home-tech

Alright, I'm back to work, and the first days have been a bit of a whirlwind (as usual). And the excitement started when opening my trusty Dell XPS laptop.

And now for something completely different! I had a disagreement with my wife a while ago. See, I've long suspected that our old house - originally built in the 1950s - has an air quality problem. Just a minor one, but still a problem.

In this article, I'll share how I estimate solar panel output in Home Assistant using a simple Lux/UV sensor from my Bresser 7-in-1 weather station, after losing direct access to inverter data when I got a home battery system.

My Windows 11 machine decided to go belly up just before Christmas, so I got to have some fun reinstalling Windows from scratch.

Ever tried editing a file on your ReFS Dev Drive only to get "This media is write-protected" or "unexpected error code 19"?

This article explains how you can keep using Windows 10 for another year, even though Microsoft has officially ended support for it. Background (rant) I'm not going to lie - right now I would not buy a Windows computer.

Are you like me - a frustrated power user on Windows, reluctantly looking into experimenting with the ultimate smoothbrain of Operating Systems - Mac OS?

This article explains how to fix it when Google Chrome decides to start crashing immediately on startup. Chrome is seriously starting to feel like the Internet Explorer of the 2020s sometimes - yet, somehow, I still keep using it.

Let me open up with a few hot takes: Operating System should be an enabler - infrastructure, that doesn't get in the way. Version control should also be an enabler - and at best, a force multiplier.

I'm on Summer vacation, and I figured it's a good time to do something slightly different - it might finally be a good time to put the finishing touches on this lighter article about my recent forays into the Apple ecosystem.

This article explains how to search through all of your workbooks in OneNote for Mac OS. The same thing you can do with CTRL+E on Windows - that is. Because for whatever reason, in OneNote for Mac, it's hidden.

This article explains how to remove a virtual Dev Drive (DevDrive.vhdx), after it's stuck on your machine. Dev Drives are separate drives in Windows, that are optimized for Developer workloads. Mostly installing npm packages, that is.

... if by "life", you mean "absolutely everything you do in Windows 11", that is. And Windows is life, right?

This article explains a couple of different ways to fix any video playback stuttering, when watched on YouTube, on your OnePlus phone.

Reinstalling a Windows machine is always a lot of fun! And that's why I've been more and more of my time doing just that.

This article explains how to tweak Windows Search so that it finds something. Or better yet - that it finds even the files that your applications are trying to HIDE from you (by storing your personal files under Application Data folder)!

So about a year ago, I paid (or made my employer pay) 4000 USD to get an AI-PC. That laptop had no AI features whatsoever, so its NPU is still in brand new condition. Great savings abound if I ever end up selling it!

This article explains how to uninstall Skype for Business when it's not visible in your Control Panel, Settings, Installed apps or Programs and features.

In one of my article's comments section, I've been suffering from semi-automated spam advertising "Long Path Tool".

This article explains how to work around the issue where the Copilot app fails to take pictures. Sounds boring, right? But hey - even with all of the gripes I have about Copilot, I do use it daily, and I'd really like it to work.

This article explains how to get your built-in webcam back after a Windows 11 update (in my case, February 2025 Cumulative Update package) hides/disables it. The weird thing is, the camera is visible in the Device Manager. No app can see it though.

This article explains how to carefully limit your Home Assistant database growth without losing data you actually care about for analysis and automations.

This article shows a few benchmarks I have run on the performance improvement that Dev Drive offers, using a real-life project I am (well, was) working on some time ago.

This article explains how you can identify which wifi bands your TP-Link Decos are using, without using a WiFi Analyzer or other such tools.

I recently (finally) moved to a commercial Password Manager after I got tired of having to copy-paste everything from KeePass in my apps on Windows and letting the only company on Earth that has to remind themselves in their slogan NOT to be Evil han...