// Personal website of Chris Smith

Image of Chris, distorted with scan lines and a hologram effect
Name:
Chris Smith
Class:
Programmer
Type:
Human
HP:
929
✪✪ Yak Shave After attacking, add 1d6 side project tokens to this card.
✪✪✪ Side project Multiply all damage by number of side project tokens.
01/001

Chameth.com

Hello :)

Hello! I'm Chris, a software developer from the UK. That's me over in the picture. My $dayjob generally involves Android app development, but I also have an excessive collection of side projects. Outside of
programming
, I enjoy
video games
,
reading
, puzzle hunts, DIY,
board games
,
films
, escape rooms, and tinkering with electronics.

This website houses my blog and some other random bits and bobs. There's a full site map if you want a quick overview of what's here. Here are my latest blog posts:

Lead image for Building a new Computer

Building a new Computer

I recently built a new computer, after exclusively using a laptop for three years. It’s also the first time I’ve departed from the usual combo of an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU.

Lead image for Coming around on LLMs

Coming around on LLMs

For a long time I’ve been a sceptic of LLMs and how they’re being used and marketed. I tried ChatGPT when it first launched, and was totally underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong: I find the technology damn impressive, but I just couldn’t see any use for it.

Lead image for Home Automation Without the Megacorps

Home Automation Without the Megacorps

I first experimented with home automation in 2016, by picking up a Samsung “SmartThings” hub. It was terrible. The UI to configure things was slow and clunky, firmware updates were applied whether you wanted them or not, and everything stopped working if their cloud services stopped. You were also locked into whatever integrations they deigned to support, of course. After that broke for the umpteenth time I scaled back and for years the closest I got to home automation was a couple of Hue bulbs.