New #CastleDoctrine: Protect Your #Home From #Virtual Intruders #BroadbandPrivacy Block #ISP #Spying #Vote Against #Slavery

Congress sold you to your ISP. If that sounds a lot like virtual slavery, that's because it is what it is. ISPs do NOT have the right to your data without your consent regardless of what Congress rubber stamped. Take action! If you value your privacy, if you believe in the sanctity of your home (and that what you do behind closed doors is your business and not the purview of BIG business), protect your data NOW.

This is the new American frontier. Your home is your castle. You have a right to protect your home from intruders, including the virtual kind. Block ISP (and third party) spying, use a Virtual Private Network or VPN to encrypt all data whenever you go online AS A DEFAULT. Trust no-one and look out for you and yours.

Congress sold you to the highest bidder (the cable and telecom lobby) in what is the new standard for bad customer service and a new low for a promise to "serve the people." Refuse to be enslaved. Fight back. Escape from bondage. Protect your data NOW.

And then, vote the spineless bastards who approved this anti-privacy bill out.

Fight for Your Right to ... #Privacy Your Home is Your #Castle

The United States Senate recently voted to pass a bill that would allow ISPs (you know the people who control the internet pipes and can see all the data flowing through them) to track you, package you and sell you to advertisers --- all without your consent. Apparently, the senators voting for this bill have forgotten that privacy is an inalienable right. If any internet businesses should be bound by strictures it is ISPs due to their (mostly) unfettered access to everything their users do online. With privilege comes responsibility and giving ISPs free reign with customers data is not a good idea any way you slice it. There is nothing wrong with being tracked with consent, there is plenty wrong with trying to say that a consumer does not "own" his own data and its OK for companies to use said data (including browsing history) without asking. If you can't be transparent about data collection, then it's likely shady. Just saying. If you don't want ISPs "tapping your wires" call Congress and give them an earful. Tell them, "I am not your product, so stop trying to sell me."* (As a staunch privacy advocate this crap makes my blood boil.)

*My slogan. Order your T-Shirt now! (Kidding about the Tee. But this is my slogan.)

Estate #IntellectualProperty: #WhoisPrivacy #DomainRegistrars #IoT + #Gardening #Composting

I spent a good part of yesterday registering, transferring and setting up domain names. What should be seamless and simple invariably turns into a hassle, because each registrar has its own matrix. But I've finally gotten all my domains with a registrar that includes Whois database privacy as a default service (i.e., free). It's patently ridiculous to expect one to pay extra fees to keep his information private. (And yes, I hate the telephone directory, too, for this very reason.)

Privacy is an inalienable right. It should not be something for which one has to barter or pay a fee. Yes, I understand "privacy guard" registrars provide generic contact data for the Whois database and forward inquiries to the actual domain registrant, but big whoop! This should take almost no effort on their part. Charging for keeping domain registration contact data private is like charging for air. At any rate, all my estate or household domains are now setup.

As it rained a bit last night, the ground should be easier to breakup today. This afternoon, I'm hoping to finish expanding my compost pile which sits in a slightly recessed pit. I'm widening and deepening the pit, so I can turn the compost more easily and keep it well separate from any surrounding growth.

Once all this is done, there will be more cowbell er, milkshakes!


NOTE: With the ongoing IOT explosion in home market products, consider that it may be helpful to employ a household domain name/s (think thejoneseshome.com). This will allow one to setup everything from email to IPs per device, if necessary, and keep everything uniform, organized & connected.

#Eurus, the East Wind: #WeatherGeek #LifeLessons #MoralityPlay

I must stop. I have devolved into someone who incessantly drones on about the weather. I can't help it, it's been so unsettling. Fascinating and annoying. And now, surprisingly... Cold. I'm going to ground.

I really do need a break, but not of the sort I received. A fool vandalized my home. Here, I am working so diligently to make something, to build something, to renovate --- and some idiot decides it would be good sport to tear it down, batter it down. 

Still I rise. I will prevail. I will have the last laugh. Because, as the hoodlum rots in jail or dies in the streets, I will succeed. The choices one makes defines him. Split second decisions. I have chosen, and sadly, so has he. A reckoning is coming, laddie! You heard it here first. News at eleven.

#Day1: Welcome to 2017! #DoBetter #Blueprint #Drafting

I've never been much for resolutions. I live by the maxim to "Do Better." I try with the passage of time to progress, to evolve, to become a better person (a better me) with each day that I'm on this planet. So with this in mind, I say, "Welcome to 2017!" I've got work to do. Sing it, Vanessa.

Day 1: The Castle Modern foundation stone has been laid in my mind's eye. Time to get to the drawing board, flush out my sketches and plot next steps.

A Blog #Retrospective & Hope for the New Year #2017!

I did it! Whew! I made a pledge (to myself) to post new content daily for the month of December, so as to end the year with a bang. I enjoy writing, but had gotten out of the habit over the years. As a result, I'm a bit rusty. Coming up with a new post each day proved more difficult than I imagined. Writer's Block was ever right around the corner, beckoning.

I do not desire to create a "chitchat" blog, posting merely for the sake of posting, engaging in small talk. I'd rather make one quality post a month than go there. (Though obviously I hope to generate quality content more frequently than monthly.) In the new year, I hope to find a good balance, but I've no idea what that will be.

I probably won't post daily. I will post when I feel I have something worthwhile to impart. Castle Modern is a relatively young blog and I'm still sussing things out, determining my comfort zone, establishing my boundaries. An intensely private individual, I'm not a natural sharer, but I can talk about geeky stuff all day. I enjoy helping others. I love sharing knowledge and learning new things.

This blog project (and any other creative outlets that I develop under the Castle Modern brand) is an ongoing journey that will hopefully help to fulfill my dreams of creating a sustainable estate, my Castle Modern, and pursuing my idea of the good life. It's my hope to become healthier, wealthier, and wiser --- to launch my startup company, to make a home and to care for my family. To do better.

Stick around. It's the online equivalent of a barn raising, a gathering of helpful souls united by common purpose. Here's to a bright future household and sharing the knowledge of how it came about.

In the meantime, Happy New Year's! Hello 2017!

#DIY #IoT #SmartRemote: #BlackFriday Score @BestBuy $9.99 #Smartphone! Control #SmartCast #GoogleCast #AmazonEcho

It seems nearly everything can be controlled by an app nowadays. There's an app for that and there's an app for this. And while the idea of such convenience is great, controlling everything at the home or estate level could become a pain for a multiuser household. Think about it. So-called dumb TVs didn't care who was turning the channel --- a child could do it unassisted --- but a SmartTV may need to be paired with an app in order to create an optimal viewing experience.

If you're a bachelor, it's not a big deal to download an app to your personal smartphone that controls your new HDTV. But what do you do when your bros visit to hang out and binge watch? Pass around your phone (with all those private selfies)? Expect everyone download another (useless) app to his own phone merely to control the TV at your house? Neither are ideal solutions.

In honor of Throwback Thursday, here's a "tech growing pain" flashback: Remember when all the streaming services launched under an assumption that each person would have an individual digital library that was his alone. Yeah, it was ridiculous to assume that people in the same household would login/logout of the same app on a family TV to watch the very same content or that each person in a household would buy a copy of the one show everybody watches. Obviously a family or household would share content across devices. Amazingly, this was the default mode in a "dumb" home. It took a while, and a lot of complaints from people like me, but most services now have family plans which allow for some form of "household" content sharing, which should have been the standard to begin with...

In addition to often lax security (Mirai IoT botnet DDOS attack, anyone?) and sketchy consumer privacy policies (All your base are belong to us?), the idea of a single user app to item 1-to-1 pairing is one more shortsighted oversight in the push to make everything Internet-connected. (Oversights of this nature are what I call "tech growing pains", where the advent of tech in a specific arena has to catch up to the actuality of usage. This "phenomenon" frequently occurs in the area of consumer products. Developers often seem to remark, "we never imagined people would use our product for thus and so." Product development tends to be rather myopic this way.)

The issue at hand: If you need an app to control X (where X is something that anyone in the house might need or want to use) then where should the app reside so that anyone authorized may access it?

Luckily, however, there is a simple solution: An IoT connected SmartHome needs at least one (multiuser) SmartRemote. You can buy one. It can be a bit pricey. Alternatively, some of the new high-end products that rely on app control come with a SmartRemote included. (High-end series of Vizio SmartCast TVs, for instance, include a free Vizio SmartCast Tablet Remote.) Or you can go the crafty tech geek way....

I decided it would make more sense to simply acquire a cheap smartphone/s and turn it into a DIY SmartRemote rather than clutter up my business or personal smartphone with home automation apps and create a security nightmare by allowing children, neighbors or guests to have unfettered access to my private mobile ostensibly to turn the television or peek into the refrigerator.

A handheld DIY SmartRemote can be loaded with any apps necessary, left unlocked and kept in a common area so that anyone in the house can make use of it. It doesn't need an active phone service, only WiFi and perhaps Bluetooth. Almost any smartphone will suffice --- you might have an old one (or several) sitting around leftover after you last upgraded, repurpose it. The caveat being to make certain that whatever smartphone you employ for this task has an OS version can support the apps you need to load and that it has enough storage space to hold said apps. (You may need to update the OS on an older model phone, if you're able, in order to make it compatible with newly released apps and/or add an external MicroSD card to expand storage capacity.)

The salient point here is that a smartphone is really just a handheld computer. "Telephony? What is it good for? Absolutely nothing." (I kid. I kid.) However, due to its ubiquitous nature the price of smartphones has dropped dramatically (on the low end of the Android market at least) compared to what "real" handheld computers cost. Of course, said ubiquitousness of smartphones has led to their becoming the latest "disposable" electronics item. To combat this horror, collect old unused smartphones from friends and family, if you're able, and turn these into SmartRemotes. Help alleviate the tech garbage glut by repurposing items whenever possible! And recycle, when items become obsolete.

Due to the fact that I'm a hard core recycler/reuser and work diligently to "green" my tech habits, my household actually didn't have any old smartphones not in already in use for some means (woe is me, I know). Not to worry, due to market saturation, you can find new Android smartphones for dirt cheap, if you keep an eye out. Black Friday sales tend to feature prominently in this quest. To this end, I scoured the Black Friday circulars and online notices for this year's sales and found a winner!

Alcatel IDEAL Android Smartphone

Best Buy advertised an Alcatel IDEAL Android Smartphone (AT&T GoPhone Prepaid Service) 8GB WiFi Bluetooth Lollipop for only $9.99 plus tax, available online or in-store. So I nabbed one. Considering that I recently redeemed for a Vizio SmartCast HDTV (reward) and won an Amazon Echo in a contest, I realized I'm at the point where a dedicated SmartRemote was in order. (I was totally willing to invest $10 on a DIY SmartRemote.) I'm only getting started with home automation, planning its integration into my home as I design, build and renovate, so this is merely a first foray, so to speak. As my SmartHome setup expands and alters, so will its needs.

For now, however, this Alcatel smartphone will work for the four or five "smart" things I have going. I happen to have an 8GB MicroSD card (freebie find) that I'll pop in it to expand the storage space a bit, since the OS alone takes up roughly half its built-in capacity. I plan to install the Vizio SmartCast app, the Amazon Alexa app and the various Google Cast compatible streaming service apps that I use regularly for starters. (All these apps are free to download, but may require a subscription to use, of course.) Once configured, it'll probably sit on an end table near the telly in my home theater (room). My little niece can use it to cast cartoons onto the big screen. And if she drops it on the floor or gets sticky fingered residue on it, it's all good.

I don't need to sacrifice my personal smartphone on the altar of IoT home automation. And neither should you.

_____

NOTES: Depending on the extent of automation in your household, you may only need one "omni" SmartRemote responsible for controlling the three tasks the average person automates (lights, music/TV, security). If, however, you happen to be a massive tech geek like I am wherein practically every thing in the house that can be automated will be automated, then merely having one remote quickly becomes very inefficient. (Engineers loathe inefficiency.)

If you only have "one remote to control them all" but own several hundred things that can be remote controlled, you'd be stuck scrolling through hundreds of apps to find the specific one needed to control your SmartCrockPot or your Home Theater --- and this cuts down the convenience factor to roughly nil.

Geeks like me will have "thematic" SmartRemotes stationed throughout the home. There will be a Kitchen SmartRemote that only has SmartKitchen Appliance apps loaded onto it, a MediaCenter SmartRemote with only entertainment and media device apps installed, etc., etc.. Each remote will "live" in the room/s that it controls. Such a thematic SmartRemote might even be built into the wall, others might be handheld and portable depending upon need.

This is the future, I envision. My Castle Modern. I've got dreams, dreams...

I'm Building a Home (AKA CM)

Your home is your castle, but this ain’t the Dark Ages.

Enter the era of Home Enlightenment.

Welcome to Castle Modern, the enlightened household built by Knowledge. 

In the seemingly never-ending quest to design, build and/or renovate the perfect abode, it pays to discover as much as possible — and to use what one learns to an advantage. (Plumb the past in order to inform the future, then implement the result/s.) Be it landscape engineering, home automation, home improvement, antique shopping, green energy or urban farming. Whatever it takes to make your house a home perfect for you (or in this case, me). This is a life's journey!

Join me as I review products, undertake DIY projects, ponder world issues that affect one's ability to live well and generally work toward creating my own Private Idaho.