Home Automation Improvements!

I went on a home automation improvement kick recently! The changes include: OpenHAB – I switched from Misterhouse to OpenHAB for home automation. Why? OpenHAB has a cleaner codebase, more active development community, more efficient event-driven model, increasing device support, a better UI, charting, and a functional mobile client. I completed most of the conversion in…

Styrofoam recycling in Austin

Melissa from Hunters Chase pointed out that Cycled Plastics in Austin recycles foam products, which are not taken and recycled as part of the single stream recycling from the City of Austin and Texas Disposal Services. From their website at http://www.cycledplastics.com/Services.html : Public Drop Off Site: Cycled Plastics maintains a public drop point at it’s…

Fedora 12 to 14 Upgrade

I upgraded Fedora 12 to Fedora 14 over the weekend using PreUpgrade for the first time.   (I tried a direct yum distro-sync upgrade first but it got stuck in infinite dependency loops.) Overall I was impressed with the download size reduction and the install speed after rebooting the system for the anaconda installer to apply the…