Big Brains Я Us
We have a Windows machine recording frames from a time lapse camera, and we want the computer to play a sound when the camera is unavailable, because of either the camera or the network. We figured out a way to do this. We can also use it to let us monitor the house internet so […]
As you know from writing scripts in .gitlab-ci.yml, the YAML syntax can be a bit restrictive, and escaping characters can make your eyes bleed. I discovered a phenomenally useful feature in YAML syntax. Strings can be built with less escaping by starting the string with a > or | operator. > takes the lines that follow and joins them with […]
We have been hearing a lot about building herd immunity against the Coronavirus, and a lot about React, a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. So we decided to combine the two to make a calculator that will help us compare the “wear a damn mask” against the “everybody gets it” scenario. This extends our […]
We are getting a lot of bad air because of the wildfire smoke near us. Our PM2.5 is regularly above 250 µg/m3 outside (!) and it was climbing up over 80 inside. We had a cheap paper filter in our HVACs, and wanted to upgrade, but apparently everybody else had the same idea because the […]
We have always used surge protecting strips and UPSes on our electronics, but as we built out our smart home we started having problems with the smart switches fritzing out. We installed a whole house surge protector in the main electrical meter. We haven’t had a fritz since. We have an Intermatic IG1240RC3 but there […]
We know from seeing all the tow trucks running through our neighborhood since Coronavirus quarantine that old-fashioned combustion cars won’t start after a couple of weeks, but it’s kind of ironic that an electric car won’t start either. Yep, electric, hybrid and plug-in hybrid cars have two batteries: a “drive” battery that moves the car, […]
For us, the most critical part of working from home during the Coronavirus era is having a rock-solid continuous Internet connection. In another post we talked about our LTE cellular hotspot failover setup, but our LTE was having trouble handling our load during long outages. We decided to get DSL as well. The problem was […]
It turns out that a WordPress multisite network served entirely through a CDN is tricky to get right. We tried it with Amazon CloudFront and a little bit of PHP.
Behold the Netgear 4G LTE Modem with Two Ethernet Ports. You plug this little fella between your existing Internet connection and your router, and if your DSL or Cable Modem goes out, this takes care of automatic failover to Cellular LTE.
I saw a terrific Coronavirus simulation about transmission called “Simulating an Epidemic”. If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it now: it communicates science well and answers a lot of my questions about social isolation, PPE and travel restrictions. This looked like something I would like to play with. I looked at the source […]
We decided to build a site dedicated to things that are smart and accessible.
We are using a dinosaur as our brainosaurus logo that was drawn by amcolley that we found at openclipart.org licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license that allows use and modification of the original content if it is accompanied by (a) attribution and (b) a link to the license.