Well, 2020 came and went, and uhh, well, good riddance!
I’ve been slacking over the last few weeks, mostly working and haven’t really messed too much with projects or hobby stuff recently. Personally, I’ve been struggling in the motivation department; I guess seasonal depression on top of the pandemic and everything else isn’t doing me or anyone any favors lately. On a positive note, I *have* done a few things though…
- After wanting to get some home exercise equipment, I scored a free working treadmill, with unfortunately a worn out belt. I came across a supply of new belts from a place called “TreadMill Doctor“, which you can buy from on Amazon. I ordered a belt for my model treadmill, and it actually fit perfectly. It was a bit of work to take the treadmill apart to swap the belt out, and a little dialing in on the rollers to keep everything even as the belt breaks in, but the belt seems to be nice quality and works great. Added a cheap little TV connected to an old AppleTV, and my home gym is suddenly up and running 😉
- Continued messing with Apple’s homekit and Ikea Tradfri stuff – so far, a couple months in, I’m still very happy with the setup, although I’ve seen a couple glitches here and there, but far less than I expected.
Ikea recently released a new update to their software, and released new “shortcut” buttons that you can use to set a scene. With homekit that functionality is a little redundant, BUT one killer feature I’ve discovered, is that since I have a few of the Ikea “Symfonisk” speakers (actually made by Sonos), I found I can use the Ikea app to create a scene that sets speakers to a particular station/favorite, and leverage a shortcut button to launch the scene. Sophos’ own app can’t even do this (in less than several taps/clicks). Works great to listen to KYW news in the morning, regardless of what station I was listening to last on that speaker. - The AMIGA lives: Over the last few weeks of December and into January, I got my basket-case Amiga 2000 up and running 100%, and did some neat case mods with the gotek floppy emulator running Flashfloppy. Look for a new post about it hopefully before the end of the week.
I’ll end with that for now; be safe!