Look, it’s a blog post where the title is a question, and therefore, as per Betteridge’s law of headlines, the short answer is ‘no’. But that wouldn’t make for a very interesting blog post, and so I’ll attempt to offer some more nuance.
Most supermarkets, and many discount stores like B&M, have a hardware section which will have some smart home devices on sale. These are typically colour changing light bulbs, or smart plugs. They’re often relatively cheap too. So, should you buy them, and if so, what are you getting?
Firstly, what do we mean by ‘smart’?
I write a lot about smart home tech – my wife has decided that it’s my mid-life crisis, and, to be fair, I have a whole category of posts about Home Assistant. But I don’t think I’ve ever defined what I mean by ‘smart home tech’. So, for the purposes of this blog post, I’m defining smart home tech as devices that can be controlled using a phone, computer, smart speaker or a remote control.
I’m including those with a remote because you often see colour changing lights in these sections in shops, but they don’t use a standardised smart home protocol like Matter or Zigbee. People may pick these up, expecting them to integrate with a smart speaker, to find that the remote control only works over infrared. It’s with this in mind that recent Home Assistant releases have added support for infrared bridges, so that you can use Home Assistant to control infrared devices. However, you’ll need to buy an additional device, such as a Seeed Studio Xiao IR Mate, flash it with ESPHome, and find an integration that supports your remote. It’s possible, but all of this is at an early stage.
So, it’s best to avoid devices that just have a remote if you’re buying new. I have one (remote pictured), and getting it to work in Home Assistant is a long-term project.
They’ll most likely be Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
The first smart plugs I bought were Tuya Wi-Fi devices, and I imagine these devices will be too. Buying smart home tech that uses Wi-Fi has its advantages:
Almost everyone already has Wi-Fi at home
You don’t need to buy a separate hub
They’re usually easy to set up
However, there are some disadvantages that it’s worth considering:
Most Wi-Fi smart home tech uses 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, and not the 5 or 6 GHz bands, which may mean poor signal quality.
If you have lots and lots of Wi-Fi devices, then this can affect the performance of your network.
Wi-Fi devices need more power when idle than some other protocols.
Unless they’re Matter devices, and you have something that can act as a Matter hub, every command will be going via the internet.
Tuya devices tend not to work well with Apple Home.
That last point is why I disassembled my Tuya Wi-Fi smart plugs to re-flash them, initially with Tasmota and later with ESPHome. They now work without needing internet access, which is better from a privacy perspective, and means they’ll still work even if Tuya turns off its servers. Which, considering the likely billions of Tuya devices there are out there, is unlikely but not impossible.
Some of these smart home tech devices only use Bluetooth Low Energy. These can’t easily be connected to Google Home or Alexa, and for Home Assistant, you’ll need a Bluetooth proxy. And whilst you can control them with a phone, you’ll need to be in Bluetooth range to do so. Like with the infrared devices mentioned above, these are best avoided.
Better devices are available from elsewhere
Knowing what I know now about smart home tech, I wouldn’t have bought those Tuya Wi-Fi smart plugs. Instead, I would have probably invested in Zigbee equipment from Ikea with one of their hubs. But the need to pay extra for a hub was off-putting, as, at the time, I only wanted to control one device.
Nowadays, you can get Matter Wi-Fi devices, like these Meross smart plugs that I use. Most smart speakers include support for Matter so you don’t need to buy an additional hub. They work better with Apple Home, and don’t rely on a cloud service like Tuya. Matter is still a relatively nascent standard, but it’s improving all the time.
I’m less keen to recommend Matter over Thread to new users. For Thread devices to work, you need a Thread Border Router – a hub, in other words. Thread devices use less power, and form a mesh that avoids the performance issues of too many Wi-Fi devices, but the need for some kind of hub is a barrier to entry.
So, should you buy cheap smart home tech from supermarkets? If you’re careful, and stick to Wi-Fi devices, sure. Just be aware of the limitations, in terms of them needing internet access and the performance impact. You may be able to use something like tuya-cloudcutter to change the firmware to something that works locally, should you have the desire, technical knowledge and means to do so later.
To help our ten-year-old get to sleep, we play some sleepy music in their bedroom each night. I’ve now automated this, using Home Assistant and a Zigbee scene button, so a single button press starts the automation and plays the correct Spotify playlist. Here’s how I went about it.
The button I bought offers two modes: single press, and double press. You can therefore trigger different automations in response to whether the button is pressed once or twice. The more expensive button from Amazon also supports a third mode, which is a five second long press.
Installing Music Assistant
Whilst Home Assistant has a Spotify integration, in my testing I couldn’t get it to play the correct playlist on the Google Nest Mini smart speaker that is in our ten-year-old’s room. So, a workaround is to install Music Assistant, which is a related project that is also run by the Open Home Foundation. This can be installed as an App in Home Assistant; once installed, you’ll need to add Spotify as a source. Music Assistant quickly found all of my Google Cast devices.
Next, you’ll need to install the Music Assistant integration in Home Assistant – it may be automatically discovered for you. If you already have your Google Cast devices added in Home Assistant, then you will end up with separate Music Assistant entries for them too.
Creating a timer helper
So that the music doesn’t keep playing all night, we can create a timer that can stop the music after a given time period has elapsed. I did this by creating a Helper, using the type timer and the default time of 1 hour 30 minutes.
You can also simply put a time delay in your automation, but using a helper allows you to cancel the timer before it completes – handy if our ten-year-old falls asleep quickly.
Creating the automation
I set this up using the Home Assistant UI, but here’s the YAML code:
The automation listens for the button press, and when it’s pressed once, it starts the music playing and starts the timer. The playlist URL is from Spotify – if you find the playlist you want, go to Share and then Copy URL, this is what you need.
I then have a second automation to trigger when the timer stops:
This actually works slightly differently, and tells Home Assistant to stop playback on all media players in a room, rather than the specific media player specified in the first automation.
Finally, I made use of the double-press mode of the button to cancel the timer early:
As a little flourish, in my first automation I have an initial first step which uses Chime TTS to announce, via the speaker, that it’s time for bed. It then starts playing the music afterwards.
My version of the automation also turns on a nightlight, as well as starting the music.
Rationale
We’ve been playing bedtime music for our ten-year-old for many years, but what prompted me was the Gemini upgrade for our Google Home smart speakers. On the whole, post-upgrade, our speakers have been more capable and offer better answers, but where they’ve fallen down is asking it to play a specific Spotify playlist. We have one playlist that we have used for years, but when we ask Google Gemini to play it, it ends up playing something else (often a different one each time) which is similar but not the same. I’m sure any parent of a neurodivergent child has experienced what can happen when you try to pass off something that isn’t quite what the child is used to as being the same.
By building an automation, I can specify the exact URL of the desired playlist, so the correct playlist is played every time. And, having a button in their room means our ten-year-old can simply press it themselves when they’re ready for bed.
Having caught up with Doctor Who and Red Dwarf, next in line were the films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I hadn’t yet watched. My MCU watching fell behind about the same time as Doctor Who in autumn 2021 – we had watched Eternals in the cinema (and been rather disappointed) and watched Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on Disney+ whilst on a train to London.
This meant that, to bring me up to date, I had 11 films to watch.
Spider-Man: No Way Home
I think the reason why we fell behind on the Marvel films is that we missed this when it was in the cinema, and as it’s a Sony joint production, it wasn’t on Disney+. Back in 2021, our 10-year-old was still only five, and so too young to want to see these films in the cinema, meaning that we had to fit cinema trips in whilst they were at school. More than once, we also dropped them at the crèche at the Trafford Centre to watch a film there – sadly, the crèche closed in lockdown and never re-opened.
Anyway, like I said this wasn’t on Disney+ and so I paid to download it from Amazon. It’s good – bringing in the old adversaries from the previous pre-MCU Spider-Man films could’ve gone badly, but it’s done well and gives some of the characters a nice redemption arc. I also liked how Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men (Spider-Mans? Spiders-Man?) were handled.
With this one out of the way, we re-subscribed to Disney+ after a two year break to watch the rest.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
The first Doctor Strange film was good, but I was less keen on this one. To date, most Marvel films have a balance of action, tension and humour, and I felt this was lacking the humour that made other films more enjoyable. I realise that this was intended to be a darker and scarier film, but I didn’t enjoy it as much.
We haven’t watched many of the Marvel TV series on Disney+ but we did watch WandaVision in its entirety, and I would recommend doing so first if you haven’t seen it or this film. Whilst this film follows straight on from the previous Spider-Man film, by contrast, you don’t need to have watched it for this to make sense.
Thor: Love and Thunder
Thor: Ragnarok was good – and this was more of the same with a return for Taika Waititi as director. Waititi also voices Korg who provides much of the humour in the film. Russell Crowe gets to play a less serious role, which makes a nice change. I laughed out loud several times whilst watching this, and it was a nice pick-me-up after the darker Doctor Strange film before it.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
The first Black Panther film was excellent, and deserved its many award wins. There was no doubt that there would be a second film, but sadly this was complicated by the untimely passing of Chadwick Boseman in August 2020. As such, this second film starts with the mourning of the death of Boseman’s character.
What this film has in common with several of the other films that I watched is that it is an objectively good film – but it wasn’t quite as good as the films that had gone before it. I think some of the earlier Marvel films set the standards so high, that some of the later films seem weak in comparison despite still being better than many others.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
This film seemed to get rather poor reviews, and was the worst performing Marvel film at the time at the box office. Which is a shame, because I liked it. I felt that it did a good job of building on the previous two films. Almost the entire film takes place in the quantum realm, and so it’s even more CGI heavy than other Marvel films.
This was supposed to set up Kang the Conqueror as the next big baddy in the MCU, following Thanos. However, the actor playing Kang, Jonathan Majors, ended up being dropped after being convicted of assault and harassment, and so Kang doesn’t feature in future MCU films.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
I ended up seeing the first Guardians of the Galaxy film twice in the cinema, and enjoyed it both times. We saw the second one once – I don’t remember it being as good, but I think I enjoyed it.
The third one is more sombre, and starts with Rocket being critically injured. Throughout the film, there are flashback sequences showing Rocket’s back story, which helps to set up the adversary at the end. It’s structured well, and like all good Marvel films, has the right balance of action and humour.
The Marvels
A sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel, this sees Carol Dancers teaming up with Kamala Khan (aka Miss Marvel) and an awkward collaboration with Monica Rambeau. At the box office, it performed even worse than Ant-Man 3, and was one of the five biggest flops of 2023, losing an estimated $200 million.
The film jumps around quite a bit, and I can’t help but feel it would have worked better as a TV series. I feel like this would have given the writers more time to flesh out the storylines, and give more of the characters a back story. Admittedly, I didn’t watch the Ms Marvel TV series first. As a film, it’s okay, and I think the last third of the film is better, but it could have been much better overall.
Deadpool & Wolverine
Previous Deadpool and X-Men films have not been part of the MCU, but this one is, thanks to Disney buying Fox and re-gaining the film rights to the characters. It is, however, not a reboot, and so in common with the previous two Deadpool films, has Ryan Reynolds as the titular character with Hugh Jackman reprising his role as Wolverine.
Indeed, it doesn’t really feel like an MCU film at all, and has more in common with the Fox X-Men films, although the Time Variance Authority makes an appearance. There’s plenty of the fourth-wall breaking and swearing that you would expect from a Deadpool film, and there are plenty of cameos too. To date, it’s the most expensive MCU film and fifth most expensive film of all time, so it was probably a relief that this did rather better at the box office than some of its predecessors.
Still, I felt it wasn’t quite as strong as the other Deadpool films. Once again, objectively it’s a good film, but just not quite as good as the others.
Captain America: Brave New World
I didn’t watch the TV series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and so I missed how Falcon became the ‘new’ Captain America. However, I remember it being released in the cinema to surprisingly little fanfare – I suspect that previous mis-steps with Ant-Man 3 and The Marvels resulted in a reduced marketing budget.
On the whole, this is a slower film; the fight scene with the Red Hulk which features in the trailers doesn’t actually happen until the end of the film. I think I noticed the cinematography more with this one. It’s clear that it had a lower budget, but I suspect that, like previous Captain America films, it will set up future developments in the MCU.
Thunderbolts*
I was under the impression that the characters in Thunderbolts would all be new, based on the advertising I had seen at the time. Having now watched the film, I realised that most of the main characters have appeared before in the MCU, but generally in minor roles:
Yelena, who is Black Widow’s sister and was in the Black Widow film and the Hawkeye TV series (which I also haven’t watched)
John Walker, who was in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – again, I’m beginning to regret not watching this first seeing as how it sets up two of the MCU films
Red Guardian, who was also in the Black Widow film as Yelena’s (and Black Widow’s) father
Ghost, who was in the first Ant-Man film
The Winter Soldier, who has been in lots of previous MCU projects
The only major new character is Bob; I won’t say much more about Bob to avoid spoilers but he’s certainly an interesting character. I do wonder how he will be incorporated into future Avengers films.
I think it’s notable that even Kevin Feige acknowledged that Marvel had released too much content, with the films and TV shows, and that the comparatively poor box office performance of this run of films may have been because audiences felt like they needed to do their ‘homework’ by watching them all. It’s certainly a feeling I had, and whilst Thunderbolts was supposed to be a largely free-standing film, I feel like I missed out on some important context by not watching the TV series. And the point is that watching TV and films should be fun – it shouldn’t be work. Sure, for some, being MCU completists and watching everything in order will appeal to them, but having so many inter-linking films and TV shows has just become unwieldy.
So, Thunderbolts: whilst I lacked some of the context, I enjoyed it overall. Not the best, not the worst, but I can see how it sets up future films.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Like with Spider-Man, this is the second reboot of The Fantastic Four, following the film rights reverting to Marvel from Fox. I saw the first two Fox films, but I missed the first reboot; I gather I wasn’t missing much from the critical reviews.
And also like Spider-Man: Homecoming, this film doesn’t dwell too much on the Fantastic Four’s origin story; it’s a flashback sequence at the beginning. Instead, it gets on with a new story – Susan Storm is pregnant, which introduces a whole new dynamic of being a team of superheroes with a baby on the way. As a parent, I can relate – especially the final scene, where they struggle to clip in a car seat.
Compared to the run of Marvel films before it, and especially to the previous Fantastic Four films, this is much better. I liked the 1960s aesthetic, and felt that the story was much stronger.
And that’s it – I’m all caught up, until this month’s release of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Then, there’s Avengers: Doomsday in December, followed a year later by Avengers: Secret Wars. It is notable that the speed at which Marvel films are released has slowed down with only one film in 2024; I guess the poor performance of Ant-Man 3 and The Marvels resulted in a re-think.
I’m still getting on with my recovery, and I’m slowly regaining the ability to do tasks that I couldn’t do immediately after my fall. I’ve found that I go through four stages with tasks:
I can’t do it myself
I can’t quite do it myself
I can just about do it myself
I can do it myself confidently
I’m now eight and a half weeks post-fall, and most tasks are at stage 3 and 4 now. The things I can’t do myself involve stretching my arms up – namely, hanging washing outside. Indoors, I can use stepladders to help me reach things, but it’s more difficult outdoors.
There aren’t many things left in stage 2 – things I can’t quite do myself – but dressing myself was something I couldn’t do entirely myself until recently. My main issue was getting my head through t-shirts, and for this I needed assistance.
Stage 3 is when I can do something, but in a rather ungraceful way or with the help of additional tools. To take the example of dressing myself, I found that laying a t-shirt out on a bed, and then pushing my head through it like a cat going through a cat flap, seemed to work. Not graceful, but it gets the job done. Another example would be drying my back; I would lay the towel over the sink so that I could grab it with both arms.
It’s this third stage that has given me some insight into what it would be like to have a permanent mobility issue. I’m hopeful that I’ll make a full recovery, and regain all of my mobility (although it’s not guaranteed). But I appreciate for some, their limited mobility is the best that they can manage, and that’s where mobility aids and various life hacks come into play.
At the end of last month, my new MacBook Neo arrived. This is my first new computer since 2018, and specifically my first new Apple computer since 2010. In this (rather long) post, I’m going to go through my rationale for going back to Mac OS after 8 years on Windows, and review the computer.
My Mac origin story
I originally switched from Windows to Mac OS in 2005, with the purchase of a Mac Mini. The year before, I had bought my first Apple hardware device, an iPod Mini, and was sufficiently impressed to switch away from Windows. This first Mac Mini came with a PowerPC G4 processor, but it wasn’t long before Apple announced it would switch to Intel processors going forward.
I wrote severalblogposts at the time about how I was adapting to Mac OS (which was version 10.4, or Tiger, back then). There were some hiccups – I remember it being a pain to get Mac OS to recognise a UK PC keyboard layout, for example. But, on the whole, I preferred it, and my next two computers were both Macs too. This was an Intel MacBook in 2006, and an Intel Mac Mini in 2010.
The Windows interlude
By 2018, Christine needed a new laptop for a university course that she was completing part time. Christine is more of a Windows and Android person, and at the time, our budget didn’t stretch to having a laptop each. We were paying £800 for full-time childcare, on top of our mortgage – back then, there was no government financial support for parents of under 3s, apart from tax exemption through childcare vouchers.
Christine’s previous Windows laptop was very old – I helped her buy it in 2009 in the early days of our relationship, and my Mac Mini was also not doing well. So, with there only being enough money for one laptop, we bought a cheap Lenovo Ideapad running Windows.
Back to Mac
Fast forward to today, and we’re in a better financial position. Christine bought a new laptop earlier this year, as she’s started another university course. Meanwhile I’ve also had a bit of money to put aside, so that I could have my own computer again. That Lenovo Ideapad that we bought in 2018 has had a good innings, but it can’t be upgraded to Windows 11. Microsoft has just announced another year of extended support for Windows 10, but by that point, I’d already made up my mind that I needed a new machine. And as Christine now has her own computer, I decided that the time was right to go back to Mac.
The MacBook Neo fits my needs well. Bearing in mind that I’ve managed with a budget Lenovo laptop for 8 years (seriously, it cost less than £400 new), I don’t need a powerful MacBook Pro. I just need something with reasonable performance for blogging, researching and buying things online – i.e. the tasks that I find easier on a big screen with a full keyboard, rather than on my iPhone or iPad.
Having those Apple mobile devices also made choosing an Apple computer an easier decision. Apple devices (usually) work well together, with things syncing via iCloud and features like Handoff. That’s something that I’ve missed during my Windows interlude.
It’s clear that Apple has made some compromises to make the MacBook Neo a more affordable computer. There are two models – the standard one comes with a 256 GB solid state drive (SSD), and for £100 more, there’s a premium model with a 512 GB SSD and support for Touch ID. Otherwise, the two models are identical: same processor, RAM and features. I went for the 512 GB model, partly for the extra storage, but also because Touch ID makes authorising things much easier, and I’m used to it from my iPhone and iPad.
The processor in the MacBook Neo is from Apple’s ‘A’ family, normally found in its iPhones and cheaper iPads, rather than its computers. This first generation MacBook Neo has an A18 Pro processor, which is the same as the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max – so not even the latest version of the A series processors. It also only comes with 8 GB of RAM, which, as the A18 Pro processor is a ‘system on a chip’, can’t be upgraded. The dash to expand data centres for AI has meant that RAM prices have rocketed, and so whilst this is disappointing, it’s not surprising in a budget model like this.
The screen is 13 inches across, with a narrow bezel meaning that overall, it’s a small device. There’s a 1080p webcam, built in microphone, and speakers on either side of the keyboard. There’s no built-in optical drive or SD card reader.
Ports and connectivity
For wireless connectivity, there’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 – so not the latest versions of either but still fine. Unlike some of Apple’s newer devices, there’s no Thread radio for connecting directly to Matter and HomeKit devices.
Wired connectivity is another area where the MacBook Neo offers a compromise. Indeed, it’s the first home computer I’ve used since 1999 that doesn’t have a USB-A port. Instead, there are just three ports: two USB-C ports, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Both USB-C ports support Power Delivery (PD), so you can use either to charge using the included USB-C cable. However, it’s quite a short cable – about a metre long, and seemingly the same cable as my iPad Air that I bought in August. And, like with my iPad Air, there’s no AC adaptor, so you’ll need to provide your own USB-C PD adaptor that supports at least 45 watts, or buy one from Apple at extra cost.
A further compromise is that the two USB-C ports are not identical. The top one, closest to the screen, supports USB 3, so delivers higher speeds and can carry a DisplayPort signal for plugging in an external screen. The second one just supports USB 2, so it’s slower and can’t be used to plug in an additional external screen. This confused me at first as I plugged my docking station into the second one, and then wondered why it couldn’t see my external screen. So whilst my work laptop supports three screens, the MacBook Neo only supports two.
MacBook Neo Battery life
I’m writing this blog post on my MacBook Neo whilst on battery power, with a USB pen drive plugged in and copying several gigabytes of files off it. It’s been running for two hours, and still has 85% charge left. That’s pretty good going, and implies that it should be capable of all day battery life for mild to moderate usage. ARM processors, like those now used by Apple, are well-known for generally offering superior battery life to Intel and AMD processors. It’s also completely silent, with no fan – all the cooling is passive.
Most of the time, I use a laptop with an external screen, keyboard and mouse, but this MacBook Neo is particularly small and light and so I might use it on its own more often. It weighs just over a kilo, and is a full half kilo lighter than my previous Lenovo laptop.
Keyboard and trackpad
I like the MacBook Neo’s keyboard, which is apparently Apple’s ‘Magic Keyboard’. My normal keyboard is a mechanical USB gaming keyboard, which works fine with the MacBook Neo, but I wanted to test out its built-in keyboard. It’s good – decent-sized keys that are responsive and allow for quick and accurate typing. However, the small size of the MacBook Neo means that there’s no separate numeric keypad.
I’m less keen on the trackpad. My previous experience has been mainly with Lenovo trackpads, where a single tap anywhere on the left side registers as a left click. This multi-touch trackpad doesn’t support that by default – left clicks must be done in the bottom left, unless you enable a setting. But, it’s good for scrolling and zooming. Meanwhile, I’ll be using my Logitech mouse with it.
As for my external keyboard, which uses a standard UK PC layout, I didn’t have the same issues as I did back in 2005 with my Mac Mini. I was able to tell MacOS that it uses a PC layout, and can switch between layouts using the menu bar.
Mac OS Tahoe
The last version of MacOS that I used was version 10.11, El Capitan, so I’ve missed 9 major versions before version 26, Tahoe, which is what the MacBook Neo comes with. The changes are moderate – the Settings app looks more like the iPad version, and iTunes is now a series of separate apps like it is on iOS (something I wrote about 10 years ago). Something else that’s new is that some apps are now universal across iOS, iPad OS and MacOS, and so I’ve installed a few of these.
I deliberately didn’t opt to migrate my data from either my current Windows laptop or previous Mac Mini (which, besides, is tucked away in a drawer somewhere). However, I was given the option of migrating settings from my iPhone. This only took around 10 minutes, and meant that my iCloud account was set up and all my Wi-Fi settings copied across. After that, I could start installing my third-party apps.
MacBook Neo Pricing
I ordered my MacBook Neo three weeks ago, and so I got lucky; last week, Apple raised their prices by £100 for each model. That means the 256 GB model now costs £699, and the 512 GB model costs £799 in the UK.
As I work in education, I was able to take advantage of Apple’s lower education pricing, and so instead of £799, I paid £599 for my 512 GB model. Or rather, I will be paying that in due course – I was able to opt for interest-free credit with PayPal and will be paying £150 each month for the next four months.
At £699 for the 256 GB model, that’s a little over half the cost of the MacBook Air, the next model up after the Neo (since Apple seemingly don’t sell a plain vanilla MacBook anymore). So, for an Apple laptop, the MacBook Neo is cheap. There are, of course, cheaper Windows laptops out there; I can’t remember exactly how much Christine paid for hers but it was less. But Apple products usually attract a premium, and this MacBook Neo makes a premium product just that bit more affordable. The fact that it comes in a choice of colours also suggests that it’s aimed more at home users and students – I went for the blue one, to match my iPhone.
All of this has been written within 24 hours of me opening and unboxing my MacBook Neo, and so I’m sure I’ll have more to write about in the near future as I get used to it.
Here we are, into the latter half of the year. I’m continuing to recover, and this month sees us go on our annual summer holiday.
Recovery update
I’m slowly regaining mobility in my arms, following my fall, and I’m generally in less pain now. I’m still not fully back to normal, but may be closer to normal mobility by the end of the month. At least I’ve been able to help out with more of the housework; Christine and I normally split tasks relatively evenly, so a lot has fallen on her.
This month should also see me returning to work in the office on occasional days – until now, all my work has been at home.
I have a bone density (Dexa) scan coming up this month, as for someone to break both arms in the way I did at my age is unusual. I expect it won’t show anything concerning but my GP wants me to have one anyway.
Summer holiday
In the latter half of the month, once the schools have broken up, we’re off for a week’s holiday in North Wales. We’re actually staying in the exact same place as last year – it was nice, convenient, and there are plenty of things that we didn’t get to do last time. In fact, my potential to-do list has enough for a potential third holiday next year, although I doubt we’ll make it three years in a row.
Weather permitting, we’d like to go up Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), although we’ll probably be taking the train to do so. We also plan to go down some kind of mine one day, and visit the Welsh Mountain Zoo.
As I’m not currently permitted to drive, Christine will be doing all of the driving this time. Which part of me feels bad about; however, I did all of the driving on our 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 holidays, so maybe this will help balance things.
New tech
I mentioned at the start of the year that we’d be looking at getting a replacement laptop for home use. Christine bought one earlier this year, and now I have one on the way too so that we each have our own device. I’ll blog about it once it has arrived and I’ve had a chance to play with it.
May’s update was short, as I was mostly recovering, whereas this month I have been able to do a little more, including returning to my standard blogging pattern of every other day. Still, here’s a few things that didn’t result in a blog post of their own:
Tom Scott’s creator advice
Tom Scott got asked by Wired Magazine to answer questions from content creators, and it’s well worth watching (video embedded above and linked here). In particular, I agree with his suggestion of always having a ‘buffer’ – i.e. content that is ready to go live and scheduled. Tom notes that, at one point, he had several months of videos ready – until lockdown happened in 2020. That reduced his ‘buffer’ down to a few weeks.
I almost always write posts in advance – indeed, I’m writing this specific section a couple of weeks in advance, although I expect I’ll be adding the sections below later. That meant that I still had a few posts go live when I was in hospital last month, and meant that there was only a relatively brief break in my regular blogging schedule. Normally I have a buffer of at least three posts, but if I know I have some busy weekends coming up, I may write posts up to three weeks in advance.
Well this ended up being a right old rigmarole this year. My renewal quote came out at 67% more expensive than last year, at over £700. And, unfortunately, I found it difficult to find any other quotes that were meaningfully cheaper with the same or better cover. Ultimately, we ended up remaining with our existing insurer but with some slight tweaks to the policy, including a higher excess, to bring the quote down a bit.
I assume the reason for the higher prices was because our car is electric, which insurers still seem wary of. The various reminder emails from the comparison web sites I used last year, for our previous diesel car, were quite a bit lower. Still, our electric car passed its MOT this month with no work needed, and it’s proving to be much cheaper to run. And in any case, it’ll only be Christine driving it this year, although I remain the car’s registered keeper.
Thankful for air conditioning
It got rather warm last week. Whilst we were outside of the amber and (rare) red extreme heat warnings, I’m glad that we bought our portable air conditioning unit last year. Unsurprisingly, my review has also been one of the most popular blog posts on here in recent weeks, picking up quite a few hits from search engines.
As that model isn’t in stock in Amazon, it hasn’t resulted in me getting lots of commission payments, which is a shame. Though it’s a noisy unit, getting our bedroom cooled down before we go to sleep at night has made a big difference to our sleep quality.
More films on Letterboxd
When I wrote about Letterboxdearlier this month, I had managed to tick off 378 films. That’s now up to the pleasing number of 444.
Some of those are films that I have watched this month, but most are because I’ve remembered watching a film or found it whilst searching through old emails or tweets. Even more pleasingly, 187 of those films are in my diary, meaning that I’ve recorded the date when I’ve watched it too. So far, 24 of those 187 films are from this year.
I’m sure there are yet more films that I’ve watched but forgotten about, but I’ve logged the vast majority.
On Sunday, we took advantage of the lovely weather to visit the RHS Garden at Harlow Carr, near Harrogate. This was my first day out following last month’s fall, and was a family occasion as we met up with my parents there.
We’ve been to Harlow Carr before – we had membership of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in 2023 and made a brief visit that June, and we’d also been in September 2012. We didn’t cover the whole garden this time and instead focussed on the areas that had changed since our last visit.
History of Harlow Carr
The RHS web site has a more detailed history, but it has been open as a visitor attraction since the 19th Century. Back then, it was a spa resort – Harrogate was well-known as a spa town and its history is detailed in the Royal Pump House Museum in the town centre. We visited in 2013. However, as Harlow Carr is about a mile and a half out of Harrogate town centre, it wasn’t as popular as other spas in the town and closed in the early 20th Century. However, its bath house remains and is now Grade II listed.
During the 1940s, the site was taken over by the Northern Horticultural Society, and re-opened to the public in 1950. This organisation merged with the RHS in 2001, and is now one of the five gardens operated by the RHS across England.
The Gardens
Compared to the flagship RHS garden in Wisley (which we visited in 2023), Harlow Carr is significantly smaller. You can probably spend slightly more than half a day here though.
The garden is split into several areas. On arrival, you enter the Main Borders, which are one of the garden’s original features, before dropping down to the stream at the bottom of the valley where more aquatic-friendly plants grow. A woodland area sits on the other side of the valley, and this includes a play area for kids.
In an area that wasn’t open when we first visited in 2013 is a kitchen garden, with edible plants, and there is a newer sub-tropical garden too. At the top is the Alpine House – an unheated greenhouse which is home to hardy plants that typically live above the tree line.
There’s certainly lots to see, and almost every plant is labelled should you wish to get ideas for your own garden.
Accessibility
As mentioned, Harlow Carr sits in a valley, so there are slopes. Whilst there are steps, there are usually alternative sloping routes, but not all paths are paved. Wheelchairs and mobility scooters are available to hire. There are accessible toilets, and one of the car parks features a Changing Places toilet.
There are three car parks; when we arrived at about half 10 on Sunday, one of these was already full and the second almost full. Two of these car parks offer electric car charging on the RAW charging network, and these are a mixture of ‘standard plus’ Type 2 AC chargers and rapid CCS2 DC chargers with plenty of chargers available.
If you’re able to arrive at Harlow Carr without a car, then there’s a 30% discount available on entry. The number 6 bus runs every 20 minutes from Harrogate bus station (hourly on Sundays), which is next to the railway station. Alternatively, there’s a mapped walk from Harrogate station to Harlow Carr which passes through the valley gardens and woodlands – it’s about 1.5 miles. Trains to Harrogate are normally half-hourly from Leeds and hourly from York, with an LNER service from London King’s Cross every two hours.
As the crow flies, Hornbeam Park station is closer, but it actually takes longer to walk from there to the garden so you’re better going to Harrogate.
Entry is free for RHS members, and there are a limited number of £1 tickets for those on certain benefits if booked in advance. We decided to re-join the RHS, for which you can use Tesco Clubcard points to part-pay. Tickets are cheaper mid-week, and in the winter, and are cheaper when booked online in advance.
Nearby
The main entrance to Harlow Carr is home to a branch of Betty’s, which is where we had lunch. Weetons Food Hall is about a 10 minute drive away, and has a good butchers and deli counter as well as plenty of nice foodie things to buy.
I mentioned at the start of the month that I was considering buying a new mouse, as my existing Arteck mouse was on the blink after not quite four years. I also noted “I’m sure I’ve had Logitech mice that have lasted far longer in the past” – and so, I’ve bought a Logitech mouse as its replacement.
Specifically, I’ve bought a Logitech M720 Triathlon mouse(sponsored link), thanks to an Amazon gift card from my aunt and uncle for my birthday last month. Like the Arteck mouse before it, this is a multi-device mouse – as the name Triathlon suggests, it can connect to up to three devices. It includes a mini USB dongle for RF mode, and can then connect to two additional Bluetooth devices – I’ve connected it to my iPad. I normally use the RF mode as I believe it’s more energy efficient than Bluetooth, but clearly Bluetooth mode is useful for devices that lack USB ports.
Additional buttons
As well as the standard left, right and clickable scroll wheel buttons, there are five additional buttons on the mouse:
Below the scroll wheel is a toggle button which affects how fast the scroll wheel moves. If you press it down, then it’ll scroll with a tactile click through lines at a time. Release it, and it’ll scroll faster and more freely through longer documents, but with less accuracy.
Above your thumb, there’s a button that defaults to navigating forwards in a web browser
Next to that, unsurprisingly, is a back button
Below that is the button to select which device you want to connect to.
Finally, at the bottom of the mouse below your thumb, is the ‘gesture’ button
When you first plug in the USB dongle, you get a popup to install the Logi Options+ app. This allows you to customise these buttons, and update the firmware on the mouse and dongle. It’s optional, and it’s only available to install on Windows and MacOS – as far as I can tell, on Linux, buttons 2, 3 and 5 can’t be configured to do anything.
Battery
The Arteck mouse had a built-in rechargeable battery, with a USB-C port to charge it. Charging was only needed about every six months, and you could still use the mouse whilst charging.
This Logitech Triathlon mouse, by contrast, takes a single AA battery, and a single-use alkaline battery is included with the mouse when you buy it. It claims to offer two years of battery life on one battery.
Inside the battery panel is a storage hole for the USB dongle. If you have other Logitech devices, like a wireless keyboard, then one dongle will be sufficient to connect to both – indeed, it can connect to six Logitech wireless devices.
Overall, the Logitech Triathlon mouse is good. It’s slightly heavier than the Arteck mouse, but offers the additional lower thumb button and control over scrolling. I found it slightly more comfortable to use as well. Whilst I prefer the rechargeable built-in battery, I have plenty of rechargeable AA batteries to use when the provided single-use battery runs out.
