Life, The Universe and ... Everything!

I replaced my bedroom air-conditioner with a Panasonic CS-XPU10WKH model in August 2020. Some time in March 2021, it's performance had deteriorated so much that i woke up one morning to a warm room and a flashing red light on the unit. I had it serviced and it was back to normal again. Now it's Sep 2021 and I'm facing the same issues again, so I decided to see if I can fix it by DIY . I've been cleaning the filters every few weeks and I don't see much dust on the cooling coils. Also the air ...

I recently enabled docker on my desktop PC running Ubuntu 20.04LTS ... and it ended up breaking Bridged Networking on my VirtManager/KVM Virtual Machines (NAT still works). It turns out that (1) docker sets up some broad rules in the iptables firewall (2) even directly bridged traffic in KVMs goes through the iptables firewall and (3) the rules set by docker messes up the VM traffic. After some googling I fixed this with: $ sudo systemctl edit docker.service [Service] ExecStartPre=/bin/sh ...

A friend of mine recently bought a PS4 ( yes ... weeks before the PS5 launch 😀, but this was a pre-loved set for half the price) and we've been playing on-line together. Which means for the first time I'm using headaphones and a microphone while on my PS4. I started out with the free AKG earbuds that came with my Samsung S8+. These are the only ones I have with a 4-part plug as used on the PS4. The AKG earbuds are of the in-the-ear type, and while they provide good noise isolation because t...

I was fortunate to have traveled a lot when I was young, as my dad worked for British Airways. Most of our holidays were spent visiting wherever British Airways flew. The bulk of these flights were on BA's 747 fleet, affectionately known as the "Jumbo Jet". My first flight on a 747-100 (then BOAC) was on 11-Dec-1973, between London and Singapore. My last flight on a British Airways 747-400 was on 22-Mar-2001, between Boston and London. All in all, I've flown a total of 78 flights on BA's...

I needed an excuse to learn how to create my own Docker Image, and fortunately all the stars aligned perfectly : An Itch that needed ScratchingTime and Resources to do itAn Urgency that forced me to actually see it through ! The Problem I have a RPM repository of custom packages, which has dependencies on some standard packages. To simplify installation, I want to include just the standard packages (just the ones I need) in my repository as well. In CentOS 8 however, some of the standard...

i discovered this useful node-red plugin node over the weekend, called node-red-contrib-cast (https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-cast). With it I can get node-red to tell my google home devices to either read out some text or play some media. So now when my door bell is pressed, in addition to triggering my 80s doorbell, the google home minis around the house start playing a clip from Paul McCartney's 1976 track "Let 'Em In" ... 🎵 Someone's knocking at the door ... Somebody's ...

Previously I installed some sensors around my home, and got them to update their status into an MQTT Message Broker. The Message Broker acts as a central nervous system for the apartment, making the status of sensors available to everything. Knowing status alone is not enough, we must be able to "do" things with the knowledge. We want to be able to transform the status from one form of information to another, to make decisions by combining inputs from different things, and finally, to act ...

Many moons ago I set up a sonoff basic power relay with tasmota firmware and a Mosquitto MQTT Message Broker on a raspberry pi so that I can switch my 3D printer on and off remotely. I've recently added a few more tasmota devices in my apartment for home automation, and wanted a more stable platform for my mosquitto MQTT broker. I've also been playing with Docker on my Synology NAS (installed via the Synology Package Manager), and since that has a redundant storage, a UPS, and is already ru...

I recently install two 433Mhz radio-frequency gadgets at my front door ... a wireless pushbutton and a wireless door sensor. The pushbutton costs USD3.55 from banggood.com. It has a replaceable battery and can be fixed to a wall using screws or double sided tape. When the button is pressed, it broadcasts a unique code on 433Mhz, just like an automatic gate remote control. The door sensor is a combination of a reed switch and magnet, and costs USD5.30 on banggood.com. Like the push button,...

My dad "recovered" this recently ... a DIY doorbell kit I bought in the early 1980s and had on my bedroom door back when I was a kid. I cleaned it up a bit, and it still works! It sounds very retro, like the telephones from the 80s. The sound of a mechanical bell is quite rare these days. How it works - Watch In Slow Motion! When the button is pressed, a circuit is formed that runs from the terminal at the bottom, through the magnet coil, over the wire to the other side, through the ...