--- title: Writing — Will Curran (2) description: "Notes on the technology I actually use: the truck, the radios, the 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/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) ## Writing 50 posts [![](https://willcurran.com/hs-fs/hubfs/will-curran-brand/walk-the-room-featured.png?width=800&height=500&name=walk-the-room-featured.png)](https://willcurran.com/blog/walk-the-room) Events Oct 21, 2026 · 4 min read ### [Walk the Room: What Live Events Taught Me About Checks That Lie](https://willcurran.com/blog/walk-the-room) At a show the console can say everything is fine, and you still walk to the back of the room to listen. After sixteen years building Endless Events, I carry that habit into my DJ, music and home builds: checks that ... [![](https://willcurran.com/hs-fs/hubfs/will-curran-brand/layered-mixes-cover-nolane.png?width=800&height=500&name=layered-mixes-cover-nolane.png)](https://willcurran.com/blog/layered-mixes) Music Oct 20, 2026 · 7 min read ### [When the Stream Got Stuck on Song 1: Seeing Layered Mixes](https://willcurran.com/blog/layered-mixes) I DJ by looping a track and layering more over it. For a while my stream named only the first one. Chat got song 1, then nothing, while the rest of the build played on top. When I dug in, I found two separate causes, ... [![](https://willcurran.com/hs-fs/hubfs/will-curran-brand/movie-mode-vacuum-cover-nolane.png?width=800&height=500&name=movie-mode-vacuum-cover-nolane.png)](https://willcurran.com/blog/movie-mode-vacuum) Home Oct 18, 2026 · 6 min read ### [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." Doing it right took three layers: block the start, send the robot home if it is running, and replay whatever got skipped after ... [![](https://willcurran.com/hs-fs/hubfs/will-curran-brand/holiday-color-engine-cover-nolane.png?width=800&height=500&name=holiday-color-engine-cover-nolane.png)](https://willcurran.com/blog/holiday-color-engine) Home Oct 16, 2026 · 7 min read ### [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 Hue hub's stored scenes onto an engine I built in Home Assistant, with 46 looks. The lights took an evening. The calendar took the thinking: it knows when Diwali, ... [![](https://willcurran.com/hs-fs/hubfs/will-curran-brand/best-live-sets-playlist-cover-nolane.png?width=800&height=500&name=best-live-sets-playlist-cover-nolane.png)](https://willcurran.com/blog/best-live-sets-playlist) Music Oct 8, 2026 · 6 min read ### [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 pick the sets and each recording's source picks the version. I worked these rules out on a Tipper playlist in October 2026: 28 fan threads, 50 ... [![](https://willcurran.com/hs-fs/hubfs/will-curran-brand/party-mode-cover-nolane.png?width=800&height=500&name=party-mode-cover-nolane.png)](https://willcurran.com/blog/party-mode) Home Sep 30, 2026 · 6 min read ### [Party Mode: 49 Ramps Blocked, Zero During a Six-Hour Party](https://willcurran.com/blog/party-mode) My house dims itself in the evening, which is exactly what you don't want at a party. There was no evening scene to switch off: the wind-down lived in motion automations, so Party Mode had to block all 49. Over a party ... [![](https://willcurran.com/hs-fs/hubfs/will-curran-brand/a-check-that-cant-fail-featured.png?width=800&height=500&name=a-check-that-cant-fail-featured.png)](https://willcurran.com/blog/a-check-that-cant-fail) Builds Sep 25, 2026 · 6 min read ### [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 ... [![](https://willcurran.com/hs-fs/hubfs/will-curran-brand/trivia-over-lora-cover-nolane.png?width=800&height=500&name=trivia-over-lora-cover-nolane.png)](https://willcurran.com/blog/trivia-over-lora) Builds Sep 20, 2026 · 8 min read ### [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 ... [![](https://willcurran.com/hs-fs/hubfs/will-curran-brand/the-veto-that-never-retries-cover-nolane.png?width=800&height=500&name=the-veto-that-never-retries-cover-nolane.png)](https://willcurran.com/blog/the-veto-that-never-retries) Home Sep 18, 2026 · 7 min read ### [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: in Home Assistant, a ... [![](https://willcurran.com/hs-fs/hubfs/will-curran-brand/a-switch-that-feeds-smart-bulbs-is-not-a-light-cover-nolane.png?width=800&height=500&name=a-switch-that-feeds-smart-bulbs-is-not-a-light-cover-nolane.png)](https://willcurran.com/blog/a-switch-that-feeds-smart-bulbs-is-not-a-light) Home Sep 17, 2026 · 5 min read ### [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 ... 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[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. [RSS](https://willcurran.com/blog/rss.xml) [Back to top](https://willcurran.com/blog/page/2#main)