Jehan Alvani
  • Home
  • Archive
  • About
  • Almost wish we didn’t have baseball, with the empty seats and masks. It feels joyless.

    Better be careful what I wish for, I guess. Might just get it.

    27 July 2020
  • I was poking around last night looking for a good way to version and move environment and dotfiles between systems. Found this nice and tidy setup. I implemented it this afternoon, and it’s great.

    8 July 2020
  • I dig Uproxx’s Best live albums, ranked list, but I’m surprised that Radiohead’s I Might Be Wrong isn’t on there. That one fan who realizes almost a minute into Like Spinning Plates that it’s friggin’ Like Spinning Plates makes me smile every time.

    8 June 2020
  • Seems like a glaring oversight that in Animal Crossing you can’t lay in bed and stare at your phone for hours

    14 April 2020
  • Social Distancing

    15 March 2020
  • There are a bunch of stories about NBA players covering the salaries of team employees affected by the season suspension. Why are the players ($$$) doing this and not team ownership ($$$$$). That should be part of operations.

    14 March 2020
  • In the most minor of workplace annoyances, I made a cup of coffee at work, but someone turned off the kettle I had turned on and I wound up with an 85° degree cup of bean water.

    15 October 2019
  • The Astros-Yankees ALCS Game 2 is going to go down as one of my favorite all-time games. I’ve watched it three times since it was played. So many tense moments.

    15 October 2019
  • A few things I’ve been digging

    • Big Fan of Austin Wintory since he scored “Journey”. His recent album “Remnants” is really good. A series of short, well-executed tracks.
    • Also really feeling Melanie Martinez’s new album “K-12” . It’s angst-pop in high form.
    • In the late-90s, a bunch of big nineties bands teamed up to put our a really good album of Doors covers. (Supposedly, making the case that he could cover “The End” was why Scott Weiland put “Atlanta” on No. 4). The album was really good, and included a couple previously-unreleased Doors tracks. I owned it back then, but I lost it in a series of moves in the mid 2000s. Good news! It’s cheap on ebay!
    • I recently read (in the modern sense of a mix of reading and listening to) “Under Pressure: The Final Voyage of Submarine S-Five” by AJ Hill, which was absolutely phenomenal. I’d read it years ago, but revisited after hearing the recent replay of a Stuff You Missed in History Class Episode
    • I picked up this Tripp-Lite KVM to simplify my home office. It lists 100hz refresh rate, but I have it working at 120hz reliably with my PC. Currently have three computers connected to one monitor through it (PC, MacMini, 13” MacBoom Pro). Much better than my old setup of switching monitor inputs then tickling a USB switch to get the input and active computer to match.
    10 October 2019
  • Iain found a katydid on the back window

    Iain: “Can I eat him?”

    Linds: “No”

    Iain: “But he looks like chives”

    16 August 2019
  • Shirley Manson talks to Karen O about Maps. It’s like this particular episode of the Jump was made for me. Heroes talking about what might be my favorite song full stop.

    24 July 2019
  • We’re wondering: What will be the next indie trend from the past that will be big right now? Our immediate thought was chillwave, just because it’s been about a decade since it was the trendy form of indie. And there were probably a lot of 13 and 14-year-olds back then who loved Neon Indian and Washed Out who are now putting out their own records. […] How about the art-folk sound of the late ‘00s associated with Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, and (kind of) Animal Collective? Again, it’s been over a decade since that stuff was really in vogue, so it’s ripe for rediscovery by a new generation (or a nostalgic revisiting by aging millennials).

    ~ Steven Hyden making a weapon of the truth in the latest indie mixtape, emphasis mine.

    15 July 2019
  • Swapped the stem on Lindsay’s bike. It seemed pretty straightforward, and thankfully it was every bit as easy as this video made it look. I skipped removing the front wheel since in my setup, the bikes sit on the ground while I’m working.

    How To Change A Stem - Bicycle Mechanics

    2 June 2019
  • If you need a new ride and you’re close to Seattle, I’m selling my beloved Mini.

    24 April 2019
  • Apparently for years, Iain has thought that “Cake by the Ocean” was “King by the Ocean”. He was deeply in love with a song about a royal beach day.

    17 March 2019
  • Aubrey, this morning as I’m helping get her dressed: “Oh! Dad! I forgot about my bones!”

    11 March 2019
  • Genuinely surprised Machado is a Padre. I fully expected him in pinstripes. Relieved, and it’s good to see the Padres get better. Hopefully the fathers can teach him some humility.

    19 February 2019
  • Iain’s reading a book and described an “evil blowspout of bones” as if I needed any more evidence he’s my kid.

    14 February 2019
  • 🤦🏽‍♂️

    29 January 2019
  • #mealprepsunday

    27 January 2019
  • Hey, Siri, let’s start a fire.

    Almost immediately after moving into our house, I wanted to get our gas fireplace in HomeKit. We’re heavily invested in HomeKit, and I really wanted the fireplace to (a) turn on and off via HomeKit and (b) have a switch that matched the other HomeKit switches in the house. However, the specifics of doing so were a bit challenging, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out a really pretty simple solution.

    The Challenge

    The fireplace is a typical gas fireplace with a switch that connects via low-voltage wiring to an AC powered control unit which lives in an open space under the fireplace. When the switch is in the “on” position, the circuit is closed, and the control unit opens the gas valve and repeatedly fires the starter until the gas ignites. Super simple.

    However, HomeKit and other “smart” switches require high-voltage AC to operate, and the control switch doesn’t have AC in the gang box.

    The Solution

    I spent a year thinking about how to get AC to the gang box without cutting a bunch of drywall, when I realized it wasn’t worth the effort. The obvious thing to do is to use a Lutron Caseta on/off switch, a relay, and a Lutron Pico remote. This meets my needs, since I have Caseta switches throuhout the first floor.

    Here’s my hardware list (affiliate links):

    1. 1 Lutron PD-6ANS Switch
    2. 1 Lutron Claro Single-Gang Wallplate
    3. 1 Lutron Non-Dimmer Pico Remote
    4. 1 Pico Remote Wall-Box Adapter
    5. 110v Coil, 10A relay
    6. Thermostat Wire
    7. 2-gang box
    8. AC Appliance Cord
    9. 18/24gauge Male and Female Disconnects (these aren't on Amazon in quantites that aren't nuts; you can find them at your hardware store)

    Here’s a diagram of how I wired the switch to the relay. I did all of this on my workbench so I could easily test the relay with my multimeter, and tuck the wire nuts away as best I could. Most relays will have a diagram printed on their housing which shows which pins energize the coil, and which contacts are switched. In my case, 2 and 7 energize the coil, and 1 and 3 or 8 and 6 were switched pairs.

    The fireplace control connnected to the low-voltage switch with 18 gauge thermostat wire using quick-disconnects, so I stuck some quick disconnects on the thermostat wires connected to the relay to make installation easier. The switch's black (hot) wire is connected to the black (hot) wire of the AC cord, the switch's switched (red) wire is connected to the relay's coil, so when the switch is switched on, the coil is energized. The neutral wires of the relay, the switch, and the AC cord are all connected to complete the circuit. The low-voltage wires to the fireplace control are connected to two switched contacts of the relay. When the coil is energized, the gate is closed, and the loop is completed, just like flipping the old switch to the "on" position. The switch's blue wire isn't used in this case, and is just wire-nutted in the two-gang box.

    I assmbled all of this in a two-gang box, tested it on my workbench, then moved it under the fireplace. There's an AC outlet under the fireplace which was unused, which was a convenient place to plug in the power cord. I disconnected the low-votage switch with the disconnects under the fireplace, and reconnected the control wires to my thermostat wire coming from the relay using the disconnects that I added.

    At this point I could toggle the switch in the gang box and, lo and behold, fire! I replaced the low-voltage switch with the Pico remote. Added the switch and Pico remote to the Lutron app, which in turn adds it to HomeKit, and did some minor tweaks in HomeKit.

    8 November 2018
  • 31 October 2018
  • Couldn’t we have let Hill wear his Dick Mountain jersey for the rest of his season? Seems like the right way to respect its greatness. ⚾️

    27 October 2018
  • I sank an hour before bed playing Donut County. If you were a fan of Katamari Damacy, this short iOS gem will be right up your alley.

    26 October 2018
  • Me, complaining that our toaster sometimes is a jerk: It’s 2018, it’s nearly 2019! It’s not hard to build electronics that compensate for a warm heating element and decrease the cook time accordingly
    Lindsay: Oh my god, it’s a toaster let’s get mad about it.
    Me: I mean, I listened to a podcast where toasters were reviewed…
    Lindsay: 😶 Are you ok? Do you need friends?
    Me: Well, I…
    Lindsay: I mean, I know you’re a nerd but sometimes you really amaze me with how much of a nerd you really are.

    20 October 2018

Follow @jalvani on Micro.blog.