--- title: Writing — Will Curran | Will Curran (2) description: I spent sixteen years building one company, and I have been in the event industry since 2007. These days I write about the technology I actually use — trucks, radios, home infrastructure, and the tools that survive past the first invoice. (2) image: https://willcurran.com/hubfs/will-curran-brand/will-curran-og.png --- [Skip to content](https://willcurran.com/blog/author/will-curran/page/2#main) [Will Curran](https://willcurran.com/) [Home](https://willcurran.com/) [Portfolio](https://willcurran.com/portfolio) [Press](https://willcurran.com/media) [Blog](https://willcurran.com/blog) [Favorites](https://willcurran.com/favorites) [Speaking](https://willcurran.com/speaking) [Consulting](https://willcurran.com/consult) [Hire Will](https://willcurran.com/hire) [All](https://willcurran.com/blog) [Builds](https://willcurran.com/blog/tag/builds) [Events](https://willcurran.com/blog/tag/events) [Home](https://willcurran.com/blog/tag/home) [Music](https://willcurran.com/blog/tag/music) Search the blog [Subscribe](https://willcurran.com/blog/subscribe) ![](https://willcurran.com/hs-fs/hubfs/will-curran-brand/will-curran-avatar.jpg?width=104&height=104&name=will-curran-avatar.jpg) Author # Will Curran I spent sixteen years building one company, and I have been in the event industry since 2007. These days I write about the technology I actually use — trucks, radios, home infrastructure, and the tools that survive past the first invoice. 48 posts [willcurran.com](https://willcurran.com) Oct 18, 2026 Home ## [Movie Mode Means the Robot Vacuum Waits](https://willcurran.com/blog/movie-mode-vacuum) The request was one sentence: "when movie mode is enabled, the robot vacuum must not run." I built it and tested it the same day, during a real movie. Doing it properly took three layers, not one: block the start, send the robot home if it ... 6 min read Oct 16, 2026 Home ## [A Holiday Color Engine with a Calendar Computed to 2099](https://willcurran.com/blog/holiday-color-engine) On October 16, 2026 I moved my front-yard lights off the color scenes stored on the Philips Hue hub and onto an engine I built in Home Assistant. It has 46 looks and fades every bulb on its own. The lights took one evening. The calendar ... 7 min read Oct 8, 2026 Music ## [How I Pick the Best Live Sets for a Playlist](https://willcurran.com/blog/best-live-sets-playlist) When I build a "best of" playlist of an artist's live sets, fans' upvotes decide which sets go on it, and the source of each recording decides which version to use. I worked these rules out on a Tipper playlist in October 2026: 28 fan ... 6 min read Sep 30, 2026 Home ## [Party Mode: 49 Ramps Blocked, Zero During a Six-Hour Party](https://willcurran.com/blog/party-mode) My house dims itself in the evening. Lights go warm, then down to a nightlight glow, and that is exactly what you don't want at a party. The obvious fix is to switch off the evening scene. There was no such scene to switch off. The ... 6 min read Sep 25, 2026 Builds ## [A Check That Can't Fail Is Worse Than None](https://willcurran.com/blog/a-check-that-cant-fail) A canary built to catch one bad state passed exactly that state, because grep -c prints 0 and also exits non-zero. The post ends with copyable self-tests that run a known-bad and a known-good input through a check in the same run. 6 min read Sep 20, 2026 Builds ## [Trivia Over LoRa: a game show on a slow, lossy radio mesh](https://willcurran.com/blog/trivia-over-lora) Since June I have been running a game show on a radio network where one message tops out at 200 bytes, takes up to about two and a half seconds to send, and may never arrive. My trivia bot asks a question every hour on a LoRa mesh. Players ... 8 min read Sep 18, 2026 Home ## [The Veto That Never Retries](https://willcurran.com/blog/the-veto-that-never-retries) In September a bathroom in my house stayed lit for nearly nine hours because a humidity sensor read 51 when the rule wanted it under 50. Thirteen minutes later it read 48, and nothing happened. The automation that turned the lights off had ... 7 min read Sep 17, 2026 Home ## [A Switch That Feeds Smart Bulbs Is Not a Light](https://willcurran.com/blog/a-switch-that-feeds-smart-bulbs-is-not-a-light) For four days in September 2026, a room-wide "lights off" automation in my Home Assistant setup cut the power to a set of smart bulbs 75 times. Every one of those runs reported success, and every time anyone looked, the lights were on. It ... 5 min read Sep 15, 2026 Music ## [Getting Viewers onto My Drop List Without Leaving Twitch](https://willcurran.com/blog/drop-list-without-leaving-twitch) I wanted someone watching my Twitch stream to type a phone number into a box under the video and land on my Laylo drop list, without opening a new tab. The code took one evening in September 2026. 5 min read Sep 13, 2026 Music ## [A Healthy Container and a Blind DJ App](https://willcurran.com/blog/healthy-but-blind) For 1 hour and 42 minutes, the app that tells my stream what I'm playing didn't see a single track. The whole time, its container reported healthy and its overlay page answered every request. I had power-cycled my decks between sets, and ... 7 min read [← Newer](https://willcurran.com/blog/author/will-curran/page/1) [1](https://willcurran.com/blog/author/will-curran/page/1) [2](https://willcurran.com/blog/author/will-curran/page/2) [3](https://willcurran.com/blog/author/will-curran/page/3) [4](https://willcurran.com/blog/author/will-curran/page/4) [5](https://willcurran.com/blog/author/will-curran/page/5) [Older →](https://willcurran.com/blog/author/will-curran/page/3) [Will Curran](https://willcurran.com/) [LinkedIn — 29,339+ followers](https://www.linkedin.com/in/willcurran) [GitHub](https://github.com/rancur) [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgscc27l4fpkWx1SeK05xg/) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/rancur) [SoundCloud DJ mixes](https://www.soundcloud.com/thewillsee) [Twitch](https://www.twitch.tv/thewillsee) [Last.fm](https://www.last.fm/user/default) [Trakt — movies & TV](https://trakt.tv/users/willcurran) [Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/55302838-will-curran) [Will See Music](https://www.thewillsee.com) [Arizona Meshtastic](https://azmsh.net) [Electric Forest Meshtastic](https://efmesh.com) © 2026 Will Curran — All rights reserved. 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