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  1. Choosing Between Third-Party Applications and Internal Development

    When deciding whether to use a third-party application or develop a solution in-house, several factors come into play. If a third-party solution meets your needs entirely, it's often the best choice due to its reliability, cost-effectiveness, and the transfer of maintenance responsibilities.

    However, third-party solutions may not always align with …

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  2. Home Assistant Power Monitoring

    So I think I have integrated aurora's delayed power usage data into home assistant, though it's a little convoluted and dodgy. Aurora is pretty much the only power provider in Tasmania.

    The issue is that they post your power consumption to their non-official API the day after. This is incompatible …

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  3. A dull, but productive day

    What did I do today? I spent a great deal of time getting some software to work for customers which isn't entirely uncommon.

    I spent a lot of time getting an automation that I am working on for my full time gig to reliably determine how to output some text …

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  4. Fires and Data

    Client over the weekend needed to do their stock-take. I built the stock keeping system they use. It's an extension of the inventory system they are forced to use by the eCommerce platform they use. It allows them to run their business in the way they want to. The catch …

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  5. Roofing

    Did a bit of roofing. Not particularly good at it. Flipped the iron around like, 16 times before I think I put it in the optimal spot. We shall see.

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  6. Unfinished Code in Production and Asbestos

    Client wants to test my app updates in production against customers. It's not finished, but they need to test it before it's finished to make sure it's what the customers want.

    Going to have to run the docker containers locally and connect them to production through an SSH tunnel. Should …

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  7. Leaks

    Things are leaking.

    Today it decided to finally rain after being dry for quite a long time. And it really decided to rain. The caravan which we were actively renovating is quite wet inside.

    Average photo, but you can see it a bit shiny.

    Little girl has been sick, not …

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  8. Heat pumps, DayZ and tablets

    Got a new heat pump installed. Specifically got the WiFi model so I could integrate it with homeassistant. Came with a firmware update where the developers have completely reworked the API and broken the existing Daikin homeassistant integration. I didn't want to wait so blindly slapping together my own integration …

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  9. The Role of Artificial General Intelligence in Preventing Apocalypse Scenarios

    In today's rapidly advancing world, the threat of an apocalypse looms large, with potential disasters stemming from multiple fronts: genetic engineering, pandemics, nuclear conflict, and artificial intelligence (AI) gone rogue. Each of these vectors presents a formidable challenge, demanding sophisticated solutions that could arguably be beyond human capacity alone. This …

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  10. Doom's AI Legacy

    In the early 1990s, a groundbreaking video game called Doom not only redefined the landscape of gaming but also sparked a vision for the future of technology. While Doom itself did not utilize GPUs — since the technology was still in its infancy — it set a precedent that better graphics could …

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  11. Darkness

    It's 2:31am and right now, I can't sleep.

    Running ten kilometers is not the kind of thing you should really just wake up and decide to do. An event such as this requires training and discipline; neither of which are qualities I possess in any remarkable way. Yet I …

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  12. On Chat GPT

    Hi.

    So everyone has been banging on about this ChatGPT AI system and I thought I might weigh in on my thoughts.

    In case you don't know, ChatGPT is a new AI model by OpenAI. You know, those crazy cats who made the computers draw weird pictures so you can …

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  13. Containerized Application with SSL

    This drives me nuts so I more or less favour cloud builds now to get away from having to setup HTTPS. The problem is, its just so necessary.

    So I am documenting here how to do this using docker compose, nginx and certbot. One resource that helped me greatly was …

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  14. Raspberry Pi Dashboard

    I got bored and thought it might be nice to have a simple way for my partner and I to see what is coming up next in our lives.

    The finished product

    So I'm not going to go over the exact setup here, it is pretty easy to do with …

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  15. Hello world!

    My name is Justin and I do things.

    I am on a journey, as we all are, where I am trying to become the best version of myself. Below are some of the modes of me:

    • Father

    • Partner

    • Developer

    • Game Developer

    • Tinkerer

    • Home owner

    • Writer

    • Backyard Adventurer

    • Philosopher

    I will …

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  16. The F-String

    Image credit Another way to concatenate strings. Hi guys, sorry it's been a fortnight! I've been hella busy and still am so this is going to be short. So I recently discovered the f-string in python. a_string = " are pretty damned cool!" print("f-strings" + a_string) So I'm sure most of us …

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  17. Pure Python HTML to PDF

    Image credit Hello again! Welcome to another Monday and another short one for you here. So, have you ever needed to make a PDF file programmatically? I know I have. One of the main advantages of having a pdf as opposed to some other graphical format is being able to …

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  18. Python List Comprehension

    Image credit Hi there! Thought I'd give a big hi today in apologies for the lack of length that this blog post has in comparison with my somewhat hectic previous one. I can't consistently keep banging out blog posts that long though, I'm pretty busy. So, List Comprehensions Moving right …

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  19. A Star

    Image credit Why A Star? So for game development, we were in a situation where we had a player that you could swap for any one of three characters. These characters needed to follow along behind the main character. At first, I thought I could do something simple like: if …

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  20. I'm Back


    Image credit Hello friends. So it's been a while and I apologise. I haven't stopped though, I have just been busy getting things done. So what's been happening? That was more of a rhetorical question as you are reading and I have hopefully moved on since writing this. I've been …

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  21. Happy New Year


    Image credit - Adam Dachis Hey gang! It's been a while since I wrote on here and that has mainly been because I haven't really had anything to say. But I have thought of something I would like to say now, and I am going to take this opportunity to say …

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  22. Tis the season...

    Image credit - DoYouKubuntu Hey gang! Just checking in. So, 'tis the season to be jolly and what not so I am allowing myself to take some R&R. Ergo I have temporarily suspended work on the platform I was working on. I'm not going into business for myself to work …

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  23. Why Jekyll Rocks


    Some of you out there probably know a little bit about web development and the various frameworks that are available out there. Some of you may be clever enough to realise that this very site is designed with a static site generator developed with Ruby called 'Jekyll'. I just thought …

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  24. Learning JavaScript

    I know what you're thinking... Clearly, I should also be learning how to use software like Adobe Illustrator and not rely so heavily on MS Paint. But hey, I know it and have been using it for years, seems to do most things I need it to! So this week …

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  25. Back to basics

    So since my last post, I have begun working as a volunteer. The Arduino project is on hiatus. As it happens, it is considerably difficult to acquire paid work when you are but a meagre, inexperienced web developer. And by inexperienced, I mean I don't have any idea how to …

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  26. Arduino Meltdown

    So today I blew up my arduino. I have been working on a project that involves regulating the temperature inside a refridgerater using the built in compressor and a small heater. You guys will hear all about it in the portfolio section when it is finished. Seriously, I've been recording …

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  27. Projects projects projects!

    G'day! So, this is my first blog post. My name is Justin, as I am sure you have deduced from the domain name, and I am a web developer/guitarist/butcher. Actually, I dare say I am perhaps the only one you know. So I am currently studying at the …

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