Gizmos

[Thad]

Decided to get a PineTime, which is like a Fitbit for people who get twitchy about wearing things that send their medical data to private corporations. Guess I'm a watch guy again. Feels kinda nostalgic.

Wasn't difficult to set up. I installed Gadgetbridge on my phone (via F-Droid), paired the watch, and then worked my way through the Settings menu until I got stuff about where I want it. There were a couple bits that felt fiddlier than they should be -- had to disconnect and then reconnect the watch to get the phone to sync the time, and I still don't have weather set up because I don't think the clock app on my phone is cLock -- but it was relatively painless.

Gadgetbridge doesn't send the monitoring data from your watch to the Internet, but you can set it to periodically dump it to files on your phone. I haven't messed around with that yet; not sure if I really want to keep a long-term log or just check the numbers occasionally.

There's a whole lot more tinkering you can do with it -- install a custom firmware, that kind of thing -- but for now I'm keeping it more or less stock.

Anyway. Kinda neat. Haven't worn a watch in like 15 years; feels amusingly retro. And it cost under $40, including shipping. Hell, back in the '90s I used to wear a Casio that cost more than that.

[Mongrel]

I used to wear a pocketwatch, not because I wanted to be one of Those Guys, but because I absolutely hated wearing watches or jewellery (and still do, basically). While I've never been the biggest fan of carrying a phone around either, I loved that phones made that shit redundant

[Thad]

Yeah, I haven't exactly missed wearing a watch, but I can see how it'd be nice to occasionally check the time, weather forecast, incoming call, etc. without fumbling in my pocket.

Already did a 2FA via SMS login earlier today; it was nice being able to glance at my wrist instead of unlocking my phone and opening up the messages app.

As far as weather, it looks like Gadgetbridge's integration with LineageOS is broken in current versions, because it relies on integration in the cLock widget that was deprecated several versions ago.

Might still be able to implement it some other way, I'll look into it.

Also: Man, the charger for this thing has a short-ass cable. I'm going to need to either get a USB-A extension cable or keep it somewhere other than my nightstand when it's charging.

[mharr]

This sounds like a great biofeedback cheat for learning zen master style heart rate regulation.

I'm still holding out for one of these

... actually maybe that QUIT button could be smaller and buried in the developer menu.

[Thad]

Me: Uh so I reset my watch because I couldn't get it to reconnect to my phone, and now it's boot-looping.
Guy: Don't reset your watch.
Me: Okay, well, maybe you should update the FAQ, then. Specifically the part where it says if you can't get your watch to reconnect to your phone, you should reset it.
Guy: Okay, done.
Me: So what do I do now?
Guy: Boot to recovery and flash the firmware.
Me: I can't. It keeps looping even when I try to boot to recovery.
Other guy: Yeah, I'm having the same problem, because I too did what the FAQ said.
Guy: Okay, well, you'll just have to wait for the battery to die.
(time passes)
Me: Okay, so, I waited for the battery to die, then I booted to recovery, flashed the recovery, the bootloader, and the firmware, and then it worked for a little while but then I went to get a glass of water and left my phone in the other room and it lost its connection and won't reconnect. What should I do?
Another guy: Try resetting it.

[Thad]

Honestly I'm more amused by all this than anything; I knew I was buying a cheap, community-supported piece of hardware for hackers and homebrew enthusiasts. The jank, incomplete or outdated documentation, and contradictory advice from various different community members are exactly what I signed up for, and I kind of love it?

[mharr]

Let's be honest, that part is the actual hobby isn't it?

[Brantly B.]

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Thad]

Let's be honest, that part is the actual hobby isn't it?

I said something to my uncle, maybe a decade ago, about how I spend more time setting up games than playing them.

He said, "Well, of course. Playing games makes us feel guilty because we're not doing anything productive. Getting a computer all set up to run them, that's productive; we're learning things."

[Mongrel]

"Damn I wanna play Skyrim"
so play Skyrim
"Yeah but I'm still working on that big medieval overhaul. I need to get that done before I start. Maybe I can play Avorion in the meantime."
so do that
"Yeah, but I wanted to make a new galaxy that actually uses faction packs so the NPC factions are something besides near-identical procedural minecraft dick sculptures, cos I got so bored with that last time"
so install some faction packs
"They're all gone from the Steam Workshop because the 2.0 update broke a ton of ship designs, so now I gotta make my own ships and packs"
...
"What?"

[Brantly B.]

I suppose the ultimate solution is to only allow yourself to play games you made yourself.

...

Is this why modern game developers act like they haven't played anything new since 1995?


(Also didn't Skyrim just drop a 3.0 that breaks every mod in existence again?)

[Mongrel]

(Also didn't Skyrim just drop a 3.0 that breaks every mod in existence again?)

*Laughs in OG Legendary Edition*

The only safe game is one devs have abandoned. No news is good news when it comes to vidja games which can receive updates.

Is this why modern game developers act like they haven't played anything new since 1995?

In my recent-ish experience, most devs probably wouldn't play their own games even if forced to at gunpoint.

[Blossom]

(Also didn't Skyrim just drop a 3.0 that breaks every mod in existence again?)

*Laughs in OG Legendary Edition*

The only safe game is one devs have abandoned. No news is good news when it comes to vidja games which can receive updates.

Wouldn't be so sure. They did the same thing to Fallout 3 last month. Put out an update with the new compiler, broke the script extender and with it every mod that used it.

[Mongrel]

(Also didn't Skyrim just drop a 3.0 that breaks every mod in existence again?)

*Laughs in OG Legendary Edition*

The only safe game is one devs have abandoned. No news is good news when it comes to vidja games which can receive updates.

Wouldn't be so sure. They did the same thing to Fallout 3 last month. Put out an update with the new compiler, broke the script extender and with it every mod that used it.

Fallout 3 is still technically not abandoned though.

You can still buy Fallout 3. Skyrim LE has actually been hidden outright on the Steam shop (you can still buy it though if you have the URL, and thank god for that).

[Thad]

I've only had the pairing issue happen once since flashing the firmware. I don't remember if it was before or after I updated to the latest (1.6.0). After asking the channel if they were really sure I should reset it, I did, and since then it's worked fine; if I leave my phone in another room and then come back, it reconnects without issue.

Still trying to figure out notifications. I want to be able to check the weather without having to pull my phone out of my pocket, but I don't want my e-mails to show up on it. I've tried adjusting the notification settings on my phone, but I still haven't been able to stop the latter or start the former.

[Thad]

Saw a Kobo Clara HD on sale for $90 and decided to grab it. Reviews I've read seem to agree that it's the best low-cost e-reader that's not a Kindle; the higher-end models are better, but if I'm going to spend more than $200 on an e-reader I'm going to hold out for something like the Reinkstone R1 (10", color DES, Android, $500) or the PineNote (10", B&W e-ink, GNU/Linux, $400).

Anyway, the Kobo replaces an old hand-me-down Nook Simple Touch I've been hanging onto. The Nook doesn't have a light, runs an ancient version of Android (2.1), and has a 600x800 resolution, so the Kobo's a pretty solid step up in every way. (Not sure what to do with the Nook; maybe just use it to show slideshows of B&W comic art. Or I could set it up to display the weather forecast or something.)

The Kobo comes with 16GB of storage, half of which is used for the system partitions and the other half of which is user-accessible. That should be plenty of space if you're just putting regular old ebooks on it, but I got 8GB of manga in that Lone Wolf and Cub Humble Bundle a few months back, so I wanted a little more storage. While there's no external microSD card slot on the thing, it's trivial to pop the back off it with a spudger and get at the internal microSD card. I found a guide that went over that, and explained that all it takes to boot from a larger microSD card is to copy the bundled microSD card with dd and then resize the last partition so it's more than the default 8GB.

There's some other interesting stuff in that guide. The Kobo runs a streamlined GNU/Linux OS (not Android) and runs everything as root. You can bypass syncing it to your Kobo account by flipping a bit in a sqlite DB. The device also has a massive security vulnerability/handy power user feature where it handles updates by checking for a file in .kobo/KoboRoot.tgz and, if it's there, just mindlessly copying whatever the fuck is in that file to the system partition, no signature required.

I found the rest of the guide (steps 3 on) useful because it helped me understand how the system is set up, but ultimately it's unnecessary. It walks you through enabling telnet, which is neat but the correct response to an open telnet port on a mobile/wifi device that runs everything as root is "Are you fucking crazy?"

Step 5 offers the much better alternative of setting up SSH, but it requires cross-compiling Dropbear and I kept getting compiler errors when I tried. Fortunately there's an easier way to set up SSH, which I'll get to in a moment.

I found a handy thread on MobileRead: One-Click Install Packages for KOReader & Plato. KOReader and Plato are alternate ebook readers; that thread includes simple scripts that will install either or both of them plus NickelMenu, a launcher you can use to run third-party programs from the main Kobo homescreen.

KOReader is designed for power users, and specifically the sort of power users who care more about features and customizability than a pretty or intuitive UI. It's got built-in support for syncing with a Calibre server, and remember up above where I said I couldn't get Dropbear to compile but it didn't matter because there's an easier way to get SSH set up? The easier way is KOReader, which includes Dropbear. You do have to navigate a few levels deep into a menu to start the SSH server, which is a little tedious; I don't know if it's possible to set it up so SSH will start automatically, or if that's something I would actually want.

KOReader seems like a good pick for reading manga; it's got a useful feature that will zoom (height/width/page) based on the content rather than the full-size image. IE it detects the panel borders and zooms to them instead of the whitespace around the edges.

Unfortunately the 6" screen is still a little smaller than a 5x7" manga page, and I find even when zooming content to page, the text in Lone Wolf and Cub is too small to read comfortably. Maybe I'll experiment with panel navigation. Or maybe I'll just wait and get one of those 10" e-readers I was talking about earlier and just read manga on that. (If I wanted to start rereading LW&C, I've got a dead-tree copy of vol 1 anyway.)

The biggest problem with KOReader is the file navigation. You can't browse by metadata, it's just a standard hierarchical file manager. Which gets the job done if you have a small collection of books, but I've got like 350 on the damn thing. Mostly stuff I grabbed off Gutenberg or bought in bundles. There doesn't appear to be a search function, so if I want to find a book I have to page through a list of 350 books, 10 to a page. Not great.

Fortunately, I've got two other apps I can use to read: the built-in Kobo app, and Plato. I haven't used either one of them extensively, but Plato appears to kind of split the difference between the built-in app and KOReader: it's not as fully-featured as KOReader (for example I'm pretty sure it doesn't bundle an SSH server) but it's got a friendlier UI, and it's got more features than the built-in Kobo reader. I'm thinking I'll probably end up using Plato to read text and KOReader to read manga (as well as sync my collection and do any command-line work that might interest me).

[Thad]

Apparently there's also a Linux distro for e-readers called InkBox. It doesn't support the Clara HD yet but it's planned for an upcoming release. Think I'll probably have to check it out.

[Thad]

The biggest problem with KOReader is the file navigation. You can't browse by metadata, it's just a standard hierarchical file manager. Which gets the job done if you have a small collection of books, but I've got like 350 on the damn thing. Mostly stuff I grabbed off Gutenberg or bought in bundles. There doesn't appear to be a search function, so if I want to find a book I have to page through a list of 350 books, 10 to a page. Not great.

There is a metadata search; I found it at the bottom of the search menu (after the dictionary search and the Wikipedia search). It's clunky and returns the same results multiple times for reasons I haven't been able to figure out yet (I've removed/re-added some books so I suspect books are listed multiple times in the DB, though it's possible it's not the DB but the search function itself that's returning duplicate entries) and it's still not useful for simple browsing through a collection, but it gets the job done if you're looking for something specific.

[nosimpleway]

Anybody know any damn thing about robovacuums? I'm thinking about getting one for the constant dusting of crumbs and sand on the floor on account of Small Child, but don't know what I'm looking for to parse reviews critically.

Most reviews bring up performance on high-pile carpet or with pet hair, but my apartment has hardwood floors and bans pets, so neither of those are an issue at the moment.

[nosimpleway]

The ants go marching two by two, from the front door halfway across the house in their quest for half a peanut

guess that's my motivation to find an affordable vacuum so I don't miss any future half-peanuts