December 4, 2018

Articles

IKEA hack: Using Skådis to tidy up networking gear

Since most smart home devices need their own hub, you tend to end up with a lot of them. We currently have three: Philips Hue, IKEA Trådfri and HomematicIP. Since most of these hubs use Zigbee or another similar wireless…

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November 20, 2018

Articles

How to pre-load a Kindle with books as a gift without an account

I'm a huge Kindle fan and have given three Kindle Paperwhites to family members over the years as gifts. [](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CXG6C9W/?tag=whitjetp-20) I've usually tried to make it easy for them to pick up imm…

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October 27, 2018

Articles

iPhone Xr impressions

My wife has an iPhone 6, so when the iPhone Xr was announced, it looked like a good fit for an upgrade. The only downsides were: The size: it's quite a bit larger than the iPhone 6 The price: for all the talk of this bei…

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October 16, 2018

Articles

It‘s all part of the plan

A song off the latest Punch Brothers album popped up in my recommendations recently and I‘ve really enjoyed the whole album. It‘s all part of the plan is the standout track though, definitely worth a listen… Watch the em…

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April 2, 2018

Articles

WiFi for the new house

Despite not being hooked up to a landline internet connection yet (thanks Telekom), I recently set up our new WiFi system. Our house is a wooden frame construction by Danwood and while planning we had read that getting W…

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March 16, 2018

Articles

Our 🏡

2018-02-24 2018-03-11 1 year and 7 months after buying a plot of land and beginning our new home, we finally moved into our first house. People always tell you that a building project will take longer than you’d hope – a…

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January 6, 2018

Articles

Photo: Schloss Nymphenburg at dusk

We went to Schloss Nymphenburg to watch the annual “Heilige Drei Könige” procession. We left just after sundown and I caught this shot of the palace illuminated from the back. The shot is a bit blurry, but I still really…

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January 2, 2018

Articles

Shooting fireworks with the OM-D EM-5 mark II

Capturing fireworks can be tricky – it's dark, everyone's excited and had a few glasses of bubbly… challenging! On most other cameras, I’ve usually used manual mode with a smallish aperture (f5.6 - f8), and long shutter…

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December 30, 2017

Articles

Olympus OM-D E-M5 vs OM-D E-M5 Mark II

I got the OM-D E-M5 six years ago as a birthday present from my wonderful wife. It’s been a fantastic camera and I love some of the shots I’ve taken with it: When the successor, the E-M5 mkii came out, there wasn’t reall…

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November 12, 2017

Articles

iPhone X vs OM-D E-M5

It was a dreary, rainy Sunday afternoon here in Munich – perfect time to go for a stroll around Nymphenburg Palace gardens and compare cameras! I was seriously impressed by the quality of the iPhone X camera, so I though…

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November 8, 2017

Articles

Smart Home: Exploring Philips Hue and Homebridge

I’ve written about setting up TP-Link smart plugs to work with Homekit via Homebridge, so I thought I’d post an update on what I’m using at home now. We’re currently building our first house and trying to figure out whic…

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October 20, 2017

Articles

Battle of the Micro-four Third primes: Olympus 25mm f1.8 vs Olympus 17mm f1.8

These two very similar lenses are hugely popular primes for Micro Four-Third owners. I’ve had the 25mm for a few years now, but occasionally found myself wanting something a bit wider. When I spotted a deal on a second h…

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October 13, 2017

Articles

Quick recap: Litmus Live London

This August, I had the opportunity to present at Litmus Live in London. All of us on the Mail Designer Team at TOWER ONE make heavy use of Litmus to verify our new design features work across all email clients, so it was…

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May 14, 2017

Articles

Brexit: Becoming German

As a Brit who has lived in Germany for 26 years, it's fair to say I have a fairly selfish reasons to want Britain to stay in the EU. Once you've seen the benefits of the EU up close, it's impossible to see leaving Europe…

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May 1, 2017

Articles

ioscon 2017 – building apps for iOS, macOS and tvOS

This year I had the opportunity to give a talk at ioscon 2017 on how equinux builds apps for all three of Apple's major platforms. Shipping a product on multiple platforms adds additional overhead and effort, both of whi…

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November 22, 2016

Articles

Using TP-Link HS-100 smart plugs with HomeKit

I got some of these TP-Link wifi smart plugs on Amazon (US version / EU version), primarily to try out their Amazon Alexa integration. They work well enough and thanks to their terrible security, I was also able to rig u…

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May 24, 2016

Articles

IdentityKit – make the watch useful

There has been a lot of Apple Watch complaining recently, and mostly for good reason: Apps are unusably slow and some of the things it does well like Notifications and Complications feel underutilized. But I think there'…

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May 1, 2016

Articles

The alexification of everything

Amazon's Alexa Voice Service is shaping up to become a home appliance platform juggernaut.

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April 20, 2016

Articles

First look: iPad Pro 9.7" Smart Keyboard

I've already written about how much I'm enjoying the iPad Pro + Pencil for product sketches and collecting ideas, so I thought I'd try diving in all the way with the Smart Keyboard. (It also helped that Apple's smart cas…

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April 17, 2016

Articles

DIY AirPlay Speaker with Raspberry Pi

AirPlay for music works really well, but is hampered by a frustrating lack of compatible accessories. In particular, I'm loathe to invest in speakers that have AirPlay built-in, in case I ever decide to switch to Spotify…

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