IT Archives - Adrian's Blog

iPhone History

Oct 11, 2024 | IT | 0 comments

When writing my last blog on the Kindle Scribe, I linked back to an Old iPhone blog, which I thought might be interesting to revisit some five years later! I think my daughter has interrupted the natural order of upgrades, although other factors may be at play, too.

Let’s start with a lovely picture gallery!

In the previous blog, I’d just upgraded to the iPhone X, with my partner using the iPhone 7 and my daughter using the iPhone 6 (the middle row). My grandma was using the iPhone 5, but sadly passed away in 2021 at the grand old age of 89. That’s probably the main thing I’ll take away from this blog: regular blogging acts like a time machine and takes you back to places you’d started to forget about. It’s also a helpful reminder of some of the things you did, which this site now takes me back to 2016!

Anyway, I reminisce! Back to the iPhones. Since the previous blog, we’ve all had a few new phones starting in 2020 with the 12 and 12 Pro. My X was only two years old for me at that point but was three years old from release. The 7 my partner used is even older, so we all got an upgrade, including my daughter, although she was using an iPad at home now. The iPhone 7 sat as a spare for some time (before being sold on eBay in 2021, when I sold both the 6 and 7 for £76 – can’t remember individual prices).

The 12 Pro was a great phone, but the following year, I upgraded again to the iPhone 13 mini. I’d found the 12 Pro quite heavy and liked the idea of a smaller phone. It was also the first time I’d ever bought an iPhone where I just went for the lowest storage configuration as I was starting to use iCloud more and more and had signed up for an Apple One account, giving me lots of iCloud storage and access to all the Apple services, importantly Apple Music so I didn’t need to carry a big music library with me. So we all upgraded again, with my partner getting the 12 Pro and my daughter the X, which she did use a little more as you could send emojis!

I loved the iPhone 13 mini and might still be using it if my daughter did not want to start using a phone as an actual mobile phone when she started high school! This is where the cycle was broken!!! I bought an iPhone 15 Pro on the day it was launched from the Apple Shop in Glasgow, and the iPhone 13 mini was handed down to my daughter, with my partner sticking with her 12 Pro and 12 months later, after the iPhone 16 launch that’s still what we’re all using.

It’s certainly true that every year, Apple make a slightly better iPhone that offers slightly better functionality than the previous generation, but that doesn’t mean that the latest will always be considered the greatest. I’m sure some would argue for the 1st generation, and while I didn’t own one, it was a flawed device. Limited storage and missing some fundamental stuff like copy and paste kept me using a Nokia Communicator until the 3rd generation. Even then, it didn’t feel too far ahead of the limited competition. I think that changed with the 4th generation, and the design of that still carries through into today’s devices. I certainly have a soft spot for the 4th generation, and it would be in my top 3. The 5th generation felt like a step back in some ways, although looking back, it was probably better than I gave it credit at the time. I loved my 7th generation Jet Black iPhone and used it for almost 3 years. It was perhaps the longest of any iPhone. I also liked the iPhone X (10) and think that would also be in my top 3, introducing the button-less form factor and FaceID. It was also the first which cost over £1000! I loved the mini form factor, although I think the 15 Pro combines the best of the 4 and the 10 and might be my favourite of all time, disproving the statement I started this paragraph with!

To finish up, the only device I still have in the house (well, garage, actually) from the original Old iPhone blog where all this started is the iPhone 4. It’s a bit of a classic, and I still have it in the original box, although I suspect they made too many for it to be worth anything in the future. It’s part of the IT history cave, along with some 1980s Sinclair computers, but that is probably another blog altogether; I should have blogged about that when Sir Clive sadly passed away. As I’m sure you’ve worked out by now, I’m a bit of an Apple fanboi (although I work in IT, so I have devices running Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and ChromeOS in the house!) As well as the family of iPhones, we all have other Apple devices, which is probably another blog. In fact, I blogged about some of them here, here and here (although my daughter is now using an M1 iPad Pro from 2021, and the iPad I blogged about here is used to Facetime, another grandparent, this time my Dad or my daughter Grandad).

Kindle Scribe

Oct 10, 2024 | IT, Leisure, Reading | 0 comments

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I’ve been an Amazon kindle fan for quite a while now and have just upgraded a kindle Voyager to a kindle Scribe. I thought it might be interesting to test out the note taking abilities of the Scribe by writing this blog on the kindle scribe itself, and testing how it converts my terrible handwriting to text and PDF! This blog might look a bit different as I’m not quite sure how to demonstrate that yet…
Lets start with a kindle history lesson. I wasn’t really an early adopter with this, as the first kindle was launched in 2007 and the first one I aned was a kindle keyboard which wasn’t released until 2010. That was a 3rd generation device, which is similar to my adoption of the iPhone which stall at the 30S model!

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like the iPhone, he had a ite a few bundle’s since that first 3rd gen kindle keyboard, and the old ones other get handed down to family members, i. e. an excuse to upgrade!
The bundle keybard was upgraded to a land Touch in 2012 and that will a handle Voyage in 2015, the 7th Gen.
I’ve actually been using that voyage for quite some time, as that’s what my new handle Scribe has replaced. Its replaced the bundle Paper white 3rd italian or 10th gon device my partner was using( I think the Voyage is better even though it was slightly ever) and we have a Paper while 5K generation that my daughter uses with a handle Unlimited subscription.
So why did I buy the Scribe? Good question!

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I quite liked the idea when it first came out in 2022, Lt it was quite expensive and I caldit justly spending almost £400 on a handle. for context, the lenddle voyage had been the most expensive one at abut £160( the Paper whites were ball and £80 and the keyboard perhaps £ too at the time). The scribe was an offer for £279, but I discard Amazon do a trade in offer where they give you a small gift card in exchange for an old device AND 20% off a new one. With ball applied to the already discounted price, I pided up a 320 Scribe with Premium Pen for £213.99! A bargain i’m sure you’ll agree? But hats sill more than any of the other handles. What makes the Scribe so special? More great auctions!
The clue is in the name. The Scribe is the first binder hat allows you to write or scribe on the

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device, so comes with a pen and is almost twice as big as the Voyage or Paper white.
Ya can mask up PDF files and some e Pub bodes, but the main reason I bought it was to make notes in meetings and then convert them to text or searchable PDF tiles. Now if you made it this for you will have seen how bad my handwriting is! I’ve had other devices that promised to do this, and never rally waled that well. Possibly dan to my illegible unting, but also down to the technology working too well. I’ll let you decide how well this works. I still don’t know as I need to send this to my Mac and see how its done. I’ll finish up oer Here once I’ve assessed the results…

So, how did it do? Let me try to explain what I’ve done. On the Kindle Scribe, you can choose to share a notebook and then have options to Convert it to text and quickly send it to an e-mail address. That’s what I did, which sends an e-mail with two links. One downloads a text file, which is the unadulterated text blocks at the beginning of this blog. The second link downloads a searchable PDF file, which is shown above. I also added the picture gallery with the 5 Kindle devices I’ve owned to break things up, and a hyperlink to an iPhone blog!

I know my handwriting is terrible, and I’ve even used the fountain pen option on the Scribe, which makes it look a little better. You can select Felt tips and pencils with various degrees of thickness and pressure sensitivity, but so far, I quite like the fountain pen effect. There are options for highlighting (which you can do using the premium pen user configurable button) and deleting (the premium pen also has an eraser on the end). You can also lasso blocks, move things around, or copy and paste between notebooks.

But what about the conversion to text? Well, you can see for yourself it’s far from perfect, but it wouldn’t take too much effort to correct and spell check, as it’s broadly captured what I tried to write. The search facility in the PDF file is also remarkably good. I think it’s done a better job than the Livescribe 3 Smartpen I bought back in 2013. That was quite a fat ballpoint pen that wrote onto specific notebooks with small dots tracking the writing. The pen transferred these to an App, which allowed you to convert them to text, although I never really got on with it, and the conversion to text wasn’t anywhere near as good. If I did this professionally, I’m sure I’d be recreating the text again using the Livescribe pen for a side-by-side comparison, but I’m not!

The other thing I’ve not mentioned is the Kindle bit of the Scribe! It has a much bigger 10″ screen, so reading eBooks is much nicer than any of the previous Kindle devices. It is still missing the page-turn buttons the original Keyboard device had, which Voyage tried to replace with haptic ones, but so far, I’ve not missed them too much as there’s less page-turning, and tapping the side of the bigger screen feels quite responsive.

So, would I recommend a Kindle Scribe? For £213.99, absolutely. It’s probably worth that as an upgrade over a standard Kindle device, but adding the note-taking functionality makes it a no-brainer! I would be more difficult at the RRP, so you’d probably need to consider the competition. They are generally more expensive but better as a note taker or Reader, but from all the reviews I’ve seen, the Kindle probably does the best job of both, and when it’s almost half the RRP, it is excellent value for money.

ps: I corrected the text I typed below the PDF file. I hope you noticed the difference 😉

I Loved FreeNAS

Sep 1, 2024 | FreeNAS, IT, TrueNAS | 0 comments

This blog is a bit of a con, as I drafted it to post on the iXsystems forum in the hope that I might get some ideas about what to do with my TrueNAS server. I’ve posted it below, but I still haven’t added it to the forum!

I loved FreeNAS, and since first installing it over ten years ago, I have learned so much about hosting and maintaining my own micro data centre, much of it from the old forums.

The death of the old forum and the focus on TrueNAS Scale have been quite disheartening, and I don’t know where I go from here. Obviously, everything is still working, so I don’t have to make any immediate decisions, but I feel I should at least be thinking about what the future holds and how I might get there.

I was hoping that if I described how I was currently using TrueNAS Core, I might gain some of the forum’s incredible wisdom to help reinvigorate my love for all things Free to TrueNAS.

For background, I started this journey running an HP N40L Microserver and about 8TB of RAW storage. That was upgraded to an NL54 and 16TB, and then I built my own server in a Fractal Define R5 case with an Intel Xeon E3 and Supermicro motherboard, ECC RAM and 36TB storage. See, I was paying attention! This was upgraded about 4 years ago using the same case, an updated Xeon and Supermicro motherboard, 64GB ECC RAM and 64TB storage, with some SSDs for jails and VMs. I still have the old one and replicate to it monthly (it used to run 24×7 until the cost of electricity went through the roof), so I have something I could play around with using Scale.

Obviously, my main use is storage. I have two pools. This main pool is 8x8TB RAIDZ2 WD HDD which is currently running about 75% (I know, too high really but I was considering upgrading the 8TB drives to 16TB over a few months). The second pool is 2x1TB Mirror Crucial SSD which is currently running about 65%. The main pool is predominantly long-term storage, and the second pool is for the jails and VMs and associated databases.

I know Scale will do all the storage stuff, so that’s not my worry. I’m worried about the jails and virtual machine I have running lots of externally facing services accessed through NGINX Proxy Manager, now running on a separate Raspberry Pi (it was running in a jail for a few years)

I have six jails of varying degrees of importance. My Nextcloud jail is probably the most important and is used by family and a small charity I was a Trustee for. The files and database are in separate datasets, and I know this could be run on Scale, but moving it and breaking it scares me! I also have an emby jail used by around 15 family members and friends. It has the emby_server folder mounted to a separate dataset, so again moving should be possible. I’m assuming it is possible to mount datasets into containers or VMs similarly to jails, but not whether the structure of these will be the same cross-platform? I also have a WordPress jail, which used to run my company website, but it’s now just my personal blog. It’s a similar set-up with a dataset stored outside the jail. I have three other jails running OpenVPN (so I can connect back to my network remotely), Limesurvey (running small surveys, which could be lost) and Airsonic (an old music streaming service, which has pretty much been replaced by emby).

I then have some VMs. The first one I created, running Ubuntu 20.4, was to play around with Docker. I’m still no expert, but I have become quite dependent on this VM as it is running Bitwarden, Teslamate, Calibre-web and a test instance of WordPress (for playing with new plugins and themes). It does have some mount points to a Docker dataset with more permanent storage, but it’s not as consistent as I’d like. It became a little unwieldy at one point, as I was also trying to run other things, so eventually, some of these got moved to their own VMs. I have an Ubuntu VM just running ONLYOFFICE Document Server, which is linked to the Nextcloud service for an Office 365-type experience. I have another Ubuntu VM running Pi-Hole and another running Mattermost, although this is still pretty much a playground and not used in anger, so I wouldn’t be too upset to lose it. The last one is a ubuntu 22.4 VM running CrashPlan, which backs up any irreplaceable data in the cloud.

Having learnt to set all this up and maintain it for the last 7-8 years gives me hope to learn the necessary skills to do it all over again. My only worry is this time I have data I don’t want to lose, and services I’d be devastated to have to start again from scratch, which I didn’t have when I started my FreeNAS > TrueNAS journey. I know ownCloud was rebuilt a few times, as was emby, before iocage allowed jails to be upgraded after the version of FreeBSD was!

EPIC Roadtrip

Jul 3, 2024 | Holiday, IT, Photographs, Tesla, Toys | 0 comments

Before we begin

Right, this is going to be a long one, so buckle in for the ride! I’m going to try to blog over the next couple of weeks while we travel from Scotland to Austria, stopping at some interesting places along the way.

Before we begin, a few updates related to previous posts are probably worth mentioning. We now own Lexee! What do I hear most of you say? Lexee is the name of our Tesla Model 3 Long Range, which we leased from Lex Autolease in 2021. The lease expired last month, and we could buy her, which we did. She will be transporting us from Scotland down to London for a day at Wimbledon to watch some tennis and then down to Dover before catching the ferry across to Calais. From there we plan to travel through France, Belgium and Germany to Austria, specifically Salzberg to explore some of the places where The Sound of Music was filmed, before heading back through Switzerland (possibly), Luxumberg and France, to catch the ferry back to Dover and then drive home to Scotland. If that sounds like a long way, it is! About a 2000 mile round trip, so a good test of the car and passengers.

They will be me, my partner of 22 years and our 11 (soon to be 12) year-old daughter. No dog for this trip, who will be enjoying her holiday staying with family at Culzean Castle. So that’s about it. We’ll be leaving for London on the 5th of July, and I’ll blog where I can along the way, hopefully with some interesting stories, pictures, and videos from my new drone. Wish us luck and enjoy the adventure…

In Bruges

So, we’ve already made it to Belgium, and this is the first time I’ve found some time to provide an update on our adventure. Perhaps the blog won’t be as EPIC as the road trip!

The drive down south was fairly uneventful, although I think I’m getting too old to drive between the Scottish and English capitals! We stopped at Tebay Services on the M6 for lunch and electricity before continuing south. Lexee suggested another stop at Keele Services, but by the time we got there, nobody needed to stop, so we thought we’d crack on. P came up with the great idea of stopping in Stratford-upon-Avon to visit the birthplace of Shakespeare and found a charger at the Morrisons for Lexee. We grabbed some supplies and plugged in the car before wandering into Stratford, where we took a few photos and headed back as the heavens opened. Not the first time we’d get wet on this holiday 🌧️

The Premier Inn at Wimbledon was fine, and we found an on-street charger to plug in Lexee. It wasn’t clear if it was for residents only, but we thought we were okay while the car was charging, and I slowed things down to make it longer than required. At 5:20 the next morning, I got up and walked to the All England Lawn Tennis Association, aka Wimbledon, to join The Queue. I probably need to write a separate blog about the whole experience, but needless to say, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I’d hoped to get a ground ticket before 11 am and then head back to the hotel to check out with P & K before finding somewhere to park and enjoy the tennis. I was still in a very long queue by 11:20 when P & K found me to switch places so I could check out and sort the car before joining them back at the tennis. It had been a long 5 hours and I was almost ready to go back and watch films in Lexee, but they managed to get a ticket fairly shortly after I’d left (about another 90 minutes). By then, I’d checked out of the hotel, packed Lexee, who hadn’t gotten a parking ticket and found somewhere to park for the rest of the day. I returned to Wimbledon and enjoyed some tennis and football before driving down to Dover for a night in the Travelodge before our early morning ferry to Calais.

We stopped in Dunkirk en route to Bruges, checking into the Radisson Blu just after 3 pm. We were all pretty exhausted and needed a rest before exploring. Still, the hotel was a big improvement from the previous one and was cheaper to boot, so we called reception and extended our stay for an extra night, giving us a full day to explore Brussels before heading to Brussels. We headed in for some dinner and caught the end of Belgium’s largest flea market before enjoying some food and drinks at Heavenly Pizza after a short walk around the tall spires in Bruges. The next day, we returned for a waffle breakfast before a short boat trip along the canals. We headed back to the hotel for lunch and to recharge our batteries (Lexee had been topped up again the day before in the car park under the hotel!) before a final walk into Bruges for dinner at the Frites Bar.

We’d struggled to find a reasonably priced hotel in Brussels for the following day, so we booked something a little outside. We plan to visit the Atomium on our way in and then drive into the centre for a few hours. I’ve registered Lexee so she can drive in the ULEZ, and we’ll head out to the hotel after a brief visit. There are no plans beyond that, but I will provide another update. This blog might look messy as I’ve typed this on my phone using the Jetpack App! It wouldn’t let me edit the Divi blog I’d started the blog with, so I copied and pasted that into here. I’ll sort it out when I have more time to fire up the laptop. I’m sure I’ll have some spelling to fix and can add links and pictures, too!

Charging across Europe

I’m still on the Jetpack App, so excuse the spelling mistakes 😂 We’ve now reached Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany 🇩🇪 having passed very briefly through the Netherlands 🇳🇱 stopping for some lunch in Maastricht. Tomorrow, we are planning to make it to Salzburg in Austria 🇦🇹 where we will be staying for 3 nights. It will give us a chance to relax a little from the EPIC road trip.

Not having a plan does offer lots of flexibility. Still, you also tend to spend a fair amount of downtime planning the next day or two, including driving, accommodation and fuelling the body. Luckily, we haven’t had to give too much thought to charging Lexee, which I was referring to in my ‘Charging across Europe’ heading!

I was a little worried about how things might work across Europe, having not tried it before and knowing that the UK isn’t as easy to navigate as North America, which we’d done on a road trip around New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Toronto, Montreal and Boston last year. I needn’t have been as we’ve been fortunate enough to find destination chargers at most of the places we’ve stopped for the night, and there’s been plenty of Tesla Superchargers and other destination charges en route. We’ve not needed to go out of our way once, and the only real challenge has been the multitude of new Apps I’ve needed to install, accounts to create and payments to make. Some of them have been toward the prices I’d normally drive away from in the UK, but the approach has been to charge to full when we can overnight and start each day at 💯%

The Tesla chargers have all been super fast (some pushing the 250kWh max), the cheapest (around €0.33 or £0.28) and easiest to use (connect and you’re off). The destination chargers have been a bit more complicated, more often than not requiring an app to be downloaded and an account created to use. Some just require payment on a webpage, and some use Apple Pay, which is probably the easiest. There was only one that wouldn’t work with either method (after frustratingly downloading the app and creating an account), but the hotel had an RFID card that could be used instead. That was also the most expensive, almost competing with gasoline ⛽️, at €0.71! I’m sure we’d have found a Tesla charger, but the convenience of starting the day with a full tank’ was worth the extra cost and was probably only about £7-8 in the context of a £?000 trip!

I’ll try to pull together some more detailed stats once we’ve made it back home. I have a Teslamate account connected to Lexee, which tracks her every move, and a Grafana Docker container where I can access lots of wonderful information about trips, charging, costs, efficiency, etc. When I eventually get some time with a laptop rather than a mobile phone, I’ll add some screenshots with some details.

Anyway, that will do for now. We’re about to go and eat at a traditional German restaurant, which I’m not sure my Daughter will approve. Still, we had takeaway pizza last night while watching the Netherlands v England EURO2024 semi-final, as my partner wasn’t feeling too good. It’s great to see lots of the world on a road trip, but it does take it out of you! A new country for all of us tomorrow, though, and a few days in the same place, so we should get some time to relax a little….

Drone home…

I’m writing this from the Hotel Castel Jeanson in France on my laptop after trying to tidy up the previous blocks! I’m not sure how well I’ve done. Since the last update, we’ve visited a few castles in Germany and many sights from the Sound of Music in and around Salzburg. I’m going to post some pictures to a gallery below and some drone footage I’ve taken in a few places, which I’ve uploaded to YouTube.

I was quite surprised at how many places specifically ban the use of drones, outside of the usual restrictions for using drone assist. I can understand why, but we’ve visited some spectacular places which can’t be fully appreciated from the ground. Anyway, I might provide a more detailed update should I find time before we arrive home, but for now, it was a quick update to fix things and add some pictures and video!

There’s no place like home.

We made it home last night after 2890 miles through 6 countries using almost 900kWh of electricity. Lexee did us proud and never missed a beat. We all need another holiday and have agreed to leave the next road tips for at least 2-3 years! It was a great adventure, but at times, it didn’t feel like much of a holiday moving between so many hotels. I was going to try to wrap this blog up with a detailed analysis of our EV charging, but I think I’ll save that for another blog. My Teslamate service has all of the data, with the Trip summary shown below. I need an updated credit card statement to double-check the conversions from € to £, so watch out for that in the coming months. I might also provide a bit more detail about the places we stayed, but for now, our EPIC trip has ended!

Raspberry Pi 5

Apr 26, 2024 | IT, Raspberry Pi | 0 comments

I had drafted a blog called ‘Android 11 on Raspberry Pi’, but it was just a title. That was back in 2021! What’s quite funny is that I am running Android 14 on a Raspberry Pi 4 with a 7″ touch screen as a console on my desk for monitoring Home Assistant. I set this up at the end of last year after receiving one of the new Raspberry Pi 5s, and it was this I intended to make the focus of this blog.

So, let’s start with the Pi 5. This was launched back in September 2023, and there was a mad scramble to pre-order a device. I’d managed to get an order through Pimoroni, which had just made their first batch cut-off, although I still didn’t receive one until November 15! I’d ordered a Pimoroni case and the Raspberry Pi 5 fan, which is a super neat configuration, but shortly after launch, things were still a bit limited in terms of what you could do with it. You could obviously run the latest version of Raspberry PI OS, and it was noticeably quicker than a Pi 4. However, you’d expect that given that those were first launched in 2019 and other than an 8GB version, not much really changed. One of the biggest benefits of the 5 was the inclusion of a PCI connector, which allows things like NVMe SSD to be connected, and this probably improves the user experience more than the bump in processor performance. I managed to pick up a Pimoroni NVMe base and have been using the Pi 5 with that and Raspberry Pi OS with the KDE Plasma desktop on and off for a few months. While it does work fine as a small desktop PC, the likelihood is that you have other devices that are far more capable and offer a better desktop experience than you’d get from a Pi 5, even with a NVMe SSD.

I was super pleased to see RetroPie support for the Pi 5 and found an excellent retro gaming build online. It took some time to get this working as I was initially trying to connect it to my 4K monitor, which it didn’t like, but once I’d solved that by using a small 1080p monitor, I managed to configure the build to use my 4k monitor at 1080p! There’s marked improvement for retro gaming on the Pi 5, with support for even more consoles, including the PS2, which is very exciting. I’ve not really had as much time to play as I might like, so I suspect this might be something I need to return to. I’ve currently got this running from a microSD card, as the Pimoroni NVMe base has the SSD installed between the Pi and the base, so switching drives requires a tool kit. I’ve seen a number of cases recently that make this much more straightforward, so I might investigate one of those. I was considering buying another Pi 5 as they are widely available now, and Amazon even had one discounted to £70, but then I did a quick inventory and realised I already have far too many Pi devices I’m not even using:

Device	Location	Use
Raspberry Pi 1b	Garage	I haven’t used this for a long time, and I never really found a use for it when it was launched all the way back in 2012
Raspberry Pi 3a	Jr Trak	This is in a Big Trak-like remote, controlled vehicle I blogged about here
Raspberry Pi 400	Office	I also blogged about this here, and it’s probably still my favourite Pi device. Will we see a Pi 500 later this year?
Raspberry Pi 4b (4GB)	Lounge	This was the first Pi 4 I bought, and it’s mainly used to plug into my TV in the lounge. I’ve done lots of Scratch coding with my daughter and used it as a media device.
Raspberry Pi 4b (4GB)	Office	This was the Pi 4 I used in my office as a small desktop replacement, but it can never really replace a desktop computer when you have a more powerful one!
Raspberry Pi 4b (2GB)	Office	I think I bought this as it was on offer and initially played around with it running Pi-hole. At the time, I was running an NGINX Proxy in jail on my TrueNAS server, but that’s switched roles as I’m now running Hass.io on this Pi, which also runs NGINX Proxy Manager, and I have Pi-hole running in a VM on my TrueNAS server. I’m sure you’ll find blogs about both of those if you look 😉
Raspberry Pi 4b (8GB)	Office	I bought this for a retro gaming boost, but it’s now running Android 14 and mainly acting as a Home Assistant monitor (see below)
Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB)	Office	Running Raspberry Pi OS and KDE Plasma desktop from an NMVe SSD but also as a microSD card partially inserted with a RetroPie build (see above)
Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (no pins)	Office	I have this in a small metal case, thinking it could be thrown in any bag and used as a tiny Linux device. It’s running a version of Ubuntu, but it’s been so long since I used it that I can’t remember what.
Raspberry Pi Zero W (no pins)	Office	I blame Jeff Geerling for this, as I used it with the HQ Camera to build a webcam. It works, but not as well as either of the two Anker webcams I use.
Raspberry Pi Zero W (within pins)	Office	This was also connected to a camera and used with MotionEye as a dog monitor for a while. It’s now in a box!

I’ve probably spent as much time playing with an old Raspberry Pi 4 as I have the Pi 5! It is hooked up to a WIMAXIT Raspberry Pi 4 7″ TouchScreen Monitor, which I picked up on Amazon for £45! I’ve ended up using it as a Home Assistant monitor, and the best OS I found to do that was Android 14! You can find some excellent YouTube guides and instructions to do this using a Kostakang build, which isn’t overly complicated and works beautifully. While I’m using it 95% of the time to run Home Assistant, it’s capable of so much more.

Having written all that, it’s just dawned on me that I probably have a similar number of other computer devices, most of which are more functional and probably powerful than any of my Raspberry Pis. Perhaps that’s a topic for a future blog? What it reminds me, though, is just how great my MacBook Pro still is, which is still my go-to device when I need to get anything done. I probably spend more time using my work HP EliteBook 830 these days, and I’ve been playing with an HP x360 Chromebook I was sent to test. I really enjoy the 360/touch screen form factor, but neither would replace the MacBook if I had to choose just one.

I also love the Raspberry Pi Foundation and will support everything it releases, regardless of how useful it might actually be to me. Playing with a Pi always takes me back to the 1980’s, when I first discovered the home computer and fell in love. I blogged about some of that here, so take a stroll down memory lane with me before going and doing something more interesting instead!

To buy or not to buy

Mar 11, 2024 | IT, Leisure, Tesla | 0 comments

Or more accurately, to buy or to lease again, that is the question!

Back in May 2021 I blogged about a Tesla Model 3 test drive, which very shortly afterwards became a Tesla Model 3 delivery day and led to a Tesla road trip blog later that year. Almost 3 years later, our Tesla Model 3 lease is almost up, and we must make some future motoring decisions.

We’ve done 17,747 miles in Lexee (yes, you get to name your Tesla and it was leased through Lex and my daughter is called Katee). Other than some inconsiderate Mercedes driver putting a large dint in the rear wing in a car park (which was repaired at the beginning of this year) we’ve had almost 3 years of trouble-free, and incredibly cheap motoring. Lexee was serviced by Tesla after 2 years, but that was done exactly as shown in the picture, on our drive, where a Tesla Service Technician visited and replaced the pollen filter and carried out some minor checks. The tyres are still fine, although I’m hoping we might get them replaced before the lease ends if we do decide to buy. We’ve spent around £600 on electricity, which is crazy compared to how much we spent on petrol in the previous car(s). Some of that is down to free charging, both locally and at work for the first 18 months. We also have a home charger, and an ‘agile’ tariff which allows us to pick and choose when to charge based on the cheapest rate, so only £130 of the total. Most of the £600 is when we’ve taken Lexee on holiday, travelling down to the Northeast of England quite often, down to London and Yorkshire a few times, and around Scotland more frequently. During the last 2+ years, we’ve had countless software upgrades, which have added new functionality to the car and fixed some minor issues. I can honestly say, that the only thing that still irritates me about Lexee is the automatic windscreen wipers, which are hopeless, but given some of my previous cars didn’t even do this, it’s a small price to pay.

I’ve owned cars (I blogged about them here) that have all done one of two things better than Lexee (apart from perhaps the acceleration) but as an overall package, nothing comes close. The Tesla Model 3 is an incredible car and one I’m more than happy to continue driving. We had another test drive in a Model Y back in 2022 when they first came out, and it’s a very similar driving experience. My conclusion was that from a driver’s perspective, the Model 3 is a better car, but from a passenger perspective the Model Y probably edges it. We also hired a Model Y on a road trip around the Northeast of America and Canada last summer. We flew in and out of JFK, and travelled down to Philadelphia and Washington DC, before heading up to Niagara, Toronto, and Montreal, swinging back via Boston and Stamford. We (I) drove almost 2000 miles and the experience couldn’t have been better. We never waited for a charge. We generally needed to stop before the car, and it cost $140 including tolls (excluding the $1,200 for the car)

As you might know, Tesla has just updated the Model 3 (the aptly named ‘Highland’ project) just in time for our lease ending in June. After reading and watching far too many reviews, there was only one thing for it. Another Tesla test drive! It was just me and Katee last weekend when we headed down the M9 to Edinburgh trying to take in all the noises and bumps, so we could compare on the test drive. We had the choice of a red or grey standard-range version. Katee picked red before I’d even had a chance to think! She drove in the front for the first half of the journey and then switched to the back for the return leg, although was a little disappointed the rear screen wasn’t working.

The biggest difference is the lack of stalks behind the steering wheel. My Model 3 has 2 stalks – the left one for indicating and a wiper button, the right one for selecting drive and cruise controls. The Highland version has these controls on the steering wheel and the drive controls on the screen and above your head by the courtesy lights. Selecting drive wasn’t a problem as we did this once on the trip. I think you can set it, so it tries to select this automatically too. The indicators were more of an issue, and while I’m sure it’s something you’d get used to, I can’t help feeling it would alienate some non-Tesla drivers from switching. Every car I’ve owned had stalks for indicators, so it does feel strange and unnatural, even though it never felt much of a problem. The only area where the Highland model didn’t feel ‘a little better than my Model 3 was the acceleration, although given that the test car was a standard-range single-motor version and we have the long-range dual-motor version, it’s a bit of an unfair comparison. The standard range is still more than fast enough for a family saloon, but the ~4-second 0-60 time of the LR model never tires.

But yes, everything else was just a little better. It was a little quieter. It was a little more comfortable. The screen and responsiveness was a little faster. The interior trim felt a little better and the seats a little more comfortable. It has a nice interior light around the car (which you can change the colour) and the seats are heated AND ventilated. The screen in the back would have perhaps sold it for Katee, but even she felt it wasn’t a compelling enough improvement to retire Lexee. And she is absolutely right!

I’m hoping we might get to buy Lexee for around £25k. Similar spec and mileage cars are selling on Autotrader for over £28k, so it seems like a reasonable offer, and we know the car has been looked after (I clean it every 2-4 weeks). Leasing a new one looks like it would cost more than the previous deal, which worked out around £500/month after the salary sacrifice and tax implications. Another long-range would be at least £125/month more and even a standard range would be around £40/month more. We’d have to factor in things like insurance, road tax, maintenance, etc. if we bought Lexee (they were all covered in the lease) but it’s probably not that much more than the monthly lease costs when you add in the cost of the car. We’d still own Lexee in 3 years, whereas we’d be back in this same solution if we leased again.

We still have another few months to decide, and a few longer trips to do. I’m heading down to Banbury in a few weeks to see friends and we’re back down to the Northeast for Easter. We’re also considering a European road-trip holiday for the summer, which might be more difficult in a new lease car than it would our own Tesla. I’ll let you know what we decided to do over the summer, probably as part of a road trip blog…