Rubenerd

This looks so cool. The original PSION was the only PDA I thought gave my beloved Palms a run for their money, so it’s great to see the form-factor still has fans:

The keyboard case is compatible with both the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro and features a clam-shell design. It uses pogo pins located on the smartphone’s midsection and attaches by replacing the default back cover. This add-on effectively turns the PinePhone (Pro) into a PDA with an in-built LTE modem.

The keyboard case is supported by multiple mobile Linux operating systems including, but not limited to: Manjaro Linux, DanctNIX Arch Linux, postmarketOS and Mobian.

I wonder if anyone has FreeBSD running on one of these things?

Ed Maste asked what everyone’s favourite changes were to FreeBSD over the last year. I replied that FreeBSD 13 was a great release for the desktop, and that coupled with KDE even made me miss stuff when I’m working on macOS.

A few people asked me to expand on what I meant by that. There’s probably nothing surprising here, but here goes:

• OpenZFS 2.0 in base is a game changer. I use datasets and snapshots so frequently when testing and building new things, going back to the Mac feels like I’m stepping back to DOS. Yes you can use ZFS on Mac, but it’s not as seamless or integrated.

• Plasma lets me arrange my desktop how I want For the most part I’m fine with macOS’s layout, but Plasma panels and the Latte dock are more flexible.

• KDE’s application ecosystem. Dolphin runs laps around the modern macOS Finder, for example. I use so many KDE and Qt applications on macOS, but they’ll always have better integration on Plasma.

• For the most part, each release of Plasma and FreeBSD feel like they’re heading in the right direction, technically and from a design perspective. I used to feel that way about the Mac, but not for a while.

• Feedback. I know that if I hit a problem, I can contact the FreeBSD or KDE maintainers.

Some of this also applies to KDE on Debian, which I run for games.

As with all this stuff, your mileage may vary. I’m only speaking as someone who came back to KDE after many years, and after running macOS since the mid-1990s. But that’s the great thing about anecdotes, everyone has one.

As much as I love all the new retrocomputing YouTube channels and bloggers that are rediscovering all this fun old tech, the focus is nearly always on games. Even people who repair or tinker with hardware see games as the end product.

That’s fine. Games are fun! But curiosity about this stuff doesn’t have to be limited by it.

People forget that the entire marketing message behind the original Commodore VIC-20 and later machines were that they were computers that could play games, rather than a game console. Advertisements claiming the devices had full typewriter-style keyboards weren’t just a subtle dig at the Atari 2600 or the Sinclair, they were an all-out assault. They weren’t saying their machines were more capable, they were saying you were too.

This is why I love Commodore kit in 2022: it was an empowering message that still resonates with me today. Other companies will tout their developer communities, but modern console makers aren’t selling you a device with an interpreter and instructions on how to build software yourself. I love my little Switch Lite and my iPad, but they’ll never tickle me in the same way.

CD-ROMs are another interesting case. While they were used to distribute immersive and complicated games by the turn of the millennium, their introduction in the 1980s was seen more narrowly as a way to store and distribute vast stores of information. This was used to mercifully distribute the likes of Office that previously required dozens of floppy disks!

But it introduced a new market segment not seen before or since: the multimedia CD-ROM. Before (more) ubiquitous and fast Internet access, these discs gave home computer access to half a gigabyte of text, sounds, music, animations, and videos. It’s hard to overstate just how cool this was! A few inventions in my childhood made me feel like I was living in the future, and this was one of them.

(Alongside the introduction of Apple’s HyperCard, they also trained the public to understand hyperlinked pages which paved the way for the World Wide Web. I don’t think they get enough recognition for this).

I grew up reading encyclopedias and atlases, so having access to a thirty-volume set of books on a single shiny disk was a dream come true. Many afternoons after school were spent reading about random topics on Worldbook, Bookshelf, and Encarta… while telling friends I was gaming (cough)!

Which leads us back to retrocomputing. I love these discs for their “ROM” part. The web is a constantly evolving and expanding medium, but CD-ROMs are snapshots in time. If I want to see what the world was like in 1996, I can fire up DK’s Multimedia Reference Atlas and cruise around. Other things like quotations and almanacs are evergreen, but it’s always interesting to see how they’re presented in that context of time.

They’re also interesting for how they’re presented. Microsoft was up to all manner of shenanigans at the time, but their Microsoft Home titles were consistently above average. DK’s Eyewitness Guides and encyclopedias were the most polished and fun. IBM’s Worldbook almost felt like you were using a web browser, and Bookshelf’s angle of being bundled with an office suite was interesting, even if now I just read it standalone.

I’ve been told by more than a few people that being interested in this stuff is boring. I might need to write more!

This sentence wins the Internet for this month:

After parking an access point (we have four in our house, all connected by Ethernet through a switch to the cable modem) right on top of the printer, I gave up, assumed it was bad, took it back and swapped it for another that had the same problem, meaning I was dealing with a feature.

This tidbit from his recent blog post is so true:

There have been a few times I’ve burned out. That’s typical for many maintainers. You either learn coping strategies or burn out completely, and in the best case end up a woodworker or farmer. At least that’s what I see most of the time.

As you’ve probably noticed by now, I thought today might be fun to share a few quotes from people I like. Here’s Leign Dodds sharing a tweet from a gaming company:

@BungieHelp: Due to an issue, we have disabled the Telesto Exotic fusion rifle in all Crucible and Gambit activities and the Thermoclastic Blooming Artifact mod in all activities.

His response:

For a very specific group of people this probably means a great deal. But I frankly haven’t a clue what a Thermoclastic Blooming Artifact might be. It sounds expensive. Or possibly something you should treat liberally with ointment.

The Algorithm constantly recommends me gamer videos, probably beause I watch Hololive streamers. One was about Overwatch, a game I’ve never played or had an interest in. They strung entire sentences together with words I recognised in isolation, but together they may as well have been Markov-trained off a dictionary. It was entertaining in the most surreal way possible.

In no particular order, here are some useful tips that may prove useful in a life of usefullness:

• Pencil tips
• Hat tips
• Poisoned arrow tips

Hmm, scratch that last one. Wait no, don’t scratch with it.

My boss gave me the opportunity a few years ago to work out of our San Francisco office. It was a life-changing experience, and despite my choice words for Silicon Valley hubris of late, I loved it. I never properly wrote about it; maybe I should one day.

Anyway, is a phrase with one word. I decided to take advantage of the fact that one of my favourite electrical engineer YouTubers had a sponsor that only shipped to the US. I ordered a specific cool little LCR and multimeter, only to be told they were out of stock and had no idea when they’d get another batch. They weren’t alone; every retailer and online store I checked were clean out.

I was about to give up, when a well-known online retailer had one in stock, and for almost half the price. I couldn’t figure out why until I realised it was misspelled Mustimeter. Perhaps their super clever algorithms of brilliant genius slash prices overtime for units that don’t sell, but they’re not smart enough to realise why they’re not selling.

I was probably being recommended the unit after looking at devices with similar descriptions or sellers, but the chance is low that someone doing an organic web search would have found it. People with these sort of hobbies are generally looking for specific model or part numbers.

I see this all the time on sites like eBay. I saw a German auction for a Commodore 64, that upon closer inspection was a much rarer, early-generation VC-20. Another DOS tower was advertised as having an Intel 8038 instead of an 80386. Even my mum used to talk about her rare powder compacts being listed as “mirrors”. Sally Oldfield would have choice words about that.

My current favourite is my retro Iomega Ditto 2 GB drive which was listed as a “cassette deck”. I’m sure they think the joke is on me, given a cassette deck would be eminantly more useful than an early Travan drive, but don’t they realise I’m a nostalgic fool!? A fool… with a Ditto drive! Take that, Peter!

Sometimes they’re typos, or the person listing them don’t understand what they’re selling. Either way, I always forget that it’s worth checking for items close to what you’re after, or to try a few queries with more vague language. You might be as surprised as I regulary am.

I got some fun feedback about my posts on battery-powered passenger trains, and Jeb Brooks’ video on the California Zephyr.

Mike Harley of Obsolete29 recommended Alan Fisher, who does some excellent takedowns of silly ideas that only a Silicon Valley tech person could have concocted, and discussions of regional trains in Pennsylvania where he lives. But it was his poignant commentary about shipping waste that I appreciated the most:

All of these [delivery] steps, except for the home delivery part, is done by a truck … These are the vehicles that transport everything that you buy online to the warehouses that hold the goods. And they’re a huge problem.

Andrew Feinberg recommended Distant Signal out of Florida. Like Jeb’s channel I blogged about recently, it’s incredibly well produced with some great commentary and video.

I just finished his video on how distributed power (DP) works:

… with two engines leading, and another engine mid-train DP. DP helps makes these two mile beats possible, By minimising slack runout and bunching en route. A single change in throttle notch on a train powered only on the head end can result in a severe slack-action wave. DP maintains a much better level of slack action and control throughout the train.

When you have motive power at mid-train, that also serves as another air compressor. The brakes respond more quickly and efficiently. Distributed power not only improves train handling, it also improves fuel economy and reduces rail wear.

I got through all that technical gab and QO26 is STILL coming out of the yard!

There’s so much not to like about These Times™, but we’re spoiled by so much independently produced video now, made by people who care about their interests. Enthusiasm is infectious… and not the bad kind.