Year: 2020

November 30, 2020
There aren’t than many pictures from official sources that shows the Oculus Quest 2 with its original strap. One might almost think they are ashamed of it.

The Oculus Go came with a fabric strap that was pretty good; it split into two bands that cradled the back of your head and kept it in place.

October 21, 2020
But Eufy also do little cameras, quite similar to my Netvue. I read the Amazon reviews, and they seemed decent, so I bought 3 – two pan-tilt and one fixed, to replace my old Netvue cameras. They arrived today, and while better than the Netvue, they aren’t by much. Still buffering, also prone to freezing – both the app and Alexa feed. And when I view it via my Echo Show screen, it always starts with a loud repetitive beat (not feedback), and 50% of the time doesn’t load at all.

October 18, 2020
At the end of last year, I signed up for a Kickstarter for a hand held instrument called Orba. It is a hand held synth and MIDI controller, but importantly, it was sold as much on its internal capabilities than as a control for external sources.

October 13, 2020
September 8, 2020
August 29, 2020
Have just received my tracking information for my Orba handheld synth. I’ve been on the Kickstarter since December. Original shipping was going to be April, but that went out of the window, of course.

Still, I’m really excited to be finally getting my hands on it.

August 22, 2020
I would love to be able to buy an EV version of my Berlingo car, which is a perfect shape for me. With the right specs, I’d buy one tomorrow. Citroen have toyed with me in the past, by announcing that they would be available…

I had ruled Citroen out of my car search. But now look what has just come along. The Citroen e-C4.

August 14, 2020
August 8, 2020
One of the joyful things about sorting through various stuff was rediscovering my Yi 360 Camera. I’d bought this as an improvement over my original Ricoh Theta, but then didn’t do much with it last year, due to having to keep my leg elevated due to cellulitis. The camera wasn’t lost – I knew where it was, but it had turned into an anticlimax.

The one downside of the higher resolution camera was that it eats batteries.

August 8, 2020
In order of preference, my three tools are:

Integromat
Zapier
IFTTT

Everything is dependent on the integration tools having pathways to and from the things you are trying to integrate, and they are not all equal. So although I may prefer Integromat, I might find myself using Zapier or even IFTTT, because they can get at what I am trying to affect.

August 7, 2020
I am trying to get back in the habit of posting the interesting stuff I have to say (for some definition of “interesting”) to my own blogs, where I can control the layout, images and have a easily searchable “diary”. Which is essentially what it is.

It used to be easy to automate cross posting of stuff to Facebook, which let me post where I wanted to post, but also still make it accessible to friends on Facebook. But then Facebook ripped up the API most integrators were using, and everything broke. As a result I found myself writing more or less the same content on both my blog and FB, and sometimes just on FB.

August 6, 2020
This time last year, I was suffering badly from cellulitis, which required me to keep my leg elevated. So I temporarily moved my office from upstairs to a bed-table pulled over my recliner chair, allowing me to work with the recliner stool in the up position.

After that was over, I decided I quite liked working downstairs, and realised how underutilised my conservatory was, especially now it had a solid insulated roof. So I made it my office.