I think I found a 4G dumbphone that's ok

It's becoming increasingly difficult to find a simple phone for calls, and I blame HMD. Attaching the Nokia brand to garbage phones was probably an excellent marketing strategy, but consumers bought into it, allowing HMD to push decent-quality phone companies out of the market. It turns out that slapping reputable names like Nokia 3310 or Nokia 8110 on dime-a-bucket knock-off phones is enough to trigger nostalgia. HMD don't even try to adapt the design or match the color of the original—not to mention the features. The Nokia brand alone appears to be enough to sell.

The problem is that people who review these phones, in fact never use them. They write a quick review - "this cute nostalgic funny looking thing, pbly good for Digital Detox™ or smth" - then get back to their 8 GHz/1 TB RAM Androids.

Then there's r/dumbphones with threads like "Screentime bad - suggest me a simple dumbphone. No unnecessary features! Just WhatsApp, a-a-and Spotify, a-a-and Uber, a-a-and navigation with real-time traffic data, a-a-and dream analyzer, a-a-and mood light that changes color based on stress levels, a-a-and projector... ". This is why overpriced phones like the Light Phone, Mudita and the Punkt exist, leaving even less of a market for reliable, reasonably priced, simple phones.

Because of all that, it's extremely hard to find a phone that just works as a phone. Phones from 2000 are dying breed where I live because 2G is being actively replaced by 4G. You might think there are a lot of modern dumb phones on the market, but most of them, even those produced by Nokia, are 2G. New 4G phones usually come with "updated" software and unremovable pay-per-play games. That wouldn't be as bad; I think I have the willpower to ignore your $4 Racin Attak garbage, but with "evolution," we also get lower-quality software with breaking bugs.

My Nokia 215 4G fails to sync the network time. This results in the call and SMS history being randomized. The fancy thread-like SMS interface is clearly not intended for the screen size. This makes it extremely cumbersome to use. It has no service in places where there is service. It does not work on all advertised network bands. It quietly loses calls and SMS , as I found out the hard way when I missed deliveries. I've gone through multiple recent Nokias, and they all have some kind of fatal flaw. Compared with other cheap knockoffs, though, at least Nokia seems to be malware-free. Yes, noname dumbphones can have preinstalled malware that will quietly drain your account with paid SMS.

Another problem is that 4G feature phones are getting bigger with each model, slowly swelling to a size comparable to smartphones. I really miss how tiny the relatively recent Just 5 Surf was. The reason for their growing size is that it is cheaper to design and produce larger PCBs than smaller ones. This is especially true when the number of devices produced is small compared to the pre-smartphone era.

Marketers hope that by putting a larger screen on devices, you will buy that stupid game or at least launch YouTube Shorts (the manufacturer will get a couple of cents for preinstalling YouTube, Facebook, or other undeletable crapware). Bigger sizes are sometimes falsely justified as being more convenient for seniors, but the screen font size rarely matches what the elderly can comfortably read. Marketers also try to reach "those who cannot afford real smartphones" by introducing bigger screens and features, which is silly because the cheapest smartphones and 4G dumbphones cost around $50.

So after getting fed of Nokia BS , I've ventured on a quest to find a new phone. And I think I found a dumbphone that's ok!

Read More →

Photo of the Day: Garmin Instinct Solar

This is post of appreciation of my Garmin Instinct Solar watch, which has travelled the world with me and been an indispensable tool in many adventures . It has GPS recording, altimeter, thermometer and sunset time, but thanks to the monochrome display, the battery lasts for month (+recharging from the sun), not like your silly "smart" watch :p

I also like to use different straps all the time, so that when I look at watch, it looks fresh and doesn't get too mundane.

#PhotoOfTheDay #survival #gear #prepper #MilitarishAesthetic #travel

Pagefind: a perfect search for a static website/blog

I fancied a search function for this blog , mainly so that you, dear readers, would be able to click on tags like #DIY and #Tip and see all the posts I have humbly written for you. Bloated blog engines like Hugo or Jekyll achieve this by generating an extra html page for each tag, but this goes strictly against my understanding of minimalism. By the way, minimalism is the reason why this blog uses no engine at all and is generated by a bunch of regexes .

To my shame, previosly, I used Google for tag functionality, clicking on tag lead to a Google search like www.google.com/search?q=site:developer.run+%22%23DIY%22 . And I was looking for a better search solution just for my blog.

Read More →

Building a Nixie Clock is easier and cheaper then you might think

The Nixie Tube Clock is an example of geek luxury. It's rare, it looks cool, and there are only a limited number of tubes left in the world, adding to the elitism. And it gives your lab that evil genius vibe. But with the right knowledge and skills it is easily obtainable.

A set of 6 new tubes will cost you around $60, the closer you live to Eastern Europe - the cheaper. Just search for nixie IN-12B on Ebay. Used tubes are even cheaper, but bear in mind that they have a limited lifespan (5-10 years). And by "new" I mean made in the 1980s, because around that time mass production stopped.

Read More →

Keyboard Scroll Wheel mod: Now with STLs!

Created 3D printable STLs for mounting keycap sized rotary encoder (EVQWGD001). Because every keyboard needs a scroll wheel . In Alice-like layout you can put encoder in the middle, the regular keyboard - replace Caps Lock. Cable raceway for Alice-like layout attached as well.

Grab on Thingiverse !

#DIY #MechanicalKeyboards #STL

Built a Macro Pad with Knob and Display

I did not have time to build a full mechanical keyboard (and I'm happy with X-Bows Lite ), so I built myself the macro pad. Extra buttons are always useful, especially a knob for volume control.

Buttons are mapped to: Play/Pause, Next Song, Start/Stop Pomodoro, and one for later use.

I've even found a practical application for an OLED display:

• When I'm playing fullscreen games, display shows GPU/GPU temperature and overheat warnings to not overcook the chips. And the current time so I don't overcook my brain by forgetting to sleep.
• When media is playing, display shows title of currently playing song or Youtube video.
• When rotating the knob, the display shows the percent of volume. The trick is that it shows the actual OS volume, so it will be correct even in case the volume is changed by other means (like os interface). This is achieved by sending the current system volume to the device when handling volume keypress in Linux .
• When idle, the display shows some awesome monochrome logos I've shared previously . Just like the way it looks.

To communicate with the display made a script to send any text, or show logo or progress bar on the macro pads display. On the receiving end is some QMK trickery , of course.

Wire with fancy "aviator connectors" goes to a custom Scroll Wheel I've put in the center of a keyboard. This is an evolution of my QMK Scroll Wheel project by adding some extra functionality to Raspberry Pi Pico.

Read More →

Photo of the Day: Radiation Detector

As this is my personal blog, and Pinterest views are over the moon, I've decided to occasionally share cool photos I am making.

My faithful radiation detector Radiacode 102 is super tiny and convenient, but not as cozy looking as the iconic CDV-700. So I think I made a perfect lock screen wallpaper for the phone!

#PhotoOfTheDay #survival #gear #prepper #MilitarishAesthetic

My perfect playlist for programming

Let me share my Spotify playlist , primarily inspired by the soundtrack of the best computer game of all time - Space Rangers 2, and other space exploration games like FTL. Turns out this music is perfect not only for playing these games but also for programming.

My Space Rangers playlist contains 89+ hours of psytrance and similar beats. Thats two full 8x5 work weeks of music (or four days if you listen 24x7), and if you enable shuffle - even more! You may wonder what is the difference from Space Station Soma ? Difference is that this playlist , is curated to avoid boring ambient-only tracks (where you got 10 minutes of barely audible hum). Also avoiding "dharmic" tracks that are too trippy. So most of the audio contains alive beats that will keep you awake and productive.

And if this type of music is not up to your taste, my another go-to recommendation for work is Rekt FM online radio.

Space Rangers playlist on Spotify

#Spotify #Audio

Music Control Tip

Did you know that you can "blacklist" songs on Spotify, by automatically skipping them? Or automatically switch to the next online radio station when there is a song you don't like. Or skip songs containing Live in title, because I still can not undertand why people put such things on the web. Basically, any media control automation you can imagine.

All you need is a playerctl . What it does, it allows to listen media for player events, for example, do action on song change. Also, it allows universal control of media players, for example pausing or skipping the song. Works with any player with MPRIS D-Bus support, so VLC, Spotify, Youtube in the browser, etc. You can write scripts in Bash or Python (for Python bindings install libplayerctl-dev gir1.2-playerctl-2.0 ).

#Tip #CLI #Spotify #Audio

Contemporary quote about AI

I don't usually drop smarty-pants quotes in this blog, but this one sounds too relevant nowadays. Forget me if I'm being dramatic, but too many people poison everything with AI just for the sake of a quick couple of bucks and hype.

I have not seen quote used recently so let me share it here:

You have no care for your species. For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons. Only now are such things possible. And what would you be paid with? What would your price be, for aiding this thing to free itself and grow?

— William Gibson, Neuromancer

#AI