After finding the time to get my Home Assistant to monitor when our washing machine and dryer are done I faced the next challenge. Sending a push notification to me and my wife. Luckily we are already using Delta Chat and there is something that resembles a complete library to send messages to people and a flag to set for bots. So, how hard can it be?
Next week Apple will likely introduce a foldable iPhone. For a long time I was pretty sure I will get one. I use my phone mostly for reading, but cannot stand reading books on it. On the other hand the iPad mini, which is roughly the form factor of the foldable, is exactly the size I want for books. Finally a new form factor other smartphone makers have already been supporting for eight years and the first time in five or six years a phone would have a new feature I care about.
Sometimes things sound trivial until you have to live with them. I spend most of my day in my office on the first floor. The washing machine and dryer are in the basement. Which is pretty neat as you cannot hear them, but it also means you got no idea when they are done. And I was sick of walking downstairs two or three times or waiting for three minutes that turned into 6, because none of these devices can calculate the correct remaining time.
In my ultimate yak shaving quest I started working on a shell. So far nothing new. I also added a file manager that is built into the shell or can be run standalone. Here is the thing I learned so far (beside how easy it is to mess up a terminal when putting it into "raw mode"): Having a single binary is pretty neat. I can scp to any server and have not just my shell with a few handy built in commands but also the file manager ready to go!
I have been a gamer for about three decades. Obviously I started very casual, as all kids do, and very quickly found interest in many different genres. I actually got pretty good at some of them if I may say so myself. And I have done pretty much everything related to gaming, from conventions, to helping organize LAN parties, to leading a clan and a guild. It has truly been a wild, joyful and fun ride.