definitely better though.

Photo Challenge: Tour Guide

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While scrolling through the camera roll on my phone I realized I don’t take a lot of photos near home, so playing a tour guide for this week’s challenge wasn’t easy.

Beer menu at The Maple Grille, one of my favorites places to eat.
Hitting balls on the range at the Sawmill Golf Club.

While I really hate winter, living in Michigan I’ve been able to experience the 4 seasons throughout my life. These next two photos are from my yard.

We get some amazing colors when the trees change.
The end was near for this rose. I really liked the blurred leaves in the back.

WordPress Date Change Redirects

Nick Momrik1 Comment

WordPress has properly redirected posts when you change the slug for a long time. For example, earlier this month I published a post a day earlier than planned. I forgot to change the date I was using in the post’s title though, so the original URL was:

nick.blog/2018/01/04/link-dump-2018-01-05/

Notice link-dump-2018-01-05 there, but the publish date was 2018/01/04. When I corrected the post’s title and updated the post slug, WordPress saved the info and properly redirected that URL to the new one:

nick.blog/2018/01/04/link-dump-2018-01-04/

Now imagine the date a post is published is important to your site though or some scenario where you change the date of a post after it’s already out there on the Internet. My example above is a little confusing for this since I’m also using a date in the post title. Continuing with it though, what if I really wanted the post to be associated with January 5th as the publish date (and I had left the title the same as it was originally)? The post’s new URL would be:

nick.blog/2018/01/05/link-dump-2018-01-05/

Which is fine right? Not quite. All of the links already pointing to the original URL that had /2018/01/04/ would be broken and 404. There was a WordPress bug ticket opened about this 7 years ago! Well, as of yesterday, with the WordPress 4.9.3 Maintenance Release, this issue finally has a fix. When you change the date of a published post, WordPress will save meta data so it can properly redirect the old date’s URL to the new one. 💥💥

Big thanks to Gary for helping me with this fix. It’s been years since I received props in a WordPress release and I need to make sure the next isn’t so far away.

Aluminum Branding Iron

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If you watched the video about the bandsaw box, you may have noticed that I burned my initials in to the bottom of the box. I got the idea to leave my “stamp” on anything I make out of wood and of course a branding iron is the natural choice.

I’d set aside an old metal bracket with the original idea of writing my name and the year and then carving it in with a Dremel.

I quickly realized it was going to take forever with such hard metal, especially with so much detail. So I shifted gears with the plans of making a simple one with my initials and 18 for the year.

I stopped at Menards hoping to find some solid brass or aluminum. In the welding section the thickest piece of aluminum they had was a half-inch square in 3 foot long pieces. I grabbed one for about $12.

It was hard to write out the 4 characters (NM & 18) in such a small space, but I gave it a try.

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I screwed up when I chopped off 1/4 of the 8; it was just too small of an area for so many details. So I cut that chunk off and started over with just NM.

Turned out pretty good and it was easy without the letters having any round edges or inside spaces.

I found out heating with a blow torch sucks and got the idea to use my old soldering iron as the heating element. I had to do a ton of filing to get the stem down to size, but it snugly fits into the soldering iron, which is nice so I didn’t have to drill a hole for a bolt or set screw of some kind and I can still use this as a soldering iron as intended if I need to.

Instead of a branding iron should this be called a branding aluminum?