• 31 July 2026

my love is carried to you by my feet (2026-W31)

Because we have a baby on the way, my partner and I have been trying to address some outstanding house projects before I give birth. Unfortunately I’m very pregnant and can’t do much physically, so I’ve been trying to find little things I can tackle without, say, bending.

I’ve been running my network off an aging router: a Netgear Nighthawk R6700v2 that was designated as EOL by the manufacturer last year. It works OK, but the wifi range leaves something to be desired (it caps out at 802.11AC), the control panel is abysmal, and it’s not receiving any security updates moving forward. I spent a lot of time considering different alternatives (like opnsense and OpenWRT), but I landed on the Ubiquiti ecosystem ultimately — it’s a favorite among homelabbers and strikes a good balance between giving me more control over our network while still being fairly plug and play. I bought a Dream Router 7 and an in-wall access point.^[1] We haven’t run the cables for the access point just yet, but even just by dropping in the Dream Router as a replacement for the Nighthawk, I’m seeing some pretty impressive speed improvements: my desktop PC went from 315Mbps to 540Mbps, and that’s with shitty ethernet cables that I need to replace.

I’ve also been tinkering a lot with setting up some smart home functionality this week. In keeping with my self-hosted and open source ethos, this is all happening through Home Assistant and, as much as possible, I’m focusing on devices that don’t require any kind of initial setup with the manufacturer.^[2] I did a big write up on a music player and display that I did work on this week, but I also bought a few Third Reality Zigbee devices: a vibration sensor to detect if my dryer is running, a tilt sensor to check if my garage door is open^[3], and a motion sensing nightlight. I had issues setting up the nightlight, but I think it’s because my Zigbee network is small right now and the hub for it is located in my basement. I have some more devices on the way that I hope will help extend the range so I can get the nightlight where I want it.

We finally had an electrician come and install some lights in the nursery; I had him install a Lutron smart-switch in there, and it’s my eventual goal to migrate all our lights to the Caseta system. The stairwell is the next project, but it involves replacing several three- and four-way switches, which is going to be an undertaking. Our house is old and the wiring is quite outdated in a lot of places (most of it still uses cloth-wrapped cabling). I don’t know much about electrical work, so I’m doing my research before taking that on.

I also started playing with GNOME on my laptop (I use KDE Plasma on my desktop). I like it! It has some nice mousepad gestures that are useful, and it’s overall just really simple and streamlined compared to KDE. KDE has so much customization built in, but it can get clunky. My laptop is a good way to test different desktop environments because I do little besides web browsing on it. If I feel certain I want to switch my desktop over, that’s a bigger undertaking, because I’d do things right and start with a fresh OS install (which will mean reinstalling and reconfiguring a bunch of shit). My laptop can easily be wiped and set back up if I really bork anything.

Mentally, though, I’m still done being pregnant and want the baby out already. I’m officially full-term as of today, and while it could still be a few weeks, I want my body back.^[4] I was very down about this all through the week and just frustrated by the waiting.

Reading

My partner and I took a mini-vacation to his aunt’s lake house, which is a yearly tradition for us. It’s a relaxing trip where I usually get a lot of reading done by the poolside. I finished The Outsiders and mostly enjoyed it; I think it falls apart a little toward the end (especially before the rumble when the greasers suddenly begin doing a gymnastics routine), but I remember really disliking it when I read it in middle school. I’m happy that’s not the case anymore because I have to teach it next year.

After polishing that off, I started reading Perdido Street Station after putting it off for years. Back in college, I worked at GameStop to pay rent; the job and the company sucked, but I worked with good folks. One of my coworkers raved about Perdido and compared it favorably to Gabriel García Márquez (who I have a troubled history with). I’m only a few pages in, but Miéville’s prose is remarkable. The prologue has incredible mystique and atmosphere. I know this is going to be a slow read for me because I have a lot of other shit going on, but I’m already hooked.

Playing

My partner got me hooked on Meowdoku, a very stupid little phone app. It’s been nice for my sleepless nights, but I blocked its internet access so that it can’t show ads, and my phone gets super hot when I play it. Mostly I’m just excited for Fields of Mistria's 1.0 release in a few days.

Listening

My friend Alex released a new song, “internet girl”. Give it a listen if you like big stinky electronic tracks that sound straight out of a 2000s DDR game (especially the nightcore version).

I listened to Tidal by Fiona Apple. Fiona Apple feels like one of those artists I should like, but I just don’t connect with her music (I’ve also listened to Fetch the Bolt Cutters).

I’ve otherwise been listening to a lot of Charli XCX’s new album, Music, Fashion, Film. From what I can tell, it’s had a bit of a mixed response, which is to be expected as it’s her first proper follow up to brat. Luckily I am able to keep more than one thought in my head at a time and recognize them as two distinct entities — brat is as much an album as a cultural moment, and it’s OK for Music, Fashion, Film to not be that. It’s much less bombastic but still recognizably Charli. Standout tracks for me are “2007,” “I’m Afraid,” and “No One Lasts Forever.”