Week 56: Patches

A week of expanding paint samples, nerding out with temperature and humidity sensors, feeling rough, and a bunch of new board games.

Posted on by Rowan Manning.
Tagged with Side ProjectsBoard GamesHouseGamesDIYHome Automation

  • Choosing paint is hard! Thanks, Matt for the ranking, it gave me even more colours to choose from 🙈 The living room mess of patches is growing at an alarming rate. I think I currently light the rightmost brighter green in the middle, but who knows how I’ll feel by next week.

    A wall covered in 20 different green and neutral paint patches

  • I’ve been having a lot of fun with home automation. I bought some Shelly Temperature and Humidity sensors and set up a couple of dashboards with my Raspberry Pi dashboard and Grafana.

    My flat's temperature and humidity displayed as room-by-room graphs
    My flat's temperature and humidity displayed as graphs in Grafana

    My next step is to use this data to power dehumidifiers around the house and get a smart thermostat set up. I’m kind of leaning towards a Tado wireless thermostat which it’s possible to integrate into my setup without giving more data to Google or Amazon.

  • I spent the first half of the week feeling really rough and decided to skip the office so I don’t spread it further. Unfortunately, this meant missing Lee’s visit 😔 fingers-crossed we can catch up next time!

  • By the weekend I was feeling a lot better. I went to play board games in person for the first time in ages, followed by a bottomless brunch (somehow feeling OK after that). Played a couple of great new games:

    • Whirling Witchcraft is a nice quick game and easy to pick up. There’s a bit of engine building but the pace of the game means it’s not super heavy on tactics.

    • Nidavellir is kind of similar to 7 Wonders, I found it nearly impossible to hold a mental model of the scoring, but it was still fun – hopefully, I’ll do better next time.