Somehow, I avoided wearing glasses until I was 36 years old. I had seen optometrists, I have a prescription, and I wore cheap prescription glasses for nighttime driving. But it wasn't until 2026 that my eye doc said, "You really should be wearing glasses all the time."

I started by buying a handful of cheap glasses from Zenni Optical. Everyone agreed I looked best with some wayfarer knock-offs, so I splurged and re-ordered it with all the bells and whistles: transitions, anti-smudge, anti-reflective, anti-scratch, etc. After a transition period, I grew to really like them!

In the past, I was aware of the Meta glasses but never wanted to wear glasses simply to use its features. But recently they went on sale, and since I am a glasses-wearer now, I started looking at some reviews and decided to pull the trigger. Since they're prescription, I could use an HSA to pay for them. They were also on sale, so I splurged yet again and got the transitions, anti-glare, etc. After owning them for a couple weeks, I really like them!

The Good

I enjoy taking pictures and videos without fumbling with my phone. The pictures and videos aren't as good as a phone camera, but the readiness of quickly pushing a button outweighs it often enough that it's now my "default" way to capturing pictures.

The camera is on the wearer's left side while the right side is a light that signals you're capturing pictures and videos. It makes it a little challenging to line up some shots, and I notice I end up taking pictures with a lot of "empty space" at the top of the photo. But then again, I'm capable of taking videos I could never do one-handed.

The speakers are higher-quality than I expected, and the volume is comfortable enough to listen to music and watch videos without disturbing people around me. It's nice to be able to watch videos when I'm out and about without relying on subtitles or carrying a separate pair of earbuds with me.

A bonus benefit is wearing them while riding my motorcycle. I once owned a motorcycle helmet with built-in Bluetooth speakers, but they were useless above 25 mph because the wind noise drowned them out. The speaker volume in my glasses auto-adjusts when I pick up speed, and it's very helpful to have turn-by-turn directions without mounting my phone to my motorcycle. I can even take phone calls while riding!

As regular old glasses go, they're fine. They're a little thicker and heavier than my pair from Zenni. It took a couple weeks to adjust to the weight on my nose and learning how to twist my neck while driving to see around the blind spots. The light-to-dark-to-light transition speed is faster than my old pair. 

The Bad

The battery life is almost good enough. With heavy usage, it will die in the early evening. Actually knowing the battery life involves either checking the battery percentage in my phone's native Bluetooth settings (multiple swipes/taps away), or invoking Meta AI and saying "battery." It answers quickly, but I would prefer a home screen widget I could quickly glance at.

At least when the battery dies, they are temporarily "just glasses." Sorry for the convenience. Fortunately it charges pretty quick in the case. However, keeping track of the glasses and case is a hassle. No case, no charging. I also wish they could integrate with Google's Find My so I can ask one of my various smart speakers, "Find my glasses/case."

This lack of integration with native Google features is another downside. Because these glasses are created by Meta, you have to download the full, bloated Meta AI app to use them. I think Google could do a better job natively integrating this across its platform. It would be killer to interact with the Gemini assistant with all its integrations than the Meta AI which interacts best with Meta apps like Instagram and Whatsapp. I don't use those apps that much.

The Mid

If you want to show somebody a video on your phone, the sound will come through your glasses. If you disconnect the glasses from Bluetooth, they will reconnect automatically. You have to take your glasses off and fold them up to stop it. 

Sometimes I bump the touch panel on accident when hugging somebody or playing with the kids. This will start playing some music (you can configure it to do nothing), so I have to quickly tap it again to stop.

I don't use the Meta AI very much. It's fine to ask for trivia ("How old is Tom Brady?") but not that useful otherwise. I would love to have it create reminders and add events to my calendar, but that's relegated to my Google smart watch. There's a momentary cognitive tax to process what I'd like to do (set a reminder vs ask trivia) before I know which smart device to invoke. First world problems, I know.

Unlike my Pixel Buds, I can't connect it to multiple devices. It would be nice to connect to my laptop AND my phone, so I could use the microphone for work meetings, and then seamlessly switch to playing music from my phone. That said, the battery life would suffer even more than it already does, so it's not a deal breaker.

It's Meta. They're probably mining my data six ways from Sunday. I've already sold my digital life to Google because these days you have to pick a tech giant and live in their ecosystem to reap the benefits. I don't want to expand that surface area, but I want the glasses' features, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I thought these glasses would fly completely undercover. For the most part, they do, but when I talk to somebody during any substantial conversation, they ask, "Are you wearing Meta glasses?" After I promise I'm not recording, it's fun to talk about the features. 

Because they're prescription, there's no resale value. But even then...

I'll probably get the next version

I'm already thinking about the features I want in the next version: keep the same form factor, improve the battery life, let me integrate with Google, and maybe even make them lighter!

A digital thermometer is the most important tool in a cook’s arsenal. Thermometers save lives and money.

AmazingRibs.com

Meater probes sound like God's gift to BBQ thermometers: it's wireless, it has a slick app, it estimates variable cooking times, and you can even make cool graphs of the meat and smoker's temperature over time. But they fail with the most critical feature, connectivity. Oh, and they're expensive.

Meater+

Initially I owned the little solo probe. Unfortunately, it's complete worthless because of the bluetooth-only range. Your probe needs to be within a couple feet of that block, which means somewhere near your grill or smoker. Then, your phone has to be within bluetooth range of that block. If you go inside and put more than one wall between you and that block, your phone loses connectivity. That means you lose all visibility into temperature and time estimates.

I gave mine away to a friend, and I still feel guilty bestowing him with that burden.

Meater Block

I ordered the single probe Meater in July 2023 and by April 2024 I gave up and purchased the bigger-and-better Meater Block+ when it was on sale for $200. This one is much, much better. The probe connects to the block, which in turn connects to your Wifi, which eliminates the bluetooth range problem, mostly.

Pros

• I like that there's four different probes, which means I can do crazy stuff like put two into one brisket and get a more accurate temperature over time. The app doesn't really support this, however.
• I can look at temperatures on my phone from inside the house. 😮

Cons

• I frequently get false-positive alerts about connection errors. I ignore all those notifications on my phone and things cook like normal, but it's very annoying. Seriously, like 10-20 notifications per 10hr cook. 
• I don't take advantage of sharing features like the time/temperature charts. Have I ever? Sure. Does it really matter? No.
• All the Meater products require an app, which lacks flexibility. You must select the animal you're cooking, then type of meat, and then the target temperature. Just... just lemme pick the temperature!
• You must scrub the probes clean before you place them back in the dock to charge, otherwise they won't make a good enough connection and won't charge. Like really scrub, and it's a 1cm square which snags my sponge.
• How do you know if the probes are charging in the dock or not? You don't. There's no indicator either way. You just pull out a dead probe next time you want to cook. Ask me how I know.
• The battery compartment in the block uses AA batteries, and since the compartment seating is somewhat loose, sometimes the batteries pop out just a little bit and won't charge anything. Once again, ask me how I know.
• It burns through AA batteries. A set of four batteries powers the probes for maybe two cooks. Not a huge deal if you use rechargeable batteries but still annoying.

Then what's the better option?

All that to say, I gave up the Meater for a simple wireless probe, and the cost/benefit ratio ($50 vs $200 on sale) gives it a big leg up. Just get that one. You get four probes, accurate readings, strong wireless connectivity, and the batteries last forever. The only downside is threading wires into your grill which is such a minor complaint I strained to think of it. That set is now my go-to.

I've been using Publii to manage my site but apparently my site is too big for GitHub anymore. Any time I try to update my site and upload to GitHub, I get a 502 error.

Pretty frustrating. That GitHub endpoint times out because there's simply too many files for it to handle. I've enjoyed having my website in a private GitHub repo so I could have a backup of my website before it's eventually published on Cloudflare. However, I already have everything backed up in Google Drive. Additionally, Cloudflare keeps a history of every time I deploy an update to my site.

It's time to cut GitHub out of the equation. Here's how I've reconfigured my Publii/Mac setup so I can publish straight to Cloudflare without changing my workflow.

Reconfigure Publii to publish locally

Changed the Server Type to Manual and use a different output directory.

Create a Cloudflare token

This is for a local script to deploy it once it detects changed in that directory. I need to authenticate via an account token.

Create a bash script to deploy to Cloudflare

#!/bin/bash
DEPLOY_DIR="/Users/mattsayar/publii_deploy/mattsayarcom-files"
PROJECT="publii-cloudflare"
LOCKFILE="/tmp/publii-deploy.lock"

export HOME="/Users/mattsayar"
export USER="mattsayar"
export CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN="api_token"
export CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID="account_id"

cd "$HOME"

/opt/homebrew/bin/fswatch -o -l 15 -e "\.DS_Store" "$DEPLOY_DIR" | while read; do
    NOW=$(date +%s)
    LAST_DEPLOY=$(cat /tmp/publii-deploy.last 2>/dev/null || echo 0)
    ELAPSED=$((NOW - LAST_DEPLOY))
    if [ "$ELAPSED" -lt 60 ]; then
        echo "[$(date)] Last deploy was ${ELAPSED}s ago, skipping (cooldown)."
        continue
    fi
    if [ -f "$LOCKFILE" ]; then
        echo "[$(date)] Deploy already running, skipping."
        continue
    fi
    touch "$LOCKFILE"
    echo "[$(date)] Change detected, deploying..."
    wrangler pages deploy "$DEPLOY_DIR" --project-name="$PROJECT" --branch=main
    echo "[$(date)] Deploy finished."
    date +%s > /tmp/publii-deploy.last
    rm -f "$LOCKFILE"
done

Don't forget to chmod +x deploy.sh. The fswatch utility monitors the directory for changes, and then it deploys when they're detected.

Update: I added some cooldown logic to the script since it did a lot of deploys in a short amount of time after I tested this out. Cloudflare only lets you have so many deployments before you start paying money, and it's best practice anyway.

Create a Launch Agent

This was new to me. It will listen for file changes in this new publii_deploy directory and run the script when detected. This only happens when I click "Sync Changes" in my Publii app. I added a .plist  item to my ~/Library/LaunchAgents directory, and it now shows publii-deploy.sh (with a magnifying glass leading to my  in Launch Items and Extensions settings menu.

Now I can just deploy via the Publii UI, but files will deploy to a local folder, the Launch Agent will detect the change, run the script, and my changes will deploy to Cloudflare via wrangler. Then the site will update to all the nodes in Cloudflare's edge network.

Pros and Cons

Pros: No more bottleneck with GitHub. Don't have to worry about repo size. No more redundant backups.

Cons: I had to do all this. And I have to do it again on any other Mac I want to write posts on.

This is the first post I'm testing it with, so fingers crossed!