Weeknotes 200

TWO HUNDRED posts! 🤩

How to Use a Tailscale VPN for Remote Work and Travel – I haven’t read this, and I probably never will, but it looks interesting for the digital nomad.

A couple of DIY sessions this week albeit at someone else’s house. First time using a reciprocating saw – quite fun. All fingers accounted for.

Some Game Boy action this week. I actually brought a Game Boy Pocket back to life from not turning on at all. Replacing the capacitors and power switch did the job. Once it had power I re-shelled it, hooked up a new IPS screen, and gave it new buttons and rubber membranes. Very happy with it. That was until I tried pressing Select, Start, A or B, and discovered that those buttons didn’t work, sadness (the D-pad was fine). So now I have to figure out what to do.

The perfectionist in me wants to pursue getting this one working even though I have many other boards I could substitute in to get this project done. I set a lot of arbitrary rules for myself which are often self-defeating. More pragmatism or grit required.

It is a win that I brought a Game Boy back to life, despite not being fully functional, but I don’t feel it.

My experiment with Quiche Browser on iOS is over. Back to Arc for now. I’m already glad I went back.

Someone stole a parcel from my doorstep on Thursday. Obviously the monetary loss is annoying (although it was low) but it was more annoying/disappointing knowing that thieves are apparently walking past my door on a regular basis. Maybe I’m annoyed with myself for being naive.

I hope they enjoy their new Game Boy Pocket shells, I’m sure they’ll get good use out of them.

Still, the doorbell camera installation has moved up the priority list.

Ideally I would like a hardwired PoE doorbell. Sure WiFi is cool, and people will swear there’s no problem with it, but network cables reduce so much friction. After they are installed of course, because the quicker and easier thing to do right now would be to get a WiFi doorbell.

The thing is, a PoE doorbell is going to need a PoE switch, and I’m all out of them right now considering that entire “network” currently still comprises of the Virgin Media Hub supplied to us when we moved in, and it certainly doesn’t have PoE capabilities.

I’ve been waiting on doing any proper networking since we moved in for a few reasons: 1) concern over spending money on networking gear; 2) not wanting to “get it wrong” because the network is bigger and more complicated in scope for this house than the small flat we were living in before; 3) all the decisions which will need to be made.

Maybe I should get on with it anyway.

“USB 2.0 is 25 years old today — the interface standard that changed the world”

I’m not old, you’re old.

How to Easily Reproduce a Flaky Test in Playwright – I’m still yet to use Playwright in anger, but these tips sound useful for when I do.

It would be great if Apple could make the audio routing(?!) on iOS – it’s a mess.

Some examples:

• Taking AirPods out of your ears should stop the music or whatever. Which it mostly does. But sometimes it doesn’t; it just continues playing. Sometimes I don’t notice straight away that sound is emanating from my pocket.

• But it gets worse. The app you’re using (Castro usually in my case) thinks the audio is still playing because the play/stop button state is still set to “playing”. To stop the audio you have to press play and then stop again. Terrible UX.

• Playing audio via CarPlay is as bad. When I connect my phone to the car what happens next seems completely random. Sometimes the last thing that was playing just starts playing, completely unrequested. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes I audio starts playing and I turn it off and IT TURNS ITSELF BACK ON and I end up in a back and forth fight with the car!

• I’m listening to a podcast. Opening Spotify stops the podcast. Why? I haven’t pressed play in Spotify. Why would the audio stop?

  I open Reddit whilst listening to Spotify. The music stops, presumably Reddit stole focus from Spotify somehow.

Sort yourself out Apple.

I’ve been planning a trip. Reddit is proving to be far more useful than the usual Trip Advisor trawling. Advice from locals is golden.

TIL Plex allows you to include the TVDB/IMDB show ID in TV show directory name to aid in identifying it correctly.

If you are using the “Plex TV Series” agent, you can optionally include the TMDB or TVDB show ID in the folder name to improve matching. If you choose to do that, it must be inside curly braces: ShowName (2020) {tmdb-123456} or ShowName (2020) {tvdb-123456}, where 123456 is the show ID. An example can be found at the end of the article.

Handy.