Neil Grogan

I’ve always been a hunt-and-peck typer. I started using computers as early as was physically possible. Sadly, no one ever taught me good habits around typing (let alone ergonomics). Having some small RSI issues in my right wrist, I decided to further go down the route of mechanical keyboards, which I previously discussed here. In October 2025, I purchased a [ZSA Voyager][voyager] mechanical keyboard. I should rewind a small bit - prior to the Voyager, I purchased a Kinesis Advantage 360 Pro (the wireless one), which is a great and supremely comfortable keyboard. One of the major downsides to the Advantage 360 is that it is uncomfortable for any sort of gaming. Also, there is a nice weight and robustness to the Advantage 360 which makes it unsuitable to travel in my opinion. ...

I last blogged about a “Tech Go Bag” in 2015, 11 years ago as I write this. A lot has changed so I thought it’s worth a re-review of my current setup. ...

About this time last year, I purchased 3 mini computers with the aim of making a Kubernetes cluster. I followed an excellent youtube video: This homelab setup is my favorite one yet - Dreams of Autonomy (Github Repository) which described the machines to buy (Beelink EQ 13 Mini), how to upgrade the SSD and RAM, how to provision them with NixOS, setup K3S, and connect using kubectl to manage the cluster. You will also have to modify your router’s DHCP settings so you can give the cluster static IP addresses. ...

Picade is an arcade machine you build yourself which uses a raspberry pi as the brains. It is available from Pimoroni. ...

Today marks 20 years since I first blogged. I wanted to give a little context to that post. ...

I recently bought a Framework 13 laptop as a personal machine. If you are not aware - Framework makes build-it-yourself laptops. I wanted to review different parts of the process and give an overview of how it’s been from ordering to delivery. ...

For Christmas as a gift to myself I bought a HomeAssistant Yellow. If you’re not familiar with HomeAssistant - it’s a one-stop-shop to control all your smart lights, plugs, sensors and anything else in your smart home. HomeAssistant is the software part and as it’s open source you can freely install it on any computer you have. In fact many people install HomeAssistant on a Raspberry Pi. HomeAssistant Yellow is their own custom hardware with a built in chip for Zigbee (and now Threads) protocol, along with Bluetooth, WiFi and audio out. It takes a Raspberry Pi compute module 4 as its “brains”. This technically means it should - emphasis on should be upgradeable if a Raspberry Pi compute module 5 that is compatible with CM4 socket is produced. ...

I’ve written previously on importing transactions to hledger/ledger from KBC bank in JavaScript and PTSB bank in Python. I took different approaches to each: For KBC, you needed to log in and run Javascript which scrape the transaction table and download it formatted as CSV For PTSB, the script automatted logging in, get the transaction table and save locally as CSV Both approaches are valid - but suffer from the same issues: any change the bank makes to it website needs to be updated in the code. The KBC/JavaScript approach was a bit more robust in that it would just search for rows on a website and download as CSV. ...

I recently replaced a rusty satellite dish and faulty LNB (it has been in use in the house I moved in to for 10+ years I’d guess) and decided to try install one myself. Here in Ireland, the two main broadcast methods of receiving TV are satellite (Freesat / Sky) and terrestrial aerial (Saorview). An issue I have one larger sitting room TV and one small living room TV. I couldn’t get both to be Samsung (out of stock on smallest sizes - which seem to be going out of fashion). So both TVs had very different methods of switching between satellite and aerial connections. I’m not sure if it is a hardware limitation (they make switching tuners slow to hide this), a licensing issue (broadcasters pay to be on the Freesat EPG for example) or a software issue (seems least likely). The fact multiple TV brands (in my case Phillips/Samsung) make it this clunky - makes me think it’s a licensing issue. I wanted to solve this by using an external box and having one mental model for navigating broadcast TV. ...

Update 2023: these instructions are out-of-date for the latest Unifi controller software versions. It's preserved here as written for those who still have older versions. This post uses a file called gateway.config.json and Unifi now say: This article is not applicable to the UniFi Dream Machine models, because all configurations are already available in the UniFi Network user interface. So I take that to mean use of this file is deprecated and it should be possible to do this via the administration webpage. ...