Raspberry Pi 400 Mouse and Bardi Smart Outdoor Static IP Camera

I've had to abandon the mouse that came with the Raspberry Pi 400 that I purchased some months ago. It was never quite right, especially when it came to copying and pasting, and proved absolutely hopeless when playing online chess because it led to frequent mouse slips. I guess they added the cheapest mouse available to the package. "DESIGNED BY XIAOMI" is printed on the top cover of the mouse, not that it means anything.

It not a big deal as a wireless mouse, especially with its own proprietary dongle, can be bought very cheaply nowadays. Overall, I'm quite happy so far with the performance of this particular Raspberry Pi model. My only complaints have been directed at the deficiencies of the Chromium web browser.

Yesterday a package arrived containing a SMART OUTDOOR STATIC IP CAMERA. It had sent by relatives and today I set it up and have it running, the sound and video feed being accessible via an iPhone app. The feed can be accessed from remotely and data can be stored to an SD card although I haven't set that up yet. The maximum card size is 128 GB. The camera connects to the local WiFi network using the 2.4 GHz wavelength.

Here is a description of the product taken from the manufacturer's website:

This camera is now the only device that makes the home router accessible to the outside world. This is something to ponder and it raises security issues as the IP address is indeed static. It doesn't change, allocated presumably by the BARDI company during the registration process and built into the price of the device.

Abandoning BlueHost and WordPress

I've decided to abandon my WordPress blog on BlueHost that I started up earlier in the year. I simply don't enjoy using it and that's reason enough to abandon it. I only made use of the blogging platform and never started building a website by transferring content from my Google Sites. All of my blog posts that I made using WordPress were mirrored on Blogger so my disengagement with the former platform is immediate and complete. There will be no transition period. It's done. However, the experience has been interesting and I no longer have to wonder about something that I never tested out.

I'll return to making blog posts on my respective Blogger accounts and using Google Sites as my personal website. It may not be cool but then again I have no reason to look more professional. I'm blogging for my own amusement and have no audience to pander to. I do what I like and I realised that I don't like BlueHost and WordPress. The dislike was causing me to reduce the frequency of my posts. 

So it's back to Blogger and more frequent posts.