Category Archives: tech

Sinclair C5

misc, tech

Can modern incarnation of C5 succeed? (BBC)

I'm easily old enough to remember the original 3-wheeled washing-machine-motor-powered death-trap, the only safety aid a flag flapping above on a flexible whip shaft, but didn't see one for real until years later, in a museum.

I view the name Sinclair with fondness. I owned a ZX81 (with 16K wobbly RAM Pack, a Spectrum 48K and thermal printer, and an almost-totally-impractical in-ear radio. I still want a red-LED RPN calculator, bug-ridden as I know it to be.

Though modern cars are far safer than during the 1980s, the roads are fuller and the drivers less-attentive than ever. So I confidently predict that Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies here.

The answer to the question the headline poses: No, no more-so than ever.

Pinboard fail

meta, tech

Well, 3 weeks after paying for a Pinboard.in bookmark tagging and page archiving account, I'm no closer to having the site owner fix the issues I've mentioned.

It's the first time tagging made sense to me, thus disappointing that the failures are increasing in scope, tested across a range of operating systems, browsers and apps.

Archiving hasn't started yet despite multiple promises, full-text search is thus impossible, new tags require multiple refreshes to show up and so bundling is problematic, simple searches fail to find bookmarks visible on the same page! I could go on, but the bottom line is when the site owner repeatedly fails to respond and fails to fix the issues I highlight, I complain about, why should I invest more time in the service?

Pinboard.in thus easily fails to gain Baz's seal of approval.

I might have to make my own, though it won't reach the promise of Pinboard's feature set. Here's something I put together some time ago; it's generated from a CSV file, no databases to introduce complexity.

http://bazbt3.github.io/readinglist/

Testy 2

tech

Finally, we have liftoff! A week-and-a-half in, and I've managed to configure a £30 computer and create a functional pair of shell scripts to post blithering idiocy to my test site/blog.

Streamlining it all to improve security, to post only changed files within the site, and to have the computer run connected only to power & the local network are my next goals.

Achievable.

Cancelled

misc, tech

After a rubbish day, a tale of woe: posts detailing a short journey from pleasure to disappointment, spanning around 3 hours:

@bazbt3:

OK, it looks as though my dream to rock up in a few days with an iPhone Plus, and start messing about with Workflows is at an end.

Financially it makes no sense, we'd like a holiday this year, and other things. So I went for a OnePlus 2: an older model, running on a Cyanogen variant with the potential to not get the Nougat upgrade; but the price, for a high-spec. phone with the big screen I crave, is very attractive.

£250 (around US$315) for this:

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/oneplus-2-1300253/review

Yes, I know you don't have time to read it. 🙂

(time passed…)

@bazbt3:

Well, that sucks. Scheduled to be delivered between 10pm & midnight, Amazon cancelled the order at 11:14pm, without giving me a reason. The twa

@bazbt3:

… I might as well go to bed. 🙁

So I did.

Chatbot

tech

User: "Hi chatbot ,whats the weather like today ?lol"

bazbt3chatbot: "Go outside, meet people, hug a tree; stop wasting your life on your phone!"

User: "Hi chatbot ,lolwut !!1! whats a tree whats a hug ?"

bazbt3chatbot: "!" (self-terminates)

Apparently, apps are a thing of the past; 'bots are our future. (A vaguely-related article.)

In Betweeners

misc, tech,

Elaborating on (or maybe not, it's not my place to say) my 'Between' post yesterday, @matigo provided some nicely written (as-ever) insights into a modern curse..

'Curse' is my cruel trick; a word, a hook to drag you in. Oops!

Social burnout.

Most here will have a social networking networking history, may even identify personally with Jason's words… For me it's a case of 'the wrong time of year'.

For you…?

Choice. While I had only IRC and MS Chat, that's all I used. IRC was a one-day thing for me; i can't recall any actual interactions at all. Literally one day. I got online and, within the first month explored every protocol and service available to me as a new Microsoft Network (MSN) customer.

Incidentally, I forgot to mention ICQ in my blog post; a service I used mainly to connect to people I already knew online. In real time. Mine was, probably still is, a 6-digit user ID.

Nowadays though we've dozens of places we can go to express ourselves. There are social networks, forums, niche services… There we can chat about our desires, hopes, dreams… with other like-minded people, hopefully without troublemakers intervening. Most of us want a quiet life when we want a quiet life.

Yes, that.

So, App.net (ADN); it's a place with lots of good memories, good people, but it's been let down by its founders and those in search of a bigger audience.

Now mine's not a massive criticism. I'm hardly there at all, my feeling's more one of a remembrance of the emotional baggage stemming from the SOTN post, the frankly-ridiculous antagonism (I'll never understand why people don't simply block) and the network's inevitable subsequent decline.

And guilt.

I'm not doing #QuoteSunday (always a low-engagement thing) in part due to IFTTT's ADN support shutting down, nor am I running #ThemeMonday (once an entirely different proposition.)

That reminds me, I should really move the #ThemeMonday page at my site and replace it with… Sometime.

I must examine my other social network profiles linking to ADN, to see whether I must move them to where I'm most comfortable calling my social hub.

Or must I?

A perhaps-telling FYI; Last year, despite others not doing, I upgraded my ADN account to 'Developer'. More of a statement of intent, a gesture, an attempt to pay back in… I developed nothing of course but got a vague sense of wellbeing, and a hammer to add to my bio. THIS year I downgraded. To an 'ordinary' paid user account. Not all the way to '40'.

Hollow.

But here I am at 10C, with a Premium account paid-up until 2017 (over the top of Jason's invite) developing an 'app' for 10C. How odd.

So, back to the blog post. Burnout maybe, but I'm happy to call 10centuries.org (10C) home.

One thing to bear in mind; I'm crap at publicising stuff; hence the one successful invite. Kinda successful, I'm hoping the guy I invited will spend a bit more time at 10C…

And that others will follow. There's nothing to lose. No ads, no spam. Really.

And here be (more) Adventures! Maybe.