It’s holiday again. No fun vacation this time though 🙂 . With the twins’ day care out for ~10 days, this holiday is more work than the usual daily routine! I actually look forward to “after the holidays” so I can have more free time..! The “fun” agenda for this holiday – minor surgery for the boy, so we have home-time with him for the recovery. (long time planned surgery. nothing to worry about. he’s mostly recovered by now. thanks for asking 🙂 )

Speaking of “free time” and “kids” – a quick question for parents out there. Do you have any success with finding the time to work on your “personal projects” / “hobbies” / whatever you’d like to call it? Got tricks to share? Does it get any easier as they grow up? Specific advice for twins? (mine are 8-months old)

I’d like to share a “business” thought I had, and get some feedback from you (yes, you!). I received a lot of positive feedback on my connected A/C project. So, I thought I could bring together and sell a “DIY Connected IR Control Kit”. Would you be interested in something like that? The focus is on a DIY kit, not a polished product (like Sensibo). I realize there are numerous Arduino kits out there (like this from Amazon, or these on eBay), and anyone can buy the components and implement the project. The idea is to create a minimal kit for “controlling things with IR”, and throw in modules for Internet connectivity and a nice booklet. Maybe complement it with a “cloud service package” that will make it easy to connect to your project from anywhere (securely). So I wonder – if you wanted to make your own connected A/C project (or other IR-based device), would you buy such a kit? Will it make any difference what prototyping platform the kit includes (Arduino, Raspberry Pi, …)? Please let me know by answering the poll below, or sharing your input through the comments!

The Weekly Review is (hopefully) a recurring summary, reviewing highlights from the last week.

With Rosh Hashana and a personal planned vacation this week, I had little time for anything else.

Oogi and I just returned from our first child-free weekend vacation since the twins were born (7.5 months). It was short and sweet. One night at Brown Hotel in Tel Aviv, with plenty of food, drinks, and sleep! We went for a package that included a treatment in their in-house spa, fancy dinner at Meir Adoni’s Mizlala restaurant, and an excellent breakfast at Lulu Kitchen & Bar. We almost forgot how it felt to be able to just do whatever we want to. Go out for ice cream? So easy! No half-hour-long diaper bag and stroller productions! The best part? Maybe waking up at 6AM, and falling back asleep, because nobody’s crying for a morning bottle. Or maybe waking up again at 9AM, being able to just stay in bed for a while, doing nothing. Oh, the simple things…

The Weekly Review is (hopefully) a recurring summary, reviewing highlights from the last week.