Tech on Routine Revelations

Stay Awake

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:02:18 -0400

The intended effects of social networks for the sake of wealth ought to be the lens through which we look at AI. At their beginning we were told of all the good things social networks provide, and they did do that for a while, but then the wealth generation went in to hyper drive. We have no reason to believe the motivations towards more and more AI is not the same wealth generation. And since there can only be one most wealthiest person on earth, that leads to not caring about the negative impacts on the rest of the world.

A potentially helpful question to ponder when thinking about where all this AI “stuff” is going. Think of the songs that you have heard in your life, do those songs stand out because they sound good and are entertaining or do they stand out because you connect to the lyrics and relate what they convey? Perhaps that connection has also leads to feeling like you know the song writer, or better yet that the song writer knows you.

Bob Nystrom’s blog post, The Value of Things, inspired the question. Perhaps a way to combat the nihilism of AI is consciousness. Most times we are unconscious, which is like hearing music and simply enjoying the sound, while times we are conscious enough to hear and relate to the words. The risk of AI is the decrease in the amount of time that we are conscious, so perhaps working on our own consciousness is a method to combating the affects of AI.

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:56:03 -0400

Very cool dashboard for the Artemis II mission around the moon. There is so much more technology now than when we last traveled to the moon 50 years ago, including our ability to check in on the voyage via the Internet. I wasn’t home to watch the launch on TV but I got a notification on my phone about it and was able to watch the launch on my phone sitting in a strip mall parking lot.

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 11:57:04 -0400

Just got the Ugreen HDMI wireless extender transmitter and receiver and I am using it to connect the Pixel 10 desktop mode to the Innoview portable monitor. I’ve watched some video on YouTube and although this is only 1080P the video looks good enough. I am thinking this is an easier way to connect my iPads to a television while traveling but I was curious about how well this works with the Pixel 10. There and been some brief disconnects and it looks like the connection is more solid while I have the transmitter plugged in to power, otherwise it pulls power from the phone.

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 11:26:31 -0400

I think the MacBook Neo presents a dilemma, what is the worth of really good physical construction of a laptop if the computing capabilities inside may not be as valuable over the long haul? I think people considering buying the Neo need to consider how they will feel if after just a few years they will want to replace it with a more performant computer. At the root of this is the question of whether or not one thinks $599 is a lot of money.

Most likely what the Neo is really about for Apple is increasing cash flow from Macs. Previous Macs tend to be useful well beyond five years after release, which makes it hard for Apple to convince people to buy their new models. I think Apple hopes that today’s Neo owner will replace their Neo next year or the year later at the latest.

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:25:44 -0400

The step count on my Pixel Watch was consistent with expectations yesterday, so it is looking like that disconnecting and re-connecting the watch to the Fitbit app on my phone helped with the problem. I did notice an odd situation of the step counts decreasing by a few hundred after ending a workout and I am not sure what is going on with that, but at least the counts are in the ballpark of being correct. I don’t expect high accuracy here, close enough but consistent is what I need to track how I am doing over time.

Fitbit On Pixel Watch Update 1

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:18:03 -0400

My Reddit post about the Fitbit app on my Pixel Watch is the source of an article on 9to5Google this morning as many people have replied to the post stating they are experiencing the same issue.

As an update, since I disconnected my watch from the Fitbit app on my phone, restarted both watch and phone, deleted yesterday’s step and distance data and then re-connected the watch to the Fitbit app the step count appears to be within expectations.

The problem now is I am not confident that the step count will remain accurate, so the whole situation is requiring more attention that I would like. One needs to be able to rely on data like this or there is no point in even collecting the data.

I have noticed through observations while sitting here at my desk that steps are added slowly over time while they shouldn’t be added at all. I have the felling the sensors on the watch are not being used properly right now, for steps and distance the watch should only increase when one is moving forward and not while sitting at a desk typing.

Fitbit On Pixel Watch Broken

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:28:09 -0400

The March 5, 2026 Wear OS update that Google released has broken the Fitbit app. The Fitbit app of my Pixel Watch 3 is significantly over counting/doubling my steps, mileage, and calories consumed. It looks like it is doubling the counts. As an example, I have taken two walks today and the workout details appear correct, one 12 minute, 0.69 mile walk of 1,515 steps and a second 24 minute, 1.35 mile, 2,967 steps walk, but the overview shown on my phone and watch shows a total of 9,827 steps and 4.7 miles.

As an experiment, I shut off my phone and watch then started my watch. After first start up the watch shows the correct step count, but eventually it connects to the Fitbit servers and is then updated with the higher step count.

I am seeing a recommendation on Reddit of a fix involving resetting the watch, which I think means that I will have to re-install apps, but before doing that I decided to try disconnecting the watch from the Fitbit app on the phone.

After I did the disconnect I deleted the day’s step and distance data from the Fitbit app and the backend server so that it displayed 0 steps. I then restarted my watch, observed that it displayed the correct step count, and then reconnected the watch to the Fitbit app, and after a short period of time the watch and the app on the phone showed 5,462 steps.

Next, I went for another walk of 2,662 steps and afterword it showed the correct sum of about 8,124 steps. I am not ready to declare the situation is fixed with my watch but it’s looking positive.

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 12:20:12 -0400

Boox has released second generation of their 10.3-inch Go series e-Ink tablets that appear intended to compete with the Remarkable 2. There are two versions of this generation, a $400 without a front light and a $450 model with a front light. A major negative, in my opinion, is that Boox has replaced the Wacom EMR stylus support with their InkSense capacitive stylus is that is less accurate and requires charging. I would not buy this tablet due to this choice by Boox.

I would wish that Boox would release an 8-inch e-Ink tablet with Wacom EMR support but that appears to be less likely to happen as time passes.

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:45:03 -0400

I am watching a video overview of Inkwell, which is Manton’s RSS app released last week. I’ve tried using Inkwell but find it doesn’t fit in to my web reading triage workflow. I send everything to Readwise Reader where I do all my reading, so the blogging and quote blogging of Inkwell would be more useful for me in Readwise. One thing that I am intrigued by is the Reading Recap feature in Fading, but I don’t know whether I would really use that feature a lot or not.

Computer Industry Pricing

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:47:20 -0400

My opinion is that $599 is a lot of money, and I cannot call anything that costs $599 as cheap. It is not surprising to me that the computer industry that thinks that $1,000 phones, monthly subscriptions for software, and that $20 per month is alright for access to cloud-base AI is out of sync on the definition of prices seems to think $599 is “low cost.”

Because I think $599 is a lot of money, I don’t think the decision to buy a MacBook Neo is a no-brainer. Consequently, if I were deciding whether to buy one for my wife or recommend one for a friend I find myself with the question, will it be a good computer a year or two from now?

Christina Warren in this week’s MacBreak Weekly makes this point about the Neo, that it will likely not be a good computer five years from now. From what I see, it looks like the Neo is comparable in performance to the first MacBook Air that Apple started selling in November, 2020. While it is remarkable that the performance of a computer holds up over six years, just how much longer can that last?

And for those writing reviews who seem to not be giving a second thought about the constraint I ask, will you ask Apple to release a lower cost MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM? You accepted the baseline Apple created of 16 GB seemingly with no complaint that it was too much. Yes, I know the Neo isn’t for you, but should we be asking people to replace their laptop every two years?

Like nearly all other things that Apple sells, I don’t doubt that Apple will sell plenty of Neos, particuarly in this hype cycle. The Neo looks like a nice first release of the product, but I expect next year their will be a new model with more RAM and storage that will provide more for your money. If you want a Neo I recommend waiting to see whether the price comes down later this year. Also, keep an eye on Apple’s competitors who I would expect to answer with competing products at that price point.

How I Use RSS

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:00:24 -0400

As I have observed earlier, right now there is a lot of good energy around RSS with new feed readers popping up nearly every week. Yesterday Manton Reece released is take on an RSS app called Inkwell that is a companion to his micro.blog service/app that I use to host this blog. Because Inkwell integrates with the blogging platform that I use, I find there are reasons to consider using it while I have resisted looking at other apps.

I have been using RSS since I first learned about it in the early 2000s. Like many, I used Google Reader mostly because it was a web app that I could use on any device. Over the years I tried desktop and phone apps like NetNewsWire, but in the end found myself back to the simple web apps that Dave Winer wrote over the years.

River5 is a simple RSS aggregator that displays the latest updates in a reverse chronological order. It is simple and I host it in a LXC container on one of my Proxmox hosts. The main thing River5 lacks is a way to maintain RSS feeds that I want it to monitor. Dave’s Feedland solved that problem as it is centered around maintaining and sharing RSS feeds while providing both river and mailbox presentations of the feeds.

I find that Feedland presents the latest updates slightly different than River5 in that it seems to batch the updates by source site so not a strict reverse chronological presentation of items. Because of this, I use both, starting with Feedland first thing in the morning to catch up and then use River5 to check in on the latest updates during the day.

The key thing is, I use Feedland and River5 to triage what I want to read, when I see a article I want to read I click the title to open it then save the item in Readwise Reader to read later. I also don’t worry about missing something, if I don’t see an item I don’t care.

If when I am reading an article in Readwise Reader I want to write a blog post about that item and perhaps quote text from it, I copy the article URL to the clipboard then switch to Drafts or Obsidian to write the post. I select any text to quote and copy it in to the draft of the blog post. Inkwell seems well suited for this part of the cycle assuming that it gets the full content of the article.

So, I am dabbling with when I read something I want to write a blog post about, using Inkwell to do that. It might find that this will be more work than worth it but I think I will give it a try for a while.

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:37:56 -0400

The 2026 iPad Air M4: Early Impressions:

The second change is memory. The M4 brings 12GB of unified memory, up from 8GB on the M3 model. More RAM means better multitasking and more headroom for demanding tasks. Transcription in Voice Memos and background removal in Pixelmator happen almost instantly. I feel it in Lightroom as well.

My primary concern about the MacBook Neo is that I don’t think the 8 GB of RAM is enough in the current AI era of personal computing. While the quote above is about the new iPad Air, I think the point about the benefit of moving from 8 GB to 12 GB is apt.

Later in his post Om also ponders whether the Neo is a better value than the Air given it includes a keyboard. I do wonder whether Neo will affect iPad sales.

More Experimentation With Android Desktop

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 15:18:17 -0400

I have paired the Nillkin folding Bluetooth keyboard to my Pixel 10, connected the phone to the BenQ monitor and enabled Android Desktop mode, thus providing me a desktop computing device. The keyboard has a built in trackpad to enable me to move the mouse on the desktop and I have figured out how to run multiple (virtual) desktops at the same time. I have ordered a portable, 15-inch monitor that I have been meaning to buy for some time as a backup display and to experiment further with this idea of really portable computing. For blogging, I am writing this in Obsidian running on the phone and I will post this item to the blog later from my MacBook.

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:12:42 -0400

I think the whole idea of the MacBook Neo comes down to one question, is $599 a low price?

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 13:10:00 -0400

It occurs to me, that the MacBook Neo is essentially the often desired iPad that runs MacOS.

What Is Low Cost?

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 12:44:40 -0400

Do you think $599 is a low price? One cannot answer this question without knowing for what and in how that what compares to others in the market. Today Apple announced the MacBook Neo, which as Wired tells us is the most affordable laptop the company has ever made. In other words, Wired says that $599 relative to other Apple laptops is a low cost.

My first reaction while reading the headlines and before reading the articles is that $599 is too expensive, and reading the articles further convinces me that this is true. My advice is to hold off on buying the Neo and let’s see how much lower you can buy one say later this summer or during the Christmas buying period.

What is behind my reaction is that I think “low cost” isn’t just about the amount of money but also about value. For $599 the MacBook Neo enables you to run MacOS apps in 8GB of RAM and store them and their data on 256 GB of storage, and I think both of those amounts are too low for $599. You can get more of both provided you are willing to run Windows and not MacOS.

Apple itself has established that 16 GB of RAM is the starting point in 2026, as every other laptop it sells starts at that amount. The higher cost of RAM may be a legit reason why Neo only has 8 GB, but I wonder if that lower RAM constraint is also tied to selling Apple’s services. The latest AI technology is not going to run well in 8 GB of RAM, so that means using AI in the cloud, and I am sure the Neo will do that very well at a cost of $20 per month.

My current laptop usage indicates to me that 256 GB of storage is just not enough. I have a 512 GB disk in my MacBook that is 70% full. I find it curious that Apple is not including Touch ID in the $599/256 GB model, for that you need to pay $699 for the 512 GB model, which I strongly suspect is the real version of the Neo that Apple expects to sell. Maybe $599 for 512 GB of storage and Touch ID would be good enough, but I still don’t like that 8 GB of RAM constraint.

You will hear that Apple is targeting the Neo at those who would buy a Chromebook, or perhaps a low cost Windows, but I got to ask, if a person is really concerned about price what exactly is Apple offering here that is better than either option? Go find some articles about the latest version of MacOS and you will find unhappy users.

So, you are going to see a lot of articles saying how wonderful it is that Apple has come out with this low cost model. In the end I think you have to determine whether $599 is low cost or not, for me low cost starts at below $500 but even then that requires some minimum specs. I won’t be surprised at some time in the future this entry Neo will get to below $500, but even then a fair question is whether the device is worth that price. (Note that right now students can buy one for $499, but I ask again, is 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage good enough for students?)

My Thoughts About Android Desktop

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 15:19:08 -0400

I watched XDA’s presentation of the Android desktop mode available in the Android 17 beta. Desktop mode is available with Android 16 too and I’ve tried it out and it’s not bad. I’ve long been intrigued by the idea of using a smartphone as my only computing device, and I honestly think this is best applied to foldables.

As I see it, the main impediment to such an all-in-one device is the lack of wireless connectivity to monitors, keyboards and mice. Imagine being able to use the desktop mode of your phone while the phone is still in your pocket.

It does appear that while desktop mode is available with all Android devices, it’s primary purpose is as a replacement to Chrome OS. For Google, Android desktop mode is a consolidation of operating systems. Google seems convinced that it’s worth it for them to offer a desktop computing user interface for their operating system, even though Chrome OS only has a small percentage of the desktop market, per Wikipedia.

I am not convinced that Android Desktop offers anything for the desktop market, and rumors are Apple may be soon announcing a low cost Macbook built on their A-series processors that will be hard to compete against.

The one scenario I can think of that might be interesting is Google pitching the idea of the Pixel Fold being the computing device that is all one will need, and therefore try to justify the greater than $1,000 price tag for the Fold. The math works when compared to the sum cost of a phone, tablet and desktop if the device fits all these use cases. However, I think for this to work there must be wireless connectivity to keyboard, video, and mouse or at the very least an easy to use drop-in docking station.

Two Way RSS

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 14:12:50 -0400

Yesterday I wrote a draft post about RSS Feeds and I wrote this:

A lot of pixels are being dedicated to writing about Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, which I think of as a “broadcast medium” for text and files.

It dawned on me later that what I wrote I think gets to the root of an issue with using RSS for two-way communication/messaging on the web. RSS is, like the web in general, a broadcast technology, by which I mean it enables one-to-many communication. Broadcasting to whomever what is new on a web site is why writers benefit from RSS, and having new writing appear in a river/timeline or inbox is the benefit of RSS to readers.

The problem as I see it is that RSS wasn’t natively designed for two-way communication. It might be that one can make it do so but that I think that’s the classic case of seeing all problems as a nail to be solved with a hammer. You can pound a screw in to a wall, but the right tool to get that screw in the wall is a screwdriver.

My experience with network communication pre-dates the Internet. Before the Internet became popular there were Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and online services like Compuserve that created and provided online threaded messaging. The experience was, you had areas dedicated to a topic called forums or boards, and users created new “posts” to the forums in which they could ask questions or share information. People replied to those “posts” that appeared in chronological order creating a coherent thread of messages.

Compare the threaded messaging I describe above to what you see on X/Twitter in which a person can reply to something that I post but that reply is just part of the social network timeline and not presented to the reader in any association to the original post, so there is no context and no coherence to the messaging without the user having to dig.

Micro.blog uses the same “mentions” method for associating a reply to a post, and I as a user can either be notified that someone mentioned me or I go to the mentions section of Micro.blog but what see there are only replies, I as a user have to click Conversation to see the entire thread and therefore the context.

I am inclined to think that the evolution of the non-threaded mentions approach is due to starting with the web and HTML rather than the prior art of BBS and its Internet sibling Usenet. There are web sites, like Discord, that you access via a web browser but in design function more like Usenet than the web.

For me, the river/timeline approach is not useful for messaging because it doesn’t provided context. One can’t even assume a topic as one could when accessing a Usenet group or a BBS board and you don’t see a chronological thread of the messages without digging.

As a writer, I see value in readers having an ability to comment/respond to a post but as that writer, what I need is simply to know that someone has responded to a specific post and I need to know which post so that I can read the feedback. Honestly, the best approach I have seen for this use case is pingbacks as implemented by Wordpress that was developed by bloggers and predates the social network timelines.

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 13:10:27 -0400

The cycle of yearly new phones from Apple and Google are not about significant changes between one year to the next. I don’t think Google expects Pixel 9a users to want to replace the phone they bought last year with the Pixel 10a this year, therefore it makes sense that the Pixel 10a has incremental improvements. I really don’t know why the reviews of these phones focus on the small number of changes from one phone to the next. It makes more sense, in my opinion, to compare the upcoming Pixel 10a to the Pixel 8a and 7a. My guess is that the improvements from the 7am, or older, is the most compelling reason to by a Pixel 10a.

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 14:35:55 -0400

In this video on YouTube, Kitt Betts-Masters shows the technology behind Wacom’s EMR pens. I currently primarily use felt nibs in the EMR pens I use with my Viwoods AI Paper Mini and Boox Note Air 3C, but I am curious about how the ceramic nibs feel. My concern has been with the effect of using ceramic nibs, even the ones provided by Viwoods, on the life of the screen.

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:04:26 -0400

I spent the afternoon working on and testing Scott Hanson’s dockerized version of Feedland. I’ve written notes but I don’t have the time now to edit and post them, which I will do this weekend. The net is that like the other time I installed Feedland in my home lab, I could not get browser access via HTTP to work. The web browser just simply refuses to load the site and displays an SSL error message. The good news is that I did get access to work via my Nginx and duckdns.org configuration in the same manner as I have done with other apps hosted in my home network.

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 15:14:35 -0400

I have moved some equipment around in the home office so that I can use the adjustable/standing desk while standing. This is the first time I have experienced moving my Macbook between external monitor configurations and I am impressed by the fact that it remembers the different configurations.

Down The Drummer Rabbit Hole

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 18:30:42 -0400

Earlier today I noted that Dave had posted about the issue I encountered on January 30 preventing me from publishing my Daynotes using the “default” blogging tool in Drummer referred to as “Old School,” which is descriptive of a day based blogging format.

I started the process of making and testing the changes that Dave suggested, finding them to be more involved, but the net result is that the Daynotes site is now served by HTTPS rather than only being accessible via HTTP.

When the ability to build the blog from within Drummer broke I did my own work around by creating a new OPML file that is served by my instance of PagePark, which is Dave’s web server app that knows how to render OPML files for web browsers. For now I am going to continue using my “new” Daynotes outline file while using the Drummer blog for longer articles. My simple forwarding url for daynotes (daynotes.frankm.info) will go to single outline page while I have created a new forwarder for the Old School site (oldschool.frankm.info).

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 13:09:09 -0400

Appears that Dave is now aware of the problem with the Old School blogs. He says the real issue is that the blogs are now served by https and the template they are based on does not support that. He provides instruction for how to fix, which starts by downloading a minimal template, editing it, putting the template html file on a public server, and then adding a header variable to the blog outline. Unfortunately at the moment Github is down so I cannot work on the fix, which for me will involve hosting the template file on my shared files host that is built from a Github repo. More details are in my Daynotes outline.

Analyze Oil Consumption Using NotebookLM

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 17:22:58 -0400

Of all the AI tools currently available I use Google’s NotebookLM the most. My best way to describe NotebookLM is that one can use it to apply Google’s Large Language Models toward a topic based on sources for information that one provides. For example, when we were researching health insurance plans last fall I created a notebook in NotebookLM and uploaded to it as sources PDFs provided by the insurance providers. I then used the chat in the notebook to ask questions about the different plans, which I then saved for future reference.

I have a 2013 GMC Terrain and a few years past I learned that this make and model SUV has a history of burning oil, so I have been diligently checking the oil level once a week and after long drives during trips. I log the date, odometer reading, and oil level in a note in Google Keep using my phone and I wish Gemini were integrated in Keep so that I could directly ask questions like how many miles have been driven and when is the last time I added oil.

Google has not added Keep as a source for NotebookLM, which I think would be logical, but what I can do is send (export) a note in Keep to a Google Doc which I can then add as source for NotebookLM. Today I exported each of my three log notes to a Google Doc, created a notebook in NotebookLM and add these docs as sources. NotebookLM correctly identified the sources as a maintenance log for a vehicle but it didn’t know which type of vehicle nor did it know the year the entries started because I only recorded the month and date. I created a README note that I added as a source in which I specified that the first date was in 2024 and that the logs are for a 2013 GMC Terrain. I also added some information about the dipstick markings.

With the oil logs in NotebookLM I am able to ask simple questions like, how many miles were driven between the last oil check and the prior check? I asked NotebookLM how many miles were driven in 2025, and it then offered to make an infographic that broke down the 2025 mileage by month. NotebookLM also created a detailed vehicle usage and oil consumption analysis report.

NotebookLM provides me with a simple and powerful way to analyze this data, but the fact that Google Keep cannot be a source means that as I update the current log note I will have to re-export it to the Google Doc and refresh that doc source in NotebookLM. I hope that in the future Google will add Keep as a source to either Gemini on my phone or to NotebookLM.

Expectations For The Pixel 10

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 14:11:35 -0400

I got the Pixel 10 for Christmas. We ordered it from Best Buy during their “Black Friday” sale at a cost of $549, when launched this phone cost $799. With an $80 trade-in of a Pixel 6a the total cost to me is $469, which is a very good price for a “flagship” phone.

Before I received the Pixel 10 I wrote this expecting it to be a blog post but I never published it, so now I am going back and I am going to put in quote format my original expectation and then my current point of view after one month of use.

I expect this to be a very worthy upgrade from the Pixel 7a that has been my every day carry for the last 2+ years. The Pixel 10 is slightly smaller than the Pixel 7a but has a larger display (6.3-inch vs. 6.1-inch) that can refresh as fast as 120 Hz; the Pixel 7a max refresh is 60 Hz. The Pixel 10 display can be significantly brighter going up 3,000 nits versus 1,000 nits, which means it will be easier for me to see the screen outdoors in sunlight.

The Pixel 10 battery has more capacity (4,970 mAh vs. 4,385 mAh), charges faster, and includes Pixelsnap wireless charging. Pixelsnap is Google’s magnetic wireless charging that is spec equivalent to Apple’s Magsafe wireless charging, and that means the Pixel 10 can use all of the Magsafe accessories that have been developed for the Apple phones over the last couple of years. For me Pixelsnap is the main feature that makes it worth moving from the lower cost “A” series Pixels to the flagship line.

For the price that I paid, I feel safe in saying the Pixel 10 is in fact a worthy upgrade, but I don’t think that would be the case at the original $799 price. If I am being honest, the most significant difference has been Pixelsnap having bought a Belkin charger and discovering Standby Mode Pro but I don’t think this feature alone is worth $200. It’s nice to have, but not necessary. The battery life is longer in so far as I have yet to have a situation in which the battery is at risk of being depleted; this is in part due to the larger size, but also due to using the Belkin wireless charger.

Another important difference between the two phones is that the Pixel 10 has 12 GB of RAM, which is needed to use all of the new AI functions that Google has been developing for phones. The 8 GB in the Pixel 7a and newer Pixel 9a means using the AI features may require sending data to the cloud, if you are able to use them at all.

So far I am not a big user of AI and so the greater AI capability of the Pixel 10 has not yet been realized. That said, I think I had my first experience with Magic Cue last week when I added a reminder to pick up a prescription at Wallgreens using Gemini and when it confirmed adding the reminder for the next it, without prompting, told me about when the Pharmacy was closed for lunch in the early afternoon.

The Pixel 10 has three camera lenses, adding a 10.8 megapixel telephoto lens to the main and ultrawide lenses of the “A” series line. The telephoto lens provides 5x optical zoom versus the 2x optical zoom in the main lens of the Pixel 7a. Google’s digital zoom software can go up to 20x on the Pixel 10 versus the 5x max on the Pixel 7a. I occasionally zoom in on objects when taking pictures so I think I will really like the telephoto lens.

As I alluded to, in comparison to the Pixel 10, the Pixel 7a is significantly limited in running the latest Google Pixel AI and camera software. There are a bunch of new photo editing capabilities with the Pixel 10 for me to learn, but I think I am most looking forward to “Edit with Ask Photos” that I think will enable me to tell the phone how I want a photo to be edited rather than figuring out how to manually do the edit.

I am not a photography snob, and so I probably have a low threshold for what I consider to be a good camera. I’ve felt that all of my phones have taken good pictures. With this being said, I will admit that I really like the 5x optical zoom that is a clear improvement over the Pixel 7a, and this is my second most used new feature next to Pixelsnap.

When I watched the Pixel 10 announcements I was immediately drawn to Pixelsnap. All of my gadget purchases are driven by utility and access to all of the different Magsafe stands, chargers, and wallets enables me to do more with the device. The problem is, I’ve historically avoided the flagship Pixels because I do not want to pay more than $500 for my phones.

Obviously, the price at launch is not going to be the only price for the phone forever. Google started selling the Pixel 10 in late August for $799 and by late November I was able to buy it at $250 less. Trade-ins bring the price down even more. I can buy last year’s flagship, the Pixel 9 now for $300 less.

To get the Pixel phones at the best price you do not want to buy at launch but wait for holiday sales, which I think results in a more realistic pricing of the Pixel line of phones. Right now one can buy from Google the Pixel 9a, which launched in the spring of 2025 for $399, the Pixel 9, which is the late summer 2024 flagship for $499, and the Pixel 10 (late summer 2025) for $599. Of course, other stores may have lower prices.

I have also noticed recently that Best Buy has started selling “returned/open box” Pixel 10s for as low as $250, which is a great price if you are lucky to snag one.

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 13:25:30 -0400

Yesterday, in response to a post by Manton about an approach to link rot that he is trying out, I speculated that utilizing the Internet Archive might be a better approach. Turns out, there is a Wordpress plugin that does this very thing.

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:46:10 -0400

My first experiment with a mechanical keyboard was brief, I returned the Keychron C3 Pro because its height messed up the ergonomics of my desk and my wrists hurt when using it. I normally use the Logitech MX Keys Keyboard that has a very low profile. For some reason I didn’t think about the additional height of Keychron keyboard, to use it properly I would need to elevate my chair high enough that my feet wouldn’t touch the ground.

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:53:30 -0400

Blogbook is an app in development that one can use to make PDF and EPUB files by exporting from WordPress, Micro.blog, or Ghost blog to a single Markdown file. Filter by categories, authors, tags, and dates–then open in Marked 3 for PDF, EPUB, and more. I can create a physical book from an export of my micro.blog to Day One, but that takes all posts in a date range while what I really wanted to do was only publish in book format essays.

Avoiding Dead Links

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:33:19 -0400

I currently subscribe to the basic micro.blog plan and I have been monitoring the features that Manton adds to premium for any that I might find useful. Today Manton posted a video demonstrating a feature he is experimenting with that could be added to premium that would help prevent dead links.

A problem that exists with adding links to other sites in my blog posts is that over time the pages I link to disappear. Chances are good that if you click a link on a post that I wrote five years ago the link no longer exists, which is a bit of a pain.

The new feature that Manton is experimenting with enhances the Bookmarks feature of micro.blog that creates an archive copy of a web page. Booksmarks is similar to Archivebox. The enhancement associates the original source URL of a archived page that one may use in a blog post and provides a “single click” way to convert the URL to the archived copy of the page on micro.blog and then you can update the post.

Of course, the problem with the current approach is that one has to know that the source URL is no longer available and make the change. For this to really be useful there needs to be some form of automation, which I can imagine could increase the costs of running micro.blog.

Perhaps a compromise is providing micro.blog users a method to initiate a scan of archived posts for dead links, check for the ones that are dead, see if there is an archived version and offer to convert the link. Such ad hoc scans might result in lower compute costs.

Another thing that would useful, if this becomes a real feature, is provide a way for the micro.blog user to an archived copy of the linked to page at the time of writing the post. I don’t know if Manton would want to automatically create an archive of all destination pages of blog posts, but that would be useful for people like me who often write posts using an editor other than micro.blog’s.

A final thought…. I wonder whether this could be integrated with the Internet archive is some way? It seems the purpose of the Internet archive is to do this type of web page archival and their storage may be a way minimum the costs to micro.blog.

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 18:32:58 -0400

This is probably only of interest to myself and a few others.

I spent more time today to move my Daynotes outline from Dave Winer’s oldSchoolBlog app, which is the blog CMS for Drummer, to pagePark. As I initially reported yesterday, attempts to load my OldSchool site is now returning a “The file name contains illegal characters” message, and the browser terminal shows the web server is returning a 400 status. I strong suspect that the use of my email address in the directory path of the rendered web pages is causing the problem.

To work around this I configured my instance of pagePark to render the original blog public outline but noticed that pagePark seems to have problems rendering nodes with type values. Today I decided to create a new OPML file. I copied all of the January items to it, made it public, and configured pagePark to render it instead. The direct URL is https://info.frankmcpherson.net/Daynotes.opml and I have configured my simpler forwarder URL, http://daynotes.frankm.info to forward to that URL.

In this configuration, my instance of pagePark is mirroring this new OPML file that is stored at drummer.land/frank.mcp… Note that this URL also has a “fully formed” email address in it, and thus my fear is whatever update that may have occurred on the server hosting oldschool.scripting.com might end up on drummer.land and the same problem will re-appear. I think if that happens that may break many publicly shared OPML scripts created using Drummer.

A work around that I have direct control over is figuring out a way to host the OPML file on my own server rather than on drummer.land, but right now I cannot think of a nice automated way to do that. I can download all my OPML files from Drummer to my PC but that requires manual steps. For now I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 12:53:37 -0400

Something has happened with the server hosting my Daynotes site, it is running a 400 Bad Request and it looks like there has been a change blocking a GET for a URL with an email address that has been working in the past. The url is oldschool.scripting.com/frank.mcp… I have created a redirect from my own instance of pagePark so that I can access the file and this is only useful for me.

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 13:30:18 -0400

In 2010 I wrote this in reaction to the first iPad announcement. It really didn’t age well.

For myself, I am waiting to learn more about the HP Slate, which HP and Microsoft announced at CES. From what I can tell, it will run Windows 7 that supports touch input, however, what I really want is a slate that supports both touch and stylus (digitizer) input because I want to write notes in digital ink and store them in Evernote.

My First Mechnical Keyboard

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:39:46 -0400

I just received my first mechanical keyboard, the Keychron C3 Pro, and this is the first blog post that I am writing with it. It is a relatively inexpensive keyboard, so a good first one to try out. This Keychron has brown switches and what comes to mind when I press them is they feel like I am pressing on rows of blocks.

I have been using the Logitech MX Keys keyboard, which has a much lower profile than this Keychron keyboard and I am starting to notice the difference in my arms. I’ve raised my chair to better position my arms and wrists over the keyboard.

I think I have to give this keyboard a period of time before making a decision about whether I like it or not. It is certainly different, but not sure whether this is a good or bad difference.

Using Obsidian With Viwoods AI Paper Mini

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:48:37 -0400

Ever since I got the Viwoods AI Paper Mini I have been developing processes for using it with Obsidian, which I use for my second brain. At present I have Obsidian installed on the tablet but I do not use it for writing on the tablet. I do have Obsidian Sync running on the tablet but not syncing all of my oldest notes imported from Evernote.

Have three Papers (notebooks) that I am exporting from the tablet in to Obsidian and I am doing this in two ways. I am using a Viwoods Sync Obsidian plugin, which is currently in development, to import PNG images of the notebook pages in to Obsidian which I can then view and link to from other Obsidian notes. The plugin uses the Viwoods native .note file as input, creates PNG image files of the pages, and then creates an Obsidian note (markdown) page with the image embedded.

For the second export method I am using the AI Text Conversion function of the Viwoods Papers app to create ASCII text of my handwriting. The AI feature uses the Gemini Pro Version 3 model and I manually select one more more pages for conversion. I find the Gemini Pro does the best job of converting my handwriting. I copy the result to the clipboard, switch to Obsidian on the tablet, open the note in which I am storing the text version of the notebook and paste the text in. After the updated note syncs to my desktop computer I then edit what I pasted to correct what is usually a small number of errors.

Finally, in the correct areas of the text version of the note I insert links to the image file, created by the Viwoods Sync plugin, that is the source of the text. I can then open image side-by-side with the text with a right-click of the link and Split Pane right.

In feedback I provided to the developers of the Viwoods Sync plugin I asked if they could do OCR of the notes as part of the sync process, which they suggest might be a feature they add in the future. The issue for that part of the plugin might be the quality of the handwriting recognition.

Raspberry Pi USB Gadget

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:37:54 -0400

Back in 2019 I learned about and testing using a Raspberry Pi as an accessory to an iPad. The idea is useful for people who want a local Linux terminal on an iPad rather than making a remote connection to one on a server. People who use terminal apps like vi or emacs and developer tools are the ones who find this the most useful.

The process involves connecting a Raspberry Pi to an iPad via USB-C cable, and software on the Raspberry Pi make the USB-C connection function like an ethernet network connection. You get an IP address that you can use to login to the Pi using SSH, at which point then have access to all the tools available in the Raspberry Pi OS. If a VNC Server is running on the Pi you can even get a desktop connect using a VNC Viewer.

The instructions for setting this all up,, in which is called USB Gadget Mode, are not daunting but take a little bit of work. Today I learned that the functionality for USB Gadget Mode is now available directly in the Raspberry PI OS.

E-ink Tablet Lock-in

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 17:24:43 -0400

In a YouTube video the developer of My Deep Guide, which is a robust PDF organizer template for e-ink devices, talked about the issue of e-ink device lock-in. The issue is that when you use a brand of device, say Remarkable or Boox, there is not a way to move your data from one device brand to another. The only file formats common to all device types are PDF and ePub but that does not provide for extraction of the information within those file types.

The problem is not just with moving from one vendor to another, but affects searching for one’s writing, which requires some form of indexing of the handwritten data such that a search can be run. I touch on this issue in my recent post in which I describe using Google NotebookLM to search for what I write on my Viwoods AIPaper Mini tablet.

As I understand it, what one writes on the Viwoods tablet is translated to vector graphics data that is stored in a file on the device. Viwoods, like Boox, uses a “.note” extension for these file names and those files even sync to my Google Drive. The problem is, there is no application provided by Viwoods to read those files and thus provide a way to search within the files.

The problem here is very similar to about 40 years ago when word processors like Microsoft Word and WordPerfect were developed and used proprietary file formats. Back then the only way to view and thus search within your writing was to open the files in their original application, you couldn’t read Word files in WordPerfect or vice versa. Years later this issue became moot as application vendors reverse engineered the file formats so that files could be moved between word processor brands. Many people vow to avoid any possible word processor vendor lock in by only storing their writing in plain text that may use markdown for formatting.

I think the ideal for tablets would be a standard data file format for handwritten notes that either the tablet providers used natively or at the very least provided for exporting. PDF exports are the equivalent to printing a document and saving that hardcopy as an archive/backup, it provides a bare minimum but quickly becomes unwieldy as the number of documents and pages within them increase. We really need fully searchable formats to allow us to retrieve information from our writing.

Use Google Drive And NotebookLM With Viwoods AIPaper Mini

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 13:45:34 -0400

I recently started using the Viwoods AIPaper Mini, which is an e-ink tablet with an 8-inch black and white display that is optimized for reading and writing. The reason I bought this device is that I wanted a smaller and more portable tablet for reading and writing than the Boox Note Air 3C I have been using.

The AIPaper Mini, like most e-ink tablets, is designed to provide the ability to write notes by hand in a manner that feels like writing on paper. The handwritten input is usually stored as vector graphics data in a format known to the software on the tablet. Unfortunately there isn’t a standard file format for this data and Viwoods does not provide a way to read those files, which have a .note extension, via a desktop or web application. Fortunately, Viwoods does generate PDFs of notes that reproduces the handwriting as seen on the device display, so exporting or syncing of the generated PDF files is primary means for archiving and retrieving information captured using the device.

Nearly all tablets today can work with the popular cloud storage providers like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox. Apple iPads default to Apple’s iCloud but also work with other providers while Android tablets tend to default to Google Drive. The PDF files generated are the only way you can view on other devices what you write on the Viwoods tablet, so they provide a small degree of backup by being able to open and view the files. Unfortunately, in order to search the files you need an app that can do handwriting recognition and I discovered that Google Drive search can and will search through PDFs, including those that contain handwriting. I enabled Google Drive as the default sync account to and tested search and found it will list the files that contain the search term but it does not jump to the location of that term within the file.

Gaining the ability to search within the PDF files the Viwoods tablets generate is reason enough to use Google Drive as the tablet’s Cloud Drive, but I think NotebookLM is the real reason why Viwoods users should use this setup. NotebookLM is a web app from Google that enables you to use Google’s AI tools against a narrow set of sources that you specify and those sources can be one ore more files in your Google Drive. I created a new notebook in NotebookLM and added ten of the PDF files (each corresponding to a Viwoods Paper) generated from my tablet as sources. As each source is added character recognition runs and you can click the file names to see the results.

I use the chat in NotebookLM to ask whether I have written anything about an item or topic, here is an example:

Have I written anything about the Day One app? Yes, the sources contain a specific entry regarding the Day One app.

On 11-16-2025, you documented testing a feature related to the application:

You were testing email to Day One Journal.

The condition for success was noted: “If I see this in Day One then it worked”.

The answers include links to the source files that contain the information. You can save the answers to a note for future reference. For example, at the end of October I merged all of the Daily app PDF files in to one monthly file using Sterling PDF and added that file as a source to my Viwoods NotebookLM notebook, then I asked what were my accomplishments for the month of October and the response included a run down of the completed tasks for each day, which I can then save as a note. (tip: On the first task line on each day write down the date)

The final benefit of using NotebookLM that I want to highlight is that it will generate a mind map based on what it finds in all of the source files, which provides a structured way to see and drill down in to the information. Here is the high level view of my source files, which I can click to expand each node.

While I am referring in this article to my use of the Viwoods AIPaper Mini tablet, I believe almost all other tablets provide the ability to sync files with Google Drive and most likely produce PDF files or perhaps a graphic file of your handwriting which you can also use as a source for Google NotebookLM. So my recommendation, if you are willing to sync your handwritten notebooks to a cloud provider, is to use Google Drive as it provides an easy path to use them in NotebookLM. I have Auto sync configured for every 24 hours and for now you have manually update the synced files in NotebookLM, which gives control over which version of the file is being used as a source.

Translating Handwriting To Text

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 18:46:00 -0400

I learned this weekend that I can use a LLM running on my Macbook Pro to translate notes that I write by hand on a tablet to a markdown text file that I can import in to Obsidian. The benefit is that allows me to securely produce the translation that I can then later use to search for the notes.

My first experience with handwriting on a computer was with the Newton MessagePad, which translated handwriting to text near instantly. The handwriting translation technology in the early 90s was not very good and the Newton’s translation failures earned it ridicule and appearance in the Dilbert comic strip, but I found it did a good job with my fairly neat printing.

Ever since Steve Jobs canceled the Newton upon his return to Apple, there has been no other computing device that defaults to translating handwriting to text. Today most of us who hand write on tablets see their writing stored in its original form, although the graphics is translated to data to be reproduced by the tablet whenever the document opens rather storing the writing in relatively larger bitmap graphics files.

A reason why the Newton translated handwriting to text is that made it possible to search for what was written. Ironically, it seems current tablet makers don’t think it necessary to provide one with ways to search for what they have written. Either the search capability is not provided at all, such is the case of my Viwoods AIPaper Mini, or the on-device search is painfully slow such as on my Boox Note Air 3C.

Microsoft provides an ability to search for handwriting in OneNote on certain platforms. I’ve written hundreds of pages of notes using OneNote on my iPad that that I can search for when the notebooks sync with my notebook computer running OneNote for Windows. It appears that OneNote for iPadOS translates the handwriting and creates a searchable index of the words behinds the scenes but that feature does not exist in the version of OneNote that runs on Android and which I can run on the AIPaper Mini and the Note Air 3C.

Both the AIPaper Mini and the Note Air 3C provide a way to export handwriting in their notebooks to PDF files you can copy to other computers that serve as a simple form of backup, but there is no way to search within those files without having an index generated. I have been on the lookout for any third party tools that I could install on MacOS or Windows that I could use to either convert the “flat” PDFs to searchable forms or at least do a good job of translating the handwriting to text files that I can store in Obsidian.

I recently came across an article written by Jorge Arango titled Transcribe Handwriting Using a Local LLM that describes the steps for performing the translation of handwriting in PDFs to text files using a LLM running on a local computer. If you have personal information in your notes you might not want to send that information to a third party cloud service, which makes this process appealing. This past weekend I tried out the steps in the article on my Macbook Pro M4 with 16 GB of RAM.

My test file was a ten page PDF created on the Viwoods AIPaper Mini that I exported to my Macbook. Arango describes a nearly completely automated workflow of which I manually executed the key steps of splitting the ten page PDF file into ten PNG graphics files and then using the recommended mistral-small3.1 LLM to do the translation into ten markdown files.

The translation of my handwriting to text was pretty accurate but did need some light editing. It took about 70 minutes for the LLM to translate each page. Keep in mind that the VIwoods AI Paper Mini is a smaller, 8-inch tablet so each PDF page is about half the size of a what one considers to be a standard 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of paper that would probably take longer to translate. Arango noted that he uses a 32 GB M2 Max Macbook Pro for the translation and I think RAM was the primary cause of the my longer processing time because the model running under Ollama on my Macbook used 21 GB; more than the 16 GB of RAM it has thus requiring a fair amount of disk swap usage.

The goal of this experiment was to produce a markdown text file copy of my handwriting in a multi-page PDF that I could then add to my Obsidian vault where I could search on it in the future. After I edited each page I used the Unix cat command to produce the single markdown file that I then imported to Obsidian. Finally, I attached the source PDF to the bottom of the file.

I think the benefit of securely translating my writing on my own computer is worth the longer processing time. Now that I have the first ten pages translated, I can go forward by just translating additional pages and concatenating them to the end of the markdown file that I had previously produced. I am certain that if I had used cloud-based version of the LLM that the translation would happen much faster, as no doubt a local computer with more RAM would also perform faster, but I wonder whether the mistral-small3.1 model is the best one for this task and if I could find another LLM with lower RAM requirements that could do as good a job of translation.

The Viwoods AIPaper Mini

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 08:12:00 -0400

I recently bought a new e-ink tablet, the Viwoods AIPaper Mini and it is the inspiration for my recent essay, Personal Computing Using Tablets. I am working on writing my impressions about this device but felt that to start I should write about what it is, why I bought it, and level set expectations.

What Is It?

The Viwoods AIPaper Mini is an e-ink tablet with an 8-inch black and white, front lit, screen. The screen supports handwriting by using a Wacom EMR stylus and the combination of screen coating and the stylus tip provides a “feels like writing on paper” experience. The bezels around the left, top, and right of the display are about .25 of an inch and there is a larger, nearly 1 inch bezel at the bottom that has three integrated buttons that are not back lit, not stenciled in black, and therefore hard to see. Two of the buttons provide navigation, back and home, while the third launches the AI chat function.

The AI Paper runs Android 13 that can run the Google Play store and therefore other Android apps. The AIPaper Mini has a home screen and a bundle of apps developed by Viwoods that reflects their opinions about how an e-ink tablet is used. My understanding is that there are similarities between the software experience of the AIPaper and the Remarkable tablets. The applications that provide the core functionality of the tablet are:

Paper for writing notes in notebooks with pages that are created from one of many templates provided on the device.
Learning for reading and annotating PDFs and ePub documents
Daily for a calendar and writing tasks and daily notes. You can sync Google and Outlook calendars to the device and add events that sync back to those services

The AIPaper also has a file manager and the ability to view and transfer files to cloud storage services including Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox. You can also sync pre-defined folders, which are where one’s notes are stored, to one of the cloud storage services and also specify whether to sync the writing files in PDF and the Viwoods own note file format. Also included is the ability to transfer between a computer attached to the same local network as the tablet via a web service that runs on the tablet by entering the IP address and port into a web browser address bar.

Viwoods is a relatively new competitor to the e-ink tablet market and their software and hardware is a work in progress. The AIPaper comes in two sizes, a 10.3-inch known simply as the AIPaper and the AIPaper Mini that has an 8-inch screen. Both tablets run the same software and Viwoods has been releasing software upgrades nearly monthly. Each upgrade has added new features reflecting prioritization of effort balanced against feature requests made by users. One coming to the AIPaper from using other tablets will find features expected to be fundamental parts of a tablet missing. Anyone buying a Viwoods tablet needs to be aware of and patient with it’s work in progress status.

Why Did I Buy It?

The reason why I buy tablets is to read and write and I use them as replacements for paper books and notepads. A good reading experience means being able to read for several hours without hurting my wrists and eyes, and I want to be able to hand write on a tablet just as I would on a pad of paper.

I have owned Apple iPads ever since the first one in 2010 but I found it too large and heavy to read for several hours. I bought the first iPad Mini in 2012 and used it to read many books, but it wasn’t until 2015 that Apple made it possible to write with handwriting using the Apple Pencil. Despite improvements Apple has made, writing with the Apple Pencil is a slippery, plastic on glass experience that is not at all like writing on paper.

I have also bought and use e-ink readers from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, which provide good reading experience but are specialized only for that purpose and do not provide a way for handwriting. When I first read about the Remarkable tablet, which was the first e-ink tablet optimized for handwriting, I found it too expensive for only writing and not being able to read my Kindle books.

A few years ago I bought the Onyx Boox Note Air 3C that has the same handwriting experience as the Remarkable and can run any Android app and therefore can be used to read Kindle books. The 10.3-inch screen makes the Note Air 3C equivalent to a pad of paper and I use it write meeting notes when I am at work. While the Note Air 3C is light enough to hold, I think it is too large for reading books while it is perfect for reading PDFs.

When I was considering buying the Note Air 3C I also considered the Supernote Nomad, but while it is smaller in some ways better for writing, it does not have the Google Play store and thus is limited in the number of third party apps it runs. I also think because you have to buy a stylus and folio cover separately the total cost of the Supernode is high.

At the end of the year my need for meeting notes will go away and I determined that a smaller e-ink tablet would be my best option going forward so when I learned about the Viwoods AIPaper Mini I bought it. It costs a little over $400, includes a stylus and folio cover, and can run Android apps. In short, the AIPaper Mini checks all the boxes of my requirements for an e-ink tablet.

What Is In A Name?

We are in a time when Artificial Intelligence (AI) is drawing tremendous attention in tech and therefore almost every company seems to be bolting on those two letters to their product names and in their software feature set. Many hardware vendors, including Viwoods, are including buttons dedicated to launching an AI chat app. The chat app Viwoods provides works with six different LLM models, two OpenAI, two Google, and two Sentient AI.

For now the AIPaper does not require an account to use these LLM models, it appears that they are relying on free API access and I haven’t really used it much to see any time outs that I have encountered when using “free” versions of Google Gemni and ChatGPT.

AI features exist in nearly all of the apps that are included with the device. I have mostly used AI in Paper to translate handwriting to text, which is done using the GPT-4o model. You can select up to five pages of writing to be translated to text but I am told that the translation quality diminishes after a couple of pages. I have selected on page of a notebook at a time to translate to text then copy and paste that text to Obsidian after which I made edits to correct errors.

I have not used all of the AI capabilities Viwoods provides with the AIPaper and I wouldn’t consider them to be the primary reason for one to buy this tablet. It does make sense to me for Viwoods to try and take advantage of them for translating handwriting to text rather than trying to do that on their own. I personally would not have included the “AI” in the product name, Viwoods Paper Mini would be good enough, but I understand their reasoning.

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 11:26:28 -0400

I have installed the beta of iPadOS 26 on my 4th generation iPad Air but I have not spent much time with it. What I have noticed right away is that it seems to be much faster or more responsive. Another thought is that I don’t think the UI changes will be useful/visible when not using a physical keyboard and mouse. I wonder what iPadOS 26 will be like on the iPad Mini?

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 10:11:49 -0400

Learned about Widgets for Obsidian via @dhry@mastodon.social and installed on the iPad Mini. Created a widget to create a quick note and another to open the ToDo page in my Obisidian vault.

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 12:26:08 -0400

I wish that my RSS feed reader could filter out items behind a pay wall, or at least flag them in some way. It would also be nice if bloggers either didn’t link to stuff behind pay walls or at least indicate that a subscription is required. I think it is ironic how Dave frequently argues against the burden of pay walls and also frequently shares links to stories that are behind pay walls.

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 16:34:20 -0400

Over the course of my career the company I work for has provided me a number of different computers to do my job, most of them have been pretty cheap devices. However, for a period of time I was provided with IBM Thinkpads including the 701c that had a unique, expanding, “butterfly” keyboard. It has been a long time since I have thought about that computer, but today I read a description of how one was restored. Nobody tries changes to physical designs of computers like they did back in the day.

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 20:38:42 -0400

I learned via HPC Factor that Microsoft’s extended support for Windows CE 8 has come to an end, completing the embedded operating system’s 26+ year life span. Windows CE was the operating system for the Handheld and Pocket PCs that I moved to after Steve Jobs orphaned the Apple Newton MessagePad. The operating system not only powered my favorite mobile devices in the early 2000s but it also was a platform for which I wrote four editions of my books.

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 12:12:18 -0400

I don’t understand why Satya Nadella ever agreed to have Microsoft re-enter the smartphone market. Three years ago they produced the Surface Duo, an expensive dual screen smartphone / tablet that runs Android. Problem was at the time it first started being sold it ran a year old version of Android and never got current. It was clear early on that Microsoft was not committed to it.

Last year I bought a Duo for just under $300, nearly $1,000 less than it first cost. At that price, it’s a nice device though too heavy to be an every day carry. I find it most useful for monitoring my two fantasy football teams on Sundays.

Recently Microsoft announced they will not be providing updates, so its now an orphan.

Sat, 26 Aug 2023 11:30:48 -0400

It has been so long since I have used Google Reader that I have forgotten why it was so valuable. Now I keep seeing the same articles in my feeds, which is why it’s so important for the new stuff to appear at the top.

Sat, 12 Aug 2023 11:06:37 -0400

Putting this here so that it’s not forgotten. Thanks to Patrick Rhone for sharing. Love Notes to Newton - Full Movie - Official - YouTube. The Newton MessagePad was the first Apple product I ever owned, after coveting a Mac for many years, and it had a significant impact on my life including being a published author.

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 11:23:41 -0400

I’ve set up Joplin to be my digital scrapbook / repository to possibly replace Evernote. A big part of the process was getting OneDrive to run in a Virtual Desktop that I can use during the workday. I using OneDrive to sync my Joplin notebooks between all my devices, including Android, iPadOS, MacOS, and Linux.

My virtual desktop has been LXQT on Ubuntu 20.04 in a LXC container hosted by Proxmox, but I can’t get OneDrive to work due to its use of FUSE. Consequently, I built a VM running Ubuntu 20.04 to and got OneDrive and Joplin working. Only problem is that I can’t get TigerVNC server to behave as a service, it seems to lock up the VM after some time.

I’ve tried running TigerVNC as a service in Ubuntu 22.04 and Debian 12 and it won’t even start.

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 09:52:03 -0400

I like sharing pictures on this blog and I wish that micro.blog had a simple way for creating photo albums. I just returned from a trip and I would love to be able to upload pictures that I took during the trip to a separate page that I can just link to rather than post all the pictures to the main blog page. What I desire is to batch upload a bunch of photos, be prompted for a date and place and have the software automatically make a photo page. The only photos plug-ins involve changes to the “default” photos page or converting a blog to something like Instagram.

I am not very sophisticated in managing my photos, they upload automatically to Google Photos and I use Syncthing to make a local backup. I can, and do, make albums in Google Photos, which used to be made automatically but no longer do.

Sat, 13 May 2023 11:54:30 -0400

If I were in charge of marketing a foldable phone, I think I would call it a mobile 2-in-1 rather than foldable because that puts emphasis on the functionality. From using the original Surface Duo learned that you have to think of these devices as a small tablet first and a smartphone second.

I could be a target consumer for these devices because I am a heavy tablet user and a lite phone user, and I use both devices every day. The problem is, no foldable is ever going to be as thin as a standard smartphone and feel comfortable in front pants pockets.

Price is a real constraint right now. When the price drops to a comparable to smartphone + tablet then it will be more compelling. So I wonder, how long will it take for a new foldable to cost $800 or less?

Googe Nest Hub Disappoints

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 13:09:20 -0400

The Google Nest Hub is frustrating to use because I want to use it as an Android display, as I think I should, but instead it only provides a very narrow set of functions. The most obvious use for me is displaying a local weather radar, which is useful during weather events. A simple way Google could provide this is by enabling Radarscope to run on it.

Today there is an ice storm moving through my area. An option I found is a Michigan weather live stream on YouTube, which I figured I could view on the Nest Hub because it has a YouTube app. Problem is, the YouTube app on the Nest Hub only displays a list of Recommended videos and does not provide me away to select a specific video on YouTube that I can watch. How come Google didn’t provide the FULL YouTube app on the Nest Hub.

I can cast the video from my Pixel 4a to the Nest Hub, but it does not make sense to me that I should have to. I couldn’t even get Google Assistant to display the video I want. some reason why I asked it to display a video from YouTube it wants to cast it to my TV rather than on the display itself!

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 09:53:25 -0400

I must be the only person who doesn’t care about ChatGPT. Ok, there may be a few others, but too few.

Using IFTTT To Send Blog Posts To Day One

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:13:08 -0400

I am testing sending what I write in my blogs to Day One via an IFTTT applet that is monitoring their RSS feeds. There are two problems. First, the IFTTT applet doesn’t do a good job of handling titleless posts, second, hyperlinks in the posts are stripped, seemingly even if I create the links using markdown.

The applet simply creates new entries to Day One in an order and it appears that if the title is blank then the next entry in the item content is used for the title, which by default that is the item link. I moved the item link to below the item content, but my temporary work around is to configure the applet to create a “default” title for every post, with the actual title, it it exists, on the following line. but this is not optimal.

It looks like I could add some Javascript logic to the applet so I am wondering if I could simply write some code to inspect the feed title and skip it, but that may take some time to figure it out. I wonder whether anyone else has already done this?

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 16:32:16 -0400

Today I did some experimentation with passkeys, which is supposed to be the new, better, more secure alternative to computer passwords. Maybe it will be, but right now, it is not as easy to setup and use across platforms as passwords.

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 11:53:03 -0400

Samsung promises Matter support for SmartThings hubs, Galaxy devices, TVs, and fridges

Regarding which SmartThings products will be Matter-enabled, Samantha Fein, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at SmartThings, said the SmartThings app would be fully Matter-enabled, and all existing SmartThings hubs will adopt the standard, including those now being made by Aeotec.

I find the above confusing because I could have swore I read somewhere that only the version 3 of the SmartThings Hub is Matter compliant, which I took to mean my version 2 hub is not. Perhaps it’s a matter of waiting or perhaps will only work via WiFi?

Rebooting RSS

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 10:11:43 -0400

It’s clear to me how FeedLand is a reboot of RSS because it makes building and managing a list RSS feeds real easy. Ever since he released Radio Userland I have been using Dave Winer’s blog and RSS products, and I have been using River5 for many years. Radio Userland was unlike any other RSS product I have used because it fused reading (RSS) and writing (blogging) in one product, River5 and Radio3 is the split of those two functions, and I still use Radio3 for my linkblogging and adding items to read later to Pocket.

River5 is a Nodejs application that you can clone to your own server, which I have running in Google Cloud. The main difficulty with River5 is in maintaining one’s RSS subscription list because it ultimately has to be accessed via a file that is stored locally on the server running River5. My solution has been to add an include node in the local subscription file, and store the file that is included in AWS where I can edit using Little Outliner via nodeStorage. FeedLand removes the hassle of figuring out where to put and how to edit my RSS subscriptions at the price of the app being hosted by Dave rather than on one of my own servers.

If your remember Google Reader and wish it still exists, I strongly encourge you to check out FeedLand because in my opinion it does what Google Reader provided, but more!

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 16:31:14 -0400

My observations after wearing the new Google Pixel Watch for four days. I also wrote my day 1 observations, if you haven’t read them.

Thu, 28 Jul 2022 09:47:13 -0400

I am walking the Appalachian Trail virtually using the Walk The Distance app. Right now I am “walking” the Georgia segment and have completed 22 miles, with 48.7 miles left for this walk. The Appalachian Trail is 2,190 miles long, I wonder if I will have finished by this time next year?

Sat, 18 Jun 2022 11:31:14 -0400

I recall that Bill Gates described this replacement of the wallet with a phone, or smart device, many years ago. I do wonder though whether digital identification is really better for us than paper? As voting equipment shows, some “old school” tech is better. Because we can do something doesn’t mean that we should.

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 16:06:06 -0400

While I like micro.blog’s bookshelf that produces the Reading section of this site, one thing I don’t like is that I don’t have control over the order of the list of books in the Finished Reading page. What I want is a chronological list, but what is produced appears to be random.

I also track my reading in outline (OPML) files using Little Outliner. While I have indivudual pages for 2020 and 2021 today it occurred to me that I might be able to produce a master index using an OPML file with parent nodes that include the other files, which I have done and is now accessibe via http://books.frankm.info.

Here are some notes about how I did the above.

Sat, 09 Apr 2022 11:45:52 -0400

RSS is the main way that I gather what I read online and I have been using it for a couple of decades. Not much has changed in how RSS readers (aggregators) work but today I found something intriguing that I would like to have.

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 12:42:01 -0400

Logitech Signature M650 first impressions: One mouse for all people Nice to see Logitech make a mouse for left handed people, who are usually forced to live in a right handed world.

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 10:14:00 -0400

Today I learned about V for Wikipedia, which is a nice though oddly named iOS app for Wikipedia that on first look reminded of me of V for Vendetta. I think the nearby feature will be useful.

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 10:01:00 -0400

How many static site generators can there be? Seems like thousands! Well, only hundreds.

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 08:59:00 -0400

There have been some changes in a year. How my desk looked last year:

And how my desk looks now:

The biggest different, literally, has been the switch to a 32-inch, 4K monitor that I love. I also have a different USB-C dock.

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 15:11:00 -0400

To me Drummer is the next version of Fargo, but that is only relevant to people like me who used Fargo. One enters and manages content in an outline, which has the same UI as Little Outliner. One can use Drummer to create and maintain a blog that is generated (published) based on a OPML file and a CSS, Javascript and HTML template. Hosting of the front end Editor and backed publisher and web content is currently being provided by Dave Winer, who is the application developer.

One can associate a unique URL to the location where the generated blog content is stored using PagePark. In this instance PagePark is basically acting as a reverse proxy, none of your content is stored on your own server.

Dave does provide Mac version of the Drummer front end that is based on Electron. He may provide Windows and Linux versions of the app. The Electron version of the app will enable you to store and edit your source content OPML files on your own computer, but from what I can tell the published content will still be hosted on Dave’s server.

From what I have read, the desktop version of Drummer is intended to be near to or equal to the OPML Editor. For my purposes it is most desirable to have the desktop version of this application.

Final note, a check of the source to the HTML file of the blog shows that nearly all of the “script src” tags have been changed and it looks like if one hosts PagePark on a server/container that supports HTTPS you might have success in accessing the blog via HTTPs.

My Drummer blog is at oldschool.scripting.com/frankm/.

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 09:21:00 -0400

Happy Windows 11 day! I’ve spent the last several days experimenting with the ARM Version of Windows 11 on a Raspberry Pi 4. The installation process is pretty easy thanks to the WoR-Flasher utility, which I used to “burn” an installation image to a SSD. At first I tried installing by simply using USB drive, and while that worked I wondered whether using a SSD would be better. I ended up buying an inexpensive Crucial SSD and a 3.1 USB enclosure, which isn’t going to be as fast a direct PCIe connection, but the combo does time out faster than the thumb drive. One challenge I had was making sure the power adapter of the Pi was providing enough power for the drive, which I resolved once I used the 3.5A USB C power adapter from CanaKit. One constraint is that the Windows 11 build does not work with the Pi 4’s WiFi. I don’t know how long this version of Windows 11 will last, from what I read the update process is not smooth and may require a re-build, which will wipe out a product activation.

During this process I learned about differences between SATA and NVME SSD drives and found a really helpful guide about the Pi 4 bootloader and USB mass storage. I also found a very extensive site of performance benchmarks of mass storage connected to Raspberry Pis.

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 09:25:40 -0400

Found the reason for why the Chrome OS Files app on my Pixelbook was taking so long to load the file system. There were SMB share mappings that became corrupt and basically Files was trying to access those shares but would eventually time out. Unfortunately, the corruption prevented me from removing the shares via the UI and there is no known way to manually remove them, so I had to powerwash the Pixelbook.

Powerwash restores Chromebooks to their factory default state, and because all of the apps and settings for Chromebooks are in the cloud, the restore process is pretty quick, even with Android apps installed. If you do have Linux apps installed, which I do, that does require a traditional backup and restore, but restoring a container such as Chrome OS uses for Linux makes that restore process pretty quick and straightforward.

My personal experience with this process confirms to me why Chromebooks are so popular with schools, the restore process for them is probably the easiest and fastest of any device you can put your hands on.

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 15:02:40 -0400

The Files app in Chrome OS Version 93 on my Google Pixelbook is taking too long to refresh the contents of the file system at first launch. I don’t know for certain, but I suspect this is a bug introduced with Version 93 because I don’t recall this being a problem. I also see this issue in File, Save dialogs in Chrome OS apps.

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 15:51:00 -0400

Google has a digital handwriting Progressive Web App it calls Cursive that can now be installed on any Chromebook. However, since you cannot type in it, it’s only useful with a stylus. The news gave me an excuse to drag out to the Lenovo USI Stylus that I have to test the app on the Lenovo Duet. Bottom line is that this combo is only really useful for quick and dirty notes or sketches, the latency between the pen and the Chromebook is so bad that writing for any length of time will drive one crazy.

Sun, 15 Aug 2021 12:44:17 -0400

My home network has both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi bands and each band has a different SSID, which I created to easily know which of the two a device is connected. My Pixel 4a can connect to either band but when it does the MAC address is different between the two, which is odd.

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 09:42:15 -0400

Apparently I misunderstood and the beta of Android 12 that I installed is not the last beta. None the less, so far it has been stable for me.

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 17:10:00 -0400

My reaction to the Google Pixel 6 news today is simple, I can’t imagine spending nearly or north of $1,000 for a smartphone. I’ve not had a single performance issue with the $349 Pixel 4a that I am currently using.

The big question Google is facing is, does the smartphone market have room for a third luxury, high priced, smartphone? Seems to me that people who buy for status buy iPhones or Samsung and I am not convinced they are going to choose Pixel 6 over either.

IoT Is An Oxymoron

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 11:38:33 -0400

What made local area and wireless networks happen are industry standards that enable different vendor products to work with each other. The Internet Of Things is nearly the exact opposite, in my home is a case in point. I have Hue lights that require a Hue hub for management and I have a number of sensors and smart switches that use Zigbee that I manage with Samsung’s SmartThings hub.

The SmartThings hub can control the Hue lights, but the Hue hub only knows Hue products. I started first with the Hue lights and the hub, but if I had could have seen in the future I might have just bought the SmartThings hub. On the other hand, one big thing I get with the Hue hub is the use of a catalog of scenes that combine different colors to make for some pretty nice lighting in our basement.

I recently bought two cheaper Sylvania color smartlights when recent heavy rains suggested it might be nice to have a color smartlight in our living room, right now we have a non-color Hue light in the living room. We have a moisture sensor in the sump pump pit that works with the SmartThings hub and an automation in SmartThings that turns on all of the lights when moisture is detected. The automation sets the color lights to purple (homage to Prince) but obviously cannot do that with non-color lights. It happened the automation was recently triggered during the evening when the living room light might normally come on so I realize it just turning on might not be enough notification. Thus the idea to buy a color light, thus the purpose of the Sylvania light because the Hue light costs $50.

Before putting the new Sylvania light in the living room I decided to test it in the basement, where I have the color Hue lights, and here exposes the problem. The Hue lights are controlled by the Hue hub that knows nothing about the Sylvania light, this the Sylvania light cannot be part of the any of the Hue scenes. Perhaps I can find a “third party” app that works with SmartThings to replace Hue scenes, but I have not yet done the research.

Better, yet, would be an industry standard for controlling these color lights that would enable me to fully control them, with scenes, from one hub or “smart device.” Of course, this is a known problem and industy leaders appear to be working together to address it by developing a protocol called Matter. Hopefully, there will be a day when all I need is one controlling device, technically right now I have three: Hue hub, SmartThings hub, Amazon Echo, and Google Home.

P.S. I really hope the Matter protocol addresses how smartlights handle resumption of power after a power outage. Hue added the ability to enforce the last known state, if a light was off when the power went off then it is supposed to stay off when power is restored. However, I’ve found that doesn’t work well with multiple successive short power loses. Worse, is the fact that the Sylvania light appears to not have such a setting. When power is restored the light turns on, regardless of its prior state.

Sat, 22 May 2021 11:43:20 -0400

Engadget, Android 12 Beta hands-on: A fresh look with few major changes for now

Summer not only means warm weather, it also means a new version of Android is evolving toward a fall release. As Leo Laporte has said, we reached peak smartphone several years ago, therefore each release seems to be just new makeup. New makeup sells, but does nothing to actuality change that which it covers.

Rumors are that the next major Google Pixel phone will use Google’s design of an ARM chip, so they can “me-too” with Apple and Microsoft. Will the new version of Android do anything that makes Google’s chip design stand out?

A Wiki User's Expectation Of Double Square Brackets

Wed, 12 May 2021 12:00:00 -0400

I am following Dave’s writing about the integration of Little Outliner with apps like Obsidian and Logseq. I think it’s important to note that neither Obsidian nor Logseq are outliners, they are markdown editors with outlining and wiki features. I would characterize Little Oultiner as an outline editor that could have other features like wiki and markdown.

How Obsidian handles text between doulbe brackets is an example of a feature it incorporates from wikis. There is an existing standard for using double brackets, it is an internal wiki link and the expected action is that it automatically links to a page that exists within the app hosting and editing the content. Usually what is between the double square brackets is the name of the page. If the page already exists, clicking the link loads that page in the app. If the page does not already exist, clicking the link creates a new page with that title in which one can then edit.

The key is that an internal link is generated and managed by the editing app not the user, where as an external link is provided and managed by the user of the app. As an example, I edit my now page in Little Outliner that I think is currently served by an instance of PagePark. (Click here to see the outline in Little Outliner) On that page the fourth note has a link to tech.frankm.info that is another outline I edit in Little Outliner. I created the link between the two using the linking tool in Little Outliner, but what if I had put double brackets around the words Technology That I Use in that sentence?

Based on my experience with wiki, Obsidian, and Roam, I expect that when a double bracket is put around those words Little Outliner creates a link to an outline (a page if you will in Little Outliner) with the name “Technology That I Use.” If I click that link in Little Outliner it opens the page in Little Outliner (could be a tab) and displays the contents of the page, or a blank page if it is new.

To complete the thought, from a publishing perspective, PagePark could follow the internal link to the OPML file and render it as it does today, with the net result of more easily writing and publishing a multi-page site edited by Little Outliner and served by PagePark.

Long time users of Little Outliner may recall the glossary function that automatically substitutes text between double quotes to corresponding text in a separate file. One way you can think of it is like a text expander where you can put a commonly used abbreviation in quotes and when the outline is rendered the associated text in the glossary file is subsituted.

For example, if you look at the second bullet under Notes in my status outline you see that “my blog” and “my Twitter feed” are in quotes and on the published page you see them as hyperlinks because I have the HTML for the hyperlinks in my glossary file, which is specified by the urGlossary value in the OPML head of the file. When I was publishing my blog using Fargo.io, (and prior iterations of Dave’s blogging platforms) the glossary was one of my favorite time saving features.

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 16:15:28 -0400

These are the Chromebooks getting Android 11

My Google Pixelbook and Lenovo Duet are in the list. Reports are that the upgrades will start with Chrome OS Version 90. My devices are currently on Version 89.

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 09:44:04 -0400

I set up a new Google TV to replace the Chromecast that was connected to our living room TV. The change was driven by the increase in the number of streaming services/apps that we now use, and which previously was primarily accessed via the Apple TV attached to the TV in our basement. Google TV doesn’t look much different than Apple TV, and I imagine Roku isn’t much different either. The remote enables voice access to Google Assistant, which I use more than Siri. I did notice that the MLB At Bat app is not the same as the one on Apple TV, but Netflix, Disney+, ParamontPlus, and Amazon all look much the same. Google TV costs much less than Apple TV. Ironically, I set up the Apple TV app and it too looks pretty much the same. I have to chuckle about running Apple TV on a Google product.

Sat, 13 Mar 2021 11:18:09 -0400

I agree very much with this sentiment that Wear OS Watchmakers Seem Destined to Kill the Platform. My theory is that because Google is not doing much with Wear OS that the watch makers are holding back using the Qualcomm 4100 until the 2021 Christmas shopping season. If they don’t, they won’t have a compelling reason for people to buy watches then. The fact that Google bought Fitbit doesn’t help the matter. My next watch, if it is Wear OS, will have the Qualcomm 4100 and I will wait until one is available.

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:28:13 -0400

I have tested the new Nearby Share function between my Pixel 4a and a Lenovo Duet running Chrome OS 89 and it worked as described.

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 17:24:55 -0400

The Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 GPS, and it’s LTE equivalent, are the only Wear OS watch currently on the market that uses Qualcomm’s 4100 watch processor.

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 14:30:00 -0400

I’ve been wondering about the future of Wear OS in light of Google closing the acquisition of Fitbit and that there are so few watches with the new Qualcomm 4100 processor. I suspect Google has drastically slowed development on Wear OS and that has forced companies to hold back launching watches with the 4100 because it may be the only new thing about them in the next year. If I am right that may mean we won’t see many watches with the latest processor until the fall.

Personally, the Fossil Sport that I currently wear has all the “features” I need but performance is not exactly reliable. I’ve begun to think one of the latest Fitbits might be good. I really wish Apple would do with Apple Watch what they did with the iPod and make it work with Android, which I think would decisively the end Wear OS, but Apple appears committed to the halo Watch gives to iPhone.

Overclocking A Raspberry Pi 4

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 11:15:00 -0400

I am using a Raspberry Pi 4 (daenerys) as my desktop personal computer during the work day, which I access from my work provided computer using VNC. By using this Pi 4 I can access the Internet from my desk without going through the corporate Internet proxy.

I built daenerys in a Flirc case, which looks really nice and provides passive cooling, and it boots from a SSD in an Inateck case. The SSD gets power from the Pi and so under normal load I would see temperatures hover around 55 degrees celcius, which is well below the 85 degree threshold that causes the CPU to throttle down.

Over the holiday I built another Raspberry Pi 4 (arya) in a MazerPi case that has a fan. The fan draws power from the GPIO pins and has two modes, high speed if plugged in to the 5v pin (PIN 2) and low speed if plugged in to the 3.3v pin (PIN1). To complete the picture, ground is plugged in th PIN 6.

The MazerPi fan just stays on all the time, I am not aware of a way to control the fan so that it only comes on when a certain temperature threshold is past. I first plugged the fan in to one of the 5v pins and found it loud enough to be heard, although not terribly loud. When using high speed mode the CPU temperatures were in the mid to high 30 degree range under normal load. When I ran Octane 2 it then crossed 40 degrees.

I decided to try the low speed mode, which is quiet enough to not hear unless one concentrates. Temperatures where in the 40 to 45 degree range, which is plenty good.

At this point the thought occurred to me that it probably makes sense to use the case with the fan for the Pi that I am going to use every day rather than in one I am going to use as an accessory and thus I removed the SD card from arya and plugged in the SSD from daenerys and it booted right up. (BTW, note that in reality a computer host name is associated with the boot drive and not the actual computer, so daenerys is really the 250 GB SSD drive while arya is a 256 GB SD card.)

Finally, I decided I wanted to try overclocking daenerys, which given the fan should be safe. Normal speed for this Pi4 board is 1.5 GHz, so I decided to overclock it to 2 GHz. Performance is noticably faster. At 1.5 Ghz daenery’s Octane 2 score is 8098 and at 2.0 Ghz the score is 9777. Neither score is fantastic, but good enough for the type of web browsing that I do.

When you overclock a CPU it will run hotter and that can cause failures. In the MazerPi, with the fan in low speed mode, and the Pi 4 booting from a SSD and overclocked to a max frequency of 2 GHz and a minimum frequency of 1 GHz I am seeing temperatures ranging from 46 degrees to 55 degress, which is about the same as well using the Pi in the Flirc case but not overclocked.

The net result is that have “upgraded” daenerys to a faster processing speed that provides better performance while maintaining a good CPU temperature and so far after one full working day it has been stable. The MazerPi case cost only $8 and is easy to assemble with help from a video I found on YouTube.

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 18:42:00 -0400

The official images of the Raspberry Pi OS are still 32-bit but there is a beta 64-bit version that I have been using on an SSD connected to a Raspberry Pi 4. When the 64-bit version was first released RealVNC Server was not available so I have been using x11vnc to remote connect to the Pi. Today I learned that RealVNC Server is now available for the beta but has to be enabled via the terminal using raspi-config, so I switched. I don’t know whether anyone else will find this useful, but it feels like RealVNC is faster than x11vnc.

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 11:56:23 -0400

One thing that I want to do in 2021 is create a way to post writing I create in Roam to my blog. What I envision is something like the actions that I use in Drafts, so basically some JavaScript that uses micropub to publish. I will start with a block and if I get that to work then a page.

Vivaldi Day 2

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 15:27:58 -0400

Today is the second day of using Vivaldi on the Raspberry Pi 4 desktop, and it continues to perform better for me than Chromium. I decided to run Octane 2 and Speedometer 2 to see how Vivaldi benchmarks against Chromium and I am surprised to find that it benchmarks slightly slower in both even though my practical use finds it faster. For example, Speedometer 2 scores 7.93 in Chromium and 7.614 in Vivaldi. For comparison, the Speedometer 2 score on the iPad Air is 201, fastest in the house.

Trying Vivaldi

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 17:13:00 -0400

I use a Raspberry Pi 4 as a personal remote computer that I access using VNC during the work day, which enables me to keep my personal web access from going through my employer’s Internet proxy. It’s also an excuse of me to fiddle with the Raspberry Pi.

I have been using Chromium for browing the web but grown frustrated with its performance on the Pi so this morning I decided to give Vivaldi a try. Vivaldi uses the same rendering engine as Chrome and I’ve found it uses the same extensions as Chrome, which is important because I need access to Lastpass.

Installation was a little tricky because I am running a beta 64-bit version of the Raspberry Pi OS and so I needed to find the arm64 version of the installation package.

So far I am finding that Vivaldi does run faster on the Pi4 than Chromium. One thing I did to speed things up is to turn off the drop-down, URL completion of the address bar so that I can quickly enter URLs. However, one function that I use to forage for new updates in the Federated Wiki verse does not work, for some reason, so for now I will need to use Chromium for that part of my daily flow.