Over the years, I’ve done several “little things” that have had something to do, one way or another, with Spotify. I used the API to classify the music I listen to most by decade to see how old my tastes were, to connect it with Home Assistant, to separate music by language, and a few other bits. But in recent days I’ve been busy getting a clock to tell me what song I’m listening to. ...

Sometimes, when I’m glued to my computer at my desk, I need to know the time. Of course, I could glance at the bottom corners of my monitors (Windows 11) to get the info, but more often than not, I have so much stuff piled on my desk that I can’t even see the bottom of the screens. Plus, when I’m gaming or watching videos, I absolutely don’t want to be looking at the clock! It breaks the immersion! So, I needed a dedicated, always-visible clock. Enter: the little gadget. ...

Okay, this is going to be a quick one. A couple of days ago, a melody from a song I’d heard ages ago popped back into my head. I couldn’t recall anything about it except that somewhere in the song, the singer (or singers) mentioned the word “dangerous.” I did what any normal person would do, I cleared my throat and started trying to imitate a piano and a synthesizer to the best of my poor abilities, so that Shazam might be able to help. I put a lot of effort into it, but I couldn’t get it to recognize the sound; it was probably because my attempts at imitating instruments are pretty awful. ...

I enjoy movies, like anyone else, and have accumulated many over the years, though I haven’t always acquired them through the most formal means. 😉 To organize and watch them, I usually use Plex, and I like it a lot; it’s a great platform and, in my opinion, deserves a few bucks from me. However, since they’ve been making some curious decisions lately, I started using an Emby instance more frequently for similar purposes. ...

I’m not really a photogenic guy but from time to time I enjoy saving memories of what surrounds me in the form of photos and videos, especially if I’m on a trip, could be my last visit for all I know. A phone is usually enough for the duty but sometimes a dedicated device that I can solely use to capture images sounds like the way to go, so I have a couple of cameras: an action can (DJI Action 3) and a vlogging cam (DJI Osmo Pocket). They’re nice for the use case, given I’m not any kind of photo pro, I just want decently looking and stabilized images, the rest is pretty much accessory, or so I thought. ...