Knightwise.com: Recent Episodes
Knightwise
The cross platform podcast that makes technology work for you and not the other way around. The place to go for all geeks who slide between Mac, iOS, Android, Linux and Windows offering an essential mix of hacks, tips, howto's and tweaks spiced up with a dash of geek culture.
Knightwise is joined this week by KD to discuss the general ideas around how we can approach technology with a more intentional attitude. With the advent of algorithms and the attention economy it’s more important than ever that we learn how to make technology work for us, instead of the other way around.
LINKS
- WordPress is 43% of the Internet – https://www.wpzoom.com/blog/wordpress-statistics/
- Digital Minimalism – https://calnewport.com/on-digital-minimalism/
- NoSurf – https://nosurf.net/
- KW505 – https://knightwise.com/kw505-curating-the-library-of-your-mind/
- Security Now Tyranny of the Default – https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-393.htm
- Intentionality – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionality
DISCORD
The action is happening over at our Discord server: Join by clicking this link
CREDITS
Mix & Production: Keith Murray
The return of the Jedi, The return of the king. Somehow it feels like all third instalments feature the return of … something. Why should my epic journey in e-paperland stray from that path: it”s time for “The return of the Kindle”.
Yes, more then a 1,5 year after I stuffed my un-used (slightly cracked) Kindle Oasis into a drawer, saying sayonara to Amazon’s walled of bookstore ecosystem, a new Kindle has arrived on my doorstep. The Kindle Scribe ( the XL-Oasis as my wife calls it) is a work of art.
Hardware: The metal casing makes the Kindle feel cool in your hands and comfortable to hold. The larger bezel on one side (on the right) gives the device a ‘primary’ orientation (that you can also refer to as the “down” side if reading in portrait mode). The display has a premium quality and writing on it with the stylus gives you very nice experience. I personally opted for the premium pen (with the eraser on the back) and switching the note taking setting to ‘fountain pen’ has resulted in my scribbles being not only readable but also aesthetically pleasing to look at. After decades of writing on a screen this is the very first device that has allowed me to do that.
Software; The Scribe has come a long way. Annotating Ebooks is not an option like it was with the Kobo Elipsa. You can add a tiny post-it note to your sentence and scribble something, after which the Scribe leaves a tiny post-it note for you to go back to. But, when annotating PDF’s doodling on pages IS an option and it is FAST.
Your own written notes can be exported via PDF without a lot of hassle.
Sideloading epubs to the Kindle is a breeze with the Kindle app, allowing me to quickly pull a pdf, epub or mobi from my Calibre library and shove it to my Kindle document.
Compared to the Elipsa 2, the Kobo feels like the first generation prototype of a promising but premature kickstarter. It”s incredible how “different” both devices feel both in use and in consistency and stability of software. Maybe the feature-set of the Kindle Scribe lacks the “annotating epub” option that the Elipsa has, but this is something I would gladly trade in when I remember how unstable and unreliable the Kobo was.
When push comes to shove, the Kindle is a great device that is not pretentious when it comes to what it wants to be. A damn good ebook reader that lets you take notes. It’s not an iPad, It’s not a Remarkable. It stays true to what Kindle’s where set out to do. Offering you a premium experience in handling digital paper.
48 hours. That is the total time my latest geek purchase has been in my possession. Barely did the Kobo Elipsa come from the package, or the return-to-sender slip was rolling out of the printer. TLDR? : Wonderful hardware, terrible software. The years between my last Kobo (somewhere in 2012) and the purchase of my latest, have proven that Kobo still has a way to go when it comes to writing good and simple software for their devices. After being frustrated with the Elipsa’s glitchy behaviour in annotating, notetaking and plain READING of documents I decided NOT to go the “I’ll just early-adopter my way through this” and go : Screw this, I just wanna read.
So now what ?
Having spent too many hours on Youtube researching this little project I knew I still had 3 options left. An Onyx Book Tab (expensive and with a sub-par epaper display), A Remarkable (That comes without a backlight and has a frigging subscription model to be able to read your own damn notes) OR a Kindle Scribe.
Uncle Jef’s bookstore.
Over the years I have owned several Amazon E-readers. From a regular Kindle, to a Kindle Voyage and a Kindle Oasis. The build quality and the quality of the display is top notch, but when it came to sideloading books it was always a little bit of a hassle. You could “mail books” to your device but those needed to be in PDF or .mobi format. Calibre took care of that but setting it up was a little cumbersome.
On that part I preferred the way of working of the Kobo (Picks files straight from Google Drive or Dropbox) or the Onyx Boox which sucks up to any Android cloud sync app you want. And the actual management of your sideloaded books in your Amazon library becomes problematic if you have a larger collection. But I get it : The whole point of buying a Kindle is to buy books in the Amazon bookstore.
Amazon has come quite a way.
BUT, Amazon has come a long way. I can use the “Send to Kindle” webpage to upload any epub, pdf or what have you to my Kindle Library and boom .. its there. I can download an epub file on my phone, share it to my Amazon Kindle app on my phone and boom… it’s in my library.
The upside of using THIS system is that I am restoring “continuity” across my devices. I can read my sideloaded books on my iPad, Phone, Android device (Onyx Boox reader) and pretty soon on soon to arrive Kindle Scribe. If the image quality of the Oasis and Voyage have been anything to go by, I may be looking forward to a well built device with a crisp screen and simple but solid software.
And with my lovely wife finally making the switch to digital reading, being able to manage our E-book collection and keep tracks of what we are reading (across different devices) is becoming more and more important. So I’m looking forward to a simple but effective digital reading solution that just works so I can stop fretting with ‘stuff’ and get back to my book.
If you would have been looking at my Youtube and Reddit stats it might have become clear very quickly: Yes! Knightwise is on a gadget hunt again. For some strange reason I have found myself fascinated by the new larger E-ink devices out there and I have waded into the world of over-enthusiastic Youtubers and venom spitting Reddit users, each with their own take on the story.
The reason? Well if I am honest, maybe just the quest for novelty. Because quite frankly I HAVE a perfectly functioning E-ink device. My Onyx Boox is an 8 inch E-reader that runs android and is pretty much one of the most advanced E-reader platforms out there. It shirks at any form of proprietary bookstores and happily runs any e-reader app you throw at it , as long as it is available on the Play store.
I had been playing around with it for a while now and had setup the perfect reading system where I would load up my books into Google play Books (silly name) which would then get magically synced over to both my Onyx and my iPad. Whatever “slate” I picked up, i could just “pick up where i left off” and continue to read.
So I don’t really know what came over me when I went for the Kobo Elipsa 2e. Me and Kobo do not have a good track record. After one flaked on me on my holiday, demanding a (then elusive) internet connection to even start up again, i said: No more! I hate their clunky software, proprietary lock in store AND the fact they only offer me books in French. But the Elipsa was enticing. A big 10 inch screen, VERY good screen quality (Kobo is exceptional at this) and the ability to take notes on pdf’s, epubs and their notetaking app. I would “break” book continuity and no longer be able to “pick up” the book on my iPad but … erm .. yeah. But why. ?
Novelty me won out and I”ve been using the Elipsa2e for a couple of days. Loaded up some books and started testing. Immediately I was confronted with the one thing Kobo is known for. Buggy software. The pen would have ghost touches while writing in the notes app. The performance of the ePubs would be unreliable. When taking notes in PDFs it feels like the kobo is having a seizure and text locks up. All fixed with a “open and close the app again” but not a seamless experience.
And its a petty. Because having this big 10 inch “disconnected” device in front of me that lacked all the interoperable stuff the Onyx Boox / iPad combo had was refreshing. The device was dumb. It only did what paper did. It was simple and nice to read on … it was like a book really. A real dumb one but … hey.
So I’m at the crossroads: Do I send the device back and rack it up to a failed experiment and get my money back. Do I ask for a replacement and once again go through the entire “testing cycle” or … do I just go back to what I had before. The point is that once again the quest for simple technology has taken me down the path of hours of research, testing and figuring things out while I actually just wanted to READ. Meanwhile my wife (after 2 decades) picked up my old Kindle Oasis and is ravaging through her books. She reads and doesn’t have a care in the world.
I’ve been looking at alternatives: The Kindle scribe (bad at notetaking, basically just a big ereader) and the Onyx tab (expensive) and come to see that there is not a lot in the market that really fits my need. In the end I just want to read and be “left alone” by distractions (and the urge to do something else instead of turning the page”. We will see where this goes. I’ll spend another evening on Hard resetting the Elipsa, changing out pen tips and swinging the rubber chicken.. Meanwhile the book is want to read is still lying there.. Untouched
From when I was a young squire, I’ve been using highlighters and a pencil to study. I would get my schoolbooks, mark all the important sections with a highlighter and then convert said information into Q&A cards to help me internalise the information. I would go out for long walks and quiz myself on the info. And that has worked for me for a long time.
When switching to E-paper and tablets, I always looked for reading apps that supported that function. Be it on my iPad or eReader, I went looking for digital highlighters that would mark out the important bits. Using a variety of styluses I would try to scribble down the summary in some kind of study notes.
Now i’ve watched hundreds of Youtube video’s on “Notetaking” on digital devices from people who have brilliant handwriting and make it all look so easy. There notes are structured and comprehensive if you try to read them. With me, that is not the case. When I start scribbling stuff I wonder why I even bother to get a Stylus at all. Whenever I try to scribble something down it’s just that : scribble. The doodling’s of a seven year old who desperately tries to write his own name.
But to add insult to injury I also have a different way of structuring that information. Linear paper doesn’t work for me very well. I end up selecting, moving and shifting whatever I write from place to place. For this exact reason i’ve stayed away from “nice paper notebooks” that I tend to mess up because of my messy and ‘fluent’ structuring of information. “linear” paper gives me the heebeejeebee’s.
That’s why I fell in love with Mindmaps. They allow me to type out the info I need, restructure it, rearrange it etc. For the longest time I have used IthoughtsHD for this but now the developer is calling it quits I had to go for something else. After some meandering I stuck with SimpleMind, an easy to use mindmap application that does what it needs to do on both my ipad and my mac and is surprisingly compatible when ti comes to exporting the mindmaps.
The downside is having to work with both an ePub file and a mind-map is you constantly need to highlight/copy and paste into the mind-map app. There is now way to add short scribbles and in essence you are working with 2 applications.
The ebook on the right with annotations and highlights, the mind-map on the right featuring selected text passages copied over automatically.Enter Marginote. An app that seems to be tailored to my needs as if I was written for me. Margitone lets you markup and annotate pdfs to your harts delight. You can scribble, highlight and doodle Eric Cartman in the margins. But the magic happens when you select text. That gets copied over (automatically) to a mind-map that you can start structuring right away. You can even add quotes, pictures and take annotations on the mind-map. When you are done you can export the mind-map as a pdf OR an OPML file. (Which is great if you want to feed it to ChatGPT to make a structures summary).
The app is 15 bucks for the pro version and I havent even scratched the surface of the possibilities they offer, but it an app that is damn handy. Your entire project gets stored and synced in iCloud and there also is a desktop version available. I will be playing around with it some more of the next weeks and might even do an entire show on it.
“So, What are you reading ?” That’s a question we get more often these days, especially since whatever book i’m into, is not obvious by its cover. For the last 18 years I’ve been ruining my eyes on the displays of various electronic readers, so whatever work of literature I indulge in, is not obvious to an outsider. That’s ok, because on of the last books I read was a little hard to explain and would make the nosy busybody inquirer frown and mutter .. uh .. ok.
So there is this planet with itsy bitsy spiders who have giant human problems.
Me .. explaining it to a stranger.
Children of Time – Adrian TchaiKovsky
“Children of Time is a 2015 science fiction novel by author Adrian Tchaikovsky. The novel follows the evolution of a civilization of genetically modified Portia labiata on a terraformed exoplanet, guided by an artificial intelligence based on the personality of one of the human terraformers of the planet.”
Yup, sounds delightfully weird and … it is. Our author isn’t just some flimsy fantasy writer but a deep deep nerd who dives deep into the subject he writes about. The result is a biologically accurate approach of the Portia Labiata spider and how it accidentally gets infected by a genetic virus to “evolve”. Said virus came from a colonisation ship (filled with monkeys) sent out by terraforming humans who thought: No need to go ourselves, we will just send some apes, make a virus that lets them evolve and have an IA guide them towards making high tea and crumpets in a few million years. Well, thats not the way it turns out. Ship crashes, monkeys die and itsybitsy spider get’s reversed-spidermanned into having powers the human mind.
The result? A fantastic “world building” book that is not just pulled straight out of the writers imagination (LOTR, Dune .. ) but based on actual bio-science and a fantastic amount of ‘what if” extrapolation. A great read, well written and respectful to the readers intelligence by valiantly plodding ahead (on all 8 legs) into more and more complex civilisation problems and asking you to “keep up, will you ?”
I love Scifi, and with age has come the preference to indulge in more and more complex works that find the middle ground between being challenging and insightful to read (Books like this) and plain arrogant intellectual grandstanding of writers who create a book that reads like an overloaded halter in a sweaty gym.
Children of Time – Adrian Tchaikovsky is available on Amazon , but order it at your local bookstore, wait a couple of days in anticipation and dive right in.
I’ve been a space geek all my life and to me, the big black universe has always fascinated me. Why? Because space is big and full of possibilities. It’s a “space” that is big enough to encompass all the possibilities of “what’s out there” that I can think of.
That feeling of “vastness” is hard to capture in ones mind. The giant black cold void that separates us from everything around is so expansive that numbers cannot capture it. What can is … Music.
As a child, the TV Series “Cosmos” has made an unimaginable impression on me. When I heard the opening tune and the dulcet tones of Carl Sagan, I would be glued to the television, focused on images of stars and nebulae and …. the Music. I was only 7 years old so I didn’t understand what Carl was saying ( I didn’t speak English yet) so what stuck is the fantastic, timeless music of Vangelis. A composer who should rightfully be awarded the honour of giving humanity the soundtrack of the stars.
There are several songs from this soundtrack that have become iconic, timeless pieces, but there is one that captures the vast cold loneliness of the void between the stars .. then “Alpha”. Melancholic, emotional and intense it feels like it is perpetually hummed by out Voyager Spaceprobes as they hurl further and further away from us every day.
So when I found this wonderful cover, performed by Jeff Pearce of the iconic “Alpha”, I knew I had to share it.
Since we are on the theme of “Remember 20 years ago ?”, let’s talk Linux. I think it was somewhere in the last days of 2004 I heard about this Linux distribution called “Ubuntu”. I had been dabbling with Linux since the early 2000’s but it never ever “went” anywhere. Distro hopping to find a solution that I could actually use meant valiantly trying to deep dive into some distribution only to back out in a huff of frustration because there would be no way to get the hardware to work or do simple things like play an MP3. Mandriva, Suse, College Linux, Knoppix … many were tried, but none stuck.
Only when I started using Ubuntu, things changed. Suddenly I was introduced to an operating system that not only seemed to work “out of the box” it also came with some third party scripts that would auto install some of the crucial components that would turn this “quirky” operating system into something that I could viably use….
Fast forward 20 years and a lot has happened. I started using Linux in earnest. From running it on my own machines (as a secondary machine), playing with it as a server, using it to resurrect old pc’s, getting it to play nice with old macs AND converting my wife’s then 70 year old grandmother onto linux (and becoming an overnight sensation on the DIGG and having the serverfarm of my webhost go into a chernobyl like meltdown).
Today my infatuation with all things new-and-Linux has mellowed. I don’t try out every new distro and have a hard time grasping why the Linux community, who, back in the days of newsgroups, flamed everyone who asked a “non-commandline question” has become infatuated with producing hundreds of different distro’s who only differ in the configuration of their graphical user interface. The only comparison is can make is that some group of stuffy librarians turned into overcrazed car-tuning gearheads overnight. Suddenly its all chrome, rap music and showing of their “pimped out rides”. This distro craze has taken valuable attention and resources away from developing what Linux really needs: Good applications.
On many occasions I’ve been confronted by another group in the Linux community: The “Freedom” guys who insist that no piece of code should be closed source. From their laptop hardware to the bios, to the operating system and all the applications: It should all be “libre”. Although they make a good point, these “Stallmanites” ( see: Richard Stallman ) put an extra hurdle in front of the further development of Linux. To grow it needs to incentivise cooperations like Nvidia, Canonical, Valve to invest time and resources in the development of software that runs on Linux so people will actually use it.
Today Linux is still interesting to me. Maybe not so much as a desktop, or as a “geeky alternative” to the mainstream, but as an interesting tool to increase the efficiency of my work. Using scripts and interesting applications (either in a command line or graphical user interface) to get my work done faster still gives Linux its allure.
In light of that I have switched over one of my laptops to Linux to rediscover the “state of Linux” not by trying out some exotic distribution, but relying on a rock solid codebase and using a graphical interface that doesn’t get in the way. With plenty of things working in a browser and just a few applications that are not directly available on Linux, the question of “could Linux be my daily driver” is once again preying on the little free time I have.
We shall see how we fare in the next couple of days with my experimental little machine and try to deduce the power and added value of linux in my daily workflow.
Who knows … The penguin might return for real..
My Gmail inbox, a wasteland of forgotten times, got an interesting email today: A congratulatory message from LiveJournal, telling me it had been almost 2 decades since my first post. … Two decades? I hopped over to Knightwise.com to investigate and did find out that indeed, in 2004 i scribbeled down my first thoughts during those exciting web 2.0 days. …
Blogging! Never before was it so easy to gather your thoughts and slam them down on a webpage, the modern day equivalent of doodling your hopes and dreams onto yellowed diary paper. A time when most of us were still hiding behind the anonymity of an ICQ account number (well, maybe not) or an original internet-handle on MSN messenger like CompuGot69 or god forbid, Knightwise.
Give a man a mask and he will show you his true nature. Whoever came up with this quote was (Machiavelli ?) was a very astute connoisseur of human nature. If i browse back to some of the blogs I read back then (and read back what I posted myself) I sometimes wonder if it was wise to put all that out on the internet. But blogging was cathartic, just like journaling. Writing down your hopes, thoughts and dreams and putting them out there (anonymously in front of strangers) was liberating. I was going through a difficult time in those days. My dad had passed away and my family was in turmoil. Babylon was burning and every day during my lunchbreak I would log into this little bubble on the internet and write up what was going through my mind.
Gradually this daily diary evolved into a more technology oriented website where I chose to share my fledgling encounters in using technology to “work for me”. Only after a few years did Knightwise.com really become a “brand” with a clear mission and a growing audience. The little online diary had become a .. product.
And I have had many a good time thanx to this little website. Opportunities have opened up for me, I’ve met interesting people and made friends for life. But the last couple of years, mainly because of my dayjob (that involves online marketing and branding) Knightwise.com has felt more like a “product” i needed to produce for an “audience” and has strayed far away from what it originally was: A diary about how I live with technology.
I wonder if I would ever be able to go back. If I would ever choose to disclose those inner most thoughts and feelings to the world. The changing nature of the internet, the loss of anonymity and the size of my digital footprint would most certainly lead to the words of “Knightwise” coming back to haunt me in my real life.
But what I do know is that “livejournal” told me a valuable lesson: How to express myself in a way that people would find interesting. I learned how to reflect on and organise my thoughts and feelings into blocks of text people wanted to read. But the most important thing was : I didn’t care if anybody did. I wasn’t hunting for likes, looking for comments or waiting for feedback. I just did it for me.
So maybe there is an “inbetween”. Where I talk about tech and how it influences my life. On what projects I dabble in and what new insights I’ve gained. To come back from a “brand” that needs to follow a “format” and bring back some of the “personal” into the digital.
So as I ponder the new Knightwise.com mission, this too becomes another factor of the new way I want Knightwise.com to feel: More like a “blog” with a “theme“ and less like a brand. I make brands for a living and Knightwise.com is my little getaway where I can leave work behind and go do something else. So it might be chaotic, inconsistent and everything that I would frown upon between 9 to 5. But .. That .. is life on the edge of real and cyberspace.
It feels like ages since I’ve been here. Pounding out words on a keyboard and sending them up to the internets. Well, I guess that is life, right? Sometimes things get “in the way” and before you know it months fly by and you haven’t touched your blog at all. Shame really. Especially considering this year marks the 20th anniversary of the Knightwise.com website (there were some proto forms before that that, but those were built with Frontpage or Dreamweaver. Well as long as it doesn’t have an RSS feed it doesn’t count, right ?
Funny thing, writing about technology. In those two decades (that count as millennia in tech-time) a lot has changed. Technology has gotten faster, more ubiquitous more available and easier to use. Yet the things I create with technology have slowly declined. My creative exploits that used to dot the internet like bright colored splashes of paint have become rarities for when I find the time, the urge or the inspiration. I wonder what is causing this.
One of the reasons is that the original “Knightwise.com” mission needs to be redefined. Somehow finding ways to tie multiple platforms together, trying to span the digital ecosphere as a “cross platform geek” is slowly becoming irrelevant. Yes, open standards are still important and we should be aware of being “locked in”. But get a webbrowser and a cloud service and you can pretty much do anything on anything these days, like running Doom in a bacteria.
So I have been ruminating about my new mission, about the new direction Knightwise.com should take and have found the answer in the very thing holding me back from creating stuff in the first place: Technology. Over the last two decades, the abundance, ubiquity, complexity and connectivity of technology has created a source of static hiss in my head, dissolving ideas before they can become reality by pounding them to grit with notifications, distractions and never ending scrolling screens filled with muck and doom.
It might sound gloomy, but this digital mulch that has become my daily reality is starting to foster the seeds of a new beginning. Of a new idea where I stay true to the original mantra ‘let technology work for you’ but slowly decompose the “cross platform geek” to make room for something new.
I’ll keep you posted….
In my last blogpost I had been pondering the idea of a « Lightphone » where I was specifically looking for a phone that would allow me to consume podcasts, navigate and communicate if needed.
One of the reasons the Unihertz Titan jumped out at me was because of its rugged interface and the fact that it would be pretty awesome to use as a « terminal » instead of a phone, allowing me to interact with the various command line applications I have. I thought it would be cool to use it to SSH into my home server and use all my « low distraction » apps.
I decided to « try before I buy » and not start throwing out cash and getting yet « another » device, but instead see if I could pull it off with the gear that I have.
I went for a « copy paste » of the way I SSH into my Linux machine at home on my iPad. Using the SSHelfish app you can predefine connections, execute commands upon connections etc. Basically it slides you into your terminal session with one tap on the screen. I installed it on my iPhone (the payed version of the app is worth it » and took it out for a spin.
Hacking at the hairdressersWaiting at the hairdressers was the perfect opportunity. Instead of scrolling through the « apps » on my phone, I « logged in » to my home server and picked up the Terminal session I had open. Using Tmux I flipped between the different apps I have open (Toot for Mastodon, Tuir for Reddit, Discordo for Discord and Newsboat for RSS) and puttered along. My hairdresser was getting a little worried since the stuff he saw on my screen reminded him more of a hacker doing his thing, than an average joe scrolling Insta.
It’s harder to use, so its easier to focusMy first impressions on this way of working were mixed. The fact you have to « connect » makes it more « intentional » to « check your socials » than by just using the apps on your phone. You are less prone to getting sucked it because it takes more focus to navigate. There are no pretty pictures to « entertain » you and keep you scrolling from one dopamine hit to the other and, because of the small screen, you only have one app open at a time.
This has an upside. Because its a more focused interface, you don’t tend to scroll aimlessly. The downside is that there is no way to (easily) watch or upload media, like pictures in your Toots or posts, for that you still need the apps. As a workaround I still keep the Discord and Mastodon apps on my phone, but just not on my homescreen.
This is of course all just an experiment but my first impressions are pretty interesting. It’s a different way to interact with my « social feeds » that makes them a little less « distracting » and make me feel more « in the moment » when i’m using them. Another small step towards intentional computing I guess.
LinksThe app : Shellfish (ios)
There are 2 kinds of phones: The Smartphone, those highly addictive pieces of glass we carry around in our pocket, that keep us glued to the screen and are the source of many hours of entertainment, games, text messages, videocalls and more ( oh yeah, and sometimes people actually « call » you ) and the « Dumbphones », classic communication devices with numeric keyboards that are mostly geared towards « calling » people and where typing out a text message requires a certain amount of patience and muscle memory that if you want to learn how to do it, you need to look for any cave paintings in the area that depict this.
NoSurf! Those Smartphones are highly addictive. We spend hours scrolling the net and social media sites, and this has led many to re-think the way we interact with these devices. We do not control them, it is like they control US. Rows of « phone zombies » on the train or waiting in line can attest to it. That is why the #nosurf movement (who wants to re-capture the moment by stepping away from your phone) goes towards a dumbphone. A silly flip-phone in your pocket that is so boring, you only use it to call 911 when you are on the brink of bleeding out.
LightphoneBut what if you realise that having a « dumb-phone » just does not fit your connected lifestyle anymore. A lot of the services we use today require an internet connection (Music, Gps etc), the same internet connection that pumps social media sludge into our brain like its Soylent green. So isn’t there an in-between? A device that allows us to « connect » without becoming an attention-sinkhole? I went on a quest to find out.
Multiple candidatesImmediately I was drawn towards the Unihertz Titan and Titan Pocket. These devices remind me strongly of my Blackberry. A small, rugged and portable device that was ideal for communicating but sucked at webbrowsing or doing any of the internet stuff with a high-visual-octane. The smaller screen and the handy keyboard is very alluring. But the size of the Titan (the pocket is smaller but also has a smaller keyboard) and the poor android support (Android 11 on the Pocket, 10 on the Titan) might speak against them on the long run.
JellyAnother weird little device on the Unihertz website is the Jelly. A 3 inch android smartphone that is so tiny, you wouldn’t even WANT to surf on it for hours on end. One way to still be connected without suffering from a screen addiction is to downsize the screen? The downside is that using this device for any kind of GPS would require reading glasses with a high perscription
Neuter your SmartphoneThe last alternative of course is to « dumb down » your existing phone. By restricting apps and access it is perfectly possible to « scale down » the digital possibilities of your phone to give you JUST the the things you need. This does require a fair share of self discipline because you can easily « switch your phone back to full addictive mode » at the press of a button.
Not quite there yet.Looking to make your Phone less addictive and more ‘productive’ is more of a thought exercise. I’ve started to figure out it is less about the hardware and more about the things we want to DO with it. Having addictive apps on your phone is a matter of what apps you allow, not what your phone can (or cannot do). I’ve recently moved things like Vinted (I can search for Retro Transformers for hours on end) to my iPad and haven’t used it since. So maybe the same can go for other apps. I need to re-baseline the smartphone I have and determine what I want it to do for me. And if that answer differs in different situations, then maybe I need to start using different profiles and settings to « transform » that black slab into something that does what I need it to do at that moment.
It all comes down to youIn the end? It all comes down to us, the user. We decide how we spend the « attention calories » of our day. Scrolling aimlessly on 9gag or writing up a blogpost that goes around the world in 50 minutes. That is up to us. Our devices enable us to do a great many things, but the way to fight the attention economy might not be with MORE hardware, but with a re-thought approach on how we want to use the technology we already have. So let’s veer away from the umph-teenth Youtube video on some new gadget, keep the money in our pocket and start thinking like like « smart » geeks.
Whenever you think Knightwise.com the tagline must somehow stil ring in your head « On the edge of real and Cyberspace ». And with « the edge » I don’t always mean the latest, newest or hippest techno hype that is going around. It shouldn’t always deal with the arrowhead of digital progress, it might also be « The Fringe ».
Having ridden the crest of the WEB 2.0 and Social Media revolution, witnessed the rise of the cloud and the dawn of big tech, I sometimes find myself in a world where everything feels « mainstream », where everybody is using the same tech, has the same phone and does the same things on the same platforms. Where the excitement has petered off and the internet has become « boring ».
Looking for an edgeSo I look for new « edges » to discover. Fringe technologies and platforms that hardly anybody knows. Places that are of the beaten path about to break new ground or fizzle into nothingness.
And opposed to the hords of streamers and podcasters that want to « make it big » and pull in huge numbers and make the big bucks, I’m loving the small engaged community of readers, listeners and contributeurs I have today. I’m not looking for a stage, I’m looking for a campfire.
Misplaced NostaligiaMaybe it’s misplaced nostalgia, looking for a tech-scene that wasn’t so mainstream. Where you don’t hear about everybody and their dog spouting an opinion over AI … Where you mention some term of tech and people say « What the hell is that ».
So let’s discover that edge together: Throw up your suggestions for some app, tech or platform that nobody knows about and hardly anyone follows. Something new, nerdy and plain weird, because .. we like that kind of stuff. Because there is nothing more exiting then … Living on the edge.
I love a good paranormal incident, I love history AND I love retro computers. Would there be anything out there that would combine all these three interests? Funny you should ask because .. There is.
The Dodleston Messages (also referred to as The Dodleston Files) is a bizarre series of paranormal events that involve an economics teacher and his girlfriend, a small cottage in the English countryside and a BBC Micro computer that is operated by him, somebody from the past AND somebody from the future.
It sounds bizarre but it makes for a fascinating story where « emails » (or text files) appear out of nowhere on an (unattended) BBC Micro computer, accessible (throughout time) to all three parties. What follows is a strange but interesting back-and-forth between all three « timezones » with some interesting twists.
Spam from the past man! This day and age you would think « worm » or « mallware » when stuff starts to appear on your computer without you doing anything about it. But this is the 80’s and the BBC Micro is in no way connected to the internet because it doesn’t exist yet. The messages just « show up ».
One of the ‘better’ Youtube documentaries on the storyMoving chairs and stacking cansAlong with the digital correspondance there is also some good old « analogue » paranormal activity with furniture being rearranged, things written on the wall and cans being stacked. But the paranormal entity is far from an evil poltergeist. He is a well mannered softspoken gentlemen called Thomas Harden who compliments Ken on his nice girlfriend ( What a fine woman thou hast) and his house full of cool gadgets (one of them being the ‘looms of light’, his wording for the BBC Micro computer as it manifests itself in his time).
Read it straight from the horse’s mouthThe ‘Dodleston Messages’ have been covered on many blog, website, Youtube video and even on a BBC documentary, but the best source is possibly Kens own book ‘The Vertical Plane’ where he describes the whole story in detail, including the transcripts from every message sent by ‘Thomas’ and the mysterious entities in 2109 . The book is hardly obtainable anymore in print form Here is the Amazon Link but you can also have a look over at (cough) Anna’s Archive but just don’t tell anyone.
Do YOU use a VPN? It’s a question you hear a lot from time to time. VPN’s used to be for people who wanted to tunnel back to the office to access a boring spreadsheet on some slow fileserver or print their daughters birthday invitations on the company dime. It used to be about tunneling « in ».
These days most people use a VPN to tunnel « out » of somewhere. Vpn’s have become commercialised services with beacons somewhere in the cloud where we all connect to. Promising us privacy and anonymity from whatever snoops might prowl the network we connected to. But what do we have to hide, who do we hide it from and who do we share it with?
So where do I use a VPN Well, that all depends. Whenever I need to connect to a « foreign network » I consider using a vpn tunnel. And with « a foreign network » I mean one where I don’t have the admin password of the wifi router.
Public Wifi’s are like public urinalsA shared wifi hotspot in a coffee shop (which I seldom use anymore) is a place where I definitely try to use a VPN to obscure my traffic. Although I have to say that I’m more worried about some hipsters malware infested Windows 7 machine giving my machine computer-gonorrhea across the local wifi network. I feel like i’m putting my donut on a urinal so… Shields up.
Corporate IT networks with Nosy neighboursAh, those sweet networks managed by overzealous IT staff at corporate offices. I DON’T TRUST THEM. If I have to hop « on their network » to do my thing, I am always careful to make sure my outgoing traffic is obscured. All of it. I don’t feel making my network traffic the passe-de-temps of some 20 something junior IT sysadmin who loves nothing more than snooping logs (or get those logs thrown in my face as part of a shitstorm during a payment issue with a client). No way.
So who do we trust ?Well, that is a hard one isn’t it. I’ll never go for one of those commercial-but-free services that they offer. The business model here is that they sell off your traffic to advertising agencies. (When you don’t pay you aren’t the client, you are the product). But the « payed » services are kinda the same. Sure NordVpn has quite a good reputation but … in the end i’ll trust my own home network and tunnel out from there via my ISP .. just like with all my other traffic.
So I take the Space SSHuttleThere are a couple of VPN services you can self host. They give you the added joy of connecting to your home network. I’m an avid user of Tailscale to interconnect my devices over the internet (Check out the podcast episode I did on that), but when I want to tunnel ALL my traffic including my DNS queries I resort to using SSHuttle and use a machine running Tailscale at home as an endpoint. Yeah I know, that’s double encapsulation and that might give me some slower speeds, but what do I care .. the guest networks i’m on have money to burn.
T.N.O. ? Trust no-one. Very true. But its not practical to set yourself up like Edward Snowden and only use your computer with Tails and Tor and hiding under a blanket (tried it, it gets very hot). At some point you have to trust somebody. In my case I draw the line at my ISP because thats where for me security and practicality balance out. At least I don’t have Hipsters licking my firewall or IT-Wanna-Be-Snoops snickering at my URL traffic.
LinksPodcast: Tunneling with Tailscale
SSHuttle (Available on Windows, Mac, Linux and in WSL)
A rainy day on holiday secluded in a tiny village in the Jura mountains in France is the ideal place to pucker around with applications that don’t require a lot of bandwidth. Why? Because I have one bar on my 4G connection and i’m a huge nerd with love for command line applications.
So time to slap another app to the collection of command line apps I have running: Time for ‘TooT’: A TUI (Text User Interface) based client for Mastodon. It’s slick, simple and fast and I can access it from anywhere. All I need is a terminal connection to my home server and I’m good to go.
So why the crap do I go for TUI apps in the modern day? Easy: They are distraction free. You don’t end up scrolling for hours watching silly cat pictures or selfies of wannabe Instagram Models. Its a bit more basic. I do the same with Reddit (using TUIR), RSS (Newsbeuter), Discord (Discordo) and Irc (Irssi). It’s faster to work with (mostly), less addictive (slightly) and most importantly: you look like a Hacker
Check out the Github page here.
Find the super easy keyboard shortcuts here.
The year is 2023 and I am looking back at (almost) 23 years of « Knightwise.com ». What started out as a humble personal website borked together in Frontpage Express (later Dreamweaver) has roamed the net in many forms since. From a silly static website, to a Livejournal blog, later a Blogger Blog and finally in the form you see today: An autonomously hosted WordPress instance with Podcast episodes hosted on Archive.org. Knightwise.com stands (With the help of the wonderful @moonenmoonen and @kdmurray) independent of any of the major platforms.
Standing on our own two feet.Why is that so important? That has become more and more obvious the last couple of years. We have seen the rise of many trends and platforms over the years. The dawn of podcasting, the coming (and going) of web 2.0 sites like Digg, The first wobbly steps of Facebook, Youtube, Google+ and so on. And we have followed many of those trends (perhaps giving some a little too much energy in comparison). But at the end of the day, the « core » of the Knightwise.com content could always be found HERE, independent and unmanaged by any « big platform ».
Just look around Twitter is fighting to keep it’s users interested in the toddler-ruled add-riddled hate-fountain it has become while Reddit heads to the battlefield against some of it’s most loyal moderators over costs for external API’s. The writing is on the wall : Those « big » and « free » platforms we have all been using carelessly are under increased pressure to push adds and make money. And today that means not only letting their users frolic around while gathering their data, it also means making hard and unpopular choices because those « free » platforms are not free at all. The price we pay is not only the attention and the data we give them, but also a slice of our freedom.`
So maybe it’s time to look backSo how was it again BEFORE those big platforms came along? How did we EVER manage to survive. Well in essence .. everything was doing their own thing. Hosting their own website, running their own forum, doing their own thing. I’m too young to remember BBS’s but DO remember having to « choose » between different IRC Services to find my posse (and my channels) .. to browse « different » forums to get an answer .. It wasn’t easy, but we weren’t completely dependant on just one major corporation.
Let’s blow up the internet! Because if we want to keep using the internet like it is supposed to, as a network where information can flow regardless of the fall of one of it’s many networking nodes, then we also should be able to steer clear of becoming too dependant on these massive platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, TikTok and the like to spread our message and communicate. Sure the are THE place to go when you want to get noticed but as a content creator you are completely dependant of their policy. In order to rescue our ability to create, communicate, share and interact our ideas and thoughts .. We need to re-fragment our content. In short: Blow up the net.
Don’t mind the hippie in the corner.Am I starting to sound stark-raving mad? Do you smell weed and picture dancing lava lamps as you think of me? It might all sound a little shangry-la but, I have always ventured to keep you independent of brands, vendors and eco-systems. So here is the next level of being a cross-platform geek.
Becoming a cross-platform geek.So what if « the platforms » we have talked about on this website go beyond the « hardware » and the « software » ones. What if they start to point towards the big information platforms where we store and share information. How about becoming « cross platform » there? For me, the recent rumbles on the different Social Media platforms have given me a bunch of inspiration on becoming a new kind of « cross platform geek ».
Experiment with me and dip your toes into the FediverseSo I have started my little quest with a wade into the primal soup called the Fediverse from which (one day) might rise a new and resilient way to tweet. So far I don’t have many friends or followers, but that is not the point. The point is to discover the pro’s and cons of a service that is NOT tied to somebodies big add budget. It’s all built on dreams, hopes and rubber bands, but so was the Internet back in the 80’s. Come find me, talk to me and discover what’s next .. For cross platform geeks.
Find me on Mastodon
In a refresh of an episode last released in 2018, this is the updated for the 2020s edition of KW’s everyday carry. There’s been some changes since the ‘almost everything Apple’ version of this several years ago, so come along and get nosy as we snoop through Knightwise’s updated EDC.
LINKS
Minimal Bag – Everyday
- iPhone 13 Pro Max
- Onyx Boox – Nova Air
- Bose QC45
- Samsung Galaxy Buds
Work Bag – Work days
- M1 Macbook (not exact model match)
- Surface Pro X (ARM)
- iPad Mini (6 gen / 64GB + 4G)
Miscellaneous bits and bobs
- Logitech MX Master
- Logitech MX Keys Mini
- Cable holder card
- USB C Everywhere (almost, thanks Apple)
- USB Stick
- SSD 1TB
DISCORD
The action is happening over at our Discord server: Join by clicking this link
CREDITS
- Mix & Production: Keith Murray
Back for the first episode of 2023, Knightwise is joined by a couple of guest hosts this week to talk technology challenges, and working in a world of ubiquitous data availability.
LINKS
- The Chronicles of Curious Characters Podcast
- Chocolatey
- OneDrive
- Cryptomator
DISCORD
The action is happening over at our Discord server: Join by clicking this link
CREDITS
- Mix & Production: Keith Murray
A quick Instagram post leads to 20 minutes of scrolling. A ping on Linkedin ends up costing me 5 minutes of my day looking at people boasting their new job titles online. A lookup of my train schedule somehow derails into rabbithole search about the origins of the Decepiticon known as Astrotrain. Lets face it: The internet is a distraction pit. Aside from housing the grandest repository of information on the planet, it also comes with a set of addictive apps that love to steal all of your time and eat up the last remaining crumbs of your attention span.
I remember when I had my very first PDA….
I remember when I had my very first PDA (You kids: That is short for “Personal Digital Assistant”. Those digital filo-fax like devices that would house your contacts (whome you could call on a separate phone), your calendar and a bunch of other handy applications like mail(and games) that would get you through the day. Via the magic of a serial cable, this thing would sync with your computer and dump swap out all of the updated info you crammed into it, with applications like Outlook Express or god forbid, Netscape Mail.
Incredible as it may seem, these things were quite productive. You would leave with a “fresh” set of data for the day, and dump out all of the updated emails, contacts, calendar requests etc … in the evening. Meanwhile you could ruin your eyes by trying to read a Ebook on them (I read a small library on them and now wear glasses), jot down notes with a tiny pen (and bastardise your handwriting) or just look cool by flipping the thing open like James T Kirk waiting for a beamout.
The time you spend on that device was your own.
The upside of it was: The time you spent on this device was your own. The You got to choose what you did next, not some pesky marketeer-psychologist-algorithm-entity that is shoving the next TikTok vid down your throat. But sync-cradles no longer exist and “being offline” is no longer an option these days. But there is a solution. How about some “middleware”, applications that allow you to enjoy the functionality of the internet without its distractions ?
Let’s try to start with Social Media. Under immense peer pressure I have found that occasionally I need to post some things on Instagram, to prevent friends sending out search parties to find my withered corpse. I hate Instagram and am especially vulnerable to Reels Video’s. I spend precious time scrolling down to the next video and wrack a huge “scroll-guilt” when I see how time slips through my fingers. I like to poke my head out on Twitter but could not care less about political retweets or watching Elon-the-idiot hogging trending topics. So I want to use social media without HAVING Social media. Can I? Answer? Yes! The answer is simple: Buffer. Its a Social Marketing scheduler for businesses but it works great for the average Joe. You can post to your personal Twitter and Linkedin profile just fine. Instagram takes a bit of fiddling, you’ll need to convert your account into a (public) creator or business account. But after that it works like a charm.
One-way Socials
So during the day I snap up some fancy pictures, snarky comments or insightful business blabla and ram the posts into Buffr. I can either post them to one (or multiple) channels, or hold the world in suspense and schedule everything for later. All of that without having any of the spammy apps installed on my phone.
One-way Socials. Yeah I know: I’m screaming into the void and not actually listening for a response, am I? That’s not completely true. I selectively pick and choose my moments where I access the Socials via the web. “Checking in” I call it. I glee over likes, read the snarky comments and snap a quippy response in a DM. That way I do Socials when I want to (and not the other way around). I filter out the crap that is force fed by ‘the algo’ and take back control of my phone (and life).
It’s a small step, but an important one if we want to take back control of our digital life and start watching the screen when WE want to, instead of the other way around.
After a summer hiatus Knightwise is back with a bit of a deep dive into creating your own interconnected network with Tailscale.
LINKS
- TailScale
- DietPi
- DietPi on KW 1403
- xRDP
- Keyboard Layouts
- PuTTY
- TOR
DISCORD
The action is happening over at our Discord server: Join by clicking this link
CREDITS
- Music: Good Day to Die by Möbius
- Mix & Production: Keith Murray
It’s one of those days where I need to go outside. The dreaded world on the other side of my keyboard that requires my presence to interact with its inhabitants in order to get done. After a silent morning I hop in the car and drive off. In my personal rolling steel cage, everything is … Continue reading "Noise cancelling your life. Don’t hear, but listen."
A quick mini-podcast this week inspired by the Knightwise.com community and a discussion over on the Discord. LINKS Wijngaardbos Henis Midnight Commander NC Spot Castero NewsBoat RainbowStream IRSSI Libera.Chat Joplin CLI DISCORD The action is happening over at our Discord server: Join by clicking this link CREDITS Music: Drop it Like It’s Spock by KFaceTV … Continue reading "KW1607 – Conquering the Command Line"
Pdf’s: We love them, right? They are our favourite cross platform way to replace paper and save trees. That is, as long as it is a passive experience. Like just reading whats on the page, perusing the manual, consuming the content. But when you need to edit them it kinda goes downhill from there. Well, … Continue reading "Do just about everything with a PDF (online)"
The first installment of our Live TV show where we talk about the stuff, geeks love to love. LINKS Enable WSL in Windows 11 Upgrade your WSL2 Kernell: https://wslstorestorage.blob.core.win… Get the Windows Terminal Preview DISCORD The action is happening over at our Discord server: Join by clicking this link CREDITS Live recording by Knightwise.
The first installment of our Live TV show where we talk about the stuff, geeks love to love. LINKS Book: Make Time. App: Prologue Audio book player. Podcast: Jason Scott talks his way out of it. Watch: Fanfiction: Star Trek Axanar. From the Archives: Transformer art. DISCORD The action is happening over at our Discord … Continue reading "KWTV 001 – Make Time, Prologue, Jason Scott, Axanar and Classic transformer art."
A quick mini-podcast this week inspired by the Knightwise.com community and a discussion over on the Discord. LINKS Joplin DISCORD The action is happening over at our Discord server: Join by clicking this link CREDITS Mix & Production: Keith Murray
I love to listen to audiobooks when I have the time. Nothing is more enjoyable than being sucked into a story read by a good narrator and tearing through the pages of a book with the tips of my earlobes as I’m mowing the lawn or working out. There are plenty of ways to do … Continue reading "Run your own Audible service with Prologue"
Yesterdays workout at the gym had me on the prowl for a new ‘random’ podcast episode about no particular topic. I had just re-installed the Google Podcast app in order to be able to cast my podcasts to my office speaker, when I came across a Ted-Talk daily talking about the 3 secrets of resilient … Continue reading "Lifehack: 3 secrets of resilient people."
On this week’s walk Knightwise presents some food for thought about how we manage our private information online, and how those managing our social networks manage us as a result. LINKS Its Me App Hot Pink Slippers Flickr 30k Dataset Don’t use ISP DNS DNS DNSSec Firefox Brave Protonmail Joplin NextCloud Belgian Trains DISCORD The … Continue reading "KW1605 – Data and the Erosion of Privacy"
For two decades the era of “Linux on the Desktop” has been just around the corner. This week Knightwise takes us through a discussion of how he’s using Linux to drive some tasks for work, and how the pandemic-driven changes of 2020 might have helped push more Linux to the forefront. LINKS Linux Distros SUSE … Continue reading "KW1604 – Linux for a Living"
Podcasting has always been a way for those who don’t otherwise have a platform, to get out and share what’s on their mind, share their knowledge and experiences, and do it without having to buy your own small-town radio station. This week Knightwise takes us on another walk through the Belgian countryside to tell you … Continue reading "KW1603 – We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Transmitters"
This week on the podcast Knightwise takes on the topic of retro computing. Whether virtualized or involving the resurrection of old hardware here are some ideas to put some older tech to use for you in 2021. LINKS The Internet Archive – Software Archive Macintosh Garden RetroPie RetroArch DISCORD The action is happening over at … Continue reading "KW1602 – Retro Computing"
Welcome to the first episode of Season 16 of the knightwise.com podcast. Picking up where we left off at the end of Season 15 with a show about the iPad Pro and how KW puts that to work on a regular basis. LINKS The iPad (Wikipedia) DISCORD The action is happening over at our Discord … Continue reading "KW1601 – Letting the iPad Pro Work for You"
Maybe its because i’m getting older but, for some reason I just love to play around with old technology. It might be a sign of age and nostalgia, it might be the direct result that the current digitital landscape is just too damn distracting and high-paced to get anything done. A lot of people go … Continue reading "Indiana Online: Digital archeology on the BBS."
I love spending time in the terminal, but you guys know that by now. The clean ascii interface helps me focus and keeps my jittery mouse-hand away from clicking yet another random site filled with modded transformer toys and loose whatever concentration I have left. There are multiple command line apps you can find all … Continue reading "Windows finally gets a decent command line."
There is so much news on the internet and social media and its all packed with fear. I don’t even know what I need to be worried about first’ — Years and Years — ‘There is so much news on the internet and social media and its all packed with fear. I don’t even know … Continue reading "Back to Blogs"
Working from home used to be a novelty: Something new, something different. Gone were the commutes or waiting for paint to dry while stuck in traffic, we could rule the world from our home office. It was all still just temporary .. right ? Fast forward a couple of months and in month number 9 … Continue reading "The return of the penguin."
A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to pick up a couple of old Macs from a friend. I’ve been collecting some retro machines over the last couple of months, tinkering with them to relax from the long days of lockdown home working. One of the items on wish list was a a … Continue reading "Messing with Macs."
As kind of a geek-midlife-crisis gift I decided to buy myself a DJI Mavic Mini II for the holidays to reboot my creative exploits and get out of the house a little more. After some shaky backyard tryouts I decided to give the little flying bugger a decent maiden flight. I hiked out into the … Continue reading "The golden forest: Testing out the Drone."
You might be a middle-aged digital dinosaur if you still remember this movie but, back in 1995 “The Net” (Starring Sandra Bullock) was a bit of a hit movie depicting a digital recluse coder who gets her identity stolen and actually has to go outside … to get it back. The movie raised a lot … Continue reading "A bit like Bullock: How life is a little like the movie “The Net”."
After ten years have past since the launch of the famous iPad tablet we take a look back through history and ask ourselves: Is the tablet ready to serve as a replacement for our desktop? We rant about the pro’s and cons of android vs IOS and how Microsoft came close to the holy grail. … Continue reading "KW1507 Tablets through time."
In the second part of “Lockdown Lifestyle” we focus on filtering the information coming your way via Social Media and being aware of the “reality distortion field”. We train you to help tech organize your day and talk about the goals you want to set for yourself. LINKS Bobiverse Series by Dennis E. Taylor [Good … Continue reading "KW1506 Lockdown Lifestyle part 2"
We are back (from the dead?) with a new show talking about the impact of “working from home” during the lockdown. In part 1 of a two-part episode we talk about how to use technology to enhance your digital (and analogue) lifestyle during the lockdown. How do you use tech to separate Work/Life/Play and stay … Continue reading "KW1505 – Lockdown Lifestyle Part 1"
The Discord roundtable is back again this week with the perennial discussion among technology and open source enthusiasts – Will we ever see the year of the Linux Desktop? LINKS Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Launch WSL 2.0 CREDITS Mix & Production: Tim King
Your ears do not deceive you, in this time of social distancing and zoom-based happy hours, the members of the knightwise.com discord bring you a roundtable of geeky goodness. CREDITS Mix & Production: Keith Murray
Its been a while since I blogged. Hell, its been a while since I did anything of great importance for Knightwise.com. And for that i want to apologize. I could blame the usual scapegoat of not having enough time, and in part that is true. But only in part. The other half was a lack … Continue reading "Getting the band back together."
This week producer KD join’s Knightwise to talk about resolutions (or not), goal setting (or not) and setting up some guiding lights for your year with annual themes. LINKS Cortext Podcast – ep. 20 [YT] KW1402 – Fighting Your Distractions KW – I Forgot How to Nerd CREDITS Mix & Production: Keith Murray
Welcome to 2020!This week Knightwise takes us through a list of projects to help stretch our geek muscles and maybe try out some new ways to use or think about technology as we slide into the new decade. We’ve got, things to learn, ways to protect your privacy and your data, projects to try and … Continue reading "KW1501 – 10 Geeky Projects for 2020"
Sliding from operating system to operating system is always cool, but the borders between the different OS’es sometimes make things hard. What if we took those away? We show you how using Virtualbox to merge your machine’s, your applications and your files using Virtualbox. Links Virtualbox Installing Guest Additions Sharing Folders with Guest OS Live … Continue reading "KW1405 – Merging Your Operating Systems"
This week on the podcast Knightwise is back in the car as he dives into the philosophical side of creativity with some thoughts on how to get from wanting to create, to having done some creating. Links iRiver 790 Review [CNET, 2004] Zoom H2 [Wikipedia] Download the mp3 Credits Mix & Production: Keith Murray Music: … Continue reading "KW1404 – Enabling your Creativity"
This week we dive into the wonderfull distro called Dietpi.
We discover its a great way to turn a single board single purpose computer into a multi-function wonder-device.
We take it a step further by showing you what DietPi can do for your Raspberry Pi and your home Linux server. Another raspberry-jam-packed show with hacks tips and tweaks for cross-plaform geeks
Links
- Music: The Midnight “The Comeback kid” [YT]
- DietPi: https://dietpi.com/#download
- DietPi Software: https://dietpi.com/dietpi-software.html
Paperless.
I have a superpower. (Aside from being a sexy geek that is) and that superpower is that whenever I write down a piece of essentially important information on a piece of paper, that slip of bleached wood pulp gets transported to a parallel universe and is never seen again. I have lost countless phone numbers, ideas, concepts, plans and memo’s by writing them down. However, ask me to pull up a piece of digital information (no matter how trivial) from 12 years and 2 days ago? Chances are that I’ll have it for you in under 10 minutes.
So the logical decision for me is of course to go paperless. I have been reading Ebooks for years now and I very very rarely handle a paper book (Because It might not be available digitally). And with writing it’s the same thing. Give me a stylus and let’s go completely paperless. So what do I write on?
Writing on the iPad I got myself a 5th generation iPad just to be able to have a very compact and light divide to write on. Instead of going for the rather large (and clunky) Apple 1st generation Stylus, I went for the Logitec Crayon. A rechargeable stylus that was designed for the educational department. It handles better then the Apple Pencil but i’ve had some issues with battery life that I need to figure out. The apps I use on the iPad mini are OneNote for taking handwritten notes and Notability for doodling. Annotating Pdf’s is done in the PDF Expert app. The upside of the Ipad Mini is of course the size (its extremely handy to carry around) but that is also its downside. The downside on the Mini is that you don’t have a lot of space to run apps side by side. Having a youtube video open while simultaneously taking notes does cramp your space.
Writing on the Surface Go
The “other” device I write on is my Surface Go. This smaller and lighter 10 inch “cousin” of the Surface Pro line is an excellent little laptop in its own right. The smaller form factor makes it a lot more “natural” to write on then its bigger Pro cousins. Having done annotations and writing on a Surface pro 4 with their 12 inch screen I can say that 2 inches makes a lot of difference. (2 inches SMALLER in this case ladies).
The upside with the Surface Go is that you of course have a “complete pc” with you. The keyboard cover is expensive but extremely handy and does not get in the way of things when you flip it back to start writing. Just like with the iPad you can split your screen and run apps side by side. Book on one end, notepaper on the other. But it is not always practical. The palm rejection acts up when you accidentally touch the ‘other application” with the palm of your hand while writing. The fact that when you are writing in landscape mode also does not help for ergonomics. The Surface go is slightly thicker than the iPad Mini (and a lot thicker) and that also gets in the way.
Flip the Surface Go into landscape mode and it’s a whole new ballgame. The screen is now almost the exact size of an A4 sheet of paper and when you put your note taking app into fullscreen mode it makes for a nice writing experience. The applications I use for Doodling here are “Bamboo Paper” (Because instead of the standard and expensive Microsoft Pen I went for the Bamboo Ink pen) OneNote for writing and Edge for annotating PDF’s.
So what do I write on ? Which device I pick up generally depends on my mood and on what I want to do. When doing a meeting with a client I find that the iPad mini works great. It’s small enough to carry around and aside from taking notes during the meeting I also use it to walk around, take pictures of their infrastructure and write up some annotations on those. When I want to study from a book I sit down with the Surface GO. Using the Text-to-speech function in Edge I can have the book read out loud to me while taking notes. I’ll put the Surface Go in landscape mode, Open the ePub in Edge, press “play” and the put OneNote fullscreen to write and scribble my way through.
The Picard manoeuvre But sometimes one tablet is not enough and I go for “The Picard Manoeuvre”. Inspired by the desk of this Starship Captain that was occasionally riddled with tablets, I too go for a multi-tablet approach. The output device (displaying the content I want to examine, a book, video or what have you) might be my Kindle or even a laptop. My annotation device can be the iPad or even the Surface go. The best combo I’ve tried so far when studying from a book is using my Kindle to read and my iPad mini to write on. The end result is a small and light combo I can shove just about anywhere.
Writing 2.0 In the end going Paperless has given me a lot of advantages. I have my notes with me anywhere, can change the order of pages, I can add pictures and even sound files and even put in some typed up text, screenshots, quotes and so forth. It has become so bad that I have a hard time working with “regular” paper because it lacks that functionality. The only downside with my approach is that writing on a screen is not the same as writing on paper. This takes some getting used to and does mess up your handwriting (although i’m not sure this is because of the device or the fact that my handwriting was never that great). I’m not sure.
But gone are the days where I ‘lost’ notes, annotations and the formula for warp drive. (I had it, I swear). Now .. I just “Write 2.0”.