Month: February 2024

How we dry laundry

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A photo of our tumble dryer that we use for drying our laundry.

One of the benefits of our kitchen renovation in 2022 was that it gave us space to install a tumble dryer in our cellar. Previously the cellar was inaccessible, and so our washing machine was in the kitchen; now both are in the cellar and out of the way.

Tumble dryer

We bought this Grundig heat pump tumble dryer at the end of 2022. Being a heat pump model, it’s very energy efficient; if you want to know how heat pumps work, this interactive guide from The Guardian is worth watching. Consequently, it’s cheap to run; whilst it cost more upfront than a regular condensing tumble dryer, over time, it works out cheaper. It’s not a ‘smart’ model but it’s simple enough to use, and at some point I may connect it to a smart plug with energy monitoring, so I get notified when it’s finished.

However, we can’t dry all of our laundry in a tumble dryer. About a third of our clothes aren’t suitable, due to either being handmade or having care labels advising against tumble drying.

Drying laundry outside

Ideally, we would dry as much laundry as possible outside. We have a small garden with washing lines, and there’s no cost involved when you let the sun and wind dry your clothes for you.

But we also live in the Pennines, which is one of the wetter areas of England, so we get fewer dry days than elsewhere. Indeed, it’s rare that we can dry our laundry outside at all in winter. When it is sunny and there’s a gentle breeze, drying laundry outside can be the quickest way, beating even the tumble dryer. But on a dull day with no wind, even after a full day outside, our laundry can still be damp.

Heated drying rack

A Dry:soon heated airing rack, for drying laundy

So we needed a way of drying our laundry indoors that doesn’t use the tumble dryer. For this, we bought a Dry:Soon heated airing rack from Lakeland. The rack gently heats your clothes to dry them, and there’s an optional cover to go over the rack to keep the heat in.

These became popular in 2022 when electricity prices started to rise, as a cheaper alternative to tumble dryers. Indeed, they are cheaper to run than older condenser dryers. However, they don’t save much energy compared with our heat pump dryer, and so we just use it for clothes that can’t go in the tumble dryer.

How long clothes take to dry depends on how full the rack is and what material they’re made of, but I typically found 18 hours is enough to get all clothes completely dry. Our model doesn’t have a timer or a moisture sensor – just a rocker switch to turn it on and off. So I have it connected to a smart plug, and an automation in Home Assistant that turns it off automatically after 18 hours.

What ChatGPT thinks about Omar’s

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On Monday, I wrote about Omar’s Balti House in Bradford. But before publishing it, I also asked ChatGPT the following:

Write a 300 word blog post about Omar’s Balti House in Bradford, West Yorkshire

So, here’s what it came up with:

Nestled in the heart of Bradford, West Yorkshire, Omar’s Balti House stands as a culinary gem, offering a delightful journey through the rich tapestry of flavors that define Balti cuisine. This renowned restaurant has earned its stripes as a go-to destination for locals and visitors alike, seeking an authentic taste of Pakistani and Kashmiri culinary traditions.

As you step into Omar’s Balti House, the warm ambiance immediately envelops you, setting the stage for a memorable dining experience. The restaurant’s commitment to authenticity is evident not only in its decor but, more importantly, in the carefully crafted menu. From aromatic biryanis to sizzling kebabs, each dish showcases the expertise of the chefs in delivering a true taste of the region.

One standout feature of Omar’s Balti House is its namesake dish—the Balti. Served in a distinctive, wok-like bowl, the Balti is a symphony of flavors, combining tender meats or vegetables with a medley of spices. The result is a harmonious blend that captures the essence of Pakistani and Kashmiri cuisine. Whether you’re a spice enthusiast or prefer milder flavors, Omar’s caters to all taste preferences, ensuring a culinary journey that suits every palate.

The commitment to quality extends beyond the kitchen, with Omar’s Balti House sourcing the finest local ingredients to create dishes that are not only delicious but also reflective of the restaurant’s dedication to supporting the community. The menu evolves with the seasons, ensuring that patrons can savor the freshest produce while enjoying a diverse range of dishes.

In addition to its culinary prowess, Omar’s Balti House prides itself on providing exceptional service. The attentive staff adds a personal touch to the dining experience, making guests feel not only welcome but also part of the extended Omar’s family.

For those seeking a taste of authenticity in Bradford, West Yorkshire, Omar’s Balti House emerges as a must-visit destination. With its rich tapestry of flavors, warm ambiance, and commitment to quality, this restaurant stands as a testament to the vibrant culinary heritage of Pakistan and Kashmir.

I have an interest in AI, and especially large language models like ChatGPT and their impact on my industry, higher education. We are seeing students using AI tools to write assessments, and even their personal statements for their university applications. And I think the above text is a good example of how AI is at the uncanny valley stage – it looks okay on first glance, but a more detailed critique highlights its flaws.

Firstly, I wouldn’t describe this as a ‘blog post’, even though this is what I asked ChatGPT to write. It reads more like a puff piece that you would read in some marketing to promote a town or city as a place to live or invest in.

It talks quite a bit about the balti dishes that the food is served on, although that could be because I mentioned ‘balti’ in the writing prompt. A major issue with AI is that they’re not always able to explain why they’ve done something. But it doesn’t mention the enormous naan breads anywhere – which, arguably, is what Omar’s is best known for.

And there are some things it has plain made up. The menu does not ‘evolve with the seasons’. Indeed, the menu doesn’t really evolve at all; whilst it has been reprinted a few times and the prices have gone up over the years, many of the dishes that are on there were ones that were available 20+ years ago. Also, I’m not sure about the ‘local ingredients’ either.

This all feeds into my concerns about the thousands of web pages currently filling up our search engines with AI-written content. How much of it has actually been proof-read, and is accurate?

In education, AI generated content is an issue for two reasons. One, it’s cheating, in the same way that plagiarism and essay mills are – it’s just that you’re using something written by a computer rather than another person. But there’s a quality issue too. I specialise in doctoral level admissions, and much of what current AI language models generate just isn’t at that level. You tend to get vague lists of things with few references (and sometimes these are made up), and if you ask it for a longer essay then it’ll probably start repeating itself. I’m sure if I’d asked for, say, 600 words on Omar’s balti house, it would have run out of unique things to say and just repeat the same statements in another way.

Most universities are now very much aware of both the opportunities and the threats that such AI models present; Turnitin, used by many universities, can now indicate whether an assignment has been written using AI as well as detecting plagiarism. There are simpler tools available online, such as AI Detector, where you can copy and paste a short piece of text. Indeed, when I put ChatGPT’s text above in there, it said that there was a ‘relatively high’ chance that it was written by AI.

I’m sure these language models will improve over time, and will overcome their current shortcomings. At which point, we may struggle to work out what has been written by a human and what was hallucinated by a computer. We’re certainly not there yet, and I don’t know how long it’ll take to get there, or whether it’ll be like driverless cars which seem to be perpetually ten years away. I hope this blog post serves as an explanation of why I won’t be farming out my blog post writing to AI any time soon.

Omar’s Balti House in Bradford

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A photo the outside of Omar's Balti House in Bradford

I’m sure I must have written about Omar’s Balti House on Great Horton Road in Bradford at least once before, although I don’t think I’ve ever written a whole blog post about it. We went there last week with a group of friends, which is an excuse to write about it.

Bradford is not short of curry houses and has repeatedly won the title of ‘Curry Capital of Britain’ over the years. And whilst Omar’s may not have the renown of other curry houses like Mumtaz, or the likes of Aagrah and Akbars which have become chains, it’s one that is held with affection amongst people who have lived in Bradford. Indeed, I’d argue that it’s a rite of passage for students who study in Bradford. I first visited early on in my first year at university, and have been back many, many times since.

Omar’s is known for serving its meals in the same metal balti dishes that they’re cooked in, and for it’s enormous naan breads. No really, they’re claimed to be the largest in Yorkshire and typically measure almost a metre across. Indeed, eating one of these naans on your own, with a balti dish, is a food challenge – and the record is currently 35 minutes having been last set in 2019. Before that, the record had stood for over a decade.

Massive naans aside, the food at Omar’s is good, and despite being a small restaurant they do cater for large groups. They also serve some western food, which is good when you have an eight-year-old who hates even the mildest spicy food.

How to join a preferred Thread network in Home Assistant

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A screenshot of Home Assistant's Thread Integration showing two Open Thread Border Routers on the same network

If you use Home Assistant, and have an existing device that includes a Thread Border Router, then it should automatically add the Thread integration so that it can communicate with Matter devices. Some of Google’s Nest Hub and Nest Wifi devices include Thread, as do some of Apple’s newer Homepod devices and some of Amazon’s Echo devices. Because they broadcast their existence on your home Wifi network using mDNS, Home Assistant can detect their presence.

What Home Assistant can’t automatically do, however, is join these existing Thread networks. As this article from The Verge states, there isn’t a mechanism for sharing Thread network credentials between devices. That means that you can end up with a home that has several devices, all with the own Thread networks that don’t talk to each other, and your Home Assistant device not able to talk to any of them.

Hiding on your phone

The good news is that Home Assistant can access Thread network credentials from your phone, and this should allow you to join one of your existing Thread networks. In the above screenshot, I have my third party Thread dongle attached to the existing Nest thread network used by my Google Nest Wifi system.

The reason why I’m writing this blog post is that it’s not obvious how to enable Home Assistant to join a Thread network that it doesn’t have credentials for. Think of the Thread network credentials as being a bit like your Wifi password (or ‘pre-shared key’ to give it its official name). However, whilst you’ll usually either use whatever password is printed on your router, or a short password you set yourself, your Thread devices will come up with their own long alphanumeric key. And then, they’ll keep it a secret.

Thankfully, your phone should have this key – in Google Play Services on an Android device, and iCloud Keychain on an iOS device. And, thankfully, the Home Assistant Companion app for these platforms can access these credentials and provide them to Home Assistant, allowing you to connect to your existing Thread networks.

Matching the manufacturer to the network

But there’s a catch:

  • If you have a Google Wifi or Nest Hub device, then you’ll need an Android device to access the credentials.
  • If you have an Apple HomePod, then you’ll need an iOS device to access the credentials.

This is why I found it difficult to join the Thread network that my Google Wifi devices had created. I’m an iPhone user, and so it wasn’t able to access the credentials. They’re not available to the Google Home app on iOS, for example.

Thankfully, my wife has been a stubborn Android user for as long as I have been a stubborn iOS user. So, I just needed to ‘borrow’ her Android tablet, install the Google Home and Home Assistant Companion apps, and log in to both. Then, on the Home Assistant app, navigate to the Thread settings where an ‘Import Credentials‘ button appears. Once I tapped this, Home Assistant was able to join the Thread network created by my Google Wifi devices. Had I owned a HomePod, the process would have been similar.

One Thread network to mesh them all

Thread is a mesh network protocol, and having all devices on the same network is beneficial. Each additional device helps maintain the reach of the network. So it’s a shame that new devices just seem to set up their own networks, and don’t bother to try to join a Thread network that may already exist. Some of this is down to the Connectivity Standards Alliance, who haven’t specified a way of exchanging Thread network credentials. But it’s also worth noting that Matter and Thread are still very new standards. By comparison, Zigbee was designed in the 1990s and standardised over 20 years ago.

A few weeks ago, the Home Assistant developers hosted a livestream about ‘The State of Matter’, and there’s a useful summary here (which is good as the live stream was the best part of three hours). There’s still work to be done with supporting Thread networks in Home Assistant.

Finally February

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The Drake Hotline Bling meme where Drake is showing his hand to January but happy with February.

Good grief, that was a long January. As I remarked to my wife earlier this week, it felt like the Januariest January that ever Januaried. I don’t think I’ve been so relieved that it’s finally February.

It’s also a special February, seeing as it’s a leap year and so we get 29 days.

I’ve been appreciating the earlier dawns – it’s starting to get light about half seven in the morning now, which makes getting up each day a little easier. I’m lucky that I don’t have seasonal-affective disorder, and quite like the early evenings on the run up to Christmas. But it’s also nice for it to start getting lighter too. And the winter flowers – crocuses and snowdrops – are starting to make their appearance. It might not be properly spring again but there’s a few green shoots here and there.

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