Going Max
Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at 10:08 PM UTC
It’s 2025, I was thinking about a new webcam. I was using a Microsoft (!) 1080p webcam for ages and it’s crap - esp. on a Mac. I had to use a utility called WebCamSettings to get this even working with Teams etc.
Webcam
My decision was buying a “real” webcam like an OBSBOT or an Insta 360 Link. These are not cheap and these are “only” webcams. Since iPhone [...]
The Home Assistant Voice Box is here - and it's great!
Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 9:54 PM UTC
In my recent post I mentioned a new (beta) voice assistant device for the use in your Home Assistant system. There are others available on AliExpress based on ESP32 etc. but this one is "the official". More information here.
Today it was delivered. Yes, it is not the sexiest device on earth, it attracts dust as crazy and I absolutley want to hide it (and you could because mics and spe [...]
My Smarthome Transition
Monday, March 10, 2025 at 11:16 PM UTC
This post is about on how I managed to transform my Smart Home from using vendor-based solutions to open-source and local-only systems. I am actually cheating. Although my solutions work entirely local, the fact that I want to use it remotely, also requires a cloud account to access it, namely the Nabu Casa account which is 75 bucks per year.
Where I came from
My first Smart Home steps based [...]
Quick Tip: TickTick kills a VS Code shortcut
Tuesday, January 28, 2025 at 9:10 PM UTC
I recently started to use TickTick, a powerful app to track your personal tasks, reminders etc. I am using the Mac version which introduces a keyboard shortcut to quickly startg a pomodoro timer.
The problem is: the same shortcut is used to open the command menu in VS Code: SHIFT+CMD+P
VS Code stopped to react on this one and it took me a while to figure out the reason, so here is how to dis [...]
Java != Java on Domino
Wednesday, January 8, 2025 at 6:07 PM UTC
Today I again encountered some strange things on different Domino machines. It’s Java again. The other specs are:
my local dev box is 12.0.2FP2, running in a container using the HCL image
the other machines are natively installed 12.0.2FP2, also Linux
there are no language packs installed at all
The parts that are used:
some Java in an NSF, defined as managed bean (but t [...]
Why bother social media anymore?
Wednesday, December 11, 2024 at 9:53 PM UTC
I am done with social media in general.
Facebook is only usable with the genius browser plugin FBP. It is just my birthday calendar for my contacts I don’t maintain a “real” record in my phone or anywhere else.
Twitter/X always only was my news feed. If you don’t like the political bias here just do not read the comments and block accounts you don’t like - so ea [...]