Chromecast won't connect to wifi - finally found the fix

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Monday, April 26, 2021.

Chromecast won't connect to wifi - finally found the fix

I've struggled for a while with Chromecast. The idea is great. I love using my phone rather than a remote. I like the idea of being able to cast any screen or browser tab in principle (in practice I think I've only done this once). I like the nice curated background pictures and that I could get round to using my own photos one day.

But here is how it works in practice. Fire up app. Select Chromecast icon and watch it go through the motions of connecting. Nothing streams. Reboot Chromecast, phone and router. Hard reset Chromecast and configure from scratch again. Reboot everything some more. Disconnect house from grid for ten minutes and switch off gas mains as well to be on the safe side. Finally, streaming! Repeat.

It's miserable. With both a Chromecast and a Chromecast 2 (which I really hoped might fix the problem). I've been through two different routers and I've tried a bunch of different settings but nothing seems to make the thing work. I even renamed the device to remove spaces.

For a while I considered buying an OnHub. Maybe Google's router would work with Chromecast? But it can't be bothered with Ethernet ports for some reason and so I'd need a new switch and then I'd probably need another power port and how important is John Oliver right now anyway (very)?

As much as I want Chromecast to work I've binned the wretched thing and bought an Amazon Fire TV Stick. Same basic principle but with apps on the device rather than your phone and a remote control.

I'd rather not have another remote, but it works instantly and without risking an aneurysm. It's also available with voice control which lets you both search for programs and trigger Alexa (my typical morning is asking Alexa for a flash briefing and then sobbing quietly when a daughter yells 'Alexa, stop... Alexa, play Gangnam Style').

My only gripe so far is that the voice search doesn't search inside non-Amazon apps (Netflix, HBO, etc).

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Chromecast won't connect to wifi - finally found the fix #etc #amazon #google #firetv #chromecast After trying hard to make Chromecast work with my WiFi the only fix that works is moving to Amazon Fire (which manages to Just Work). )

Get ITHCWY By Email

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, November 6, 2022.

I'm over social media - the Facebook page for this blog is a hopeless way to reach people and I removed the slow horrible sharing widgets a while ago. But I have this nagging suspicion that RSS is a super-niche activity for techno-libertarians harking back to the good old days of the Internet with open protocols and wall-free gardens and isn't entirely up to snuff either. So I'm going to experiment for a monthly email list for people who vaguely follow the blog or use Catfood Software products but don't quite manage to come back here every day to check for updates. Sign up here.

Why? Excellent question. The rules for blogs are to pick a narrow topic of interest, know your audience and do keyword research and drop SEO honeypot bombs to draw that audience in. I did that for Catfood Software but this isn't that kind of blog. It's a random collection of my hobbies and interests. So if you're not sure read through the Featured section in the side bar to get a preview.

I write a lot of code so what you'll get for sure is updates from Catfood Software and other occasional side projects. When I struggle with the process or discover something I write about that as well - these posts are more interesting to other developers and less exciting if you just want your desktop wallpaper (or Android phone) to look awesome. I love to make videos that don't have me in as well, mainly complicated time-lapses so you'll find a lot of those too. Also hikes in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. Occasionally politics.

If that works for you and you're not an RSS type then please join and let me know how I'm doing.

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News: California may end tyrannical daylight savings

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, October 23, 2022.

Mandelbrot Spin Zoom

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022.

Mandelbrot Spin Zoom

Zooming into the Mandelbrot Set is always fun but I feel it's often a bit static and would be enlivened by a good spin so you can corkscrew your way down. Enjoy:

This was cloud rendered over two weeks using a Google Compute Engine high CPU instance (on a free trial, thanks Google).

I used the coordinates from a video posted by metafis on YouTube and a palette approach posted by Alex Russell on Stack Overflow.

The music is Flaming Memories generated by JukeDeck.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Mandelbrot Spin Zoom #etc #video #mandelbrot A deep spiraling zoom into the Mandelbrot Set with music from JukeDeck )

News: Wisdom teeth removal is rarely necessary

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, November 6, 2022.

News: Case made for 'ninth planet'

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, November 6, 2022.

OAuth

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Wednesday, February 22, 2017.

We'd probably be living in a post-scarcity Star Trek / Culture style universe happily working on self-actualization if we didn't have to spend so much time fucking around with OAuth.

(Previously)

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(Published to the Fediverse as: OAuth #etc #oauth A detailed and thoughtful critique of the challenges of working with OAuth. )

Got It

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Wednesday, February 22, 2017.

Got It irritating me on Facebook

When I run an app or launch a website it's generally because I've got some task to complete and a few free minutes to try and complete it.

Let's take Facebook for example. I want to quickly scan through to see which of my friends are sharing anodyne inspirational quotes superimposed over stock photography and silently judge them.

Facebook picks this moment to let me know about a new feature that will display previously unshared photos and videos to try and get me to share them. I'm instantly pissed off because of the unwelcome cognitive load and then I realize that the whole app has frozen. In fact every time I load Facebook at the moment it just hangs until I give up and do something else.

This is probably because one of my daughters has the endearing habit of shooting hour long 4K videos of the floor. The poor app is probably innocently trying to grab a couple of thumbnails and instead getting an object lesson in the halting problem. I'm sure this will eventually get fixed and it's not even the root cause of my current fury.

Got It irritating me on the Londonist

Got It

My only option is to click Got It. This chirpy little phrase is slowly infesting every corner of interaction design. It seems relatively innocuous at first but let's unpick it a little.

Generally Got It signals that something has been added to an app or site that the designer feels is important enough that they need to let me know about it.

This is almost always going to be bad news. Probably the way I complete my task has changed and I'm going to have to learn the new way. Maybe there has been a complete redesign and the use I had for the app was considered an edge case and has been removed. It could be that for legal reasons I need to be told that some new previously unpillaged corner of my privacy needs to be violated.

I'm immediately in a bad frame of mind when I see Got It.

Also there is rarely a Don't Got It or  Don't Want It link. Got It is a sign that something is being forced on you and the happy language is an implicit forced value judgement that you've both fully comprehended the change and that you wholeheartedly agree with it.

It probably feels cute to designers that come up with this. After all, a whole team has probably toiled for weeks if not months to come up with a new way to cause my phone to hang. They really want me to use it. But you're not putting yourself in my shoes. I rarely care and usually you're making my day fractionally less enjoyable and the design should be about me and not you.

Got It irritating me on YouTube

I miss OK. It's less loaded. I'm OK with dealing with whatever you're inflicting on me. It's not as good as OK / Cancel but sometimes OK is about the best you can expect.

I just don't Got It.

(Previously)

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Got It #etc #youtube #facebook #londonist Why I hate that chirpy Got It link in interaction design - it's almost always bad news with a forced positive value judgement )

Google Inbox Account Switching

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, November 6, 2022.

Google Inbox Account Switching

Google is generally pretty good about managing multiple accounts but sometimes you get completely stuck. One example is Google Inbox where your primary account is Google Apps for Work without Inbox enabled. You just get a screen saying that Inbox needs to be activated and no option to switch to another account.

There is a fix, and this sometimes works for other products as well. In the URL (https://inbox.google.com/u/0/) there is a user number. Change the 0 to 1 (or maybe 2, 3, etc depending on the number of accounts) and you can get Inbox up and running again.

One case I haven't found a clean workaround for is importing a segment or custom report in Google Analytics. You just get the default profile and if it's not what you're after then there is no way to switch. What does work here is launching an incognito window, signing in to the relevant account and then using the import link. A bit painful but gets the job done.

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Correlation is not causation but...

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Wednesday, February 22, 2017.

Blog post length vs number of children.

I have crunched the numbers and calculated the average length of blog posts on I Thought He Came With You vs. how many children I had at the time the post was written.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Correlation is not causation but... #etc #blog #ithcwy Statistically insignificant study of blog post length vs. number of children here on I Thought He Came With You. )