I’ve been blogging (on and off) for a while now. Originally, I just wanted a place to write down things I’d done, tutorials, idle thoughts, stuff like that. But since I’m also active on Mastodon (or recently GoToSocial) and link to my posts there I started wondering if anyone ever actually reads my posts or if I’m shouting into the void here. You know, idle curiosity. The obvious answer to that question comes in the guise of website analytics. ...
I’ve wanted a digital frame at home for a while now. I’m notoriously bad at organizing pictures, even worse at sorting, printing, arranging or displaying them. So when I found out that digital frames were a thing it seemed like this would be a natural solution to this problem. Unfortunately, the commercially available ones either don’t have the features that I want (e.g. some way to connect with my images stored in my Nextcloud) or feature worrying amounts of integration with various third-party services, clouds, phone apps and whatnot. I’m absolutely not inclined to yield control of my pictures to some provider who is supposed to sell me a device for displaying them but maybe that’s just me. ...
A while ago I bought an eBook reader. I figured it’s a smart investment because the shelves at my place are almost full. Also, this would let me carry my whole library with me at all times so I have to carry less. Buying new books should also be easier because I don’t have to order them and wait but can just download them instantly. What’s not to like? Sure, there’s something to be said for holding an actual paperback in your hands but I think the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, at least for me. ...
I recently decided to get a new phone. The old one (a ShiftPhone 6m) wasn’t that old yet, I only bought it 2.5 years ago but it was already running on Android 8.1 which is no longer supported. I could have waited for the manufacturer to maybe provide more support in the future but it seemed doubtful to me this would actually happen. As I understand it, the biggest roadblock for this was the CPU, a Mediathek one, for which the manufacturer apparently doesn’t provide support or something of the sort. From what I hear Snapdragon processors don’t have this issue but what can you do? ...
Nowadays, I get the impression that most people realize how dependent we all are on the tech giants. Those few companies that are worth more than some countries and which shaped the internet of today to the point that, without them, most of it would simply break down. Most people also seem to know, at least to some degree, that companies like Google, Amazon and especially Facebook are not totally benign and do some pretty shady stuff with people’s data (to put it mildly). ...