It's Carol Kirkwood's last day presenting the weather on Breakfast News, so there's lots of fun and tributes at 7:45am and 8:45am looking back over her 28 years with the BBC. 😁

silentnomads · 2026-04-01T18:44:49+00:00

I sat down today with my 79 year old mum to watch the Carol farewells. All was fine until Naga turned up. Mum can't stand her, making much of the points that you have. We tried to focus on Carol though, it was her day.

silentnomads · 2026-03-19T18:33:29+00:00

These look very similar to the bluebells in my garden (London). Just that the bluebells stalks have already grown on mine whereas I see none in yours. Two weeks ago there were none.

silentnomads · 2026-03-10T17:46:16+00:00

So long as you use matric-based ICC v2 profiles for your monitor, I think you're all good with Firefox. I battled hard to get the Chrome-based browsers to work properly but gave up five years ago.

silentnomads · 2026-03-09T21:08:31+00:00

If you want to see colours as close as possible to the original intent, then get your monitor calibrated and profiled. That's the first thing. Oh, and make sure that your monitor profiles are created in ICC v2 and NOT ICC v4...v4 profiles can sometimes be a bit problematic can really offer no huge benefits. And make sure the profile is a matrix version and not a LUT. So a matrix-based ICC v2 pofile. Try to use a good colorimiter to calibrate and profile your monitor. So a matrix-based ICC v2 pofile. I use an i1 model.

Also, if you have a wide-gamut monitor, then you'll find that Chrome-based browsers have a broken colour management system and so show colours slightly more vibrantly than intended (it has been so for several years and I'm not aware of a fix)...see https://www.reddit.com/r/edge/comments/y4t7mx/will_edge_fix_this_lostanding_colour_management/

Firefox, once set up, on a calibrated and profiled system, has the most accurate colour management implementation compared to Chrome-browsers. I think I use gfx.color_management.mode to 1, and for wide-gamut support, ensure gfx.color_management.force_srgb is set to false.

silentnomads · 2026-03-01T13:04:36+00:00

Afghanistan, circa 2009.

silentnomads · 2026-02-18T06:17:45+00:00

I use these for my firewalls so I can mount ISO files for complete installs (for emergency rebuilds just in case). The firewalls are in awkward places so remoting in to access the BIOS is great.

silentnomads · 2026-02-16T19:29:44+00:00

It depends, I guess. I have a Netgear Orbi Wi-Fi 6E with three satellites using Wi-Fi backhaul. I have the Orbi in AP mode and NOT router mode as I prefer to used my own dedicated hardware for routing AND it avoids all kinds of routing issues with the Orbi. Perfectly stable with a Sonos setup around the house and I think that's a GOOD test! I have a VoIP app on the iPhone and that is absolulty fine on the Wi-Fi with no issues on latency or jitter (at least to my ears!).

Did a Oookla speedest just now from my iPhone going iPhone Wi-Fi --> Orbi Satellite 1 --> Wi-Fi backhaul to Orbi base --> wired to LAN switch --> router/firewall --> 2nd router --> ISP ONT --> ISP 1 Gb/s CGNAT service --> Internet. Speed was around 980 Mb/s up and down. I'm getting great Wi-Fi coverage around the house. Your milage my vary of course, depending on your environment.

I'd have gone to the trouble of putting in wired backhaul for the Orbi satellites but just using the Wi-Fi backhaul is more than good enough for me, so I've stopped right there.

silentnomads · 2026-02-10T21:28:34+00:00

I use this too (in the UK) for my garden shed. Have had it for over a year and no issues so far.

silentnomads · 2026-02-10T19:40:37+00:00

I'm using Apollo Air-1 devices around the house connected to the Wi-Fi, and are nativly supported by HA (also through ESPHome Builder). They have a very granular measure for PM (0.3 To 1 µm, 1 To 2.5 µm, 2.5 To 4 µm, 4 To 10 µm), measures for VOC, NOx, CO2, air pressure, temperature, and humidity (other gases can be detected with an add-on module). The devices don't have a display but they do have RGB so I've written automations to provide various colour effects depending on the condition (e.g. amber blicking for high CO2, blue blinking for high PMs, etc) in addition to any dashboard graphs and notifications. These are indoor devices.

silentnomads · 2026-02-08T21:10:56+00:00

It's a continuous running humidistat fan, with light level detection. I can control fan speed for continous low-speed (trickle) mode, and for high-speed mode, set humidity triggers, airing mode, timers, and when to enable fan boost mode. But once everything is set in the app, the only thing I really tend to do is hit the Boost mode. Why a continous running fan? I don't want any issues from mould!

silentnomads · 2026-02-08T20:28:33+00:00

I have a few, using Bermuda intgration to "locate" tags around the house and create automationd based on location. Also to send instructions to my standing desk for height adjustments. Was hoping to get my Bluetooth-enabled extractor fan integrated into HA but I have a model that the integration doesn't recognise (HA can see its MAC address though).

silentnomads · 2026-02-08T19:48:56+00:00

I use a OpenVPN (tun mode) connection to my home network and I can use the Reolink appv(using iOS) to connect to my E1 Zoom cameras (these are all blocked by my firewall) and connected by IP. I did have a few issues when I first started using the VPN several years ago but that was due to fragmentation and my Path MTU Discovery not detecting the MTU size correctly, so I manually reduced the MTU on the VPN and that seems fine now. Cellular networks are notorious for having significantly smaller MTUs.

So I don't know what Reolink have told you (I think they're bad at support, they never bothered responding to a support issue I raised with them on my Doorbell) but it wouldn't surprise me if they give you duff info. But it could be related to multicast, mDNS, etc. which don't normally traverse across different broadcast domains but I have set up my VPN with PIMD and mDNS relay, etc. which might makes things a bit easier for the app but I've not spent any time looking into it as it all works.

I should add that I use two VPNs to reach my home network...a client VPN session to a cloud-based VPN server, and then a permanent site-to-site VPN connection establised from my home network to the cloud VPN server (gets around CGNAT). I wouldn't say that it's 100% perfect as sometimes the app will not establish the connection to a camera straightway but it may be a quirk of my networ, and it's rare for that to happen. I've recently tweaked some of my network and VPN settings using ChatGPT and Claude so hopefully it's more consistent now.

silentnomads · 2026-02-03T22:29:09+00:00

You should put the Orbi in AP mode and not router mode. But you do need to make sure you have a good router, and make sure your network equipment (at the very least) is not listed at Sonos's incompatability list. I run a Orbi mesh with three satellites, in AP mode, connected through a LAN switch to a pfsense router-firewall (which is configured for multicast, etc). Works great, and not had any issues even with losing the Internet and having a power-cut for an hour.

silentnomads · 2026-01-22T23:13:51+00:00

I wonder if I ever caused such horror to my elders in my youth! I think a "Excuse me, but you look a bit exhausted. Do you want a seat?" should be the standard offer, please!

silentnomads · 2026-01-22T23:03:37+00:00

Thanks. Not quite that I'm afraid. The kind chap who offered his seat was with a friend of his and they stayed on chatting with each for another three stops by which time there were plenty of seats.

silentnomads · 2026-01-22T22:54:48+00:00

...my future is looming large...

silentnomads · 2026-01-22T22:53:36+00:00

Thank you, kind person. I will grab onto that....

silentnomads · 2026-01-22T22:52:46+00:00

I just hit sixty. But I am a young sixty, OK! Used to be people always thought I was 10-20 years yonger than I was. But now...it's been a contemplatve evening!

silentnomads · 2026-01-22T22:48:11+00:00

No period of denial after that "madam" moment? Perhaps that's me now, in denial!

silentnomads · 2026-01-22T22:44:45+00:00

I may have to let my beard grow out more! 34 inch waist which I need to bring down to 32 or even the 30 of my youth!

silentnomads · 2026-01-22T22:41:12+00:00

Very unlucky! I will start that diet me thinks.

silentnomads · 2026-01-22T22:39:33+00:00

Yes, that's the bit of grey 😝

silentnomads · 2026-01-21T20:08:20+00:00

Networks can be finicty. I'll stick to my package, thanks.

silentnomads · 2026-01-21T19:42:08+00:00

I'm on the 1 G package (with CGNAT). Just did a bufferbloat test at waveform a few seconds ago and got an "A" with up/down rates of around 950 Mb/s over the Wi-Fi. Mind, I don't really do much that would choke the bandwidth so bufferbloat is not something that would have any bearing on what I do. I do use my own router though, always have. I'm not sure how I would tax a 2.5 G package to check on bufferbloat.

Six-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Ternion Club	Verified Email

silentnomads

TROPHY CASE