You can get access to your water usage here:
https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/water-environment/how-to-use-less-water/mywatertoronto
You can add this integration to Home Assistant:
https://github.com/davecpearce/hacs_mywatertoronto
Neat stuff! I’m just waiting for my water bill to hook it all up.
I live with anxiety.
It’s something that I really didn’t have an understanding of until I considered that I may be living with it, researched it, and the pandemic, plus some brewing personal situations that I needed to resolve was really the impetus for me figuring it out.
I think, when people think about anxiety, they think of the stereotypical suburban housewife in the 80s and earlier, taking Valium, not able to cope with things; which does a real disservice to women and stigmatizes what anxiety is, and how it can be treated.
We’ve come a long way since then and while mental health is still misunderstood, the treatments, compassion and care that exists today versus what I’ve seen friends go through, say, in the 80s is night and day.
NOTE: This blog entry discusses my mental health journey and while aspects here might help you, I am not a mental health expert and I advise you that if any of what I have written resonates with you, do consider speaking with a therapist.
Consider being in a situation that involves someone else where your mind is racing trying to figure out all the angles, possibilities and outcomes of the situation in advance so you’re prepared to get through any variant of the situation – a perpetual what if machine.
You’re nervous about saying the right thing in the right way because it’s super important to you, you have often been misunderstood in life, so you want to make sure you’re heard and understood. It consumes you and takes up valuable cycles you could be using to focus on other things in your life.
You become irritable, emotional – you want to do the right thing- you want to do the right thing for yourself, you also want to be considerate and do the right thing for the person you need to talk with and open up to, but you can’t because you’re trying to find the perfect way to meet your needs, their needs, to be sensitive to the other person and true to yourself.
You agonize over it.
You beat yourself up.
At least, in how anxiety has been showing up for me, this has been a common scenario. I recognize that anxiety shows up in a multitude of different ways for different people. Overcoming and learning to live with anxiety is a unique journey for everyone.
There are a few approaches I figured out for myself that seemed to work
That spinning is not kind, it will pull in other baggage, and it’s very hard to dig out. I knew that if I talked directly to the person involved about the situation I’m spinning about, it’s not going to be pretty. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.
In all honesty, no matter how weird or meandering or even ugly the path to the resolution to the situation you’re in is, dealing with it straight up is actually better. The people that can and do see past your baggage will be the ones that will help you figure things out and support you in seeing through your anxiety and triggers.
The character of Anxiety in Inside Out 2, a recent movie from Disney-Pixar, anthropomorphizes a great representation of anxiety. I really feel that if I had this story growing up, it may have given me some good food for thought or at least planted a seed where I could have realized earlier what was happening and lessened the impact on my life.
I’m not going to talk here about how I was able to connect the dots that lead to me learning how to mitigate my anxiety as it did involve some unconventional methods. The parts I will talk about are
While only I could do the work, having that support network was what I really needed to sort myself out. Definitely a gift the universe has given me.
Today, I can say my mind is the quietest it has ever been, ever. I cringe thinking about the times it lead to awkward and explosive situations. I’m not comfortable with it, and all I can do is accept that it happened and where required clean it up. learn from it and be a better person.
Anxiety has shaped my life for an incredibly long time. I can go back to my childhood where it started. I have no idea if it’s something that I’m predispositioned towards or a learned behaviour – I suspect a combination of both.
I certainly recognize what I went through, and the situations that made me a pro at the spin and keeping things to myself. My strong independent streak because I couldn’t rely on or didn’t even have the support I should have had when I was younger, and keeping things to myself as a result, among other things, all this adds up, and I am not surprised at how this turned out. It was a perfect storm.
I am proud of the man I’ve become, I’m proud of the hard work I’ve done on myself to be a better human. The true me has always been upbeat, personable, hardworking, someone who wants to do the right thing, make the world a better place and an introvert-leaning ambivert willing to look inwards,
The people that matter, I know, are also proud of me. I would not be where I am without them.
Yesterday I took our Tesla for its first charge at a Tesla Supercharger, mainly to check it out, see how simple the process was. Seriously, it was easy. Literally, as long as there’s a credit card linked to your Tesla account, you plug in and go, and you’re charged directly.
I decided to try getting there using Full Self Driving which is included for three months as I used a referral to purchase.
I started on the road in our relatively quiet neighbourhood which was a good place to start getting up to speed and then turning on FSD. I was nervous having researched some of the challenges, times you need to take over, etc.
Remember, you need to pay full attention when using any driver assistance system, especially one in beta. You can and should override the system anytime you’re feeling unsafe.
There areas where I was nervous:
I’d be curious to see how the vehicle does when the busy street is busier. The car turned flawlessly.
I was nervous that entering the ramp to get on the highway that it would take the ramp quickly and it initially did, but then slowed down appropriately and then accelerated up to speed beautifully. I’m used to merging sooner than the car did, and in this case the car chose to use the full acceleration lane.
People had moved over so it was clear to merge. That is one of my concerns – people often won’t move over for me in our other vehicle and I have to be aggressive getting on to the highway. It’s super annoying.
Exiting the highway at a particularly busy exit, it chose the correct lane and drove fully to the Supercharger.
I am impressed with the system and I hear that FSD 12 (we currently have FSD 11) is way better.
Do I need a Full Self Driving system in a car? I’d say not, I’m quite happy with a more “basic” lane keep assist and traffic aware cruise control which still uses AI. I still want to drive rather than give up that control. Yes, I want to be in control. LOL
If you’re interested in a Tesla and this blog has helped, feel free to ise my referral link to book a demo drive or to buy a Tesla. and get awards like 3 months of Full Self-Driving Capability.
I’ve been wanting to do a video for Iain the Tech Bear to demystify driving assistants on cars. Specifically I’m talking about autonomous driving.
BMW
On my 2020 BMW X5 I have the Driving Assistant Professional package. What this includes is:
It is a pretty fantastic package. When I moved from our Mini which was manual to our previous X3, it had similar features and was a total game changer. The X5 took this to the next level especially with the ability to self drive in stop and go traffic. In the Greater Toronto Area, you this feature is so helpful!
Tesla
Tesla has three packages – Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self Driving.
Autopilot really is just Traffic Aware Cruise Control which is the equivalent to radar cruise control, except on our 2024 MY it does it all with cameras, no radar. It also includes lane keep assist under the branding Auto Steer.
It’s pretty basic and it does the job. It doesn’t have self driving at 60kph which lets me go completely hands free in stop and go traffic, but I’m used to still holding onto the steering wheel when in that situation.
Enhanced Autopilot will “navigate on autopilot” which means on highways it will automatically navigate and traverse ramps and exists. It will automatically lane change as well with confirmation. In addition to automatically parking and the Summon functionality – which these are not currently available for Tesla Vision vehicles.
Full Self Driving is exactly that, the car uses AI to drive automatically. It’s still in beta, and you MUST pay attention. Even if it ever gets out of Beta, you still need to pay attention. You are ultimately responsible for your safety! This includes Autosteer on city streets and traffic light and stop sign control. I’ve not had a chance to test this at all.
I’ve experimented with Enhanced Autopilot and it’s both an improvement on what BMW offers, but it’s also a regression given the features that my BMW has that the Tesla doesn’t currently have.
That said, I’m very happy with what Tesla offers despite only having the car for just over 14 hours. I’d be happy with basic Autopilot.
So…
I really have to ask – what were the people thinking when they died in cars with any level of Autopilot? I’d never consider falling asleep at the wheel and not paying attention. It’s clear, the systems are NOT ready for that kind of trust. I value my life too much to trust the systems. Putting blind trust in these systems is a Darwin Award waiting to happen.
Since those times, the US NHTSA and other organizations have raised issues and Tesla has had to update the software so that people must touch the steering wheel, and the car will nag. Even other manufacturers have had to update and adjust their software.
Additionally, if you abuse the use of Autopilot, it will actually ban you from the service for a week. That’s smart on responsible.
I don’t have time for people using devices to counteract the safety systems on any vehicle that has some degree of autonomous driving such as weights.
In short, don’t be stupid. Pay attention.
Both our BMW and Tesla have driver attention cameras so it knows when you’re not paying attention to the road and doinking on your phone instead, and they alert you.
These systems do alleviate stress and I do feel refreshed after a longer drive. After driving manual, which I love, just not in Toronto traffic, having a system to help me arrive somewhere refreshed is amazing.
I like driver assistance systems and I’m fascinated by AI and how it can help to make driving safer. I do believe these systems do reduce accidents by keeping space, keeping you in lane, etc. However, it is your responsibility to pay attention and ensure safe operation of the vehicle.
Over the past few months I’ve been thinking that Scott and I need a second car. Since I’m not going to the office, and Scott is driving to work everyday due to some of his mobility issues that make navigating the TTC a pain; I’ve been feeling like a bit of a shut-in.
Introducing the eKumaKart!
Our first electric car! A Tesla Model Y.
I have always wanted an electric vehicle, ever since we leased our first two hybrids. We’ve gone from being super efficient to buying a series of gas guzzlers to buying one of the most efficient vehicles in the world.
We did a test drive Friday evening after seriously considering the Model Y, and submitted a deposit online. There was a Deep Metallic Blue with the white interior – in fact two – available in Oakville.
Within an hour we had a VIN, all the paperwork we needed to do initially, and an appointment set for pick up. Today at 4pm.
Over the next few days, updated documentation was added to our account and I could digitally sign for things such as the electric car incentives, which is automatically applied to our car downpayment.
I have never had such a smooth sales process. I didn’t have to deal with the BS of haggling, things like oil change packages, and other things. The price is the price – and right now they’ve dropped prices by $4000 in Canada, plus the $5000 Federal Government incentive, that’s $9000 saved there.
Not to steal a saying from GM’s Saturn days, but this is a different kind of car company and a different kind of car.
The tech, the way the cars are built (despite the quality control issues – ours so far has none that I can tell), is pretty groundbreaking. It is refreshing to see the established car companies challenged. They definitely have some catching up to do, although a company like Tesla cannot be complacent.
Yesterday, I called someone out for ageism related to a particular part of Madonna’s Celebration Tour. People are often reposting how she’s dancing during Ray of Light and often saying rather ageist things about it.
In terms of the concert, Ray of Light was not her best moment in the concert. Her dancing was not great, but for context, she’s in an open box, flying over the attendees with just the rail to hold on. Hats off to Madonna for that because I know I’d be way nervous.
Her costume – epic! I think it does two things, and keep in mind, this is my interpretation – I see it as A) celebrating rave culture and B) I kind of see it as saying, “Lady Gaga, here’s the torch” because what she’s wearing looks to me to be Gaga inspired. I can vibe with that.
I’ve always been one to live and let live. Who am I to judge what someone does, especially older folks in this case. If you want to let your freak flag fly, using P!nk as reference, go for it.
Talking with someone yesterday, at the recent Haçienda events in Manchester, there was a couple 80-ish plus years old who went to that event. Are we go going to tell them to go home because of their age? No! We’re going to dance and celebrate with them! To me it would be awesome to be in their presence.
When I was at Hibearnation in November in Manchester, at the second club night, I was blown away by a 20-something guy coming up to me and going, “Damn! You’re just tearing it up on the floor” and he was celebrating that with me. Both club nights were special to me for a multitude of reasons, but knowing that I was accepted despite being almost 50 was the icing on the cake.
I’m not one of these myopic Madonna fans who are militant. There are things she’s done at times that I’m like, WTF? Sooner or Later at the Academy Awards in 1991 was one of those moments for sure.
At her core, I appreciate the fact that she shines the light on topics that people want to ignore such as sex, safe sex, HIV awareness, age, empowerment of women, empowerment of minorities and marginalised communities.
I know by the time I’m her age, I don’t want to be stuck at home; I’m planning on being out there and active. Given the near death experience I had two years ago, I want to live and experience life even more.
Her music deals with some amazing deep topics. A perfect example of this is almost the whole Like a Prayer album. Her music videos speak volumes on several levels that often get missed. What seemingly looks like a bunch of women having fun (referring to the video for her single Music) is commentary on, “Guys can have all this fun, why can’t women?”, and that’s a basic example.
Did you know that Like a Virgin was actually written by two guys and it’s actually about that time when you fall in love with someone and you’re all a flutter about the relationship, and you feel “shiny and new”?
She has pushed the envelope for women, gay men, people of colour, etc. Yes, she has done some of this stuff controversially, absolutely. The right approach? Not always for sure, and it rubs people the wrong way. I can appreciate that because, again, what I referred to in my WTF comment above.
Everyone seems to have an opinion on Madonna that’s surface level. When you dig a little deeper, you realize just how much depth she has. If all you’re looking at is the criticism and accepting that, then you’re not seeing the important messages and things she’s actually saying.
I can’t force anyone to like Madonna, just like someone can’t force me to be a fan of, say, Taylor Swift. That said, I can learn to appreciate what Taylor Swift has done and while I don’t totally get her, I know she’s an important cultural force with a younger generation.
My intention isn’t to make someone a fan of Madonna, but she has done a lot for our world and I think she actually deserves way more appreciation than she actually gets. I wish people were a bit more critical and looked at things with a bit more depth.
A shame the person blocked me because a slightly shorter version of this would have been my thoughtful response to engage in discourse and to educate.
Before December 1983 my dad had written a letter to my mum which my grandmother read aloud which mentioned something to the effect of, “I’d like to buy Iain and Robyn a Commodore 64”.
The excitement of me going, “YES!” and then realizing maybe that wasn’t the response I should have given, “Maybe not? Is it okay?”. You could see the confusion in my voice because my parents did not have the smoothest of divorces and messaging was really confusing about us hating him yet still having a relationship with him.
I digress, December arrived and he visited taking us to the University of Guelph to introduce us to some of his colleagues and their work, going for meals. I really felt in those days, Dad was doing his best and making an effort to do what he could to inspire us and be a Dad.
I was too excited, after all, I was 10 years old and I was about to get an amazing computer! I had already experienced an Apple ][ and Commodore PETs at school; being exposed to UNIX and an IBM 5150 PC at my mum’s work; and friends had a Commodore VIC-20.
We drove to Guelph one late afternoon, went to a Zellers, and pick up a Commodore 64, a 1701 monitor, 1541 disk drive and all with, i think, a free VIC Desk! I think we also got Music Maker as well, so we weren’t left without something to try.
Those early days of not understanding how to load programs from the Commodore 64 and the 1541 – I remember my Grandfather and Uncle figuring it out; to getting my first joystick – a Suncom Slik Stick, and games Radar Rate Race and Jupiter Lander for my birthday.
I did so much with this computer
Mum actually used Paperclip to help type a book for one of the profs she worked with, rather than typing it out on Wordperfect on her work PC. I don’t remember how long the Commodore 64 was in her bedroom or at her office, but it certainly was a significant amount of time.
I made a number of friendships over the Commodore 64 – Paul and his dad too me to my first World of Commodore in December 1984. Paul gave me some of the first games – Ghostbusters, Pole Position and Frantic Freddie.
I’d learn about Super Snapshot cartridges, fast loaders, how bad Commodore printers were – thanks to my uncle for helping to purchase a Commodore 1526 printer that I used for many years to print out assignments; until I purchased a Xetec Supergrapics Jr and a Star NX-1000 Rainbow printer – the first piece of computer hardware I saved up for and purchased with summer work money.
I even bought a 1764 REU which, in some respects was a waste of money, though it really did speed up GEOS which I used VERY extensively for homework assignments.
I still have that Commodore 64, the 1541 disk drive, the REU and every disk I ever owned. Gone is the monitor, the VIC Desk, . The last time I turned it on was last year, and unfortunately, I think one of the PLA chips died as I was backing up my disks to an SD card – Pi1541 for the backup win!
Thankfully, the World of Commodore is still going and I was able to purchase a replacement PLA chip – that I still have yet to install. I will likely do that in the coming weeks.
While the TS 1000 was the first computer I owned, the main computer I used was this Commodore 64. It was a workhorse for me from 1983 to 1990 when I picked up a Commodore Amiga 500.
Such a powerful computer at the time, and I realize now there was so much more I could have learned, especially with electronics and the user port. I’d have loved to have had a second disk drive, a second phone line into the house and run a BBS. I actually did run one for a short time period, but off the main phone line. My grandmother was not pleased with me. LOL!
Still, I did push that computer and loved every minute of it.
My YouTube Channel is going through a bit of a transition!
With not travelling as much as I used to, I decided to add a new category of content – Tech Content! Beyond travel and music, it’s one more thing I’m quite passionate about.
There is a lot that I want to talk about between retrocomputing history, Internet of Things, and various projects I have going on.
What a steal! CAD$69.99 in 1983 and comes with the arcade game, Frogger and Mixed Game Bag 1!
The problem, and the best way to disappoint a kid – to be clear, the corporation, not my mum who spent hard earned money in 1983 to get me my first computer.
To use those games, you’d need a 16K RAM Pack!
I first explored programming on this computer, with a membrane keyboard and the manual in hand, oh and a Panasonic tape recorder to save my programs to.
I’ve mentioned people in my life who inspired me in my career. I mentioned my great uncle, Reggie.
In my life story of the Timex Sinclair 1000, is another person that inspired me – Kenyon Taylor.
Kenyon and his wife were friends of my grandparents. In my fact, one of his sons and my mother dated for a period of time, I think, in the 1950s. When we would vacation in Northern Ontario, we would often travel to Mindemoya on Manitoulin Island where they lived.
Kenyon is famous as one of the co-inventors of the modern trackball, DATAR, vehicle detection systems, and Flip Disk Displays among a number of other patents. In many respects, I was standing in the presence of engineering greatness not really comprehending it as a kid.
We last saw Kenyon shortly before he passed away in June 1986. I remember Robyn and I being very quiet at his side with mum and some of his family members. He is someone I wish I could have spoken to as a teenager or an adult.
Back to our connection on the Timex Sinclair 1000 – When we visited Kenyon, he had a Timex Sinclair 1000 and he inspired me to learn more programming on it and printed out a number of programs for me to type in.
I still have those programs, printed on the Timex Sinclair 2040, using thermal paper!
It gave me some really good inspiration for algebra and trigonometry in high school.
This is one of a number of moments in my history, definitely a gift that I will always appreciate.
I didn’t always use the Timex Sinclair 1000 after about 1988. I’d occasionally pull it out and plug it in for fun, but I have fully transitioned to using my Commodore 64 for gaming, and homework. None the less, I held on to the computer and, as mentioned, I still have it, as well as two backups – one from an acquaintance from high school, and one my partner Sté is passing on to me.
Sinclair computers were such an important part of making computing available to the masses back in the 80s, especially in Europe and would go on to great acclaim with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, of which I picked up a Spectrum+ when I lived in Norwich in 1995.
I’ve dreamed of having servers in my home to do various things and, I guess, it’s finally taken on a life of it’s own!
See, it started with me implementing Pi-Hole, to stop annoying advertisements from websites. Of course, I have a bunch of IoT devices and have controllers.
Then Raspberry Pi announced the 8Gb Raspberry Pi 4. I bought one as soon as I could and wondered, what should I do with it? I’ve always wanted to install Home Assistant should our network connection ever go down, we can control our devices.
I added a Synology NAS as I needed the space and the redundancy for backups and the Raspberry Pi Retroconsole project I’ve been curating. This also allows me to run Docker containers – the ability to run a particular piece of software in it’s own little – are pretty cool.
The thing with Home Assistant, you don’t want to run that off an SDCard as it will burn it out. So I bought an Argon One M.2 case with a 250 Gb SSD. A Raspberry Pi running off an SDD is pretty quick! It surprised me.
So, Home Assistant doesn’t use that much space, so I’m wasting the space on a 250 Gb SDD! Also, admittedly, the fan on the Argon One M.2 case started making noises and I had situation where I thought I lost the SDD, so I decided to switch the case to a SunFounder Pironman – I’m all about the LED lighting.
So far so good.
So with that done, I’m deciding to experiment with a bunch of services hosted on both the NAS and my Pi 4 8Gb:
Pi-Hole – I’ve already mentioned, this is my Ad Blocker
Home Assistant – i’ve mentioned this too, which allows me to run my IoT devices independent of their cloud brokers
Mealie – This is a new addition, a recipe manager that will scrape website pages for recipes. I really like this concept, and have been somewhat fascinated by recipe managers since my Timex Sinclair 1000 days
WordPress – This was the first iteration of a dashboard, more a page of links to servers and such inside our home. I’m not sure I’ll use this much, but having the option, I might be inspired to put it to use
Homarr – is everything I ever wanted in a Dashboard for a home. It’s easy to add new buttons for internal web services and more! The perfect starting point!
OwnCloud – With the space on the Raspberry Pi, I could put some important files on here as a just in case backup fron the NAS and cloud; accessible anywhere.
Kasm – I heard about this from a YouTube video on servers people are running at home. I’m completely blown away that my Raspberry Pi 4 with 8Gb can run two streaming Docker containers running a game of Doom and a full Debian Linux instance! It’s pretty awesome and gives me a bunchmark for just how powerful a Raspberry Pi is.
Plex – I run Plex off my Mac server for streaming videos
Apple Music – Last but not least, my music streams off my Mac server
I also have dedicated systems that run a web browser, PHP and control LEDs for saying a room is busy.
There you have it – what
