A few weeks ago I decided to actually setup an Etsy shop. I figured that I should sell some of the items I have been making with my Cricut and other creative tools. Check it out here at ArtsyBF. I have started to make a variety of things including custom tumblers, stickers, sticker sheets, and…
Of all the things on my hypothetical pandemic bingo card, a Cricut would NOT have been on it. Who would have thought any of us would have a hypothetical pandemic bingo card, but 2020 doing what 2020 does best, this is where I am. I honestly don’t know why I went down this path, but…
Overview Smart Plugs are one of the most basic building blocks of a smart home. The good news is that there are a ton of them on the market, but the bad news is that there are a TON of them on the market. The challenge is finding one that is the best for you…
I have been looking for a GarageDoor control for years to add to my smart home. I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten to the store or work and wondered if I had left the garage door open. A remote opener would be a perfect way to solve this issue but there…
Continue reading Smart Home: Meross HomeKit Garage Door Opener
As I recommended in my Smart Home: Overview post, the Philips Hue system should be one of your first purchases if you are building a smart home. The system is definitely pricey, but it is stable & well integrated into all of the main smartphone platforms where you can enable voice control as well as…
Although I now have plenty of smart home devices, I would say that I started out as a skeptic. A lot of my reasoning came down to “It’s not that hard to just [walk over and flip the switch, run upstairs and check the windows, walk over to the thermostat, etc] now, so why would…
On my recent trips to Japan, I spent some time at the Tokyo Disney Resort and visited both Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea. Overview Growing up in Southern California, you are, by default a Disney person. It’s kind of a rite of passage. Your first trip with your parents as a kid is the high bar…
I have been using iPads since the original one came out in 2010. iPads were primarily a secondary device – check email, browse the web, and watch movies on vacations – but that always meant I needed a laptop to do anything that required creating something. This all changed with the iPad Pro and the…
Company on Broadway was the last show I saw before the Coronavirus pandemic hit the US. I saw this show on Tuesday, March 10th and by Thursday evening of that week, Broadway was shut down and has been ever since. On one hand, I feel lucky to have been able to see this production before…
Continue reading Company on Broadway….before a serious lack of it
Overview Japan had long been on my list of places to visit. Honestly, I put it off because I was afraid. It felt like too big of a challenge–the language, the food, and the culture. I was unsure of how I would fare in a country where the language didn’t use a roman script, where…