The small things that have massively improved my life

2025 11 12

Hi, I'm Elysia, and I'm a lil gremlin working to make my life easier. You see, i really value day to day experences and work hard to make life's basic and boring things as fun and useful as possible. Over the last far too many months, I've been working very hard to build a cosy nest to raise a family in, and it's seen me take on a lot of projects. I wanna document and share those, and how they've transformed my life.

I say I am a gremlin because the notes list for this is 40 lines long, in the HTML comments, and a lot of those are very vague and broad bullet points like "bikes". The changes have been very far reaching and extensive, and I don't know if I'll be able to get through everything. Let's start with the biggest and longest term projects of these.

Smart home.

I'm not really a techy person, at least compared to my partner. My interest in technology extends only so far as to what would be helpful for me. Turns out though, that's a lot of things.

It all started with lighting. My sister's apartment had Siri controlled lights, and it was awesome getting to turn them off from bed, and with voice. The washroom had a RGB light in it which was really good for setting mood lighting and pranking people. It was exciting! And then beyond that, someone I was seeing at the start of the year had google home in their condo, which was also awesome. They had ambient lighting that changed depending on what u were watching on TV, with "Maple Leaf blue" coming on when we watched a hockey game together. She also would use it to set timers hands-free.

Also yes i watch Hockey.

Prior to this, my only experience with smart home was modding an IR remote to be controlled by my computer so i could have mood lighting in my room easier.

When I started my smart home project, it was with Trådfri lighting. But that prior experience with routing controls through my computer remained in my head, and gave me inspiration for a bus departure board in my own home. I started just by using the switches paired to the lights, but soonafter I got a zigbee dongle for my computer, the conbee 3 from dresden elektronik. After a couple days of setup, we had the open source home assistant up and running, and could connect to it with our phones as well.

the command centre

Home assistant is the closest thing to an everything app I have ever used. It handles casting, my air conditioner, TV, weather forecast, cloud media, radio, shopping and idea and goal lists, mains energy usage monitoring... it's wild. Just about the only things i havent been able to figure out so far is how to get it to turn off my computer screen at bed time and how to get a good cloud calendar with it.

The cloud media part is a lil misleading. It isn't cloud at all, it's just a big ass hard drive. How ! You may be asking.

Well, we use Tailscale to access our desktop from other networks. Therefore, if im out in the field filming, I can send my videos off back home to make more space on my phone or camera. As mentioned in a previous blog post about my phone, my phone has a tool-less SD card slot, letting me do easy file management while I am out and about.

Tailscale also lets us do things like turn on our furnace while out to make place warmer, and use full SSH and SFTP, or control my desktop using KDE Connect. In the even of the furnace, accessing that through home assisstant allows us to automatically turn it on based on the rate at that time of day, because the government charges different prices depending on the time of day. It's cheaper to turn it on while at the 9 to 5, and then have a home warm before getting home, which is when rates hike up to peak prices.

Having a "cloud storage system" that is just my computer really helps me handle my organisation and file management to stay well organised, avoid duplication, and just makes it so i can be a lot more spontaneous and more loose in my life. Like, if im going out, I can decide at any point while out to go to the library or photo store to print things off, instead of needing to plan those trips in advance and get the files on my phone or my laptop. Being disabled, cloud storage also massively helps me because i can access files from everywhere, which is much easier on my body and brain. Like, being able to recover in bed while in pain but still being able to share my photos, or send my group project submissions, is so incredibly helpful and good for me. Same goes for lights.

internet of things

Being able to turn lights off from bed is fucking fantastic, especially when i slept on the floor for about half a year. again, the disabled piece makes it hard to move and reach switches, but also just from a coziness factor. It also lets me do things like ask my partner to turn the lights up or down while in the shower or out in the back garden fixing up a bike. It's just so convenient.

I am also a bit of a light slut, and so being able to change the colour, brightness and what lights are turned on at any time, is just lovely. I have at least one set of fairy lights in every room in my plex, and then also a main light, and it's lovely.

Of the programs we've set up so far, here's the most useful

• having lights come on when one of our phone's connect to our flat's wifi, turning them off when all phones leave
• Having our bathroom lights automatically come on at a very low brightness at midnight ( night light to see what youre doing while peeing without waking u up too much )
• having our bedroom and living room lights come on gradually at 7am tpo wake us up with some lights in winter
• "disco mode"

i should get more lights to make my flat less sad. Its dark so early

One of the coolest things home assistant enables is doing certain things in reaction to something else. The example earlier about turning "maple leaf blue" colours on when watching a hockey game automagically, or having network connection tell home assistant to do something with our lights. It's really powerful. Some of the metro stations where we live have artistic curved lighting pieces that play a smooth watery flowing animation most of the time, but then played a more energetic firey orange animation when a train is about to arrive, which i gives me enthusiasm to do it with our own departure board ( although id need to get the right type of light to do this with, i have epilepsy and would need to do an animation. maybe my computer case's lights can play an animation that smoothly? )

we use our google pixel tablet to control and view the command centre. Using a tablet stand from ikea or the magnets. Kinda related but flexible mouse pad that goes in lap or on floor or blankies has been super amazing for using computer in cosy locations, and for playing PC games on couch. Also got from ikea. Also, throughout our flat, we have chargers pre-positioned, sop we can set up tablet somewhere or wireless charger and dock it.

i wanna reseach how to add my aputure photograpy light to homeassistant to make that easier to control while doing a

I was orginally gonna set this all up on my raspberry pi 4, but uh, I lost it. Uhm. So now it runs on my desktop, which means it also needs to compete for resources with playing games on our tv, bluetooth, compiling software, video / photo editing, and drawing as well as file management. My computer is fairly old but aside from rendering things at 1440p/4k in HDR, it's able to multitask all these really well.

• AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core
• 15.6 GiB of DDR4 ( usually pegged at 70% usage but occasionally jumpts to ~90-100%. i have a lot of swap on my SSD though and my utilisation would be higher without it )
• AMD Radeon RX 580 w/ 8gb VRAM ( this is the bottleneck but only when outputting above 1080p)
• conbee iii dresden elektronik

ive had this computer for about 8 years and have never upgraded anyhting except adding a bluetooth card to it.

Keep in mind, i use my desktop computer for multiple things in my flat, so it needs to render to multiple displays ( work desk in bedroom for working, regular monitor for general computing in living room, and TV for playing games ), and im often livestreaming. It wouldn't have a graphics bottleneck if i was only rendering to one of my 3 displays and didnt screen record.

vtubing

sorta related to this but a bit outside the scope of the blog. lets mention it briefly. I vtube using IRL Pro on my phone to film and send data to computer, i use ffmpeg to start an RTMP server on my computer and convert that into a virtual camera output, i plug that into kalidoface for face tracking to vtubing model, and then use browser source in OBS to get it inside OBS.

connection between devices

bikes

This is the second biggest and long term project. Most of them arent this big, but

In my eyes, getting a bike was one of the biggest single improvements to my life that could even be possible. Especially for how low commitment it is, even before we got nice bikes. Bikes are fast, theyre good for your health, society's air quality, resource efficency ( both in manufacturing and fuel efficency, with ebikes being the most efficent vehicles except for long distance and ultra high capacity, where trains take the cake ). They're also mobile tables, somewhere to sit down, explore. They open up your view of the world around you, and lets you easily talk to other people. They can carry groceries. But most of all, they're unbelievably fucking fun.

I actively choose to ride a bike simply because its fun and makes my body feel good. There's nothing more to it. The fact theyre faster than all other options ( including car ! ), the fact they are positive impact on society, the fact it keeps me healthy ( physically and socially ), they're all bonuses.

Ride a bike. Im doing it in Ottawa, a abnormally sprawly Canadian city where it snows two metres in a week. You can do it too (* nyote: ottawa is the only city in north america where dutch style intersections are standard and are pretty normal elements of intersection design, which makes biking a lot safer, even when there arent bike lanes on the straightways. ottawa also has a big recreational trail system that is useful to fill in the gaps in the network, and a year-round " bring ur bike on transit" program, as well as locked and supervised bike parking buildings at some rapid transit stations. But like, let's be real, ottawa is still a bad city for biking in )

i feel liike biking has massively expanded the world around me. It's so much easier to see people, talk to people, get around, explore. It speeds up just about every journey and makes them all take way less mental and physical energy, and doesn t restrict u to specific travel corridors, making spontaneous adjustments easy. And people love to say hi when theyre out and about, its a great way to meet people and stay involved in community.

We ride utility bikes. A Wheelerz Omafiets and a Batavus Weekend, both Dutch imports. We got them from the Plain Bicycle Project in Winnipeg and Go Dutch in Toronto, respectively. They both came with back racks certified to carry 25kg, which is much higher than what seems to be the norm in canada, with 250$ bike racks that can only carry 7-15kg of load. Pathetic. The Batavus has a café lock, shown in the video, the Oma has skirt guard and two 35L panniers ( saddlebags for the americans in the audience ) from Basil, both have an upright posture with a step through frame, full chain case. The Batavus also has 7 speed internal gear hub. The Oma was offered with a 3 speed internal hub, but I couldnt afford it at the time. Pretty big mistake on my part cus it gets really tiring to pedal a single speed bike after a full day, especially with cargo ( although it isnt a big deal at the start of the day ).

These bikes are meant to get shit done with, and a lot of my daily life is figuring out how best to adapt my bike to the situation. In the header image to this article, you can see me carrying a tripod in the pannier, and i also had my full camera gear loadout with me. I carry groceries in this all the time, as well. I really miss swedish food so the other day i went to ikea to get three daim cakes ( no prästost 😭🎀 canadian cheese fucking sucks!! ). We ride them all season, too.

We'll talk about it more in the camera section, but the best camera is the one you have with you, so when its reasonably dry out (ie, anything less than torrential ), we ride with our neck strap on and use it as a crossbody strap, wearing it just like my tiny shoulder bag that goes out everywhere with me. I also use the back rack as a table to change lenses or set groceries on, and put my mitts on my bag staps when im not wearing them so i can use both hands. My keys are on my retractable extender card holder, although i prefer to use bike locks that either retain their own keys, or uses a combination lock, because theyre much faster to use and much easier to operate with mittens on, as well as requiring less storage space on my person.

step through frame bikes with upright riding positions are sosososososo much better for me as a disabled person than normal road/hybrid/mountain bikes. and its proper upright, too, not the awkward fake upright that domestic city bikes have, which are more like hybrid bikes. theyre so much more comfortable and easy on our back and neck, and give us better visibility and less blind spots. they are also much safer in the event of a crash or accident, cus we hit less when falling, and will basically always hit feet or back first.

the oma has coaster brakes, which one of us prefers because of handbrake trauma, and i prefer for ease of use and because it doesnt require hand dexterity ( hand brakes are difficult to squeeze cus of disability, and almost impossible with mittens on ). The Batavus has hub dynamo and gear hub, which make it very practical and low maintenence. Both have full chaincases whihc also make them lower maintenence. Also I am writing this in snow/freezing rain and im so extremely relieved our chains is enclosed and away from the water. Also imo exposed chains is kinda hella ugly, especially when they have deraileurs.

id like to get a basket for one of them cus i used to love tossing my camera in the front. At some point when we have the money any time we'd also like to get a pram(stroller)/bike trailer 2-in-1 for when we have kids, etc.. also want to bring the bikes to feature parity with each other, especially wrt to café locks and skirt guards,which are too useful to only have one. it would also be pretty cool if we could find a snow shovel/tripod mount, like the ski/surfboard bike mounts u can get. Wait actually u can probably use the same mounts for snow shovels and tripods. nvm. Very far down the road we want to get a electric cargo bike , again for kids but also for hauling furninure and shit. I am always 100% in favour of electric cargo bikes. What a beast of a vehicle.

camera stuff

i dont think ive ever written a webblog about my camera, but my photography pages probably get the gist. Basically. I use a small camera. Fujifilm X-T10. Hella Small.

I got it years ago but it was such an important imporvement over my previous camera. samew with the controls, i vastly prefer the direct physical aperture and shutter and comp dials, rather than PASM dial and digital control.

I use my strap attached to hair clips so i can easily remove them and swap them out. I have a neck strap and wrist strap and also take them off when shooting with a tripod. awawawawawawawawawawa

i got the fujinon 90mm f2 recently ii love it.

i stuff all my small accessories into a small viltrox pouch

i dont use a camera bag

straps

bags

if it hasnt become apparent, i am a hauler. I bring shit with me everywhere. We have a 30L backpack from Kathmandu that ive had for about 2 years now, and my partner got a Coto Paxi bag that we lost in about a week. Awwwww man. What's with backpack brands being named after mountains. We both also have small shoulder crossbodies, also known as evening bags. Backpacks are optimal for carrying a fuckton of shit very far, and i've carried basically everything you can possibly imagine in my back pack, literally fucking everything. Groceries, bedding, camera equipment, laptop, prints, enough cards to set off a anti-theft RFID scanner at a store in Oslo by overwhelming it with data, video games, makeup, an entire cosplay to change into at 7 am on a express train's bathroom on the Lakeshore line in Toronto, idk. You name it its been stuff in there. It isnt the best back pack in the world for organisation but it gets the job down and hey its lasted for a year while being cared for approximately a negative amount and travelling to 5 countries with. Its also had broken glass in it and gotten drenched in water on a enormous number of occasions.

Getting a backpack was one of the first steps inin my journey from nothing to where i am now. they are extremely flexible storage devices that carry a lot without much strain. Theyre almost like a fundamental part of the modern human body, up there with bikes. Hell, if you dont have panniers or a trailer or a box to toss shit in, then backpacks are a very effective form of storage for a bike as well.

I've started taking it less with me in the interest of back pain ( the kathmandu doesnt have a strap to put the weight onto my hips, or as Jetlag: The Game calls it: " speed mode " ), and because i now carry excess size items in my bike bags, buts its still such an incredibly useful device when a part of a trip wont involve my bike. One day i may end up getting a smaller and more stylish city backpack but really ive noticed i tend to use almost all the space in my backpack even just as a every day carry, and there isnt much space for things like groceries. Wrt to EDC, i try to keep my backapack loaded with essentials at all times so i can grab it and go if i ever need to go somewhere and dont have enough time or spoons to pack. Laptop, water bottel. makeup, first aid, transit cards for every city ive been to, spare camera batteries, lens cleaning equipment, a spare tuque and pair of gloves, headphones, etcetera..

While im here, bluetooth headphones have been huge for me. We have a pair of the Sony XMWhatevers and apple airpods and they each serve extremely different purposes in my life. I headphones when im biking or running ( cus they are a lot sturdier on my head), when playing arcade games and sleeping ( cus of noise cancelling ( and cus arcade games only have 3.5mm jack and only my headphones have the option to use that ) ), and sometimes when im calling someone while doing chores. I use airpods for basically everything else, because they fit inside my small shoulder bag.

In addition to my airpods, my handbag also carries my wallet, various transit cards for places i often travel to like Montréal and Gatineau, earrings, a handheld mirror, and a battery bank. When i dont have a battery bank, i usually put my phone in the space taken up by the bank ( i dont have many clothing with pockets ). I clip my eyes and primary transit card for where I am with a retracting keyring type device. It's just from the storebrand from canadian tire, but it looks a lot like the keybac orginal, if you wanna get ur own from somewhere Not Canada.

the card holder itself

The retracting key is super useful and requires less hands and arm movements for just about everything, and lets me be a lot more fast and loose with my lifestyle. I always have my keys on me, i cant remove them, and getting them in position to unlock shit is really trivial, and i only need one hand to do it,and i dont need to think about where my key ends up after using it, because i just let go. Same for my transit card, except that one time it flew out of the holder after a long night. Still need to put some tape or some kind of latch to stop it from falling out again. It is extremely nice when im carrying a large item against my chest and need to open the door or unlock the bike or get on the bus when its crowded. It is so so so s so s sosooooo much easier

We oringally got a kawaii string one from a kawaii store in Oslo, and my sister has a cat one, but the string frayed after only a couple months, so when we got a new one we got one that used a metal chain. The bonus is that this one also doesnt sag when putting keys on it.

file management

ive talked about item sorting, but now lets talk about file management.

I use paper dividers for physical documents. With health, legal, finance, mail, and one other category. Then i use a dossier container to hold the fichiers. I told my logo design professor, who is french, that theyre called fichiers in english as well. uwu

i have a much more involved sorting structure on computer.

In my main drive's root directory, I have documents, downloads, drawing, games, iso, music, pictures, and videos

inside of documents, i have books, edits, finances, freelance, health, legal, openstreetmap, saves, website, work, and writing.

in pictures, i have 3ds, canon eos, a series of locations, moodboard, flags, film, emojis. each location directory is subdivided into pretty, and then the genre of photography. It is a a very sprawling system that appears to have fractals of depth if yoiu look closely. It also isnt perfect ! but its good

We also extensively sort all of our addresses and contacts and thunderbird, and used those as a master list to put into our cloud contacts list in nextcloud. Nextcloud is also where we store our calendar cus home assistant isnt amazing. It syncs between devices automatically, and lets each other know what we're doing. No duplicates, as much info filled as possible ( user icon, full name, address, birthdate, signal, matrix username, website, email addresses, phone numbers, etc.. Having all this info helps with automation, ie., when using transit app for routing, it will automatically add contact addresses as favourite locations, which is extremely useful in a pinch and i dont have enough time to check ). I really wanted to use home assistant but couldnt really find anythiing half decent. We also converted our school timetable into a standard calendar format so that it autofills my calendar, and we make extensive use of the calendar auto invite file format.

we also make extensive use of lists as seen in command centre

nest wares

i carry a notebook around as much as possibke and use it to make concept art for my ideas or to write as a diary.

rechargeable AA and AAAs are a godsend. i use them in light switches, fairy lights, remotes ( including wii), and the Oma's bike light

kitcehn

cheese slicer is amazing. not only does canadian cheese suck, they havbe bottom tier form factor for cheese slicing, although wholesalers sell kilo+ blocks that work well with them. In groceries u can only get 200-400g super thin slabs. Hate that. I usually get triangular blocks. Hot plate to put under pots is really nice for cosy moding, metal hot rack really nice for racks and large things like laptop, cake tin, scale.

appliances

dish washer is life changing, as is in suite laundry machine. Laundry tumble dryer is also nice but i would prefer a drying room since tumble driers are sad and i cant just put my clothes in the snow.

misc

tree style tabs in firefox, custom chrome css for firefox to make it best fit my screen and theme, custom firefox homescreen to make it cuter and easier to navigate and more useful ( i replaced the firefox logo with tenna deltarune, and replaced "firefox" with "creature")

i have all my computers autoswithc theme based on sun position

i autostart everything

we outline our day schedule from the start as much as possible, making sure to leave leeway and to set "today" and "future" goals to mix short term and long term gratification without burning out. Lately, that's looked a lot more like resting, a lot,,,

In our mud"room," we have our entire winter clothing collection in one spot, which is really good. it kinda goes into the organisation and file management like that and my official docs and keys but idk

i love myself and my family ! thanks for reading