Neil Turner

Moving my email to Fastmail

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Screenshot of the Fastmail interface

I’m now using Fastmail (referral link) for my email. My email address remains the same, but all email sent to it will go to Fastmail’s servers.

Fastmail isn’t a new company; as per Wikipedia, it’s been around since 1999. That makes it older than Gmail, which was founded in April 2004.

Moving away from Gmail

I’ve had a Gmail account since June 2004, back when it was invite-only, and, for the past ten years, I’ve been re-routing all my email through Gmail. Having all my email in one place makes things easier, and Gmail’s spam and management tools are better than the standard ones that you get from a generic IMAP server.

So what’s changed? Well, some time in the very near future, Gmail will no longer pull email from other accounts. Until now, email sent to any email address on this domain would be periodically picked up by Gmail using POP3, and would then appear alongside any messages sent directly to my Gmail address. There was a short lag time, which was annoying, but it made things easier overall. That POP3 email pickup is what is going away.

The Gmail apps for mobile devices will still support connections third-party email accounts using IMAP, instead of POP3, but the emails would remain on the original email server. This isn’t really what I want, as I’d then have to use my email server’s storage space and spam tools. Plus, those emails wouldn’t show in Gmail’s web interface.

Switching to Fastmail

A couple of weeks ago, Anil Dash kindly shared a referral link for Fastmail as an alternative. The key factors that I like about Fastmail are:

  • You can use your own domain relatively easily
  • You can easily import all your old emails from other major platforms

So, once I’d signed up, I amended the DNS records for this domain to point to Fastmail’s servers, and then imported 22 years of emails from Gmail. It also brings across your contacts, and has a Calendar which can maintain bi-directional synchronisation with Google Calendar. The import took just a few minutes overall, and although it did mean I had over 12,000 unread messages, it was easy to bulk-mark these as read.

Using Fastmail

Fastmail’s web app works well – it’s fast, clean, and offers a three-pane mode as pictured in the screenshot. Since I use Outlook for work, this feels the most comfortable for me. There are official apps for mobile devices, and there are setup guides for most common desktop and mobile email apps, if you want to use IMAP. There’s a lot of configuration options, including customisable gestures on the mobile apps.

You can also continue to have email from other accounts, like Gmail and Outlook.com, forwarded to Fastmail, and be able to send messages using these other addresses.

Something that is important to note is that Fastmail does not offer a free tier. If you sign up, you can get 30 days for free – and Fastmail won’t demand any card details upfront if you do. After that, an individual plan is normally £4.50 per month, or £54 if you pay for a year upfront. If you use my referral link, then you can get 10% off in your first year.

Moving away from American Big Tech

Fastmail isn’t an American company – it’s headquartered in Australia. That being said, many of its servers are still US-based. Recent events in the USA have meant that I have been reconsidering how much I rely on American companies – especially those that provide services to the US government. Moving my email away from Gmail is one way that I can take back control of my personal data.

Another option to consider is ProtonMail, which is based in Switzerland. ProtonMail offers a free tier, and you can also bring your existing domain over. Its cheapest paid plan is cheaper than Fastmail, at £3.19 per month, but only offers 15 GB of storage instead of Fastmail’s 50 GB. ProtonMail has a greater focus on privacy and encryption, but I’ve seen others comment that it’s not as easy to use.

Yet another feature killed by Google

13 years ago, Google killed off Google Reader, and over the years around 300 products and services have been killed off by Google. I shouldn’t be surprised that yet another feature has gone. There’s a summary post from jwz.org about other options, but this is what I’ve gone with.

Whilst I doubt Google would ever kill off Gmail as a whole, having my own domain means I can port my email to a new provider without changing my email address. Especially as I’ve had my primary email address for 23 years now. In the UK at least, we can port our mobile phone numbers between operators; having your own domain means you get the same flexibility for email too.

Just the Browser

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Screenshot of the Just the Browser web site

Do you sometimes feel like AI features are now just foisted upon us, whether we want them or not? It feels like almost every app now has some kind of AI feature added – even Notepad on Windows 11 isn’t immune, with Microsoft adding its Copilot to it.

Most web browsers have some AI features now. Edge, being a Microsoft product, includes a quite number of AI features, as does Google Chrome. Even Mozilla Firefox isn’t immune, and there has been some pushback against this. Some people have been choosing alternatives such as Waterfox – a Firefox fork with these features removed. That being said, Firefox will have an AI ‘kill switch’ in future versions.

The good news is that most of these features can be disabled in these core browsers, and this is where Just the Browser comes in. You can download a script that will automatically disable these features in Edge, Chrome and Firefox for you. It works on Windows, Mac OS and Linux, and it’s open source. If the script doesn’t work, there are other options available for each individual browser. It’s also worth noting that, at least under Windows, your user account needs to be a system administrator to run these scripts.

If you’re curious, you can see which exact features are disabled by Just the Browser in each browser. The list is longest for Edge, and shortest for Firefox, which does at least attempt to care for its users’ privacy. It isn’t just AI features that get disabled; it includes any kind of sponsored content or telemetry. But it means that you can carry on using your preferred browser and not need to switch.

A return trip to Cannon Hall Farm

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A photo of the start of a ferret race at Cannon Hall Farm

Last weekend, we went back to Cannon Hall Farm, which is in the so-called ‘Tuscan hills‘ surrounding the town of Barnsley. We’ve been many times before, the most recent of which was in 2024, and I last wrote about it in 2017.

Since that visit, Cannon Hall Farm has seen a number of developments. All of the outdoor play areas have been renovated, with new equipment installed, and there are a couple of new indoor attractions. These include a reptile and minibeasts room, and a mammal house, where the lights are kept low as most of the mammals are normally nocturnal. In other words, it’s now a farm with a small animal zoo tacked on. I suppose they had to get a zoo license to have meerkats, which have been there for many years now, and have leaned into it. On the plus side, it means that there are more indoor areas, and so it’s still a good place to visit even if the weather isn’t great.

Still a farm

Despite the new additions, Cannon Hall Farm is still fundamentally a farm. There are still plenty of opportunities to see farm animals, and this time of year is a good time to visit. Many of the sheep have newborn lambs, some of which are wearing woolly jumpers donated by the public. We saw quite a few little bouncy bundles of joy on our visit.

There are also regular sheep and ferret races (pictured above) throughout the day. Get there a few minutes before the races start, and you can get a free coloured ticket; if that ticket is drawn after the race, then you win a free day pass for a return visit. That’s assuming that your chosen colour of ferret doesn’t decide to fall asleep for the duration of the race.

The huge soft play gym is still there, which again is good for rainy days. There are also more food options available; as well as the Hungry Llama inside the soft play gym and the White Bull at the entrance, there’s now a dog-friendly café called the Lucky Pup, also at the entrance.

Expanding into other media

Nowadays, Cannon Hall Farm is well-known nationally, thanks to various TV programmes on Channel 5. They’re also very active on Facebook, offering ticketed live streams for events such as lambing season.

The Nicholson family, who have owned the farm since the late 1950s, have now written three books and a cookbook, all of which can be bought at the farm or online. There’s also a wide range of branded merchandise, including an official set of Top Trumps.

Accessibility

As mentioned, Cannon Hall Farm is on a hillside, so the site is on a slope. However, almost everything has step-free access. Wheelchairs and mobility scooters are available to hire. Assistance dogs are welcome, but ideally with some form of identification – it is, after all, a farm, and so untrained pet dogs shouldn’t be brought along as they may upset the animals.

There is a Changing Places toilet next door at the Cannon Hall Museum (which I also wrote about in 2017), however, the museum is shut until next month. Having one on site, as well as a dedicated quiet space, would be really good additions to improve accessibility for people with more profound disability needs.

There is a £3 charge to park on site; it’s pay and display (cash and cards accepted), although you can also pay in advance online when purchasing tickets. If you want to visit by public transport, there’s the number 94 bus from Barnsley bus and rail interchange which runs every two hours to the nearby village of Cawthorne. From there, it’s about half a mile off-street walk through the Cannon Hall Country Park.

Entry prices vary; midweek is usually cheaper than weekends. Carers get in free with a paid ticket, and Max card holders can (at the time of writing) get up to two free tickets – one each per paid ticket.

Pancake day

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Today is Shrove Tuesday, which in Christian cultures falls the day before Ash Wednesday and the start of the 40 days of Lent. We’re not Christians in our household, but we do like an excuse to have pancakes, and so Shrove Tuesday is known as pancake day in our household (and I’m sure many others). Pancakes have been traditionally eaten on Shrove Tuesday as a way to use up foods that households wouldn’t eat during lent.

We normally make pancakes our main meal on Pancake day, having a mixture of savoury and sweet toppings. Savoury toppings are usually cooked meat or cheese, and for sweet toppings, usually one or more of maple syrup, honey, lemon juice, sugar and Nutella. We make our pancakes from scratch.

This year, the start of Lent broadly coalesces with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. During Ramadan, Muslims tend to fast during daylight hours, with the first meal after sunset typically called Iftar. However, whilst Easter (in the Gregorian calendar) is on the 5th April, Eid al-Fitr, the festival at the end of Ramadan, is likely to fall on or around the 20th March. The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, as opposed to solar Gregorian calendar, and so the exact date of Eid al-Fitr varies. Depending on local customs, it may start on the night of the first sighting of the crescent moon in Saudi Arabia, or the following day.

Finally, writing a blog post about Pancake Day is an opportunity to share the above video clip from the TV series Maid Marian and her Merry Men. If you’re not familiar with the show, it was written by Tony Robinson (better known as Baldrick in Blackadder and, more recently, the presenter of Time Team on Channel 4), and the song is performed by Danny John-Jules, better known as the Cat in Red Dwarf. Whilst the music in the series was very much of its time, it holds up well. It’s a re-telling of the Robin Hood story, except the Merry Men are led by Maid Marian, with Robin Hood portrayed as being something of wet blanket.

Ponhog laptop backpack review

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A photo of the Ponhog laptop backpack

I was in need of a new backpack that can carry a laptop, and so I bought this Ponhog laptop backpack (sponsored link) a few weeks ago. Here’s my review of it, but firstly a bit of background.

I’m a hybrid worker, and when I go into the office I tend to commute by train. In the near future, I’m likely to need to transport my work laptop around more often than I do now. At present, I have a lightweight backpack designed for hiking and cycling, which can hold my iPad, my lunch bag, and not a lot else, so I have a separate laptop bag.

I’d rather not have two bags – I don’t want to be that guy who has to grovel to our IT department because I left the laptop on the train. So, I needed a backpack which could also safely transport a laptop, and this Ponhog laptop backpack seemed to fit the bill.

Overlooking the name ‘ponhog’

Firstly, I’d like to address the elephant, or rather, ‘hog’ in the room: frankly, I think ‘ponhog’ is a terrible name for a luggage brand. Whilst the word ‘ponhog’ itself isn’t in Urban Dictionary (a baseline test for any brand – looking at you, Nonce Finance), ‘pon’ just means ‘on’ and ‘hog’ means ‘pig’.

I don’t have any better suggestions myself, but I’m sure there are many potential brand names that are better than ‘Ponhog’.

The outside of the backpack

There are a number of different styles and colours available. I went with blue, which I mainly chose because I liked the colour, but it also appears to be cheaper than some of the others. The fabric feels like a plastic-y denim, which gives it some water resistance. It certainly hasn’t let in any of the rain that we’ve had in recent weeks whilst I’ve been using it, so that’s good.

There are five zipped compartments accessible from outside. There’s the big main one (more on this later), a smaller one which is behind some black shiny fabric, a small flat one on the front with reflective material, and two tall side compartments. I particularly like the side compartments, as I can pop a water bottle in one, and a reusable coffee cup in the other, and they can be completely enclosed inside. There are also two thin side pockets that don’t zip up, one on each side.

Inside the backpack

It’s possible to open the backpack so both the top and bottom of the main compartment are completely flat. Apparently this is so that you can have it open for inspection at airport security. There are Velcro flaps on each side that you can close if you don’t want to open it fully.

The main compartment is pretty big – it claims to have a 30 litre capacity. At the back are two padded pockets – a larger one for a laptop, and a smaller one for a tablet. A Velcro strap helps to anchor the devices in these pockets in place, although it doesn’t fit snugly around the device like some dedicated laptop bags do. As such, it’ll protect your devices somewhat, but not as much as one with a tighter strap. Also, whilst I could fit my iPad Air into the tablet pocket, I could only do so without a case on. But there’s plenty of room in the laptop pocket for a really chunky laptop and a larger tablet.

The front compartment with the black shiny fabric has four little sub-pockets. I like these – it means that I can sort the various gubbins I carry around with me into each pocket. This includes spare headphones, charger cable and plug, hearing aid batteries, a pen, some hand cream and a power bank. It makes finding things a lot easier, and it’s handy that it’s separate from the main compartment.

What it’s like to wear the backpack

All this would be for nothing if this backpack wasn’t comfortable to wear, so thankfully it is relatively pleasant to have on your back. Overall, it is heavier than my old backpack, which was made of much lighter material, but it also seems more waterproof. The back panel is made of a breathable mesh, and as well as the shoulder straps, there’s a cross brace so that you can transfer some of the weight to your ribcage.

The dimensions mean that it is (just) small enough to be classed as a ‘small under seat bag’ on airlines such as Jet2 and Ryanair, so you could have this in addition to your hand luggage that goes in the overhead locker. Indeed, there’s a strap on the bag that allows you to hook it on top of a rolling case, which is handy. I actually wish I’d taken this to Athens rather than a small tote bag, as it would have made packing to go home much easier.

Whilst I’m primarily using this bag for daily commuting, I can see it being very useful for international travel, should I need to fly somewhere again. I’ve had it for about six weeks as I write this, and have taken it to and from work a few times. Overall, I’m pretty happy with it; it’s the first time that I’ve bought a backpack online rather than in a shop where I can try it on first. So, I’m pleased that it’s been a worthwhile purchase.

Friday 13th

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Today is Friday 13th, and because it’s February and not a leap year, this is the first of three Friday 13ths that we’ll experience this year. The next one will be in March, and then again in November. It’s the first time since 2015 that we’ve experienced three Friday 13ths in one year. Indeed, last year we just had one in June, and next year there’ll just be one in August – which will be the day after the likely date for A-level Results Day.

Friday 13th is seen as unlucky by superstitious people, although only since the 19th century, according to Wikipedia. In the early twentieth century, a book called Friday the 13th was written by TW Lawson, which may have popularised the superstition. The fear of the number 13 is apparently called triskaidekaphobia, and this is much older dating probably to the middle ages. The fear of Friday 13th specifically is known as ‘paraskevidekatriaphobia’.

I guess any mention of Friday 13th can’t go without a nod to the Friday the 13th film franchise. The film series alone runs to 12 instalments, from 1980 to 2009. I’m not a big horror fan so I haven’t watched any of them.

Almost all schools in England break up today for half term. So, these past few weeks have seen a stream of emails from various visitor attractions that we’ve previously visited, advertising various special events starting today. This includes the next major exhibition at the Science & Industry Museum in Manchester, which is all about space and based on the new Horrible Science series on CBBC. I guess we’ll be going to that soon, especially as the Power Hall has now re-opened following a six year renovation.

Olsen & Smith 1800W Smart Ceramic Heater Review

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A photo of the Olsen & Smith 1800W smart ceramic heater

My latest new smart home device is this little 1800W ceramic heater from Olsen & Smith (sponsored link). It’s only around 20 centimetres tall, but is able to output a decent amount of heat quite quickly.

We bought it because our ten-year-old’s room is consistently colder than the rest of the house. I suspect it’s because the radiator in there is under-powered, and hidden away behind a cover, but it’s typically 2°C colder than our bedroom next door. So far, our mitigations against this have been extra blankets on the bed and a hot water bottle, but I decided that we needed to do more than just keep the bed warm.

Using the ceramic heater

This ceramic heater is designed to be placed on a desk, or similar – it’s not really suitable as a free-standing heater as it’s quite short. It comes with a 1.5 metre cord.

There are a series of touch buttons on the top to control the heater. It has a digital thermostat, so you can set a target temperature and have it heat up to that level. There are four heat modes: low, medium, high and eco, which determine the power output. Low drops it down to 900 watts, and high uses the full 1800 watts of power. Meanwhile, eco mode automatically adjusts the power output to maintain the target temperature. It also includes a built-in timer, allowing it to automatically switch off after up to 12 hours.

It’s very quiet – it’s stated to run at between 28 and 56 decibells. I’m partially deaf, so I’m not the best judge of how noisy something is, but I could barely hear it. It’s certainly much quieter than our air conditioning unit that we use in summer, and quieter than a typical desk fan turned up to full speed.

In terms of its effectiveness, the heater seemed to warm the room up pretty quickly, as measured by its own thermostat. I have a separate ThermoPro thermometer in the room which measured a smaller but meaningful increase in temperature, but the heater isn’t pointing towards it.

Smart features

The ceramic heater uses Tuya as its smart home platform. As regular readers will know, I’m not a fan of Tuya, but I accept that it’s simple to set up, especially if you don’t have lots of other smart devices. Indeed, on opening the Tuya app, Tuya auto-discovered my new heater and asked to configure it. The app controls are easy enough to use, and mirror the controls on the unit.

The key reason why I wanted to buy a smart ceramic heater was to be able to automate it in Home Assistant. Our ten-year-old tends to only use their bedroom for sleeping, so the heater doesn’t need to be on much. Thankfully, when I reloaded the Tuya integration in Home Assistant, it appeared as a climate device. Home Assistant’s controls are limited to setting the target temperature, and turning it on and off; the controls for setting timers and heating power aren’t exposed. But being able to turn it on and off with an automation is possible, and so I have it come on around an hour before bedtime to warm the room up, and then switch off.

A peculiarity with this ceramic heater is that you can link it with Alexa via the Tuya app, but not Google Home. Which is odd; every other Tuya device I have owned supported both. Thankfully, I could add it to Google Home via Home Assistant, so our ten-year-old can use voice control with it.

A bargain

Finally, I want to highlight that this little ceramic heater cost just £20 from Amazon. There are a few cheaper ceramic heaters, some of which simply plug straight into the wall. But they tend to have lower power output, and aren’t smart. As much as I’d rather have something with local control, a smart ceramic heater for £20 is excellent value for money.

How to: multiply two entities in Home Assistant

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A screenshot of a YAML Template Sensor in Home Assistant that multiplies the values of two other sensors.

Suppose you have two entities in Home Assistant, and you want to multiply them together to produce a third entity that always shows the product of these two entities. Here’s how I went about it.

One of Home Assistant’s built-in integrations is Template. These Template entities derive their status from other entities in Home Assistant, and appear in the Home Assistant web interface as Helpers. You can do some fancy things with these, but all I want to do is multiply the value of one by the other.

Calculating export income

In my case, I wanted an entity that shows how much I’m earning from exporting excess energy generated by my solar panels, once our home battery is full. The amount exported is available as an entity in the SolaX Modbus integration that I use, expressed as a value in kWh. I also use the Octopus Energy integration with Home Assistant, and this has an entity showing my current export rate in £ per kWh. So, multiplying these together will show how much I should be making when I export.

This should be possible to set up as a Helper in the Home Assistant interface, but I personally found it easier to do so in YAML. Also, this is where I was able to ask ChatGPT to help write the YAML code. After tweaking its output to fit my needs, here’s what I’m using:

template:
  - sensor:
      - name: "Export income"
        unit_of_measurement: "£"
        state: >
          {{
           (
            states('sensor.solax_today_s_export_energy') | float(0) *
            states('sensor.octopus_energy_electricity_[mymeter]_export_current_rate') | float(0)
            ) | round(2)
          }}

The name is a human-readable name that I have given to the entity. The unit of measurement is optional – Home Assistant will accept just about anything you type in here, but as the amount will be currency I’ve put in the £ sign.

The ‘state’ bit is where I needed help from ChatPGT, as this isn’t really standard YAML here. We specify the first entity, and add '| float(0)'. The ‘float’ is necessary to provide a floating point number. The * character represents multiplication, and then we repeat the same notation for the second entity. Finally, we specify ‘| round(2)‘ so that the resulting entity rounds to two decimal places. Which, when dealing with an amount of money, makes sense as 0.3333 of one pence isn’t really worth knowing about.

As with any changes to Home Assistant’s YAML configuration, you’ll need to restart Home Assistant after setting this up. You’ll then have a nice new helper, in my case ‘sensor.export_income‘ to plop somewhere on your dashboard. Personally, I have it as a badge which appears once the value is higher than 0. Which, at this time of year, isn’t very often, but we did have a nice enough day a couple of weeks ago to be able to export some electricity.

An overview of other people called Neil Turner

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An amalgamated screenshot of web sites about other people with the name Neil Turner

I suppose one problem with having a (relatively) common first name and surname, is that I’m not the only person called Neil Turner. If you do a Google search for ‘neil turner’, this blog is currently not the first result, although it has been in the past.

When I first joined Facebook, almost two decades ago, I was invited to two separate groups for people called ‘Neil Turner’. And I have even met someone in person called Neil Turner, albeit with a different middle name. And I get plenty of email to my Gmail address, which is derived from my name, meant for other people whose surname is Turner and who has a first name beginning with ‘N’.

So who are these other Neil Turners? Here’s a quick overview of the ones that I have found.

Neil Turner, the British author

The number one result on Google at present is a British author called Neil Turner, who writes financial thriller books after a career working at hedge funds in London and Frankfurt. Three of his books have been published so far.

Neil Turner, the Canadian author

I came across the Canadian author called Neil Turner because several people emailed me, expecting me to be him, to invite me to attend various book club meetings. Indeed, a few months ago I added a note to my contact page advising people that I am not the same person.

This Neil Turner is also an author of thrillers, focussing on the lawyer Tony Valenti. So far, there are 10 books in the Tony Valenti series.

Neil Turner, the retired Labour politician

If you go to the Neil Turner page on Wikipedia, nowadays you will see a disambiguation page which links to five other pages. However, in the past, it would have taken you straight to the former MP Neil Turner, who represented Wigan for the Labour party from 1999 to 2010. He was briefly a junior minister in Tony Blair’s latter days as Prime Minister, but announced in 2009 that he would not stand for the next election.

The Wigan constituency remains a Labour seat, with Lisa Nandy having retained it since the 2010 General Election.

Neil Turner, the photographer

Previously, Neil Turner the photographer was also a number one result on Google for ‘neil turner’. This person is based in Bournemouth and is a professional photographer who also has a blog. I suppose that makes him the opposite of me in a way, as I’m more of a blogger than a photographer, although I do neither professionally.

Neil Turner, the former rugby league player

Back to Wikipedia, and there is a former Rugby League player called Neil Turner. He played for Hull FC and Doncaster, as well as spending time as a police detective (if an unsourced statement on Wikipedia is true).

Neil Turner, the Australian politician

It seems that more than one person with my name has gone into politics as there was a politician called Neil Turner in Queensland, Australia. He served time as the Speaker of the Queensland Legislative Assembly in the mid-1990s, but he died in 2011.

Neil Turner, the Australian scientist

Another Australian namesake on Wikipedia is Dr Neil Clifford Turner, although he was born in the UK. He is an agricultural scientist who looks at how crops can adapt to dryer landscapes as a result of climate change.

Neil Turner, the retired British researcher

At the nearby University of Leeds, there’s Dr Neil A Turner, who researches cardiology and is based at the university’s medical school. He’s now retired but contributed to some published papers as recently as 2024.

Neil Turner, the British co-author

There’s a book called Toby and Sox, about an autistic boy and his therapy dog, which was authored by Vikky Turner and co-authored by her husband, Neil.

Neil Turner, the architect

There’s a Neil Turner who works for a Durham-based architecture practice called Howarth Litchfield. The company is currently involved in renovating Redcar station on the north-east coast.

Neil Turner, the footballer

There was a footballer called Neil Turner who died before I was born. He was born in Scotland, which figures as ‘Neil’ is originally a Scots-Gaelic name, and played for a number of teams in Scotland, England and later the USA.

Neil Turner, the British professor

Yet another member of academic staff with my namesake. Professor Neil Turner researches project management and supply chains at Cranfield University, and teaches on their research MSc programme in project management.

Neil Turner, the psychotherapist

If I lived in London and needed counselling, then I could make things really confusing by visiting a psychotherapist with my namesake.

There are many more people out there with the same name as me – these are just the people that came up on the first few pages of searching. What is notable is that almost all of these people are older than me; I think by the time I was born in the 1980s, the name ‘Neil’ was starting to go out of fashion. Indeed, it’s no longer in the top 100 baby names and so I can’t even track its popularity.

None of these people are especially famous. When I decided to write this, I was aware of three of them (the British politician, the British photographer and the Canadian writer) but mainly because these are people that I have been confused with in the past. I was unaware of the others until I researched this.

Also, should I ever decide to write a fiction book, I might need to write it under a pseudonym, or use my middle name. Having three published authors with the same name would get unnecessarily messy.

Mealie – self-hosted recipe manager

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A screenshot of Mealie, the self-hosted recipe manager

I’ve been playing with Mealie recently. It’s a recipe manager, so you store all of the recipes that you have saved from various web sites and search them easily. You can also add your own recipes, including photos, and include a star rating.

Mealie isn’t the first recipe manager that I’ve used. Until now, I’ve used Mela as a recipe manager. Mela was developed by the same developer as Reeder, which I use for RSS feeds. Mela is really well-designed, and I’ve used it happily for three years, but it’s for Apple devices only. Whilst I use an iPhone and an iPad, I don’t use an Apple desktop anymore and Christine has an Android phone, so I’ve been looking for a cross-platform replacement.

Installing Mealie

Mealie is self-hosted. That means that it runs on a device that you own, rather than a web service, so you’ll need a spare device that’s always on to run it. A Raspberry Pi should be fine, and indeed that’s what I’m using. The other requirement is that the device runs Docker – again, I already had Docker up and running on my Raspberry Pi. If you use Home Assistant, you can install Mealie as an add-on.

There are two versions of Mealie, with different database storage systems. The easiest to set up is the one that runs on SQLite, which should be fine for a reasonable number of recipes and up to 20 users. If you’re planning to host a much bigger Mealie instance, with more users who all need to access Mealie simultaneously, then you can opt for a version which runs on PostgreSQL. This version should also offer better search, but will require more resources and may need a more powerful computer than a humble Raspberry Pi.

Adding recipes to Mealie

Once installed, and you’ve created an admin user, it’s time to add recipes. Mealie can import from a number of other recipe managers, although sadly not from Mela. So, I’ve been manually re-adding recipes as I go – I’ve made a start, but we have over 300 in Mela.

Recipes can be imported from a given URL, analysed from an image or typed in manually. You can also copy and paste the HTML of a web page if Mealie isn’t able to connect to a given URL; this is what I have done with some Mela recipes that I’ve exported as HTML.

Once the recipe has been imported, Mealie will then parse the ingredients. This allows it to build up a database of ingredients, so you can tell it what you have and it can suggest recipes from your library. It also allows you to adjust quantities in the recipe, if you want to make double or half, for example. By default, the parsing uses natural language processing (NLP) but if you have a paid OpenAI account, you can link this and have ChatGPT do the work too. I believe you can use other AI models if you wish, including self-hosted ones.

For the first few recipes, Mealie prompted me to decipher some ingredients that it didn’t understand. Although it has a ‘British English’ ingredient list, it’s not complete, and so I had to add some items. You can also added aliases for items, and over time, it got better at parsing recipes.

Phone apps

There are apps available for Mealie, but there isn’t an ‘official’ one as far as I can tell. On iOS, I’m using one called MealieSwift, which offers most features for free and the rest for a one-off £10 payment. Others are available. Once I’ve got more recipes migrated over, I’ll see about an Android app for Christine’s phone.

If you want to be able to access Mealie outside the home, then you may need to set up a reverse proxy – I use Nginx Proxy Manager for this. The Home Assistant Addon supports Ingress, so you can also access it remotely through the Home Assistant web interface if installed that way. Speaking of Home Assistant, there’s a built-in Mealie integration that you can setup once you have Mealie installed. Mealie offers a powerful API, and so you could potentially build some interesting automations with it.

Meal planning

As well as storing your recipes, you can use Mealie to plan meals, by allocating recipes to meals in a calendar. You can take that further and also use Mealie to develop a shopping list, which will include the ingredients for the recipes you have added to your meal plan. Mela does this as well, and integrates with the native calendar and reminders features on iOS and OS X. The MealieSwift app that I use doesn’t do this, but it should be possible using Mealie’s API.

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