Payment Security, Greek Style

October 8, 2025 | Comment

Handheld chip and pin machines aren’t as universal as I thought they were. On a recent trip to the States, I found that it is still much more likely that they will take your card away to some dark corner to produce you a paper receipt, no doubt cloning it in the meantime!

In the UK that almost never happens but the vast majority of restaurants will come to the table with a machine these days, demanding payment before you’ve even seen this bill!

While holidaying in Greece earlier this year I found in a number of places where not … Read the rest

What’s the Difference Between Matter and Thread?

July 27, 2025 | 1 comment

I’ve recently been getting into home automation and Home Assistant in particular (expect more posts on that as I get my head around it).

Words that frequently come up when dealing with home automation devices are Zigbee, Thread and Matter. I was familiar with Zigbee but was confused about Thread and Matter and how they worked together so I asked my friend ChatGPT to explain. I found it useful so decided to tidy it up and post it here.

What are Thread and Matter?

Thread and Matter are two of the latest smart home standards, often mentioned together, … Read the rest

Nanobag

June 11, 2025 | Comment

Is a shopping bag technology? Well, this one, Nanobag, was featured in Wired magazine, so I am pretty sure that it is! On that basis, I am featuring it here on my blog.

I’ve had shopping bags in the past that fold into themselves to a small form factor, but the Nanobag suggested that it took that to another level. The issue I had with other solutions was that they weren’t actually that small when folded and, when opened out, weren’t large enough to hold an LP record.

Choices

The Nanobag comes in several sizes, as illustrated in the … Read the rest

Ulanzi MA30 Carabiner-Mounted Phone Tripod

May 21, 2025 | Comment

I wrote recently about my disappointment regarding the credit card-sized tripod, the CardPOD, which was portable but unstable, not what you want in a tripod. Undeterred, I searched for a more suitable replacement and stumbled upon the Ulanzi MA30. I was already familiar with Ulanzi as I own some of their 52mm MagFilter Magnetic Filters.

A Different Approach

The MA30 has a lightweight, all-metal body with a premium feel to it. The feet for the tripod fold into the body and, like the CardPOD, it has a strong, Magsafe, magnetic ring to attach it to your phone. … Read the rest

COLMi Smart Ring – an Update

April 9, 2025 | Comment

Not so long ago, last January in fact, I wrote about the COLMi Smart Ring, the smart ring that you can pick up on Aliexpress for about fifteen pounds. In my conclusion I wrote that “I like the design of the ring, but the quality of the finish shows where cost savings have been made to keep the price down.” Now, less than three months later, I am back as that has proved to be highly accurate.

The picture above shows my R06 smart ring after three months of use, and below it an unworn one. As you … Read the rest

Cardpod

March 21, 2025 | 1 comment

Over the years, I have backed a number of Kickstarter projects with a varying amount of success. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have found that I am more likely to support someone that I backed before and like what I have received – or even just received it as that’s not always a guarantee. So when a company called CARD who I’d previously backed announced a new project I was interested. Their previous project, the Kablecard, is excellent and I still use it today.

Kablecard – The Swiss Army Utility Card for Charging on the go!

Enter the CardPOD

The CardPOD… Read the rest

RWOL from Alexa

RWOL from Alexa

February 10, 2025 | Comment

At the end of 2023, I wrote about how I had used a Raspberry Pi Zero to act as a machine to remotely turn on and off a media server that I had in my house. The idea being that it was unnecessary to have it on 24/7, consuming electricity when I was asleep for much of that time.

While I had a nice little web app from which I could trigger the start up and shut down I always wanted to be able to do it using voice commands via Alexa. Today I finally got round to doing that … Read the rest

COLMi Smart Ring

January 21, 2025 | 1 comment

I have been looking for a way to track my sleep habits, and given that I love a good gadget, I thought that this might be the way to go. Initially, I tried wearing my Apple Watch in bed, but I found it uncomfortable and the results didn’t seem very accurate, so I gave that up. Then, I was listening to The Rest is Politics podcast, and Rory Stewart was waxing lyrical about his Oura smart ring, and I thought now that might just be the answer.

If you’re Rory Stewart being paid £1 million a year for your … Read the rest

Remote Connections to a Raspberry Pi

December 31, 2024 | Comment

In my last post I wrote about the Raspberry Pi Monitor and how it is a great solution for working with your Raspberry Pi. However, as great as the Pi Monitor is sometimes it is a bit of overkill or too big to carry around which got me to thinking about other ways to access you Pi.

Why would you want to choose one of the following? Well, they require little or no extra hardware, are cheap to implement and run, and have the added benefit of the possibility of remote access.

Here are three other methods which you might … Read the rest