Reading is critical to my mental health. Ever since I was a kid, I read, at least a little bit before I fall asleep. In fact, it’s almost a trained behavior now. If I start reading during the day, I get sleepy! What I like about reading is that it gives me an opportunity to stop thinking about the day, put all of that aside and focus on something else. Almost like “parking” my brain for the evening. I want a good book, not a great book. It needs to be something I enjoy, but easy enough to put down. If...
Update: This post is out of date. See Detect how the PWA was launched on web.dev for details on how to check if your PWA is installed, how it was launched and if the user switches between standalone and a browser tab view. I got a question via email this morning asking if there was a way for a PWA to check if it’s installed. The site wanted to know what state the app was running in, either a browser tab, or a standalone window. First, you can use the getInstalledRelatedApps() API to check if your...
One of my highlights from Google I/O this year was the Device Lab that Matt Gaunt and I built to show developers how their site looks across the multi-device web. It was a really cool thing to see all kinds of different sites working on phones, phablets, tablets, computers and even TVs. A few folks have asked how we set things up, and how we did it, so I figured I’d document our process here! Device selection # We ended up with 46 different devices on the wall, including: Nexus 4 (x2) Nexus 5 (x10)...
My project this weekend on my home automation system was two-fold, first I wanted to clean up the code and make it a bit more object oriented, but I also wanted to add a web interface that is accessible outside my apartment. The largest part of the weekend was spent re-architecting things. Now, each component is effectively self-contained, so it will be easier to add or remove components later and making it easier for other people to use. Once that was done, I dug into the web interface. The Pi does a...
I’ve always had a fascination with home automation systems, things that make your life easier and computers that do the stuff that I’m too lazy to do. In college, I had my tiny little apartment in Ottawa all wired up with X10 and this weekend, I “finished” my most recent creation. Though honestly, is it ever really done? It all started a few months ago when I picked up a set of the Philips Hue light bulbs - they’re amazing. LED light bulbs that are fully addressable and programmable via a simple to use...