Previously my phone-photo-backup process involved connecting it to a computer, then manually copying photos to a folder on my NAS. This was inefficient, and I'd often forget to do it for months at a time. I wanted something that'd backup my photos automatically, and do so to my own hardware. I found PhotoSync to be an awesome app and setup PhotoPrism as a backup target for it to use.

The past few weeks have been quite a ride. I've not had so many good things happen in such a short space of time before!

With everything going on, I just felt the need to write this post as a journal of how things were, how things felt and to remind myself that things are going just about as well as they can be for me and my bubble right now. I'm grateful.

I've worked with code for a long time now, I've come to realise that every 'simple' request is only simple on the surface. As any system grows, so does the number of considerations that have to be made when implementing a new feature or change to existing functionality.

I'd previously set up an If-This-Then-That (IFTTT) integration with Monzo to put 20p into a pot every time I tweet. I'd locked the pot until mid-November.

Then the PS5 pre-orders opened, and the release date in the UK was November 19th, 2020. My pot would unlock just before this - neat!

In part 1 of this series of blog posts about Home Assistant I got setup and created an automation.

In this post I'll cover what I use most on the mobile app and how I use notifications where relevant to my automations.