Author: db

Welcome to the family the TP-Link HS220. A wifi-enabled dimmer switch. You know you can always use another WiFi switch product!

For once in the history of smart switches we have a neutral wire (the white), normally the experience is to open the existing wall plate and curse the electrician who, sometime during the ascendency of disco, saved $0.02 and skipped the traveller.

Installed. IP assigned. Discovered in Home Assistant. Working. Great!

One minor hiccup. I bought this since it would work locally (I don't want some new cloud service they'll bring in a few months). And, it does. The Kasa app does allow you to login as a guest and setup new devices without creating an account. Except for the HS220. The other switches work. Huh? Well, dummy account created, device assigned to the IOT network (which has no Internet access), and it works from Home Assistant, So, minor speedbump, the device does work without Internet.

Earlier I wrote about the joys of Linux, fonts, snaps. Today, a new but similar challenge. Its tax form time. And, we can sign them remote. Great. What's this? A new font? CCHTaxFont? What is that?

pdffonts tax-forms.pdf 
name                            type              encoding         emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------- ----------------- ---------------- --- --- --- ---------
DEVEXP+TimesNewRoman            CID TrueType      Identity-H       yes yes yes     63  0
DEVEXP+TimesNewRoman,Bold       CID TrueType      Identity-H       yes yes yes     70  0
WPCUBE+Arial                    TrueType          Custom           yes yes no      23  0
WPCUBE+CCHTaxFont               TrueType          WinAnsi          yes yes no      27  0
WPCUBE+Arial,Bold               TrueType          Custom           yes yes no      31  0
WPCUBE+Arial                    TrueType          Custom           yes yes no      34  0
WPCUBE+Tahoma                   TrueType          Custom           yes yes no      38  0
WPCUBE+Tahoma                   TrueType          Custom           yes yes no      41  0
WPCUBE+Arial,Italic             TrueType          Custom           yes yes no      45  0

OK, no problem, I'll just Google that. Hmm. Problem. OK, let's find a way to make the embedded font in the pdf into a ttf truetype font.

$ mutool info tax-forms.pdf
PDF-1.7
Info object (78 0 R):
</Author/Subject/Keywords/Creator/Producer/CreationDate(...>>
Pages: 7
Retrieving info from pages 1-7…
Mediaboxes (1):
1 (61 0 R): [ 0 0 612 792 ]
Fonts (9):
1 (61 0 R): Type0 'DEVEXP+TimesNewRoman' Identity-H (63 0 R)
1 (61 0 R): Type0 'DEVEXP+TimesNewRoman,Bold' Identity-H (70 0 R)
2 (48 0 R): TrueType 'WPCUBE+Arial' WinAnsiEncoding (23 0 R)
2 (48 0 R): TrueType 'WPCUBE+CCHTaxFont' WinAnsiEncoding (27 0 R)
2 (48 0 R): TrueType 'WPCUBE+Arial,Bold' WinAnsiEncoding (31 0 R)
2 (48 0 R): TrueType 'WPCUBE+Arial' WinAnsiEncoding (34 0 R)
2 (48 0 R): TrueType 'WPCUBE+Tahoma' WinAnsiEncoding (38 0 R)
2 (48 0 R): TrueType 'WPCUBE+Tahoma' WinAnsiEncoding (41 0 R)
2 (48 0 R): TrueType 'WPCUBE+Arial,Italic' WinAnsiEncoding (45 0 R)
$ mutool extract tax-forms.pdf 2
$ cp *Tax* ~/.fonts

Done. Hope you enjoyed if you had to use Libreoffice to sign your forms this year. Next year I hope to convince them to use SignRequest and do it online.

So I decided to get medieval on the purple lamp. Sadly my estimation of getting the (what seemed like plastic but in hindisght was glass) off in one piece was not so correct. Its ok, the bleeding has stopped, and the millions of razor sharp bits of glass all over my desk will be slowly sopped up into my pores!

As you can see in the above, the yellow bit came off. What is this yellow bit you ask? You see, there are 2 methods of creating white light from LED. You can go RGB (mix red/greeb/blue) light. Or, you can use a short-wavelength (blue to Ultra Violet) and run it through a yellow phosphor coating. Interestingly, some make it out as blue, some make it out as yellow. The combination makes white. Credit to Sir Isaac Newton for discovering this.

No credit for guessing which type of lamp I have now, particularly since you saw the photo above. If we zoom in, we can see 9 LED in each module, and, a yellow hat, missing on G5.

It is also this blue that is the theory behind why you wear blue-blocking glasses later in the day, the theory is the blue causes your circadian rythyms to kick in and think its morning, rather than evening. You can read more about blue led and sleep rythyms here. As to other protect-your-eyes-from-blue-light, that is bunk. Its just about sleep.

So Friday my wife and I look out our front door. There, on the step, is 1/4 of a chipmunk. Appetising.

Lately there has been a fox wandering around, I defended my cat saying "Oh, that was the fox".

Later, reviewing the tale of the tape, uh, spoiler, it was the cat.

You may recall the great sadness of the lamp that went purple. Its that large white bulb in the photo, a Cree model with a small corn cob inside. I puzzled over this for a bit, what can give me a lot of light, mostly in the outbound (rather than downward) direction (given the type of lamp).

After some research I came up with this folding (deformable!) type lamp. Yes its meant for your garage ceiling. Their slogan is "as easy as screwing in a light bulb" which brought a lot of jokes to mind.

Interestingly, it has no radar. I'm not sure if i should be concerned, but in the end decided that most of my light bulbs also don't have radar so this was acceptable.

Somewhat more alarmingly the voltage. Usually its the upper that is the range, but both have thae same upper. O well, we are definitely in 85-277 so that should be ok.

The colour. Hmm. I ordered 5000K, its not even an option. But, since its background light (and i doubt they calibrate it too closely) I'll accept this.

If we look at it installed in its not-particularly-native-environment, we can see its a bit ridiculous looking. But, a large shade hides it. It puts out a fair bit of light, i'm skeptical of the 12000lm specification. But, i'm no longer purple, and that's what counts.