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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • If you are looking for FOSS, I highly recommend joplin. It’s simple but works well. I used it for many years until recently I switched to Obsidian. I dislike that Obsidian isn’t FOSS but I’m using the free tier and the community plugins really make it so much more powerful than Joplin. They both store things in Markdown so I’m not locked down to their ecosystem which I think is a requirement for any note taking app.












  • I’ve been using Home Assistant for a while now. I do recommend setting up a VLAN that can’t communicate with the internet which is where any wifi devices live. However I really like ZigBee and/or Z-Wave devices as they don’t require any internet connection.

    Lights alone are a game changer. Timers never really worked well for us because we’re pretty far north of the equator and sunrises/sunsets have a pretty big swing. I currently have the lights come on 1 hour before sunset so it adjusts to this swing without me having to do anything. Then I have a button on my nightstand that turns off all the lights that aren’t night lights.

    The downsides are that it can be expensive. You start with a couple of light bulbs, maybe a couple of outlets, next thing you know you are pricing out how much it will cost to change all your switches and trying to figure out if they all have neutral wires or not. You’ll start watching youtube videos of people’s setups and looking for ways to do more with your smart home. It’s a fun hobby but can be a lot of work.


  • Induction is where it’s at if you want electric. It works similar to how a transformer works. The stove makes a magnetic field that your cookware reacts to. The downside is that all your pots and pans need to be magnetic. Fortunately this is easy to test with any magnet (like a fridge magnet even).

    You can get single stand alone induction burners for less than $100 if you want to try it out. Some are more powerful than others.

    I’ve been wanting to replace my stove for a while and I still keep going back and forth between gas an induction. I still kind of prefer cooking on gas but there’s some controversy about air quality and gas stoves. But I can tell you, if I don’t get a gas stove… I’m gonna get an induction one.