Well this weather is rather lovely

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A photo of some trees with plenty of blossom

It’s been a particularly good Spring, hasn’t it? Lots and lots of sunshine, warm daytime temperatures, and almost no rain. It’s almost like the lovely Spring that we had in 2020, but without the lockdown restrictions. As such, we’ve been able to enjoy it a bit more.

As solar panel owners, it’s been particularly welcome. In March, our solar panel system saved us £50 by not needing to import energy from the grid, and we exported another £25 of excess electricity. And this month, despite us not being halfway through yet, we’ve already exported £25 of electricity. Overall, we’ve certainly exported far more than we’ve used from the grid. However, we’re having some issues with our smart electric meter not reporting usage, and so I’m not able to properly quantify this yet.

Although it’s been cold at nights, we’re still using less gas and electric than we would typically use at this time of year thanks to the nice weather. It’s been warmer during the day, and we’ve been able to dry more laundry outside too. We haven’t used our heated drying rack for a few weeks now.

Energy prices

Speaking of energy prices, I’m hoping that this will mean that Ofgem’s Energy Price Cap will go down when it changes again in July. The warmer weather should have reduced the use of gas central heating, and the increased contribution of solar energy will have reduced the amount of gas that’s burned to generate electricity. Seeing as it’s mainly wholesale gas prices that drive the price cap calculations, reduced demand for gas will hopefully see the price cap fall.

Hosepipe bans

It’s been that long since it rained that I can’t remember the last wet day that we had. Which has been good for getting out and about, but not so good for keeping the reservoirs topped up. Rain is forecast for next week, but if the general trend is for lots of hot dry days, then I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with a hosepipe ban in the summer.

If you want to plan now for a hosepipe ban and don’t already have a water butt to store excess rainwater, consider getting one from Save Water Save Money. Pop your postcode in to find out if you can get one subsidised by your water company. They’re at least £10 cheaper than elsewhere, as long as you’re prepared to wait around six weeks for delivery. We haven’t invested in one yet (we need additional work doing on our guttering) but it’s something to consider.

One thing we have bought in response to the warm weather has been a portable air conditioning unit. British homes are not typically built with air conditioning systems (and our house is around 100 years old in any case). Whilst the nights have been cold, I’m fully expecting that, if this good weather continues, there will be some hot nights on the way. A standard pedestal fan can help keep you cool by blowing away sweat, but it can’t cool the air in a room. Once it’s arrived and I’ve had time to evaluate it, I’ll do a blog post.

The new Areas dashboard in Home Assistant

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Last week saw the release of Home Assistant 2025.4, and with it, a new type of dashboard called Areas. This is an automatic dashboard, managed by Home Assistant itself, which displays your devices sorted by room, or ‘area’. At present, it’s ‘experimental’, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes the default in future.

The default dashboard in Home Assistant is also automatically managed, but if you have more than a few devices and integrations, it can quickly become overwhelming. Therefore, my default dashboard is one that I manage myself. I can decide what to show, and in what order. However, it’s taken me quite some time to build and tweak that dashboard, and at one point I had almost 30 different cards showing. I’ve reduced that somewhat, and now use badges to highlight information that I need to know, but it still represents a significant investment of my time.

The new Areas dashboard therefore sits somewhere in the middle. The first tab shows an overview of your home, with sections for each ‘area’ that you have defined in Home Assistant. Most people will make each room an area, but it’s up to you – you may define parts of a room as a distinct area, for example. Personally, I’ve gone down the room = area paradigm, but I also have areas for ‘roof’ (where the solar panels are) and ‘outside’.

Setting up your home’s areas

You can set up your home’s Areas in the Settings pane in Home Assistant. When you do so, you can also specify any entities that represent the temperature and humidity in that room. This is useful, as these entities will then show up on your Areas dashboard.

Once you have defined your areas, you’ll need to add your devices to these areas. Again, in Settings, navigate to the Devices section. You can sort your devices by Area, so you’ll be able to see which ones are not allocated. Some of these ‘devices’ will represent virtual things, like HACS integrations or web services, so you don’t necessarily need to allocate these to a room.

A screenshot of the Home Assistant interface showing the options when adding a dashboard, including the new Areas dashboard

Adding the Areas dashboard

Again in Settings, you’ll need to open the Dashboards pane. Here you’ll typically see three dashboards there already. These will include your current default dashboard, the built-in energy dashboard and the built-in Map dashboard. At the bottom right, click ‘Add Dashboard’, and choose ‘Areas (experimental)’. Give it a title and an icon, and then enable to show in your sidebar. Once done, you’ll be able to access it at any time from the side bar.

Initially, every area that you have defined will have a section and a tab along the top. If you click the Pencil icon at the top right to edit, you can re-order the areas, and also make any invisible. You may want to do this if the dashboard doesn’t show anything useful for that particular area. If you click into each area, you can also hide any devices that you don’t want to see on the dashboard. For example, in my screenshot, each programme on my Bosch dishwasher shows as an individual entity; I can therefore hide all of those apart from the dishwasher’s power status if I want to.

The areas dashboard is still experimental

We’re only a week on from this feature having been made available in Home Assistant, and so it’s still ‘experimental’. In particular, you’ll only see a handful of devices on this dashboard. In my case, this includes lights, sockets, my dishwasher, my TV, media players, and thermostats.

But it’s a lot easier to set up and manage than it would to create a new dashboard from scratch. And it’s less overwhelming than the other default managed dashboard, which shows a huge amount of data. As time goes on, I hope that the Areas dashboard is developed further and becomes the new default. It’ll make Home Assistant feel more like other smart home apps like Google Home, and make it easier for new users to manage.

How to save money with gift cards

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Back in December 2023, I wrote about why you shouldn’t give gift cards as presents in the run-up to Christmas. I still stand by that, but wanted to expand on the last section of that post about when it is appropriate to buy gift cards. Because, it turns out, buying gift cards can actually save you money.

This is all about exploiting the difference between the actual cost of gift cards, and their value. Go to any supermarket, and there’s usually a display at the end of an aisle full of gift cards for various other shops, restaurants, cinema chains, subscription services and the like. When you buy one of those cards, a small percentage of what you pay goes to the shop (otherwise they’d be selling them at cost price). To give an example, when you buy a £10 gift card, 50p of that £10 may be kept by the shop, and the gift card supplier gets £9.50.

What we can therefore do is find places that, instead of pocketing that 50p, they pass some of that on to you as a saving. It’s a bit like cashback sites like Quidco (referral link), where they share some of the money they get as commission with you. I’ve listed a few options below:

Pluxee and other employer schemes

I work for an employer who is signed up to Pluxee. This means that I can buy online gift cards, usually at a 3-5% discount, for many stores. The ‘big four’ supermarkets are included, as are the likes of M&S, Boots, and many online retailers. It also handily keeps track of how much money I’ve saved – we’ve had it for close to ten years now and collectively I’ve saved over £100.

You can use it for big ticket items – back in 2020, I bought our LG TV mostly using Curry’s vouchers. At the time, the discount was 8% (I think) and at present it’s 6%. Ultimately it knocked around £25 off the cost of the TV.

The big advantage of Pluxee is that you can buy the gift cards and be able to use them almost straight-away. So, say you’re in a supermarket, and you’ve used one of those handheld scan and ship gizmos, so that you know exactly how much your shopping will cost. You can then quickly buy a gift card for that amount, go to the checkout, and use it to pay for your shopping.

Costco

Another place to buy gift cards at a discount is Costco (something I didn’t mention in my overview last year). As with most things from Costco, you have to buy in bulk. For example, you can buy five £20 Pizza Express gift cards, collectively worth £100, for £85 – that’s a 15% discount, and better than the 7% I get with Pluxee. You can buy the cards both in-store and online, and the online prices include postage.

Bear in mind that these are physical gift cards, and so you will need to actually buy them from the shop, or wait for them to come in the post. You can’t just buy one whilst waiting for your bill in a restaurant, for example. And you’ll need to be a Costco member to take advantage.

Sprive

I did a more detailed overview of Sprive last April. Sprive is an app for managing mortgage over-payments, but it includes a feature called Sprive Rewards for buying gift cards. It works in a similar way to Pluxee, except that the discount goes towards over-paying your mortgage. So, for example, if you buy a £10 M&S voucher through Sprive, it’ll still cost you £10, but Sprive will add another 40p onto your next mortgage over-payment for you.

The discount rates on Sprive tend to be lower than other apps – most supermarkets are only 2.5% for example. But it’s also the only place I’ve seen that offers Amazon gift cards, albeit at only 1%. However, one could argue that, because the savings are taken off your mortgage, you’ll save more in the long run due to lower interest payments.

If you do decide to sign up to Sprive, use my referral code HTWH65PM for an additional £5 off your mortgage. Incidentally, in the year since I originally wrote about Sprive, we now own 63% of our home, up from 55%.

Obviously, Sprive is only of use if you have a mortgage, Pluxee is only available to people who work for certain employers, and Costco also requires a membership. So, for everyone else, there’s Snip:

Snip

If none of the above options are available for you, then you may wish to consider Snip. I haven’t used it myself, but it allows you to buy gift cards in a similar way to Pluxee. The catch is that there is a monthly (£3) or annual (£30) membership fee. Now, if you use Snip regularly, you will easily save more than the monthly membership fee – assuming that a typical supermarket gift card has a discount rate of 4%, then one £75 shop per month would be enough to cover the fee.

Whilst savings of 3-5% may not seem like much, they do add up over time. This is why I like the tracker on Pluxee – saving a few pence here and there may not seem like much, but over the course of a year, it’s enough to pay for a trip to a cinema and a restaurant (which you could probably also pay for with gift cards). I will admit that it’s also a bit of a faff – I remember spending ages at a self-checkout in Ikea trying to get a voucher for 5% off, and struggling to get the payment to go through. It would be nice if things were just cheaper, rather than having to use workarounds like these.

A Minecraft Movie review

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An image of the poster for A Minecraft Movie, showing the five main characters.

You’re probably aware that A Minecraft Movie is out, considering the absolute juggernaut of publicity behind it. And seeing as our nine-year-old is obsessed with Minecraft, we inevitably went to see it yesterday.

My verdict: it’s basically fine. Three stars out of five.

Our nine-year-old loved it. They have played some Minecraft at home, and watched many hours of other people playing Minecraft on YouTube. I guess you would get more out of this film if you are familiar with the game, judging by the cheers from fellow members of the audience every time some kind of iconic item from the game was featured in the film. We went to see it at our local Vue in Halifax, and the screen was pretty much full. I guess that’s something to do with it only having opened on Friday in the UK.

There’s a series of scenes before the opening credits where we’re introduced to Jack Black‘s character, Steve, and the ‘Overworld’ which is the blocky Minecraft world. Then we return to the real world to be introduced to Jason Momoa‘s character during the opening credits. Indeed, the first part of the film spends quite a bit of time in the ‘real world’ before we’re back into the blockiness. It’s probably a good thing that the Overworld is featured so early, as it doesn’t come up again for a little while.

The plot is, well, a bit meh. Jack Black is peak Jack Black in this, and Jason Mamoa (also a producer of the film) does well, but the rest of the characters could do with more depth. It’s perhaps ironic that a film about a world-building game, doesn’t itself have enough world-building, in my opinion.

Ultimately though, this film will do well because it’s about Minecraft, and there’s just enough fan service to get players of the game on board. If you’re not familiar with the game, and don’t have kids, then maybe wait for it to come out on streaming.

No more Google Assistant on Fitbit Versa 3

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A screenshot of an email from Google Fitbit. It says: You are receiving this email to let you know about an upcoming change to your Fitbit Sense and/or Versa 3. Over the next few weeks we will be progressively phasing out Google Assistant on your Fitbit device. You can learn more about this process here. This change means that Google Assistant voice control for activities will no longer be available on your Fitbit device.

In a few weeks time, Google is removing support for Google Assistant on its Fitbit Versa 3 and Sense devices. I have a Fitbit Versa 3, and so last week I received an email (screenshotted above) notifying me. Going forward, if you have a Fitbit Versa 3 or Fitbit Sense, you’ll only be able to use Amazon Alexa and not Google Assistant.

When I first heard about this, I was a little confused. After all, with Google now owning Fitbit, you would expect them to phase out support for Alexa to keep you in Google’s ecosystem. So, I did a bit of digging.

Alexa on Fitbit has always supported more features

Firstly, Google Assistant has been a poor relation of Alexa on Fitbit devices. On a Fitbit, Alexa can do most things that an Amazon Echo device can do, including controlling smart home devices. Google Assistant was more limited, to things like web searches, or launching apps on the Fitbit device to set timers or start exercises.

I’ve had my Fitbit Versa 3 for nearly three years – it was a 38th birthday present from Christine – and in that time I’ve only ever used Google Assistant. Following this announcement, I switched to Alexa, and have so far found it more capable. We don’t use any other Alexa devices at home, and so I’ve had to link up our various smart home devices to Alexa son that I can interact with them. For the most part, I’ve used Home Assistant and Homeway to achieve this.

Google is ‘upgrading’ Assistant to Gemini

You’re probably aware of Google Gemini, which is Google’s AI chat bot. Later this year, Gemini will replace the Google Assistant mobile app, as Google wants to foist its AI tools on its existing Google Assistant users. I’m not extremely comfortable with this, as I believe that current AI models are flawed and inefficient. For example, last year Gemini told people to eat one rock per day, and I’m concerned with the amount of computing power these AI models need compared to more basic natural language parsing. But I guess I don’t have a choice unless I stop using Google Assistant altogether.

Anyway, it seems that Google has decided that its older devices won’t be getting the Gemini upgrade. When you use Google Assistant on a Fitbit Versa 3, it communicates with the Google Assistant on your paired phone by Bluetooth. Presumably then, once the Google Assistant app has disappeared from app stores, it won’t be able to work. Google no longer sells the Versa 3 and Sense, and so I’m guessing they’ve made a business decision not to support the Gemini upgrade. After all, unless you’re a Fitbit Premium or Google One subscriber, you’re not making any more money for Google after having bought the device.

For now, the newer Fitbit Versa 4 and Sense 2 should still work with Google Assistant – these models are still on sale at the time of writing. However, they’re being phased out – in future, Google will only sell the Inspire and Charge Fitbit ranges. If you want a smart watch, you’ll be steered towards Google’s Pixel Watch range – but bear in mind that they’re Android-only.

As for my Fitbit Versa 3? Hopefully it’ll keep going for at least a couple more years, and I’m happy with using Alexa instead of Google Assistant for now. When it comes to replacing it, however, I’ll need to think hard about my choices. Whilst Fitbit’s smart watch range is less capable than, say, an Apple Watch, they offer much better battery life. An Apple Watch Ultra typically lasts only 36 hours, whereas the Versa 3 would do five days on a full charge when I bought it. Even now, it still manages 3-4 days, depending on use.

How to: Make Bluesky more manageable

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A screenshot of Blueksy's moderation settings

This is the latest in an occasional series of how to get the most out of Bluesky, my preferred social network. In previous blog posts, I’ve talked about using labellers, displaying your pronouns, following Mastodon accounts using Bridgy Fed and importing contacts from Twitter/X, and today, I’m going to write about how I ensure that Bluesky isn’t too overwhelming for me.

Custom feeds

By default, new users to Bluesky get three feeds: Following, Discover and Popular with Friends. Following is the default, and shows you everything posted by the user accounts that you follow. It’s the feed that most people use. But one unique feature to Bluesky is what was known as ‘choose your own algorithm‘ in the form of Custom Feeds.

At the time of writing, I follow 220 accounts on Bluesky. Sure, some post more than others, but if I’m particularly busy, it can be a lot of content to catch up on. I therefore use a custom feed called OnlyPosts, which hides replies and reposts – in other words, it only shows regular posts and quote posts from your Following feed. If I don’t have a lot of time to catch up on activity on Bluesky, then the OnlyPosts feed means I can get up-to-date more quickly.

There’s another custom feed from the same user called Mutuals, which only shows posts from the users you follow who also follow you back. Whilst this may reinforce an echo chamber, it makes Bluesky a little more like the Friends feed on Facebook where there’s a reciprocal relationship with the people you’re following.

To follow a custom feed, follow the link, and then click the ‘+ Follow’ button on the profile. It’ll then appear as a tab on your Blueksy home page.

Moderation lists

I follow around 20 moderation lists. These are lists curated by other users, allowing you to mute or block people en masse. This gets rid of some of the noise from people that you’re never going to agree with, making it a more pleasant experience. Using block lists like this used to be possible on Twitter, using tools like Block Together, and so it’s good to have this on Bluesky as well.

I won’t list all of the lists that I use, but here are some key ones:

You can either block or mute all accounts on these lists.

Muting hashtags and keywords

I currently have words like ‘Trump’, ‘Vance’ and ‘Musk’ muted, so even if people I follow post about them, they won’t show up in my feeds. I’ve also muted a number of sport-related hashtags as such things don’t interest me, and keywords for several TV shows that I don’t watch. Most social networks have such a feature, but it’s worth a reminder that Bluesky has it too.

Muting using labels

You can also use labels to hide posts. For example, I follow the Engagement Hacks Labeler, but rather than simply adding a label to posts, I just hide them altogether.

By using all of the above tools, I have a more curated Bluesky experience that isn’t just endless doomscrolling, or posts that don’t interest me.

A highly subjective ranking of UK cinema chains

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I’m writing this a couple of weeks in the past, the morning after watching Mickey 17 at the cinema (it’s a good film, you should watch it if you haven’t already). With us having lost a weekend to Sci-Fi Weekender, I wrote a whole batch of blog posts ahead of time, including this one.

I wouldn’t say that we’re regular cinema-goers – generally, we go to watch family films that are suitable for our nine-year-old. Mickey 17 is clearly not a kid-friendly film and deserves its 15 rating – we only managed to go because we were able to arrange childcare in the evening. Whilst Sowerby Bridge itself no longer has its own cinemas, there are a number of different cinemas within easy reach of home. This includes some independent cinemas – the Hebden Bridge Picture House, the Rex Cinema in Elland, and the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford. But they’re mostly single-screen cinemas with a limited number of films on offer.

So, generally, we go to one of the chains. We’ve been to most of the chain cinemas in recent years, so, this is my high subjective ranking of the different chains:

1. Everyman

Everyman cinemas are top-tier. Instead of individual seats, you get sofas, with cushions and plenty of legroom. Every cinema has a bar, serving cocktails as well as beer and wine, and the food menu goes well beyond the basics into burgers, pizzas and sharing plates.

If there was an Everyman closer to us, we would go there almost exclusively. Alas, the nearest is in Leeds city centre, at the top of the Trinity Leeds shopping centre, and so we’ve only been once in recent months.

2. The Light

Whilst not quite as upmarket as Everyman, The Light offers an above-average experience. You don’t get sofas in the screens, but you do get big, comfy seats that can recline as standard, and the legroom is generous. Similarly, the food menu isn’t as extensive as Everyman, but you can buy freshly made pizzas and alcoholic drinks to take in. The Light specialise in smaller screens, so it’s a more intimate experience than other cinemas – we went to the Bradford cinema where six screens are squeezed into a relatively small space.

The Light in Bradford was where we saw Mickey 17, and it’s worth noting that if you park next door in the Broadway shopping centre, you can get 5 hours free parking. Also local for us will be their new cinema opening later this year in Huddersfield town centre, which will also include a bowling alley and other entertainment besides showing films.

3. Showcase De Lux

Showcase is also one of the smaller cinema chains in the UK. In my experience, it’s the nicest of the large multiplex chains. Again, the seating is a step down from The Light and Everyman, but fine. The food is also standard for cinemas, with the usual popcorn, nachos and hotdogs. Our nearest is at Birstall on the edge of Leeds, where we can park for free and it’s just off the M62.

4. Vue

Our nearest multiplex is the Vue in Halifax. Of the three big chains, I tend to find Vue to be the best, but not by much. You can pay a little extra for premium seating, but otherwise it’s standard seats with standard legroom. Other things that I like about Vue are:

  • they still have some cinemas in town centres, which was great before we could drive.
  • some of their cinemas only charge £5 for any film, generally making them one of the cheapest cinemas

5. Odeon

I would broadly consider Odeon to be equivalent to Vue but ranked them lower as, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, they had a policy of moving their cinemas out of town centres. Our closest Odeon cinemas are on the outskirts of Huddersfield, and halfway between Leeds and Bradford. Their locations mean that they’re well away from a range places to eat, so it’s hard to have a meal and then a film. In Huddersfield, for example, there’s just a Pizza Hut and a pub nearby. We would have considered seeing Mickey 17 here as it was closer and showing at a similar time, but the lack of food options meant we chose The Light in Bradford instead.

The exception is the Odeon at the Trafford Centre, which we used to use because the Trafford Centre had a crèche (sadly closed during the pandemic and never re-opened), but it’s a bit far.

6. Cineworld

Finally, Cineworld. The company has been in a bit of pickle recently and it shows. Until The Light came along, Cineworld was the only multiplex in Bradford city centre, and so I used to go there quite a bit when I lived there. We recently went to Cineworld in Bradford again to see Wicked, and it’s clear that it needs some work doing on it. I’m not saying I would never go to Cineworld again, but unless it was the only cinema showing a film we wanted to watch at a reasonable time, I would give it a pass.

One last thing to mention: CinemaGuide is a useful site that lets you select your local cinemas (including all of the above chains and some independents) and then view a list of everything that’s on across all of them, sorted by film title. It’s handy when you want to see a particular film, and can travel to multiple different cinemas if needed.

Playlist of the month: Robert Miles’ Children

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Screenshot of the Children by Robert Miles playlist on Spotify

Last month was rock music, whereas this month, we’re mostly in dance music territory with Robert Miles’ most well-known song.

January marked 30 years since the original release of the song Children, by Robert Miles, in Italy. It went on to become one of the most iconic songs in dance music, creating a new, short-lived genre known as ‘dream house’. It was designed to be played as a more chilled track as the last song before closing at nightclubs, to help clubbers calm down and avoid getting into road accidents when driving home.

Miles sadly passed away in 2017, but over the years Children has been covered and sampled many times. Here’s a non-complete list – alas, some of the songs I wanted to include aren’t available on Spotify. The playlist is on Spotify if you want to listen along – I’ve mainly included the original or extended mixes where available, so it’s a longer playlist than normal.

  • ‘Children’ by Robert Miles. We’ll start with the original song. What most versions have in common is the piano tune, but many also sample the guitar melody as well.
  • ‘Children’ by Tilt. This cover version followed in 1999, and took the song more in a trance direction. It’s also much longer at over 10 minutes. I bought the CD single of this, although I think I leant it to someone who then didn’t give it back.
  • ‘Children’ by 4 Clubbers. Another trance remix that followed a little later.
  • ‘Children (Future Breeze vs Junkfood Junkies Remix) by 4 Clubbers. There was also a remix included with the above single, which is more well-known. This more of a glowstick waving, hands-in-the-air track.
  • ‘Children 2012’ by Jack Holiday and Mike Candys. This was an electro-house cover version.
  • ‘REACT’ by Switch Disco featuring Ella Henderson. This song from a couple of years ago heavily samples Children, but adds lyrics written and performed by Ella Henderson. It’s one of our nine-year-old’s favourite songs.
  • ‘Closer’ by Bou. This also came out a couple of years ago, and was in the UK Top 40 singles chart at the same time as React. At the time, one in four songs in the top 40 sampled other songs.
  • ‘Children’ by Tinlicker. This seems to be the most recent cover of the original song, from 2022. It slows the melody down slightly.
  • ‘Rollin’ by Jackie Chain and Kid Cudi. I found this through the excellent WhoSampled.com. Not my preferred king of music but you can hear Children sampled throughout. This came out in 2009.

Missing songs:

  • ‘$timulated’ by Tyga. It is on Spotify but seemingly not available to stream in the UK
  • ‘Children (Mandrake Remake)’ by Mandrake. Another trance cover from 2003, which I have on an old Euphoria compilation album.

Sci-Fi Weekender XVI – a retrospective

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Paul McGann and Daphne Ashebrook being interviewed by David J Howe at Sci-Fi Weekender

So we got back from this year’s Sci-Fi Weekender on Sunday, and now that I’ve had a few days to recover, here’s what we got up to.

Thursday

We arrived on the Thursday evening. For lunch, we stopped off at Thaymar Ice Cream, which is just off the A1 near Retford and has a lovely tea room and farm shop. Oh, and the ice cream is great – I can particularly recommend the damson and liquorice flavour. After some food, we attended Pirate Pete’s Quiz and Karaoke. Sci-Fi Weekender normally opens with a quiz, and though the format was different this year, it was good fun.

With it being the first day, we called had a (comparatively) early night.

Friday

Our first on the Friday morning was a panel featuring Lauren K Nixon. Lauren is an author and a friend from university, and one of the people we gave a lift to down from Yorkshire on Thursday. Panel discussions are a big part of Sci-Fi Weekender, and Lauren was there for four of them, including discussions about traditional vs indie book publishing, and fantasy vs romantasy.

The headline guest for this year’s SFW was the eight doctor, Paul McGann, who appeared on stage with Daphne Ashbrook who played his assistant Grace Holloway in the 1996 TV film. They were both excellent guests, with really insightful answers to questions. Their interviewer was David J. Howe, one of the organisers of Sci-Fi Weekender and a writer of many Doctor Who handbooks.

In the evening, it was a welcome return for Jollyboat, who have performed at three previous SFW events.

Saturday

Whilst cosplay is encouraged throughout SFW, the cosplay competition normally takes place on Saturdays, starting with the preliminary round in the morning. The standard of cosplay is always really high, and there’s a really strong cosplay community around SFW. Throughout the weekend, there were several unofficial cosplay meets themed around fandoms like Star Trek.

There were also two events featuring John Robertson – a Q&A event at lunchtime, and then the The Dark Room in the evening. John has been at the majority of SFW events in recent years, but missed last year’s due to a clash. It was a welcome return – whilst the format of The Dark Room is consistent, there’s a lot of improvised material and it’s always hilarious.

Another session that we enjoyed on Saturday was a motion capture demonstration by Creature Bionics. They specialise in motion capture for films and videogames – especially for non-human creatures. It was really interesting and great to see the footage in realtime too.

There was also a great workshop by Artyfakes, a costume and props company, where they made an axe out of a plastic pipe and foam in about 90 minutes.

Right before The Dark Room were the Cosplay Finals on the main stage, where the 10 best entrants from the morning were asked to do a short piece of singing or acting. The winners were Hoggle and Ludo from Labyrinth, and much of the outfits were crocheted.

The Holodeck

SFW has normally been split between three rooms – the Main Void, the Spaceport, and the Timeport. The Main Void has the main stage, and the Spaceport is a smaller venue used more for panels. Over the past couple of years, the Timeport has just been used for vendors; this year it was home to various workshops. Meanwhile, the Games Room at the holiday park was rebranded The Holodeck, and was home to more vendors, a retro gaming set-up and ‘Full Size D&D’, which unfortunately we didn’t have time for. It was great to see this space better used; in previous years, it’s only been used for table-top gaming.

Things we didn’t get to see

Seeing as it’s split across four rooms, and we also needed to eat and drink occasionally, we didn’t get to see everything. The other big guest was Noah Hathaway, who we missed on the Friday, and there were some panels that we wanted to see but couldn’t. There’s more about this year’s event on Blazing Minds.

SFW XVII

Tickets for next year’s event are already on sale, and indeed may be close to selling out if the various emails and texts that I have received are anything to go by. There’s also a competition to win tickets – we were competition winners all the way back at SFW 9 in 2018, and it seems like lots of people have been lucky with the competitions in the past.

We’ve already booked for next year, and this time we will be sharing our accommodation with four of our friends to keep the costs down.

Dashboard Badges in Home Assistant

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A screenshot of the Home Assistant Lovelace dashboard showing several badges at the top of the home screen

One feature of Home Assistant that I’ve only recently started using is Dashboard Badges. These are small widgets that appear at the top of your dashboard, and allow you to view information at a glance. There’s a screenshot above which shows the widgets that I currently have set up.

Badges have been part of Home Assistant for a long time, but they received a major overhaul last August in version 2024.8. In the (approximately) 18 months that I’ve been using Home Assistant, I’ve been gradually adding more and more data to my dashboard, to the point where I had to scroll through several screens worth of data to see what I needed. Which isn’t ideal. Badges are a potential solution, showing basic information at the top, where it’s most accessible.

Each badge widget can usually display the state of one entity. In the screenshot above, I’ve included:

  • The temperature in our dining room, as recorded by our Nest thermostat
  • The current weather (it was, in fact, not raining when I took this screenshot)
  • The current power output of our solar panels
  • How much charge our solar battery currently has
  • The current status of our dishwasher
  • The current status of the TV in the living room
  • The current status of the sun
  • The latest version of Home Assistant

There’s a moderate amount of customisation available. For example, as well as the status of the entity, you can include its name, and this text is also customisable to save space if needed. You can also tweak the colours and the icons.

Controlling visibility of badges

One great feature that badges have in Home Assistant is controlling when they’re visible. I actually have more badges than the eight mentioned above, but they’re not showing as I don’t currently need the information offered. For example, I have a badge that displays whether an update to Home Assistant is available. But I only want to see this when an update is available – if I’m running the latest version, I want the badge to be hidden. Here’s how I configured it:

A screenshot of the Entity Badge configuration in Home Assistant

Having selected the widget, I’ve gone to the ‘Visibility’ tab, selected the entity, and told Home Assistant to only display it when the ‘State is equal to’ and ‘Update available’.

I use this on some other badges too. For example, if there’s no power coming from the solar panels, that badge disappears. Similarly, if my solar battery is at 20% or below, which is its idle state, that’s hidden too. You can also control the visibility based on which user is currently logged in, or anything really – the state of one entity can control the visibility of the badge for another.

A useful badge is one that makes use of the custom Octopus Energy integration from HACS, and will display if I haven’t used my Octopus Wheel of Fortune spins that month. Last month, I won 800 Octopoints, which was nice, and it’s helpful to have a reminder to use them.

By using badges, and setting their visibility, I’ve reduced the number of cards on my dashboard significantly. It makes the dashboard less overwhelming, and prioritises the most important information that I need to see quickly.