The first phone running Android sold in the United States was the T-Mobile G1, first sold on October 22, 2008. The HTC version began selling a month earlier. I bought the phone shortly after launch and I am surprised that I did not write about the initial purchase. My first blog post about the G1 and Android was on November 23, 2008.
Taking a walk down memory lane. Found a picture of the huge battery pack that I used with the T-Mobile G1 in order for the phone to last through the day.
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/.
I will try Drummer. Two things I am interested to learn, one is how is the backend hosting handled the other is the level of integration with Radio3. I do think it’s disappointing that this is another, new blogging platform that does not support HTTPS. While theew is the appearance of fighting “the man” (Google) the reality is soon it will become harder for users to read what is published to this platform because ALL major browsers will make it harder for users to access sites that don’t use HTTPS. The sad thing is that at this point it is much easier to support HTTPS so don’t real there is a real good excuse for not doing it.
I find it interesting that there is a resurgence of tablets running Android, with Nokia being the latest announcement. My guess is that this is a reaction to the pandemic, but will they sell?
New York Yankees seem to have the same problems the Chicago Cubs had since 2016. Most likely they won’t admit to following the wrong formula of have too much of the same in their lineup. Maybe a trade of Judge to the Cubs next year?
In my opinion the root cause to the problems that Facebook exposes is the commercialization of the Internet. Capitalism provides a tremendous amount of opportunity and can make people very rich, but it’s not stable, and left unconstrained it will destroy democracy.
The fast majority of the problems we are dealing with in the United States has been due to a war waged by powers and principalities against the New Deal laws that constrain capitalism and preserve democracy.
Facebook’s business model centers on keeping people engaged in their site and they, as does just about anyone in the advertising business, know that angry people stay more engaged. I don’t know how you go after Facebook and not then go after Fox or MSNBC, not to mention advertising in general.
60 Minutes featuring a whistleblower about Facebook is tad hypocritical coming from CBS, whose chairman stated that Donald Trump’s candidacy “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” I wonder why?
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.
When I think of Michigan, fall is the season that first comes to mind. As a life long Michigander, I also know that on nice fall days you got to get outside, because winter is coming.
Apple should stop taking itself–and the iPhone–so seriously | Macworld
Not just Apple, but also Apple users. Whether it’s a tab or a button the affect is the same, you tap or click it to switch between sites that are open in Safari. Maybe I am different, but I don’t recall electing to use one app over another because of how it looks, for me it’s about the functionality.
It’s the media, claims the Supreme Court Justice at a event hosted by Mitch McConnell, that is making the court look like “a bunch of partisan hacks.” Surely it cannot be the event nor the host of that event at which you made the comment. Either this is a demonstration of arrogance or ignorance, both of which represents the problem.
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.
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.
Of all my favorite teams, the Cubs have the most talent and I expect will have chances to win championships again in the foreseeable future.
Not true now and not likely in the foreseeable future. The Packers got to the NFC championship game and this appears to be the last year of the Aaron Rodgers era, so the window for them appears to be closing.
After a week of cold, wet weather it’s nice to see the sun and feel the cool autumn breeze.
I notice that my free year subscription to Apple TV+ expires at the end of next month and they released the first episode of the Asimov Foundation series show today. Coincidence? My recollection is the Asimov series was a big part of their launch pitch last year, and of course up until now had failed to deliver and I’ve been considering not renewing.
I don’t see a good way to confirm what processor type is in a Wear OS watch. Settings does not show any processor details. Consequently, I don’t know how you confirm or refute Mobvoi’s claim they are now shipping Qualcomm 4100+ chips rather than the “base” 4100.
Learning Computing
Back when there were several book store chains and plenty of stores I spent a fair amount of time in them and in particular looking through the computer magazine section. Magazines were a big part of my formative computing years, and I looked forward to each month’s issue of Byte. The magazines were not only a source of news about the latest hardware and software, they were also a means of software distribution containing pages of source code available to manually enter on a variety of computer platforms.
Physical book stores are nearly extinct and computer magazines shrank in to oblivion, replaced by the Internet, but I have found one corner of the Internet where computer magazines still live. You may have heard of the Raspberry Pi, which is an inexpensive “computer on a chip” popular amongst makers. What you might not know is that raspberrypi.org is more than just the computer hardware, it’s a foundation dedicated towards computer education. The foundation publishes tutorials and lesson plans for teachers and it has a publishing arm for books and magazines.
Four different magazines are published: HackSpace, Custom PC, Wireframe, and The MagPi, which you can subscribe to and purchase online and in stores in the United Kingdom. Better yet, the magazines and books are free to download in PDF format.
If you own a Raspberry Pi and have the full desktop version of the operating system installed you will find a Bookshelf app in the Help menu of the desktop’s application launcher. Bookshelf has tabs for each magazine and books that you can download and read on the Pi. If you don’t have a Pi you can browse through and download the PDFS using the web browser on your computer.
If you are not familiar with Raspberry Pi you will find everything you need to know about it on their web site, raspberrypi.org. Another great source for information is the Official Raspberry Pi Handbook, and the 2022 version has been just released and available to download.
If you are looking for an inexpensive starter computer for yourself or a child, I recommend the Raspberry Pi 400, which is an “all-in-one” computer you can buy for $70. I also think anyone considering a future in computing, or just interested to learn more, should buy a Raspberry Pi 4 kit, which you can assemble and use to learn more about computer hardware and software.
2021 Microsoft Surface Event
I am contemplating purchasing a new laptop computer so that I can access and learn the latest operating systems. I am most interested in Window 11 because Windows is the primary operating system that I use every work day, but the integrations between iPadOS and MacOS also have me interested in a Mac. If I buy a Mac I can also run Windows 11 in a VM, so that will provide me the best of both worlds.
So, I watched the Microsoft Event today to see whether Microsoft might announce something that will influence my purchase decision. My conclusion is none of the products announced today fit in the budget that I have in mind because of the add-ons one has to purchase to gain full functionality.
Microsoft did announce nice looking products today, but for me they have a real pricing problem. Take, for example, the new Surface Go 3. The lowest price version costs $399, which comes with 4 GB of RAM and only 64 GB of storage, which I really do not think is enough storage for any productivity device in 2021. Consequently, the lowest model I would consider is the mid-tier 8 GB RAM, 128 GB model at $549, but that only gets you the tablet. You will want to add a type cover that costs at least $100 and most likely a Surface Pen for another $70, for a grand total of $719, and that combo is with an Intel Pentium processor rather than the more powerful Intel Core i5 in the Surface Laptop Go. In my opinion Microsoft should include the type keyboard with the Surface Pro and Surface Go at their current price.
My research prior to the event tells me that the Microsoft product that most makes sense for a reasonable PC running Windows 11 is the Surface Laptop Go. While it won’t run MacOS, you can buy a well equipped model (8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD) for $800.
Thing is, I can also buy a Mac Mini with the same memory, storage, and price and for less than $200 also have the ability to run Windows 11. Of course, the Mini is a desktop and my bias is toward the portability of a laptop, so that has me looking at a Macbook Air for $200 more, which is pushing the price a bit higher than I would like.
Of course, I don’t intend to make a decision until after the expected Apple Mac event that should happen in October. Rumors are a new Mac Mini and Macbook Pros will be announced, but not an Air. A new Macbook Pro might influence pricing of the current Airs. My ideal would be a new entry level Pro with 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB SSD starting at the current $1299 “base” price, which I think would mean Apple could drop the price of the current Airs by $100 to $200. The logic being it would not make sense to have the high end Air and the Low end Pro with the same specs and same price because nobody would by the high end Air. (The only reason to buy the high end Air over the Pro right now is the 512 GB storage at $50 less price!)
The other question is, what will be the specs for the new Mac Minis? In this case I expect the specs will remain the same, the prices will remain the same, and there will be a processor upgrade. However, the consequence there might be availability of the current Mac Minis at lower prices. An 8 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD model at nearly $600 is appealing.
One might think the reasoning I’ve described above is an “apples to oranges” comparison. I see it as a “get what I need” versus an “investment” comparison. I bought my last Macbook Air 15 years ago, and it still functions! It’s really slow compared to most devices today, but what that experience tells me is that buying an Apple laptop or desktop realistically gets me 5 to 7 years of use. I can buy a cheaper laptop to just run Windows 11 but it probably gets me 4 years of real use.
So, now we wait for the next Apple event. Traditionally Apple has held two events in the fall, one in September to announce new iPhones, which they did, and one in October featuring Macs and iPads, thus one more event to gather information for making my purchase decision.