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Random thoughts of a Brit living in the Imperial Valley of California

Archive for April, 2009

Song of the Week

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Couldn’t find a video 🙁

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April 30th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

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A Little Home Security

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Thanks to an individual who we don’t seem to be able to keep out of our house, this weekend will see us install a mini-DIY home security system. Rather than buy a package and pay monthly fees for monitoring I decided to do something home-grown that I can expand for both security and automation. A friend of mine is quite the expert (I think everything in his house is monitored and/or can be controlled from his website) and I went with the software package he recommended.

HomeSeer is able to take signals from most, if not all, of the home automation device-types out there, X10, Z-Wave and so on. It is fully programmable thanks to a Visual Basic like language that lets you code to a specific library. For example, it knows about sunset times so you could have lights come on when it gets dark. As well as regular things like lights, sensors etc it can also control telephones, voice speakers, all kinds of things. I saw one page where a guy put an RFID chip in his car and now when he gets near his garage, the door automatically opens.

To start off, I have some door sensors and a couple of cheap wireless IP cameras. I aim to set the system up so that when an external door opens during times where there is supposed to be nobody home I will get some pictures sent to me. What we will do if we see someone we don’t like I am not yet sure, both Teri and I are too far away to go and challenge the unwelcome visitor, but it will at the very least serve as evidence that the person was there when they say they were not.

One reason for not going with a regular security system is that if it gets disabled, or the PIN is shared, then it’s useless, and typically these systems don’t allow for remote internet monitoring (at a reasonable price). If I want to move things around, or change a condition then I can. And since it’s more than just security I can add automation as and when I want.

So we’ll see how it all goes this weekend, and then over the next few weeks…..

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April 10th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

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Things I Had Planned to do This Week

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Post-Vegas I had vowed to do the following:

  1. Seriously start to lose weight – no alcohol during the week, no chocolate, snacks during the week, walk to/from downtown twice a week
  2. Go flying – I haven’t flown without an instructor since last September. I seem to have lost the confidence to fly alone.
  3. Arrange mandolin lessons, at last
  4. Do something in the evenings other than sit, surf the web and watch UFC and CSI repeats on TV.
  5. Make some puppet theatre

It’s Thursday night and I sit here with wine by my side, chocolate stains on my lap, walking shoes still clean, no entries in my flying logbook, no further along learning the mandolin than the day I bought it, watching CSI and being looked at by puppets who are saying “you suck”.

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April 2nd, 2009 at 8:08 pm

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On the Hoover Dam

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Back from the MINI Vacation in Vegas, had a good time and will write something about it soon. In the meantime, here’s a short video clip taken on the Hoover Dam which we drove over on one of the outings.

On the Hoover Dam from Paul Sanders on Vimeo.

Teri and I take a walk around the Hoover Dam.

The footage was remixed using the ‘Film Grain’ filter in iMovie ’09 for that 60’s look.

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April 1st, 2009 at 7:54 am

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