I’ve mentioned before that I’m very picky when it comes to keyboard. This drives my husband crazy, because we have too many keyboards in storage as I try something for a little while, realize it isn’t fitting the bill, and then in the closet it goes.
A couple of years ago I discovered Velocifire keyboards on Amazon. They are mechanical keyboards that are relatively cheap on Amazon, and other than an annoying space bar rattle, I like the way they perform. It’s probably because I learned to type when I was in elementary school and first used an IBM Selectric Typewriter at age 10, but I like a keyboard with a little bit of heft and the rapid-fire sound of fingers dancing on the keys for all to hear. It makes me sound productive.
I wanted to jazz up my keyboard with a new set of keycaps. I’m also pleased with that which is retro, and Drop offers their MT3 Dasher Keycap Set. Modeled after Data General’s “Dasher” terminal of the late 70s and early 80s, this keycap set has a delightful retro kitsch to it that makes my geek heart happy. The keycaps are compatible with any keyboard using Cherry MX (or equivalent) key switches, so it took just a few moments to pop off the original keycaps and pop these new caps in their place.
Mechanical keyboards are fun!
The upgrade in the feel and sound of the keyboard is a delight. I’m very pleased with this purchase, especially since this set was marked down from $120 to $39. A little pricey but well worth it.
These little things make my workdays at a geek that much more enjoyable.
I am a dork. I freely admit this. And because I’m a Gen-Xer, I know what life was like before we had smartphones and tablets and even Windows and pretty graphical interfaces when it comes to interacting with a computer. Sure, when I worked at Digital back in the late 1980s and early 1990s we had DECwindows and even Windows/386 (Windows 2.0), but we spent a lot of time at a console prompt.
As a geek I am still very interested in the console prompt. This runs contrary to my status of a somewhat Apple Fanboy and aficionado of Linux desktops.
Sidebar: as much as I try, I don’t find Windows 10 nor Windows 11 that appealing. Yes, I can do plenty of things on Windows and I’m productive at work everyday using the mandated Windows 10 environment on the company issued computer, but it’s not really my cup of tea. To each their own.
Because of my typing or keyboarding abilities (I can currently type around 130 words per minute on a well tuned keyboard), I prefer to move files around in directories or folders by typing commands instead of dropping and dragging with a mouse. I even have a terminal prompt application installed on my iPad and that makes things work quite lovely for me. It’s a comfortable blend of ying and yang. Maybe as a Gen-Xer I should be saying, “I’m a little bit country, I’m a little bit rock ‘n roll”.
I’m typing this blog entry in a text file on my repurposed 2011 Mac mini. Apple has deemed this Mac mini too old to run a modern version of MacOS, so I’m using it as a file server running Debian Linux. I don’t have a GUI (Graphical User Interface) installed on this machine, I just get to the console via one of my computers or by using the small keyboard and monitor I have attached to the computer in my office. The program I’m using to write this entry is called vim, a newer version of vi, which has been around for decades. Just for kicks I also have WordPerfect from the early 1990s installed on this server and I’ll use it once in a while. When I worked at Digital we used a word processor called “WPS-PLUS” or “WPS-8” (depending on the machine I was using at the time) and I created many beautiful documents through a plain-text editor not much more robust than this text editor I’m using right now. It wasn’t WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), but it was enjoyable and it didn’t cause me eye strain.
Embracing my inner geek keeps me sane. And as I get older and slowly tip-toe away from sanity, anything to keep me grounded is always a good thing.
I was wasting time on Youtube. The algorithm suggested a run of all the credits ever shown for “Laverne & Shirley”. I suddenly remembered something that has been bothering me since I was a kid.
The two women in this shot in the ending credits can not be Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams.
The same two people are shown throwing snow at each other during the first season opening credits, and if you look really close, it looks like one of them is a man disguised as a woman. Yay for HD remastering!
Their profiles just don’t look like Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams. I even noticed that on my parents’ 19-inch Zenith back in 1978.
The lumber yard/hardware store/contracting business owned by my Dad’s side of the family sold General Electric appliances. The GE “ball” logo was everywhere in our home, especially after Dad built the house I spent the latter half of my childhood in. At one time, my grandparents, and each family of my dad’s siblings had the exact same dishwasher, and they were all emblazoned with “GE Potscrubber” across the front. You could also change the color of the front panel of the dishwasher, but that’s a different blog entry.
As a child of this GE atmosphere, coupled with the fact that both paternal grandparents at one time worked for General Electric at Electronics Park before I was born, I learned to associate GE with quality. It’s one of the reasons I chose GEnie, the General Electric Network Information Exchange, as my first online experience.
One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about the GE brand is that the company and its subsidiaries have maintained a consistent logo for over 100 years. There are slight variations in the “GE Ball”, but for the most part, anyone and everyone knows what that symbols means. Unlike Coke and Pepsi and Target and Walmart, who update their logo with the times, GE’s logo is timeless. Aside from that first incarnation in 1892, it has looked the same for nearly 125 years, and I think that’s pretty nifty.
It’s a quality logo that has withstood the test of time.
The only time I’ve found GE branding confusing is as found on a spacemaker laundry unit in the condos at Walt Disney World’s Saratoga Springs Resort.
Here’s the unit was simply labeled “GE Quality Product” any in no place featured the familiar GE logo. I can only assume someone else built the unit for GE and GE was just licensing out the name. Today GE’s laundry products are actually made by Haier, and GE lends out their logo to maintain familiar branding.
One of my favorite fonts was also created by GE. I use this font all through my Linux desktop setups (Windows and Apple don’t let users change the font). This font is called GE Inspira and it has a nice modern touch to it. You can find it through a simple web search.
I now have the old jingle, “GE, we bring good things to living, we bring good things to life” rattling around in my brain.
I’ve had the new M2 MacBook Air for a few weeks now and I’m still quite pleased with my purchase. The build quality of this computer is phenomenal, although I still prefer the keyboard on my Magic Keyboard case for my iPad Pro over the keyboard on the MacBook Air. It’s nowhere near the questionable experience of the Butterfly Keyboard Apple put in their machines in the late 2010s, but there’s something about the keyboard that feels slightly off when compared to the iPad Pro.
I’ve mentioned before that work insists I use a Windows 10 laptop. I have this docked to a large monitor with a standalone keyboard and mouse, because I don’t really enjoy the keyboard built into the Dell ultrabook. I wish they’d given me a Lenovo ThinkPad, those keyboards are wonderful, but alas, dude you got a Dell.
The standalone keyboard I’m using for work these days is a bluetooth Microsoft keyboard and after using it for a month or two it’s starting to miss characters once in a while or slowing down to wake up for work. I was hoping the Microsoft keyboard would give a PC version of a Mac keyboard experience, and it’s not bad. The spacing feels a little cramped but it doesn’t make the noise my mechanical keyboard makes, which is good for Zoom-type meetings and the like.
I still love the keyboard on my old Lenovo ThinkPad T460s, except the CTRL and FN keys are swapped and that throws me off from time to time. Linux is still quite enjoyable, and I just updated the ThinkPad to the latest version of Fedora. It’s now running Fedora 38 with Cinnamon as the desktop of choice.
My productivity is best on the MacBook Air, and that has become my daily machine. Linux desktops are quite nice but don’t feel quite as intuitive as Mac OS when it comes to getting things done. Too many of the desktop environment choices of Linux try to be something else. I really wish someone, somewhere would come up with something completely different from the desktop experience. I was hoping the iPad Pro and iPadOS would fill that niche, but Apple is just trying to shoehorn desktop functionality into a tablet. I’m hopeful that AI will someday be able to look at a “data stream” coming into your computer and basically ask you want to do with that data. For example, you get an email suggesting dinner out with a friend. The AI should be smart enough to present a few of choices: respond to the email, open your calendar, suggest a restaurant, or make the reservation. This is where walled garden data sources don’t work well and why I always lean on my data in one app being available to data in another app.
Maybe we’ll get there before the end of this life.
I missed important calls from work last night. The issue at work ultimately turned out to not be a problem related to my team’s work, but it took some time to get that figured out and since the crisis team at work couldn’t reach me, they started calling up the hierarchy chain.
I am disappointed in myself for not being on top of this.
One of the most irritating things about the modern age is that spammers and scammers are allowed to irritate and ring phones and send text messages at all times of the day and night without any sort of control efforts from our legislative bodies. Anyone that spams or scams my phone should be shot. Full stop. This is why I have my phone so locked down when I’m sleeping.
I figured out how to set up the “sleep” focus mode on my iPhone so I will still get calls from work. Normally my iPhone is ALWAYS in silent mode. I don’t even know what my ringer sounds like. But when I go to bed each night, I’ll have this reminder to prompt me to take it out of silent mode as I put it on the charger.
I’m not about to miss another call from work. I have too much responsibility and my team does too many great things for me to fall down on this.
And props to me for having the same alarm clock that I purchased at Ames in Worcester, Mass. in 1990.
I’m always fascinated by these promotional films from the 1950s. I love the style of the cinematography, the positive attitude presents, and the fashion and style the folks are wearing in general.
Here, the fictional(?) town of Hilldale finds out a new freeway is coming through their town.
It has been my attention to take a “modern” approach to my personal computing needs. I have an M1 Mac mini from 2020 for my desktop setup, and I’d do everything on my 12.9 inch M1 iPad Pro. Apple encourages users to try this approach and I was willing to give it a whirl. I tried this before with my old iPad Pro and I find the experience a little limiting when traveling.
I had my iPad Pro as my primary computer on my last trip back East and even though Apple insists the iPadOS can do everything I need to do, there were limitations. I’d go to a website to take care of some medical paperwork for my mother and it wouldn’t work. Multitasking is never easy, even with the latest updates to iPadOS. The setup worked 80% of the time and as we start traveling more, I need a setup that works 100% of time.
I finally convinced my husband I needed a laptop. I’ve been playing around with the idea of going to a non-Apple device again and focusing on a Linux setup. Even though there has been huge progress with Linux on the desktop over the years, again, I’d find myself becoming dissatisfied with that setup and knew I’d still be wanting a proper Mac laptop. After all, MacOS gives me the full UNIX experience I’m looking for with the terminal always being available.
Enter my new M2 MacBook Air.
For the first time in my Apple existence, I stepped away from the standard “Space Gray” and decided to go with their Midnight model. I also went up a notch from their base offering in the space and went with the 10 core GPU and 512GB SSD version.
I’m absolutely amazed at how fast this machine is. And it is gorgeous, oh so gorgeous.
Some unboxing photos.
I never owned a Mac that had the “butterfly” keyboard. My last MacBook Pro was the very last 2015 model they offered before switching to the butterfly keyboard. I set that loose a couple of years ago when it looked like it wouldn’t be easily supported by the latest versions of MacOS. My husband had a butterfly keyboard on his first MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (I don’t remember the year). His current machine, a 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, was purchased a year ago for his birthday and is still blazing fast.
The “M” series of Apple’s processors are absolutely amazing. I have always been impressed with the performance of my M1 Mac mini. Anything I threw at it was not a problem. When I used the machine for work during COVID, with video calls and multiple applications, and compiling software, and everything else, the computer didn’t break a sweat. It’s going to be repurposed for Jamie to use in his music studio, replacing a 2014 iMac he’s been using for a very long time.
This new M2 MacBook Air leaves that M1 Mac mini in the dust. I did not expect to see such a speed increase. This computer has been an absolute delight for the past 24 hours.
The setup was not as straightforward as I would expect from Apple. A few months ago Apple offered “Advanced Data Protection” for iCloud. This added an extra layer of encryption so that absolutely no one could access my data while in iCloud. The new feature requires the latest version of the relevant operating systems. As you can see in the last screenshot, the first thing I needed to do was upgrade my brand new computer from macOS Monterey to MacOS Ventura. Ventura made its debut last fall: five or six months ago.
Because of Advanced Data Protection I was unable to add my iCloud account to this new computer. That left me with two choices: add a temporary account so I could update the machine and then jimmy around in the users’ panel to add the “real” account or turn off Advanced Data Protection on iCloud (lowering security) so I could add the computer, update the computer, and then turn on Advanced Data Protection.
I tried the former, but ended up getting into a dead-end when it came to user management. This resulted in some fast searching to bring my computer back to factory settings and then I opted to go with option two. As a computing security zealot that is probably more paranoid than necessary, I found this approach unsettling but I went ahead and did it anyway.
The second solution worked and once that was done, I had everything up and running as I wanted within a couple of hours.
Aside from that hiccup, this computer has continued to amaze me with its performance. One thing I love about MacOS is that I can get to the terminal prompt and do all the UNIX (Linux-type) things I want to do but still have the MacOS experience riding on top of everything.
Overall I’m very pleased with the new computer. Aside from the few hiccups that seem to common around Apple these days, things are quite good and I’m a happy camper.
I mentioned last week that I had found a solution for my cross-platform app management, specifically around my personal journaling habits (Day One) and task management (OmniFocus). With both of these traditionally Apple-only applications having web interfaces, it was now easy to keep using them because I could still get to the data from my Linux computers.
Day One continues to be brilliant for me and it’s helped me sort out thoughts, reminisce about things that have happened in the past, and in general continues to bring me delight.
OmniFocus is another matter. While I’ve used OmniFocus on and off over the years, I always end up feeling like the application and/or processes are just too complex for my needs.
I’m a simple guy. I maintain a todo list so I don’t forget to do things. I’ll have a brilliant thought while out for a walk or falling asleep and I have to write it down or else I’ll forget it in five minutes. I can remember every room and associated schedule from high school but I can’t remember what I recalled five minutes ago to tell my team at work. So todo lists are important to me.
So, I’m back to “Plain Text Productivity” using todo.txt. I maintain two todo lists, one for my personal tasks and one for work. Every morning, when I sit down at my computer to work for the day, I type a buildtasks at the command line on my work-issued Windows computer and the automation builds routine things I need to accomplish for the day and copies anything from my personal list, which is sitting on our home server, marked with +work. It then deletes anything for work from my personal list.
It’s a little clunky but typing that command every day tells my brain, “OK, it’s time to work”.
Because I’m a GenXer that knows life before point and click and because I LOVE retro computing, I love tinkering around on the command line. And because I’m an applications developer, I can write simple scripts to automate the creation of checklists and integrate them into my personal todo list. As a pilot, I like checklists. A lot. My team at work has learned the value of checklists under my leadership.
In this screenshot I’m logged into my home server, looking for anything I’ve tagged with “blog” due today, finishing that task, and then creating a checklist for my next flight.
My “today” command is pretty simple, it’s a shortcut to a longer command that grabs anything in my todo.txt with the current date. Because I have my next flight checklist staggering dates, whenever I look at anything due that day, I’ll see the tasks to prepare for my next flight.
I’ll dive a little more into the scripts I use to augment todo.txt as outlined on the website in a future blog entry. It’s not as robust as point and click or touch and swipe, but it works well for the way I think, and that’s what keeps me on track.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
