Neil Turner

Playlist of the Month: Ikea

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Screenshot of the Ikea playlist on Spotify.

‘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.

As usual, you can follow the playlist on Spotify.

  • “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.

My chosen HACS integrations

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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.

Sometimes it’s good just to write utter rubbish

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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.

Apple AirPods Pro as hearing aids

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Screenshot from Apple showing the AirPods Pro hearing aid features

I don’t tend to follow Apple’s new product announcements very closely anymore, but yesterday’s announcement that Apple AirPods Pro 2 will be able to act as medical-grade hearing aids interested me.

I’ve been a hearing aid user for almost two years. My hearing aids are really basic, standard issue NHS over-the-ear models. They work, and are loaded with an audio profile that amplifies the frequencies where I need the most assistance, but they’re basic. There’s no Bluetooth, and I have to take them out to use a headset. They don’t even have rechargeable batteries – my local NHS hospital has to send me packs of little button batteries every few months.

Hearing aid costs

Whilst I get them free on the NHS, were I to lose one, I would need to pay £75 for a replacement (so £150 for a pair). And that’s pretty cheap as far as hearing aids go. For context, basic hearing aids from Specsavers start at £499 a pair if bought privately. Top-of-the-range hearing aids cost closer to £3000 a pair. I guess the high prices are partly to do with the cost of being certified as medical devices and limited number of customers.

With this in mind, the £230 cost of a pair of rechargeable AirPods Pro 2 is fantastic value for money for hearing aids. Especially as they will work well with an iPhone and support Bluetooth – which is something that would otherwise cost four times as much. And, it’s a lot more accessible – it took me several months following my hearing test to get a referral via my GP to audiology, whereas these will be available to buy on the high street without any gatekeepers.

Replacing regular hearing aids

Before we get too excited, Apple’s press release notes that the hearing aid functionality will be for mild to moderate hearing loss only. That includes me at the moderate end of the hearing loss spectrum, but for people with significant or profound hearing loss, regular hearing aids will still be necessary. There will be a ‘hearing test’ feature included in iOS 18 to tune the hearing aid functionality of the AirPods Pro. However, I doubt it’ll be as accurate as an audiogram that has been produced by a qualified audiologist in a sound-proof room using professional equipment.

I also think that others will find it confusing if you’re talking to them whilst wearing AirPods. Most hearing aids are designed to be relatively discreet – the visible bits of mine are clear plastic with the electronics hidden behind my ear. Whereas it’s pretty obvious that someone is wearing AirPods.

But on the whole, I think this is a massive game changer for people with hearing loss. Having hearing aids so easily and cheaply available could help so many people. I might have to consider getting myself a pair.

Mr Fitzpatrick’s Temperance Bar

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A photo of the outside of Mr Fitzpatrick's Temperance Bar in Rawtenstall, Lancashire

At one time in northern Britain, there were hundreds of ‘temperance bars’ – essentially pubs that didn’t serve alcohol. Nowadays, just one of the original temperance bars survives: Mr Fitzpatrick’s in Rawtenstall, Lancashire. We called in on the August Bank Holiday Monday, on our way to Gawthorpe Hall.

The Temperance Movement

The Temperance Movement came about during the Industrial Revolution in the 19th Century, as a way of steering workers away from the perils of drink. In England, the movement started in Preston in 1835 and spread across the newly-industrialised northern towns and cities. Followers of the temperance movement took a pledge to stay away from all alcohol, whether that be spirits, beer or cider. Therefore, temperance bars offered alcohol-free social spaces for the movement’s followers.

Temperance bars would offer a variety of flavoured non-alchohlic drinks, such as Sarsaparilla, Blood Tonic and Dandelion and Burdock. In our household, we’re heavy consumers of Vimto, and this fruity blend also came out of the Temperance Movement. Back in 2013, we went to an exhibition all about the Temperance movement at the People’s History Museum.

Mr Fitzpatrick’s

Nowadays, Mr Fitzpatrick’s is better known as a brand of cordials, which are on sale at many independent shops across the north of England and include the aforementioned flavours. They’ve hung on to this one remaining temperance bar, in the Lancashire town of Rawtenstall, where you can try their full range of cordials mixed with still or sparkling water. They also do milkshakes, and a decent food menu – we called in for lunch and our eight-year-old thought it was amazing. Upstairs, there’s a model railway suspended from the ceiling.

Whilst Mr Fitzpatrick’s is the last surviving of the original temperance bars, it’s an idea that seems to be coming back around. There’s a BBC piece about the ‘rise of the sober bar’ from 2019, and I’d argue that the various dessert bars that have popped up in majority Muslim areas in the UK are a response to the need for non-alcoholic social spaces. Many young Generation Z adults don’t drink, regardless of religious affiliation, and it’s nice to have bars that offer a wide range of interesting soft drinks. Even if you’re not teetotal, it’s a bit depressing when you’re not drinking and all there is on offer is cola or lemonade.

Accessibility

Being a very small and old building, accessibility isn’t great – the toilet is up a narrow, steep staircase although accessible facilities may be available at the nearby Rawtenstall Bus Station. Free parking for up to three hours is available nearby but you’ll need a Parking Disc (Sundays and Bank Holidays are free all day). Regular X43 Witch Way buses run towards Burnley and Manchester.

Rawtenstall is the northern terminus of the heritage East Lancashire Railway, which runs from Bury.

HACS – community components for Home Assistant

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A screenshot of the HACS web site

Whilst Home Assistant is already the most flexible smart home platform, with hundreds of built-in integrations, HACS is an optional additional tool to add even more integrations.

HACS stands for ‘Home Assistant Community Store’, and it allows you to download and install custom components from the wider Home Assistant community. It’ll also keep them updated for you. Home Assistant has long supported so-called ‘custom components’, which allows functionality beyond the standard built-in integrations, but HACS makes finding, installing and updating these much easier.

A couple of weeks ago, version 2.0 of HACS was released. This includes a new addon for those using Home Assistant Operating System or Supervised mode, which makes it easier to install. Updates are now handled via Cloudflare for improved performance.

As well as additional integrations, HACS also allows you to install different cards for your dashboards, and different themes. For example, Mushroom is a set of replacement cards which some prefer the look of.

Compared to the built-in integrations, which are maintained by the Home Assistant project, those in HACS are maintained by the community. This means that they may not be tested as rigorously as the official integrations, and so it’s important that you have regular backups in case things go wrong. Also, expect more bugs.

As for why integrations are only in HACS and not Home Assistant itself, there are a few reasons:

  1. It’s a niche service that may only apply to one country, or is of limited wider use.
  2. It uses scraping – this is where there isn’t a publicly available API for the service and so it scrapes the contents of web pages to work. These aren’t permitted in core Home Assistant integrations.
  3. It’s still in active development and not ready to be merged into the main Home Assistant release.
  4. It duplicates the functionality of a core Home Assistant integration but does so in a different way.

I’m currently using eight custom integrations through HACS, and I’ll discuss these in a later blog post. If you’re a Home Assistant user and haven’t already checked out HACS, have a look to see if you can extend its features even further.

A visit to Gawthorpe Hall

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A photo of Gawthorpe Hall, a National Trust property in Padiham near Burnley in Lancashire.

Burnley is known for many things, including its football team, its history as a mill town, and the birthplace of Sir Ian McKellan. But it’s also home to Gawthorpe Hall, a stately home connected with the mill trade, which is now in the care of the National Trust. We went to visit it last week on the August Bank Holiday Monday.

Technically, Gawthorpe Hall is in the neighbouring town of Padiham, although the two pretty much flow into each other. There has been a building on the site since the 14th century, although much of the hall dates from the 16th century. It was then extensively rebuilt in the 19th century, and passed into National Trust ownership in 1970. Prior to the National Trust taking it on, it had been in the Shuttleworth (later Kay-Shuttleworth) family throughout its history. Over the years, the Shuttleworths hosted a number of famous historical guests at Gawthorpe, including Charlotte Brontë and King George VI.

Inside Gawthorpe Hall

Inside, there are three floors to explore. Downstairs there’s the dining room, with a balcony, and the drawing room which has some very detailed plasterwork on the ceiling. There’s also the usual shop in the entrance hall.

Upstairs is home to the Gawthorpe Textiles Collection, run by an independent charity that was founded by Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth, the last of the Kay-Shuttleworths to live at Gawthorpe. Rachel was a keen collector of textiles from around the world, and some samples from the collection are on display across the middle floor.

Up to the top floor, and there’s a family room, which is home to some toys for visitors to play with. There’s currently an exhibition about Gawthorpe Hall in the 1600s, including its links with the infamous Pendle Witch Trials. There’s also the Long Room, which spans the whole of one side of the house, and the Huntroyde Room; a bedroom with a four-poster bed.

The gardens and parkland

Outside, there are some formal gardens, although they’re not very extensive and situated around three sides of the hall. The grounds beyond are more extensive, although much of these were closed off due to damage from Storm Lilian. The gardens and grounds are normally open from 8am until 7pm at this time of year. There currently isn’t a café; I gather that there used to be one in one of the outbuildings but it looks like it’s been closed for some time.

Accessibility

The gardens and grounds should be accessible to all, and there are disabled toilets (but no Changing Places toilet). There are steps up to the hall, although once inside a wheelchair can access the ground floor, and an interactive computer workstation to view images of the upper floors. There is no lift.

The nearest railway station is Rose Grove, which is a 35 minute walk; Burnley Barracks and Burnley Manchester Road stations are a little further away. There are apparently frequent buses to the end of the drive from Burnley bus station, and then it’s around 10 minutes walk up the drive.

Although the National Trust own Gawthorpe Hall, it’s operated by Lancashire County Council and so it doesn’t take part in any free entry promotions. However, National Trust members do still get in for free, as do holders of a National Art Pass.

Heritage Open Days

Over the next couple of weeks, various historic places will be open for free for Heritage Open Days, and this includes Gawthorpe Hall on Saturday 14th September. Normally, entry is £7 each for adults (under-18s are free), so if you’re not a National Trust or National Art Pass member, this is an opportunity to explore the hall for free. However, maybe consider arriving by public transport; the car park on site is small, and we struggled to find a parking space when we visited.

Joining all the Brits and Brazilians on Bluesky

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The tl;dr version of this post is that I’m now considering Bluesky to be my primary public social media presence, with Mastodon a close second and Threads a distant third, and here are the links to my profiles:

Last month, Elon Musk basically tried to incite civil war in the UK on Twitter (which he calls ‘X’). This seems to have been the last straw for many Brits who were still active over there and who don’t consider themselves to be right-wing, and so there’s been another exodus. This time, Bluesky seems to have been the main destination, and so I’m now reconnecting with lots of people that I used to follow on Twitter before I basically quit almost two years ago in November 2022. Since then I’ve been mostly hanging out on Mastodon.

Now, I like Mastodon; especially its decentralised nature and that many servers are run by the community with donations. It’s also got some good and mature third-party clients like Ivory, which I use. But it still feels like a niche social network that attracts a more technical audience. And it’s notable that, given the choice between Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads, most Brits leaving Twitter haven’t chosen Mastodon.

The Brazilian Twitter exodus

Over the past couple of days, there’s been another mass exodus from Twitter, this time in Brazil. However, this is because Twitter is now blocked in Brazil. In a nutshell: Brazil’s previous right-wing president, Jair Balsonaro, was ousted in an election; there was an attempted coup by his supporters, and then a Brazilian Supreme Court judge demanded that Twitter suspend the accounts of those suspected of being involved in the coup whilst they were under investigation. Instead of complying, or even challenging the court order, Elon Musk closed Twitter’s office in Brazil and sacked its staff. So, the supreme court judge gave Twitter an ultimatum to appoint a representative in Brazil; Twitter refused, and so it’s now blocked. As in, the whole web site is inaccessible from within Brazil.

Consequently, Twitter users in Brazil have been looking for a new home, and most seem to have landed on Bluesky (although some have gone to Mastodon too).

If these statistics from Statista are right, then Brazil made up the sixth biggest audience on Twitter, just behind the UK. Which means that Elon has alienated two of his top ten biggest markets in the space of a month.

Oh, and it gets worse. It turns out that Brazil was home to many large fan accounts on Twitter; many of these posted in English and so it wasn’t immediately obvious that they were based there. So they’re gone from Twitter too. At this rate, Twitter is going to become like the alt-right social network Gab, just with some brands wondering where all their engagement has gone.

Galaxy brain

Before his purchase of Twitter, Elon Musk had a reputation for being a forward-thinking successful entrepreneur. Tesla was a pioneer in all-electric cars, SpaceX has contracts with NASA, and his Starlink network allowed people living in remote areas to access satellite broadband internet.

But he’s completely ruined Twitter. I’m not sure whether it’s some kind of galaxy-brained scheme that mere mortals like myself are unable to comprehend, or whether he’s actually not that intelligent but has lots of money to throw around to see what sticks. Or somewhere in the middle. Either way, he seems to keep making unforced errors that seems to make no kind of sense business-wise. It’s worth noting that, despite being probably one of the world’s richest people, he took on a lot of debt to buy Twitter, and those loans will be accruing interest. It can’t be long before Twitter goes bankrupt, can it?

As for my Twitter profile? It still exists, mainly so that I don’t lose my username. But my profile is private, and I’ve deleted my avatar and background. I haven’t had the Twitter app on my phone for over 18 months now.

Business models

My only worry about Bluesky is its business model. In the long term, how is it going to make money? Are we going to start to see adverts, like on most other social media? Will there be a premium tier?

On Mastodon, I pay small monthly contributions via Patreon and Ko-Fi to the overall project and server owner respectively, and that suits me well. And Threads is part of Meta. I’m assuming Blueksy is backed by venture capital money, but at some point it’s got to be able to make money on its own terms. I just hope it’s done in a way that won’t massively alienate its user base.

Playlist of the month: 90s Summer

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A screenshot of the 90s Summer Songs playlist on Spotify

We’re getting to the end of another month, and so with just a few hours remaining in August, here’s this month’s playlist. I appreciate that the weather hasn’t been particularly summery this week (stormy more like) but this month’s theme is songs that remind me of the summer holidays of the 1990s. You can listen along on Spotify if you want.

  • ‘Steal my Sunshine’ by Len. This Canadian band ended up being something of a one-hit wonder with this upbeat song 25 years ago.
  • ‘Waiting for Tonight’ by Jennifer Lopez. Oooh, a JLo song for the second month running. I listened to a lot of Galaxy 105 (now known as Capital) during the school holidays and this was in regular rotation.
  • ‘Save Tonight’ by Eagle Eye Cherry. This was everywhere in the summer of 1998, from the half-brother of Neneh Cherry. Whilst a second single and an album did well, you may be surprised to know that a further five albums followed – I certainly was.
  • ‘Lovefeel (Tee’s Club Radio)’ by The Cardigans. The dance remix of that song from Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, courtesy of American DJ Todd Terry. It was some time later before I heard the slower original.
  • ‘Staying Out For The Summer’ by Dodgy. Dodgy had been around since the early 90s, and this song was originally released in 1994. Their 1996 single ‘Good Enough’ was what brought them fame, however.
  • ‘Cecilia’ by Suggs, Louchie Lou & Michie One. The original was by Simon & Garfunkel, but Suggs from the band Madness released this speeded up version with some additional reggae vocals in 1996.
  • ‘In The Summertime’ by Shaggy & Rayvon. We’re in 1995 now and another cover, this time of the Mungo Jerry classic with additional rapping from Shaggy.
  • ‘Twist and Shout’ by Chaka Demus & Pliers. Another cover! Reggae music was big in the mid-90s and I prefer this to the original.
  • ‘Wake Up Boo’ by The Boo Radleys. A mainstay of the student club nights that I went to in the early 2000s, but originally from 1995. They’re regarded very much as a ‘one hit wonder’ despite having released eight (!) studio albums, the most recent of which came out last year.
  • ‘Macarena (Bayside Boys Remix)’ by Los Del Rio. And we’re back in remix territory. The original came out in 1993, but it was the 1995 remix by the Bayside Boys, and subsequent dance moves, that made this song so popular. Sorry, but I actually like this song.

A return trip to the National Coal Mining Museum

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A photo of Caphouse Colliery at the National Coal Mining Museum for England.

Last weekend, I took our eight-year-old to the National Coal Mining Museum for England. It was our second visit, the first being in 2017 which I wrote about at the time. Our eight-year-old was only one then, and so we couldn’t go down the old mineshaft, but this time we could.

This is now the third mine that we’ve been down in as many months; last month, we went to the one in Beamish, and in May we went to the one in the Black Country Living Museum. Caphouse Colliery, the mine at the National Coal Mining Museum, is different as it’s primarily a deep mine, and so the tour enters and exits using a lift in a 140 metre deep mine shaft. There is a drift entrance to the mine as well, but it’s mainly there for emergency evacuations now and isn’t part of the tour.

Mining ceased at Caphouse in the 1980s and it became a museum shortly after. So, whereas Beamish and the BCLM are set in the early twentieth century, here the mine tour covers the full history from the early 1800s right up to the more mechanised latter times. Though coal is no longer mined here, the mine is still regulated as an active coal mine and all battery powered devices have to be surrendered before the tour – hearing aids being the only exception. As such, I don’t have any photos from down the mine.

Back on the surface, we had a look at the indoor exhibitions, about miners’ lives and a special exhibition marking forty years since the Miners’ Strike. Around the colliery, you can see the old steam engine that powered the lift mechanism, and the Pithead Baths, where miners would start and end their shifts with a communal shower. There was also a cage with some canaries – the literal canaries in a coalmine.

We then caught the narrow gauge paddy train which takes you to the other end of the site, where there are new stables for horses and ponies. Ponies were still used down coal mines as recently as 1994, and so when the museum opened, it served as retirement stables. Whilst the ponies there now are rescues, none of them have worked down a mine.

As it was the summer holidays, there were some additional activities on for kids. A large sandpit was outside the Hope Pit to recreate a beach; when miners eventually became eligible for a week’s paid holiday, thousands would go to various UK seaside resorts like Blackpool, Skegness and Cleethorpes.

We had a good time; in retrospect, I’m surprised it’s taken us so long to go back, as it’s only just over half an hour’s drive away.

Accessibility

The underground mine tour is mostly accessible to wheelchair users, but the no batteries rule applies. Some of the buildings aren’t accessible due to their age. There are accessible toilets but the nearest Changing Places toilet is a ten minute drive away. More information is available on the web site.

Parking is available on site; it’s normally free, but there’s a £5 charge in summer (which in turn gives free use of the paddy train). There’s an hourly bus service between Wakefield and Huddersfield which calls at the museum.