Fathers often work hard to keep it together. And sometimes that includes managing a myriad of tech to make the home run smoothly. Here’s my ode to honor that endless journey.
Gifts are cool. But I don’t really need a present on Father’s Day. Simply spending time with my family is all that I want. Though it would be nice if all my tech behaved too. Then I could really kick back, if just for the one day.
Perhaps the real present I crave is the gift of a smoothly operating home ‘system.’ All status lights glowing green. But 24 hours for that kind of tech Zen is hardly enough.
The good news is my tech reality at home is not so dire. My little kingdom operates well enough. But there’s always something to do. Technology is rarely a set it and forget it proposition.
As I consider all this, I think I may be blurring the meaning of Father’s Day to include the larger ecosystem of my tech accessories and digital minions. Do I somehow want them to honor my fatherly efforts as well?
Of course, that’s not how it works, at least not yet.
But this larger topic has inspired me to create another… poem. *
Buckle up. (This one’s really silly.)
Smart for One Day
I rule my domain like a Wi-Fi crazed king, I monitor, update, and manage each thing, The sprinklers, the HVAC, the hot water too, If it beeps, then it answers to you-know-who.
The router is moody? The system is slow? The bandwidth gets tight. Where did all of it go? My son streams in 4K. My wife on a call, And now it’s my job to untangle it all.
I just want one morning where nothing has crashed, Where no pings or notifications have flashed, Where the AC runs coolly like it should do, And sprinklers don’t ambush me out of the blue.
I want my warp engines to purr without fail, I want all my updates to roll out and sail. I want my smart home to be smart for one day, Without rebooting in a glitchy display.
Just gather the family and let the day flow. And bask in the warmth of the people I know. Just my wife and son and a house running right, And maybe some cake to enjoy with delight.
A fork with chocolate cake is all I need, A generous slice is a glorious deed, And maybe my son tells a joke that’s so bad, It makes it the greatest day ever for Dad.
So here is my wish, and it isn’t that tall, One day where my tech doesn’t fumble and fall, Where we laugh and slow down and revel in this, The geekiest, sweetest of Father’s Day bliss.
Instead of manually searching through each of my streaming apps to find new film releases each week, I did this instead using Claude.
In our house, streaming a movie on a Friday night isn’t just fun, it’s become something of a family tradition. Each week for more than a decade, I’ve curated a list of films for my wife and son to stream with me. (We usually choose one after I play all the trailers.)
As you can imagine, the movie choices were more limited when our son was younger. (Don’t ask how many times we watched, “The LEGO Movie.”) Now that our boy is in high school, he’s ready for a wider range of options.
But that still doesn’t make our movie selection process easy. We’re three people with three different tastes in movies. I can often predict what our son will like, but not always.
“John Carter?”
I’ve got a running joke going with him regarding Disney’s “John Carter.” That flick’s been on my list since our son was in elementary school. Even though it was an absolute box office bomb, I thought this silly adventure on Mars was fun. Plus, its parallel Civil War era dark vibe provided an interesting stylistic twist.
I’ve always felt it was the perfect Friday night choice. But he’s probably turned it down at least 100 times. (I think I might want to take it off the list.)
I Always Need More Choices
The truth is Barrett’s movie list doesn’t always contain a collective choice to watch each week.
So, I’m always looking for new options to offer up. And it feels crazy to say that with eight streaming platforms to choose from, it’s been challenging to find enough fresh releases. (This has become increasingly difficult since the pandemic and the overall decrease of movies being made today.)
Hurry!
Every Friday evening before dinner, I find myself quickly scouring through all my streaming apps in search of any new releases to add to my list.
And let me tell you, this process always feels like it takes forever as I hunt around!
Wouldn’t it better if I could put a little AI-oomph into this process to speed up my search?
And that’s exactly what I just did.
Set up a Claude Project
So, I went to my Claude AI assistant and asked it for help on how I should set up this movie search to repeat regularly. It suggested I create a Claude Project.
You can do that by navigating to the left sidebar and clicking on “Projects.”
Click on “New Project”
Add in the “Description”
Then add in the “Instructions”
The “Instructions” field is for your prompt, which provides the directions for Claude to follow.
Here’s the prompt that Claude created for me to use:
When I ask for new streaming movie releases, search each service individually with separate web searches — one each for Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Max, Hulu, Apple TV+, Peacock, and Paramount+. Cross-reference with Rotten Tomatoes and JustWatch. Do NOT use a single combined search. Group results by service and include: title, date added, genre, and Rotten Tomatoes score where available. Only include movies, not TV shows or specials. Include results for the most recent seven days. (I added in that last sentence.)
You, of course, can use this prompt as well. Just modify it with your particular list of streaming services.
Creating My Movie List in Seconds
So, I quickly set up this Claude Project and then ran it. It instantly got to work searching a variety of websites that track new streaming movie releases for the platforms I listed.
And then about ten seconds later, Claude provided me a report with all the new movies I should consider, sorted by streaming service and complete with brief descriptions.
It was perfect.
(You don’t need to set up a Claude Project for this. You can just run the prompt as part of a regular chat question. But the project makes it ready to go for the next time.)
A Huge Time Saver
Wow. Why didn’t I think I this sooner?
Claude isn’t the only AI assistant out there that can do this trick. (It just happened to be the one I used for this exercise.)
Now, I can accomplish this movie search in seconds. That’s quite the time saver.
Barrett’s Movie List
I must admit that presenting my movie list has become a bit of an eye-rolling moment for my family after all these years. But they still let me do it.
And you might be asking… where are their lists? Exactly.
Somehow, I’ve fashioned myself as the all-knowing movie critic in our family. (In my defense, I have been writing movie reviews as a hobby since I was in college.)
But that doesn’t really make me an authority any more than you.
Thank You, Claude
At best, my movie list is a quaint family tradition. We’ll leave it at that.
And by the way, our son is growing up. Did I mention he’s in high school already?
So, Friday movie night doesn’t happen regularly anymore. And when we do sit down together after dinner, it’s often to watch the next episode from a series we’re watching. (We’re currently enjoying “Dark Matter” on Apple TV.)
But I will always have a few movies to suggest whenever the moment calls for it.
And now, Claude gets to do all the research work for me.
Before framing a collage of family history photos for your walls, there are several important factors to first consider. Here’s what I learned.
I usually show off family photos at home through my digital screens. (I haven’t bought photo paper in years.) The pictures glow on my little Nixplay digital frames and on my family room screen via my Apple TV interface. For years, I’ve enjoyed the flexibility to rotate countless images through these little memory portals.
What I’ve mostly ignored is the art of analog photo framing where you make a print, place it in a wooden frame and hang it on your wall. That’s so 1925. Plus, you ruin your walls in the process with all those little nail holes.
Well, unless you want to live in a sterile environment with empty walls, you have to accept some damage across the years and include a little patch and paint planning for your home.
So, I recently embarked on a journey to return to this old-school approach and frame more photos to hang.
My goal was to create a memory wall/family history gallery featuring photos from past generations in our hallway.
The Best Archival Photos have Visual Markers I turned to the collection of pictures from my parents’ old photo albums, many of which I had already digitized. So, I was off to a great start, but I was quickly disappointed with what I found.
Sure, my parents took family photos, but a lot of them simply weren’t that great. Those Kodak moments were turned into soft, mediocre images captured by inferior 20th century consumer tech. (I’m admittedly spoiled by today’s smartphone photography magic.)
More importantly, so many of these images couldn’t stand on their own and reflect a story. The backgrounds were simply too vague.
Going back a generation to my grandparents, I had fewer pictures to work with. That said, I could tell my paternal grandmother really enjoyed being photographed.
I have just a couple of pictures of my great grandparents, and that’s it.
Other Factors to Consider Once you select the best photos to work with, then you’ve got to figure out how they should go together. And that can be much harder than you’d think.
How you position archival family pictures can totally affect the story you want to tell. This is an entirely different skill set than I’m used to. (Remember, I just rotate pictures in digital frames.)
Plus, I was overwhelmed by the challenge to properly position a collage of photo frames on my wall and make it look organized and well designed (as opposed to a mess).
And then finally, the idea of puncturing my wall with lots of little nails almost pushed me over the edge towards inaction.
Display a Story in Groups of Four Photos To help reduce my stress and solve for these complexities, I decided to make my photo frames do more of the work. I purchased wall-mountable frames that housed four 5″ x 7” photos each. (I picked up a few 25” x 10” frames from Target.)
This strategy reduced my clutter concerns by 75% right there.
And it also created a structure for how I would organize my photos. Each group of four pictures needed to represent its own story.
Suddenly, my project became much easier.
One group showcased portraits of three generations on my father’s side as well as my maternal grandparents.
Another group featured my parents over the years.
Easy, right?
The only functional limitation to this design was I needed to group photos by orientation: portrait or landscape.
Still, I was able to make it work.
A Photo Collection Reflects a Larger Family Narrative I’m happy to report the grand opening of Barrett’s family history gallery (7am-6pm weekdays and 9am-1pm on weekends).
But seriously, it feels great to have a few photos on our wall that display my family’s story. Previously, I’ve had some of these individually framed on shelves throughout our house. But they were effectively hidden from daily view.
Plus, I like that our son can see this new collection. He knew my dad (who passed in 2022), but he never met my mom.
Yes, there’s more work to do… There’s a whole other family history to reflect on our walls. That comes next.
Simple and Effective Design How ironic. What’s old is new again. So obvious… yet still requiring me to (re)discover these mini ‘aha’ moments.
Until the day comes when I upgrade my hallway to wall-to-wall digital screens, relying on old-school frames with four photos each is my DIY photo gallery solution.
