2023-02-06

No Longer Justified and Ancient

I have changed the text alignment here to start instead of justify. I'm still quite ancient though. That's all I wanted to say.

Still no Master Plan

Still not sure what to put here. The first few entries wrote themselves kind of. I just had something I felt like writing about and then I did. But that doesn't happen every day, apparently.

All Bound for Mastodon Land

Mastodon is pretty nice, so far it's a steady flow of things to read, not as much as I used to have on the old place, in the before times, but the quality is good. And I am posting a lot more, and that's quite nice too.

People seem to really like the Griffin Powermate thing I posted. 😅 It's at 53 favourites and 12 boosts right now. Just goes to show that people like things that are old, well made, stylish, and useful, and get happy if their shiny thing can actually be used with their modern computer.

There is of course a lot of old hardware that's just impossible to use these days—I should know, I have most of them—but not that much of it that is as useful or intuitive as a knob, and not that much that keeps so well due to an all-metal construction.

I posted a link to my instructions on the BetterTouchTool forum also. People there also seem to like it. 🙃

So that's it then, my 15 minutes of fame. Now I can go back to being boring again.

An interesting observation: Adjusting the volume in macOS with the Powermate controlling the "small steps" is a lot more laggy and sluggish when using the AirPods than when just using the computers own audio output. I guess that's because the volume is actually adjusted by the AirPods themselves, so a command need to be sent over bluetooth to them, and possibly a reply coming back. For every. single. small. step. adjustment. And there are a lot of small step adjustments done when turning the wheel.

Rocking to the Rhythm in their Ice Cube App

Still have not tested Ice Cubes for Mastodon. Still have not updated to iOS 16 or macOS 13. The latter is the reason for the former. I should get around to it some day. But I worry it will break my perfectly working setup 🫤.

I'm using Toot! still. Seems to be the one that suits me best at the moment. It's not perfect, but I still like it. Worth every money I paid for it.

In other software non-news, still using Sublime Text for coding, but I use CotEditor to write these posts in markdown. Spellchecking works better there, as it's the macOS standard. And I need spellchecking. 😬

CotEditor have an annoying bug while writing Markdown though. The section selector flickers slightly every time I stop typing for a few seconds. It's very annoying, as it usually sits right there in my peripheral vision and just blips every time I stop typing for more than one second.

I should probably check if there is an issue for it already, and possibly report it if not.

On the other hand, if I stop typing for too long my brain might start working.

It's 3 A.M. Eternal

I wonder why I never seem to be able to sleep at any kind of sensible hour. And why is it so easy to sleep in the mornings?

Also, if Instagram send me one more push notification about reels I should be checking out, I'm uninstalling the app. Sorry to the three people I have on Instagram messaging, we can probably find some other communication channel.

Is Flickr still a thing by the way? I have an outrageous amount of photos on Flickr. Not really worth looking at. Too many of them are from a PLASMA JET concert. No, not those plasmajets, the Japanese one. What, there's more than one? Yes, it's death metal. No, I don't remember which members were in it at the time. No I will not explain. Actually, I couldn't even if I wanted. Moving on.

You got it, You got it

My old friend Martin tooted that I should have my own YouTube channel about "old and/or quirky tech". I think there are quite a few of those already—I'm subscribed to several—so I don't really see what I could bring to the scene. If it's one thing I'm bad at it's doing regular things to a schedule. And if it's one thing I am good at it's missing deadlines. And I don't even like the very angst inducing whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

I am also far too shy to ever be successful. I bought a fancy looking microphone some time back. I still haven't talked into it for fear of hearing my own voice. And fear of the neighbours hearing me. I mean, they will think I'm even crazier than they already think I am. Not that that is a bad thing, but still.

But for what it's worth, I do have a Youtube channel already. Since 2006 in fact. It even used to be monetised back before they changed the rules about minimum subs and watch time. No, it never earned any money. And there are no serious videos on it.

And I see now that Youtube have automatically converted my short videos to "shorts". Thanks a lot for that Youtube, I really love how my videos now continuously loops as people try to locate the hidden description with important information and context.

My most popular video have 21,710 views.

That actually surprise me. It's just showing me controlling an RTI (Road and Traffic Information) LCD-screen from my Volvo S80 with an Arduino. It's a pretty cool screen really, it's motorised and comes up from the dash when the system activates. Many people wanted to use it to show other things though.

That was 11 years ago. I was doing a lot of hacking on that car, sniffing the CAN-bus, documenting diagnostic commands, controlling the screen so I could hook my original Nintendo 8-bit to it. I used to be rather active on an old Volvo forum back then, and I documented everything I did on the forum. I just used Youtube to host small videos for the people on the forum to see.

That forum is now gone, and so is all the useful info I wrote and all the discussions with other people there. They say the internet never forgets? Shows what they know. The internet is a huge amnesia-machine, it only cares about the "new shiny". Bitrot is a real thing, and the Langoliers eat anything that is left.

Before I used Youtube I actually used Google Videos. Does anyone even remember that anymore? They closed it (of course they did) for new uploads in 2009, because Google bought Youtube. They later closed it down completely and all my videos were automatically migrated to my Youtube channel, but unlisted, and I never made them public.

I see now that two years ago Youtube changed all unlisted videos uploaded before 2017 to private. I should change that back to unlisted.

Here you go, this is a link to what I believe is the first video I uploaded to Google Videos. I'm in the video. My brother is commenting behind the camera.

It was migrated to to Youtube on November 1, 2012, but it's a lot older than that. It's been unlisted/private ever since, and right now it sits at one view. And that is me. I watched it. (Ok, two views now as I had to confirm it works again) And now you can too! Using that super secret special link, only for the Justified people who read this far. My special gift to you. Thank you! 😍

Unfortunately, unlike some other videos uploaded in 2005, my video didn't net me $1.65 billion just a year later. Because I uploaded it to Google—for free—instead of making my own video platform and later selling the whole company to them. Easy mistake to make.

Anyway, mentos and lemon soda? Not impressive. 😆

Last Train (Do You Wanna Ride?)

Yes, I completely derailed here. Anyway, Youtube-channel: Totally Exists. Prospect of getting new videos up there any time soon? Outlook Not So Good.

But one should never say never, so they say. Who are They? Who knows. Doctor Who (Hey!) The Tardis. You What?! (You What?!) Exterminate! Posh, Posh, Posh, Loads of money.

I'm probably getting quite tired. I should really stop now. But that has never stopped me before.

And since you're here, have another video. This one is actually public, I made it 10 years ago. The music was totally used without permission or credits, but it's Worm Riders from Panzer Dragoon Orta OST. I should probably update the description to mention that. Also, it's a good soundtrack. Give it a listen if you like. Especially Ancient Weapon 1 (Yes, there is a remix of it called More Than a Weapon, totally worth a listen also).

Should ye ever find yeself with yon OG XBOX, and ye olde fire-button-mashing-thumb is up for it, do give the game a try also.

I'm just old, am I not?

Good night.