There’s been quite the to-do in the world of WordPress in recent weeks. Matt Mullenweg, one of the two people who forked b2/Cafelog to create WordPress in 2003, has had a public spat with WP Engine, a WordPress host.
Matt’s arguments are that WP Engine should be paying to use the WordPress trademark (or offer development time to the WordPress project in kind), and that it disables features in WordPress such as post revisions (which allow you to revert a blog post or page back to an earlier version). He’s used his platform to publicly call out WP Engine, including at a recent WordCamp event where he was the keynote speaker – an event supported by WP Engine.
Matt is basically the same age as me – he turned 40 a few months before I did. But in the 21 years since WordPress became a project in its own right, he has accumulated a huge amount of power and responsibility. He’s the founder and CEO of Automattic, the commercial enterprise that runs WordPress.com – which is a WordPress host and direct competitor of WP Engine. But he’s also one of only three board members of the WordPress Foundation, which looks after the WordPress open source project (aka WordPress.org), and, seemingly the only active board member.
To me, this is a massive conflict of interest, and means that a massive amount of control over WordPress is held by one person. Don’t get me wrong, I believe Matt deserves to be on the board of the WordPress Foundation, but not as the only active member. And we’re seeing the impact of this control, with WP Engine’s access to the WordPress plugin and theme directory cut off.
Matt’s actions have ensured his hosting companies are now the only WordPress hosts that can guarantee something like this will never happen to their users.
Whilst I don’t use a dedicated WordPress host, should Matt have a beef with my host for whatever reason, this could cut off my access to security updates for plugins. I mean, there would be ways of downloading updates manually, but this would also require regular manual checks. Not really feasible considering I have 28 plugins installed.
To recluse oneself from making decisions where a conflict of interest may occur is a core principle of most professional membership organisations, and good leadership. I’ve taken a step back more than once at work, where I’ve had a conflict of interest regarding a decision for someone that I know outside of work. Matt needs to do the same.
If you run a hobbyist web site like I do, then nowadays there’s at least two places to get free SSL certificates: ZeroSSL, and Let’s Encrypt. I’ve used both, and so this is a comparison of their relative advantages and disadvantages.
Of the two, Let’s Encrypt is the most well-known, even though it’s only been around almost 10 years. It’ll celebrate its 10th birthday this coming November. Despite this, over 400 million certificates have been issued over those 10 years, and 93% of web sites use Let’s Encrypt certificates. It’s now the world’s most popular Certificate Authority, presumably because it’s free for all to use.
ZeroSSL is a much smaller commercial alternative, but it too offers free SSL certificates. The concept of SSL certificates being free would have probably blown my mind 20 years ago, but now almost all web sites use SSL – probably because Google ranks such web sites higher as a way of encouraging better security.
Anyway, this is a comparison, so here we go:
Ease of issuing certificates
Let’s Encrypt is designed to be an automated service for managing certificates, using tools like Certbot. Which is fine if you have a host that supports Certbot, or another tool that uses the ACME protocol. For example, I run Sympl which manages my Let’s Encrypt certificate for this web site.
But if you want to manually obtain an SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt, it’s a much more involved process. You’ll need to interact with Certbot on the command line, and probably fiddle with your domain’s DNS settings. SSLFree.io appears to be a web-based front-end for getting Let’s Encrypt certificates, but I’m not sure how much I trust it.
ZeroSSL is the winner here. There’s a web-based tool for obtaining SSL certificates, and you can authenticate using an email link if you wish. There is also an ACME API.
How many certificates you can get
Let’s Encrypt is free for everyone, no matter how many certificates you need. You can also create a ‘wildcard’ SSL certificate, that would cover example.com and all its subdomains, although you’ll need to use a DNS provider that has a plugin available like CloudFlare.
ZeroSSL, being a for-profit company, isn’t so generous. If you want to use their web-based interface, then you’re permitted a maximum of three free SSL certificates that are valid for 90 days. This limit of three certificates includes renewals, so if you have three certificates already, you’ll need to wait for one to expire before you can renew it (or pay for a new one). Thankfully, there isn’t a limit on those created using the ACME service.
How long the certificates last for
Paid-for SSL certificates would typically last for 12 months. The free certificates that Let’s Encrypt can issue are only valid for 90 days, but the idea is that their renewal is automated using tools like Certbot so that, in practice, there’s no interruption in service for users.
I’ve focussed on Let’s Encrypt and ZeroSSL as these are the two that I have the most experience with. CloudFlare also offers free SSL certificates, as does SSL.com. I can’t really compare these as I haven’t tried them.
Earlier in the year, I changed my current account to a new provider. I’ll probably talk about the process in another blog post another time, but when it came to choosing a new bank, I decided to stick with a bank that still has high street branches.
When we moved to Sowerby Bridge in 2010, there were still two banks left in the town. HSBC and Yorkshire Bank had recently upped sticks, but Halifax and (the then) Lloyds TSB were still there. But Lloyds left a few years ago, and then Halifax shut up shop more recently.
Now Sowerby Bridge essentially flows into Halifax (the town), and most high street banks still have branches there. This includes Halifax (the bank) – indeed it wasn’t long ago that there were two branches, including the original branch of what was then the Halifax Permanent Building Society. That’s now gone, but there’s still one branch remaining. Barclay’s have also closed their branch, but we get a van for ten hours a week instead. But, on the whole, Haligonians and those living nearby are still reasonably well-served by banks.
Banking hubs
That’s not true for some other places. Elsewhere in West Yorkshire, the towns of Ossett and Normanton are now the home of ‘banking hubs’, run by the Post Office to provide banking services where no other banks remain. Almost all UK banks are signed up, and allow customers to pay in cash and cheques, and withdraw cash. Representatives from the main banks then visit at a set time every week for more complicated queries. It’s better than nothing, but many banking hubs lack printers for printing off paper bank statements.
And that’s a problem. For the most part, I’m happy to go paperless with my accounts, including my current account. But there are times when a paper bank statement is a necessity. When we re-mortgaged the house a couple of years ago, we needed paper bank statements that were certified by a solicitor. And if you need a DBS check, to work with young or vulnerable people, then you have to provide paper documents. Simply printing a PDF statement from your online banking app isn’t sufficient – it has to be a proper paper document. Bank branches can provide paper statements and put an official stamp on them where needed.
As much as online-only banks like Starling, Chase and Monzo regularly top customer service charts, they don’t make it easy to request paper statements. You normally have to contact their customer service team and wait for them to be sent through the post.
Now, this is arguably a problem for DBS and solicitors, rather than the banks themselves. For example, the DBS doesn’t support the government’s own GOV.UK ID check app. And I’m sure that the banking industry could work with organisations like the DBS to develop a way of sharing identity without relying on paper documents, a bit like how drivers can share their driving license details using a share code. But until something like this happens, I’ll be sticking with a mainstream bank.
Speaking of cheques: sure, you can scan cheques using most banking apps, but I’ve had this fail on more than one occasion. Indeed, one cheque that was rejected was issued by my own bank. Admittedly that was a few years ago and technology has moved on a bit, but I’d want to be able to take my cheque somewhere to pay it into my account – especially if it was for a large amount.
I’m lucky enough to have grown up in a home that had a dishwasher, which in the 1980s and 1990s was much less common than nowadays. And since 2010, Christine and I have rented flats, or owned a house, that has had a dishwasher. We also made sure that a decent dishwasher was part of our new kitchen.
My own experience, along with this YouTube video embedded below and some guides from Which? are what I’m using to inform this blog post about what I’ve learned about running a dishwasher. And, more importantly, how to get the most out of it.
1. Some dishwashers are bad
Specifically, the dishwasher that was left behind in our house by the previous owner, which was manufactured by Indesit. It may have been age, or just bad design, but frequently the glassware in particular would come out dirtier than when we put it in. We tried giving it a thorough clean a few times but this never seemed to make much difference. So we were glad to see the back of it when we had the kitchen re-modelled.
Its replacement was manufactured by Bosch, which is one of the better quality appliance manufacturers. In the two years since, it’s done a very good job. If you’re in the market for a new dishwasher, check the professional reviews and maybe consider paying a bit more for at least a mid-tier model. We nearly went for a cheaper model – it was going to be built-in and so the ‘brand’ didn’t bother us – but I’m glad we didn’t.
2. A good dishwasher will clean just about anything
Because our old dishwasher was unreliable, we didn’t put anything too testing in it – just cutlery, crockery and glassware. Whereas we know we can rely on our new Bosch dishwasher, and so we put more challenging items in it. This includes pots and pans, and even oven trays with burnt-on food. Whilst it can’t always get rid of all burnt-on food, it does a pretty good job. As such, we run our dishwasher with a full load every day.
Not having to wash these things up manually saves a lot of time.
Just make sure that whatever you put in is dishwasher safe – many plastics are, but avoid putting anything wooden in like spoons or chopping boards. Knives can also lose their sharpness if they’re regularly put in a dishwasher – whilst this is fine for standard crockery, we tend not to put cook’s knives in the dishwasher.
3. You still need rinse aid and salt, even with all-in-one tablets
Most dishwasher tablets are ‘all-in-one’ nowadays, and include small amounts of rinse aid and salt. That should, theoretically, mean that you can ignore the low salt and rinse aid warnings in your dishwasher. But it doesn’t.
You should still fill these up, but many dishwashers will have some way of limiting how much is used. We use all-in-one dishwasher tablets from Smol(referral link) which are posted to us regularly. But I’ve also configured our dishwasher to use a smidgen of salt and rinse aid as well. As we have a smart dishwasher, I was able to do this using Bosch’s Home Connect app, but your dishwasher’s manual may have a way of doing it using some combination of buttons on the front.
4. You can just put the dishwasher tablet in the main body of the dishwasher, but you probably shouldn’t
Some experts say that you needn’t bother putting a dishwasher tablet in the dispensing tray. This is contradicted by the above YouTube video however, and I’m siding with that. The reason why you put the tablet in a dispensing unit is so that it’s released after the pre-wash cycle. The pre-wash is essentially a rinse to get rid of dirt on your plates before the main wash starts. If your tablet is in the main part of the dishwasher during this time, then the detergent will be partly consumed during the pre-wash, leaving less behind for the main wash.
The differences of opinion here suggest that the impact of not using the detergent dispenser is minimal. And, if your dishwasher has a broken dispenser, then you can still use it with the tablet in the main body of the dishwasher. One other suggestion is to consider putting the tablet in the dispenser, and some dishwasher powder in the bottom of the dishwasher. The powder will be used in the pre-wash, and then the tablet in the main wash.
5. The ‘auto’ or ‘standard’ programme is probably the best one
Most dishwashers offer a range of programmes, which optimise for either speed, cleaning or energy, or a balance of the three. For example:
Eco will prioritise energy efficiency over speed and cleaning. It’ll use the least amount of water and electricity, but won’t clean as effectively and will take a long time.
Intensive is the most powerful cleaning programme, which may be good for heavily soiled items or pans and oven trays with burned-on food. But it’ll use more energy and may take longer.
Rapid will be the quickest, but to do so it’ll use more energy and won’t give as good cleaning results.
Standard is a compromise of the above. It’ll offer the best balance of energy efficiency, cleaning and time.
If your dishwasher offers an ‘auto’ mode, then it should use its own logic to work out which programme is most appropriate. As long as you don’t mind some unpredictability about how long the dishwasher will take, this may be your best option.
Which? compares the various cycles and finds that the standard programme offers the best results overall, with the rapid programme the worst. But whilst the eco programme performs a little worse than standard, such programmes typically use significantly less energy – about 30%, and typically saving around £15 per year. There’s some hard data here, if you’re interested.. For the most part, we use Eco or Auto.
6. You need to clean your dishwasher regularly
Our Bosch dishwasher sends out an app notification via Home Connect when it decides it needs a clean – usually every couple of months. It also has a dedicated ‘Machine Clean’ programme. But if yours doesn’t, then you can still just run it empty on a standard programme with dishwasher cleaner in it.
However, just using dishwasher cleaner isn’t enough on its own. You also need to clean the filter regularly – Which? reckons weekly, but I tend to do it at the same time as the machine clean, so every couple of months. And, less often, it’s a good idea to clean the spray arms – they can get clogged up with bits of food which prevents them from working properly.
7. There’s no need to manually pre-rinse your crockery
If you have a good dishwasher, then you don’t need to pre-rinse your items before putting them in. That’s because your dishwasher will do this for you during the pre-wash cycle.
That being said, it’s best to scrape off any bits of food on your items before loading them in the dishwasher. We have a selection of silicone spatulas that we use for this, with any leftover food going in our food waste bin. Leaving lots of food on your items will clog up your dishwasher’s filter and spray arms more quickly.
8. Your dishwasher may work better if you run the hot tap first
This one depends on how your dishwasher is plumbed in. Generally speaking, in the UK and Europe, dishwashers are plumbed in with just a cold water feed, and then the dishwasher heats the water to the required temperature. But in the USA, there’s a higher likelihood that there’s a hot water feed as well.
This is worth bearing in mind. When you turn on a hot tap, the water is sometimes cold and takes a little while to warm up. So, if your dishwasher has a hot water feed, then it may initially be getting cold water at first. Therefore, if you run the hot tap before starting your dishwasher, the water that comes into the dishwasher will be warmer.
We’re in the UK, and our dishwasher and washing machine just have cold water feeds, so this doesn’t make a difference to us.
9. Use time delays to take advantage of cheap electricity
I know I drone on about our solar panels, but to make the most of them we tend to run things like the dishwasher during the day. Bosch’s Home Connect app lets you specify times when you get cheaper energy, and so it can default to running the dishwasher at those times. For us, this is during sunlight hours, but you may be on (for example) an Economy 7 tariff when it’s cheaper to run overnight.
The smart features of our dishwasher make this easier, but most should come with some kind of time delay programme. If not, you can make a regular dishwasher ‘smart’ using a ‘fingerbot’ and an energy monitoring plug.
Back in February, I started using nginx Proxy Manager to manage external access to the various web services that I host on my Raspberry Pi – namely, Home Assistant, calibre-web and Nextcloud. Nginx Proxy Manager (NgPM) includes Certbot, which is an automated tool for managing SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt, and it should automatically renew certificates every three months so that there’s always a valid certificate in use.
In practice, this doesn’t work on my NgPM install. I understand it’s a bug in an older version that has been fixed, but as I run NgPM as a Home Assistant addon, that bug fix hasn’t made its way downstream. Attempts to renew the SSL certificates through the NgPM web interface fail with unhelpful errors.
Hopefully, the Home Assistant addon package will get updated soon, and this won’t be a problem anymore. But in the meantime, this is the workaround that I’m using – manually interacting with Certbot on the command line to generate a certificate. This can then be imported into NgPM manually.
Step 0: access Certbot through Docker
If you have access to Certbot directly, you can skip this step.I don’t, and Certbot is no longer supported on Windows, so I’m using the version of Certbot that comes with NgPM.
As this runs in Docker, we need to open a shell session inside the Docker image, using docker exec -it addon_a0d7b954_nginxproxymanager sh. I had to run this as root on my system using sudo.
Step 1: request the certificate
Now we can interact with Certbot itself. Here’s the command to type:
certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges dns - d example.com
Let’s break this down:
certonly specifies that we just want the certificate – we don’t want Certbot to install this for us.
--manual tells Certbot that we want to manually authenticate the domain.
--preferred-challenges dns means that we want to authenticate using DNS, rather than HTTP – this is tricky to do when you’re using a reverse proxy
-d example.com is the domain that we want the SSL certificate for.
Step 2: add a TXT record to authenticate
If you use something like Google or Cloudflare for DNS, then you may be able to use a plugin to automate this step. I don’t, so here we create a TXT record on our DNS provider’s dashboard to authenticate the certificate. This will be something like _acme-challenge.example.com and will include a text string that Certbot gives you.
Once you’ve created the TXT record, my suggestion is to set a timer for 2-3 minutes, before pressing Enter to continue. DNS records can take anything from a matter of seconds to a few minutes to propagate, and if you try to continue too soon, the authentication will fail and you’ll need to go back to step 1. Trust me on this.
Step 3: download the certificate files
If the authentication is successful, then Certbot will have created two files for you. For me, these were something like:
As I was running Certbot from within Docker, the easiest way I found to save these was to type cat /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/fullchain.pem (and for privkey.pem) and then copy and paste the output into a file locally.
Step 4: add to Nginx Proxy Manager
If you’re using Nginx Proxy Manager and want to be able to use your new SSL certificate, then open the SSL Certificates tab at the top, click ‘Add SSL Certificate’, and then ‘Custom’. Don’t choose the Let’s Encrypt option; although these certificates were issued by Let’s Encrypt, you want to import them manually.
Give it a name – I usually put the name of the service and the month (e.g. Nextcloud Sept 2024). Upload the privkey.pem file as the Certificate Key, and fullchain.pem as the Certificate. Click Save.
Now, go to the Proxy Hosts tab, and choose the host that matches the SSL certificate that you’ve uploaded. Click on the three dots on the right hand side, and choose Edit. On the SSL tab, select the certificate that you’ve uploaded. And that should be it – try navigating to your domain to see if it’s working and check that the new certificate is in use.
No auto-renewals
It’s worth baring in mind that manually-issued Let’s Encrypt certificates won’t normally auto-renew. You apparently can use validation hooks to enable auto-renew, but this goes beyond my expertise.
I’m hoping that the package maintainer for the Nginx Proxy Manager addon for Home Assistant will issue a new release soon, which will enable me to auto-renew my certificates in future. If not, then I have my own guide to follow to manually renew.
Early in July, I needed some new Bluetooth headphones at short notice, and so I bought this cheap pair of Kvidio Bluetooth headphones from Amazon(sponsored link). At the time, they were around £16, but at time of writing they’re selling for £14.20, which is only a little above half their recommend retail price.
Now I’m no audiophile, although I do like headphones that at least make some effort with sound quality. And quality-wise, these sound like headphones in the £30-40 range. Which is pretty good considering their price. They’re nowhere near as good as some much more expensive headphones, but in terms of sound quality, they’re excellent value.
Two devices
One great feature is that they can be paired to two different Bluetooth devices simultaneously. I have my headphones paired to both my iPhone and iPad, and you can switch between the two sources just by starting playback on the other device; your other device will then pause. It supports Bluetooth 5.3, which is currently the second-newest release, and puts it ahead of my iPhone (5.0) and iPad (4.2).
You can, of course, use the headphones for calls, and there’s a microphone included. I haven’t tried recording sound from the microphone but people I’ve called whilst wearing them haven’t commented on any sound issues.
In terms of physical ports, charging is with a USB-C cable, and there’s a 2.5mm audio jack for devices that aren’t paired via Bluetooth. Note that the 2.5mm jack is input only – the microphone only works via Bluetooth. There are three buttons – the centre button pauses playback, and can be held down to turn it on or off. The other two can be used to skip tracks forwards and back.
Another sign of their cheapness is the sounds that the headphones make on startup (a very poorly digitised voice saying ‘power on’ and ‘connected’) and a loud beep when the pause button is pressed. More premium headphones will probably have more pleasing sounds.
Battery life
Battery life is claimed to be 65 hours, and I’ve only needed to charge them once since I bought them nine weeks ago. The long battery life is probably because these are noise-isolating headphones – i.e. they’re a snug fit around your ears to block out noise, but they don’t feature active noise cancellation. That also contributes to the lower price.
They’re quite lightweight – indeed, they don’t feel very solid although I’ve not managed to break them yet. As such, they’re quite comfy to wear, even for long periods.
For what they are, these Kvidio headphones are very good value for money. Sure, there are many better quality options out there, but I think you would struggle to find something else as good as these at this price point.
A common question that comes up in various social media memes is about how far north, south, east and west you have been in your life. Over the years, I’ve travelled a fair amount, although I’ve always lived in one of two neighbouring counties in Yorkshire. That means that the compass points below are all relative to Yorkshire.
I’ve tried to include different modes of transport as well.
Furthest north
Being in northern England, I’m already at a comparatively high latitude and so the furthest north I’ve been is St Andrews in Scotland. My mum has a friend from university that lives nearby, and so we’ve been a few times. The last time was in 2015 for a friends’ wedding, when Christine was pregnant. We went by train, as I had only just passed my driving test.
Again, being at a high latitude means there’s a lot of south. So far, I haven’t ventured beyond the equator. The furthest south I have been is St Lawrence Gap, on the south coast of Barbados. I went there with my parents on holiday in 2000; it was the year I turned 16, and also their 25th wedding anniversary.
Sticking to land transport, I have travelled by train from Agde on the south coast of France, all the way back up to York in a day before. It took 9 1/2 hours, although this was in the days before High Speed 1 had opened and so the same journey would probably be closer to 8 hours now. This was in 2003, again on holiday with my parents. The journey down was by car, but I had opted to join the holiday late as was after my first year at university. My parents were booked onto Motorail to travel back from the south of France to Calais, where you put the car on the train overnight and travel in sleeper carriages. Alas, it wasn’t possible for me to be added to the Motorail booking so I made my own way home.
As well as going north, I also went very far east in 2015. This was travel for work, and so far it’s the one and only time I’ve been abroad for work. The trip took me to Jordan and Oman, with layovers in Dubai and Bahrain. Specifically, the furthest east was in Muscat, the capital of Oman.
When it comes to driving, the furthest east I have been is probably Great Yarmouth, for Sci-Fi Weekender. Looking at a map, Great Yarmouth is slightly further east than some of the places I’ve driven to on holiday in France. And though I have caught a train into Italy before, this was a flying holiday in 2001.
Furthest west
Our trip to Barbados is the one time I’ve crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and so it’s also the furthest west that I’ve been. We stayed in a self-catering apartment in Holetown on the western coast.
If we zoom in on Europe, then Dublin was the most westerly place, but we flew there. We haven’t been back to Ireland yet but it’s somewhere that I’d like to see again.
Driving-wise, the furthest west I’ve gone is the peninsula of Quiberon in Brittany, France, where we went in 2022. As for by train, this would probably have been Gloucester, where I went on a PGL canoeing holiday in 1998.
All in all, I’m lucky to have been able to travel so far. I definitely want to go further, and I’m sure a list of places that I haven’t been to yet would make a good future blog post.
‘Good grief’, you may be thinking, ‘how can there be enough songs about Ikea to make a playlist?’. Well, I was aware of four, and found several more while creating this playlist. Seeing as it’s September, which is a time when many 18-year-olds are dragged around Ikea to get furniture, bedding and utensils before setting out on their own for the first time, I thought it would make a good theme.
Also, for some reason our eight-year-old has developed a hatred of Ikea. Which is a shame because we do need to go sometime soon.
“Ikea” by Grace Petrie. “It’s Wednesday evening in Ikea; There’s just two kinds of people here; And in my life, I have been both”. I can relate this, as I too have been both. It’s a sad little song from the phenomenal Grace Petrie, who I’ve blogged about before. Also available on Bandcamp.
“I Fear Ikea” by The Lancashire Hotpots. Sung to the tune of ‘The Wild Rover’, this laments the labyrinthine layout and that you have to pick the boxes out of the warehouse yourself, which then don’t fit in the car. The Hotpots are well worth listening to if you like musical comedy and have a northern English sense of humour, like I do.
“Ikea” by Jonathan Coulton. JoCo is probably best known for the song ‘Still Alive’ which plays during the credits of the game Portal. This is from his 2003 debut album, Smoking Monkey.
“Ikea” by Mitch Been and the Distractions. Mitch originally recorded this for BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show, and I seem to remember him playing it dressed as a Viking in an Ikea car park for the one-off BBC Two show ‘Ikea Drives Me Crazy’. Also available on Bandcamp.
“Ikea” by Urban Cone. This is the first of the songs that I found whilst researching this playlist.
“Ikea Date” by SWMRS. This was the second, where the singer is recalling a dream set in an Ikea.
“Ikea Strikes Back” by CLIFFDIVER. This was the third. I actually quite like this song despite not having heard of the band before.
“Ikea” by Suman Biswas. I actually own this CD and never realised this track was on it. Suman is a consultant anaesthetist who used to be part of a double act called the Amateur Transplants with Adam Kay. Also available on Bandcamp.
Last week, I wrote about HACS, the Home Assistant Community Store, which allows many additional community-provided integrations to be installed into Home Assistant. This week, I’m going to list those that I use.
DVLA Vehicle Enquiry Service
The DVLA Vehicle Enquiry Service allows you to monitor the publicly-available data about any UK car. When you set up the integration, you input a registration number, and it’ll download the data from the DVLA’s database. This includes useful information like when the car’s MOT is due, or when the car tax expires – these can be automatically added to a calendar widget on your Home Assistant dashboard.
HASS Agent
The HASS Agent integration allows you to use HASS Agent, a Windows desktop utility for managing Home Assistant. Once set up, you can configure automations to shut down your Windows computer, receive notifications, or monitor its state.
Nest Protect
We have a Nest Protect smart smoke alarm, which isn’t supported by the built-in Nest integration in Home Assistant. Google hasn’t made a public API for it, and so to integrate it with Home Assistant, you need to use this HACS integration. This is a good example of why an integration is in HACS and not Home Assistant core; setting it up requires you to log in to your Nest account in a private window, and then use Google Chrome’s developer tools to essentially ‘steal’ the cookies so that Home Assistant can hijack the same browser session.
Google has talked about adding the Nest Protect to its Google Home app for years, meaning that the standalone Nest app can be retired. But it hasn’t happened yet. When it does, perhaps there will be a proper API, and this will be available in Home Assistant core.
Timer Bar Card
This is a new card for your dashboard, which creates a progress bar for sensors that have a countdown. I use this for our Bosch dishwasher, so that as well as showing how long it has left, it shows visually how complete the washing cycle is.
Meross LAN
We have a pair of Meross energy monitoring smart plugs, and although they support Matter, to be able to do more than just turn them on and off, I need to use the Meross LAN integration. It supports both HTTP and MQTT communication, and will work both using Meross’ cloud MQTT servers and your own local MQTT broker, if you have one. Once set up, you can use the energy monitoring sensors in Home Assistant.
Octopus Energy
We get our gas and electricity from Octopus Energy (referral link, you’ll get £50 off your first bill if you sign up), and they have an API that any customer can use. The Octopus Home Asssitant integration lets you bring your meter data into Home Assistant, and you can set up automations to opt you in automatically to any energy saving sessions. The data is updated daily, unless you have a Octopus Home Mini which can provide realtime data for electricity, and half-hourly data for gas.
As well as offering some of the best unit rates for energy export, the fact that Octopus offers an API means that just about every UK geek that I know uses them. They also seem a lot easier to deal with than other energy suppliers we’ve used in the past.
On the one hand, this blog post is just some filler content. I’m trying to keep up with my schedule of a new blog post every other day and needed to write something, and so this will have to do. I’m writing this on a dull, wet Saturday afternoon and have next to no inspiration to write anything useful. What I write won’t rank highly on search engines, or get reposted lots of time on social media. In fact, you’re probably wasting your time reading this because I’m only writing it because I feel I have to, and not because I necessarily want to. After all, Google and other search engines like web sites that are updated frequently, and if I take another long break from blogging then my posts will drop down the rankings and no-one will ever visit.
On the other hand, sometimes it’s good just to write utter rubbish. It gets your brain going, and once you’ve written some utter rubbish and cleared your head, you’ll be warmed up to write something more useful. At least, that’s the theory, according to this book by Gillie Bolton and Russell Delderfield(sponsored link) that I read back in 2021.
I read the book as part of a postgraduate university course that I did, mostly during lockdown, which included teaching on reflective practice. This wasn’t one of the core books on the reading list, but it was recommended to me by, err, well, Russell Delderfield himself. He’s a former colleague of mine. Gillie Bolton, the principal author, is a big fan of writing anything for a few minutes, and recommends it at the start of each exercise in the book.
Does it work? Well, it’s not a method that I use much – most blog posts that I write have spent at least a few days in my head before I write them down. But when faced with the need to write something, I suppose it’s helped here. I’ve left the first paragraph in; if I was writing professionally, I’m sure that an editor would probably remove it and want me to SEO optimise the remaining text. That’s not going to happen here. This is going to be a completely un-optimised, un-edited stream of consciousness blog post that might be useful for some people. And sometimes that’s okay. I mean, it’s my blog after all.
