Thomil's Random Ramblings

So, over the last couple of months, my blog has seen quite a few posts about Amazon products... if you ignore that embarrassing break over the summer months that is. That’s simply because bit by bit, I’ve found their products to actually be quite useful in my everyday life. Granted, not all of them are equally useful all the time, but all in all, they’ve really been useful in completing my smart home setup here at home. Anyway, for this article, I’m going quite a ways back, all the way back to January 1st of this year, to be precise. On that day, I published a long-planned article about my experience in setting up a smart home in my apartment here in Cork. At the time, I already had a pretty extensive setup, and on the whole, not that much has changed since then. I’ve added another speaker, while still waiting for a decent offer for a robot vacuum to roll around. There has been one major change however, and that is the arrival and integration of two more Amazon Echo speakers. The speak...

We’ve all done it – Impulse purchases that, while not triggering buyer’s remorse, didn’t really get all as much usage as we would have thought. I’ve done it more than once, and some have only really started to see much use due to the current COVID-19 lockdown that has half the planet hunkering down at home. With said lockdown looking like it’s going to last for quite a while longer, I thought it would be a good idea to show off some of the tech that’s keeping me sane while working from home, insofar as that’s still possible. My first bit of what you could call “Corona Kit” is a Sonos Play:1, a connected speaker. This thing is what could best be described as a planned impulse purchase. I’d been planning to get another Sonos speaker for quite some time, after winning my first one in a workplace competition back in 2018, but between job changes and other turbulences, it wasn’t until back in September 2019 that I finally made my move, in a rather rash decision. I had initially wanted to g...

How things change – Just a year ago, I was decidedly dismissive of digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa. I’d had some experience with Siri, but she hadn’t exactly impressed me with her capabilities. At the same time, smart speakers as such just seemed too limiting in my eyes. I’m someone who prefers visual feedback, rather than just hearing a voice. It was only when Amazon came out with the first Echo Show speakers that my interest was piqued. Even then, it would take until the waning days of 2019 for me to finally make the jump. The decision to go for an Echo speaker was an impulse, that literally hit me in the last 3 hours of Black Friday. Yes, for once, I actually took part in that! Anyway, Amazon had a package deal on a Philips Hue multipack and an Amazon Echo Show 5 for less than the regular retail price of either of the 2 products, so I decided to take the plunge. Now what exactly is the Echo Show 5? In effect, it is an Echo smart speaker with a 5.5“ touch screen on the f...