Hacking a Fireplace

UPDATE – Read Hacking a Fireplace – Revisited for an alternative approach to this hack. I’ve been building my home automation system for years and have achieved extensive lighting, climate, entertainment, security and entry control. Never satisfied, I’m forever pondering potential refinements that would enhance the overall effectiveness and capability of my system. I recently …

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TNG 9 – Sheets Mod

I’ve worked with a LOT of genealogy software applications over the years and all of them have left me, for one reason or another, unsatisfied. I started experimenting with The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding, also known as TNG, back in mid-2010, but really started digging deep into the application over the past few months. …

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Build a Vernam Cipher

The current issue of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly has an article on cryptography that outlines the use of the Vernam Cipher (aka One-time pad) to encrypt text by hand. What makes this technique interesting is its ease of implementation, but even more interesting than that is the fact that the Vernam Cipher is the only …

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Home Automation Overview

When we receive a first-time visitor to our home they ALWAYS ask about the whole-home control panel mounted in our family room. This panel allows us to control and obtain status on just about every aspect of our house from a single location.  This, invariably, leads to questions about what my Home Automation (HA) system …

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Learning to Ride

My little girl hit a new milestone today by learning to ride her bike! Getting here, I can honestly attest, has been a very bumpy ride (pun intended), but alas she prevailed! Let me start with a little bit of context. Every child is different. I put my son on a bike at about five …

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Troy-Bilt Pump Repair

I bought myself a gasoline power-washer last year to replace my old washer and was really pleased with its performance.  At the beginning of summer this year, I set up my new washer for my annual outdoor cleaning.  I hooked everything up and gave the engine a pull. As expected it cranked right up and …

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