Aug 15th, 2024

Author: donich_admin

The future’s orange

R and I have sorted of solved a problem we have had for a long time which has been made worse by my restricted mobility.  Although our offices are next to each other, we have had the wall between them professionally soundproofed.  This works very well which is good, but also means that I can’t shout across the house to R.

At the moment I am spending most of my day in my office working on our book (R and I are jointly writing a computer security book), and because the wheelchair isn’t very comfortable, I sit in my ordinary office chair.  So to get R, I have to get up, get into the wheelchair and push myself through two doors (with somewhat awkward lintels) and across the hall.  And even when I get there, I have not reached R, because his office is round another tight corner and across a carpeted room with a rug in it.  All these things are non-trivial.

So we have tried a variety of things – none of which have worked.  The best of them was Microsoft Teams, which in theory should let us instant message each other.  In practice it doesn’t work because R can’t use it on his work Mac, and even on his Windows PC he is not good at remembering to look at it.

So the new solution.  We bought three Apple home hubs.  One for the kitchen, and one for each of our offices.  So not only can we use Siri on them, but they also have an “intercom” feature.  So I can say (for example).  Hey Siri, Intercom R and say “Get your lazy arse into the kitchen and bring me some pie” and he will get an audible message in his office.  R also has a “meeting light” at the door to his office.  In differently abled times I would walk past the door, and if the light was on and red I would know he was in a meeting and not go in.  Now from the comfort of my own office, I can ask Siri if the meeting light is on red.  If it is not on red, I can either intercom him, or if it isn’t urgent, I can get Siri to turn the meeting lamp on and blue.  Blue is our new code for “Come and see Maz when you are next walking past”.

I hope this will work well because this whole “don’t shout round corners” thing has been a serious bone of contention for years.

The home hub speakers are very cute.  Mine looks like an orange and is called Rose.  The kitchen one is blue and is called Bridges.  R’s is green and is called Hudson.  Any one care to identify the TV show the names come from?