What caught my attention in weeks thirty-two to thirty-four, 2023
In continuation to week 31, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in week 32 - 34, 2023:
- 🏖 Just before our family vacation we were all sick (cold) or someone broke something, but somehow we managed to travel to the Baltic Sea. Actually, we are more of a bike-hiking family that is drawn towards the mountains, but this summer we had the opportunity to house-sit for friends, which we gladly accepted. Vacations with a dog have to settle in anyway, and biking vacations aren't possible with her for now. (So far we don't want to put our dog in a pension or similar.) The long journey was - as usual for the Deutsche Bahn - chaotic. Two of our previously booked connections were canceled in advance without replacement, we had to spontaneously reschedule on the way and change trains in Hamburg, which we actually wanted to avoid. There, of course, we unexpectedly ran into a CSD demo. Incredibly many people at the main station. There was no forward and no back - our dog was visibly shocked by the "interestingly" (for our dog) dressed people, but she mastered it brilliantly. The vacation was stormy and rainy at first, but very relaxing and we were able to recover well. After our return, my wife and I went straight to Cologne for a party and I then went to Bonn for a three-day conference.
- Nevertheless, there were some tech-related things that caught my attention during the last weeks as well:
- 👾 During my vacation, I got a little involved with RetroGaming. I have been toying with the idea of buying an Analogue Pocket for a very long time. However, the horrendous shipping fees, the customs fees (in total at least 50% extra on the retail price of $200) and the completely unknown delivery times have prevented me so far. I therefore looked around for alternatives and found especially the following youtube channels / videos very helpful:
- 🕹 I then included the following devices in my shortlist:
- Miyoo mini+ (Linux),
- Anbernic RG353PS (Linux),
- Retroid Pocket 2S (Android), and
- Retroid Pocket 3+ (Android).
- 👾 I guess everyone has different ideas and preferences and I don't want to summarize all the reviews etc. here but I finally bought a Miyoo mini+ and pre-ordered a Retroid Pocket 2S. The Miyoo is now running OnionOS and I am overall very happy with that little device. It's crazy how many different manufacturers, operating systems and form factors there are. And there's definitely still a lot to understand now, especially in terms of RetroArch. However, I have to be very careful not to slip into some kind of new collecting passion, which unfortunately happens way too fast to me.
- 🕹 In the course of my research, I've scoured countless best-of games lists for System XYZ and remembered the countless games I've played, loved, or just desired. However, my absolute favorite systems back in the day were not handhelds / game consoles, but my Amiga systems (500, 600, 1200, and CD32). To be able to play some old classics, which are now often even freely available, I bought the corresponding bios files from Amiga Forever (somehow getting them off one of my two Amiga computers still sitting in the closet was too complicated for me). On their site you can find lots of related links to Game Download Sites and Support Sites, too. Then there is AmigaVision - The ultimate Amiga games and demo scene setup. And I also looked into FS-UAE Amiga Emulator. I haven't had that much time to play with all this stuff yet, but of course have already bought a 8BitDo SN30pro gamepad, which makes a very good impression on me so far.
- 🥧 So, the next logical step would be to look into this RetroPie - Retro-gaming on the Raspberry Pi - right? 🤦♂️
- And of course there were some macOS and iOS apps I've stumbled upon:
- 🔍 Finbar - Supercharged menu bar search. [...] Finbar reimagines the Mac’s built–in menu bar search with great features such as fuzzy filtering and tracking of recently selected menu items.
- 📆 Whendy App - When should you get started? Just ask Whendy. No more time math: Start with a target time and then work your way back. It's that simple! I've mentioned this app before but it was once again really handy in the recent weeks.
- 📺 Callsheet: Find Cast & Crew - Have you ever wondered "who is that actor?", or perhaps "when was this movie released?", or "what was the title of that one episode of that show I love"? I'm still not sure if the "little more" info you get presented, e.g. compared to the more classic trackers like TV Forecast, really justifies a subscription, but the price is more than fair and the app really functional and well made.
- 📺 ScreenCred: Movie & TV Credits - Find connections between your favorite movies, shows, actors, directors, and more. By searching two movies, shows, or people, ScreenCred takes a unique approach by only showing you the common cast, crew, and credits between the two.
- ⁉ Codepoint - 70,000+ Unicodes in your pocket! Codepoint helps you find glyphs, icons and symbols. Search for Unicodes, characters, emojis or SF Symbols.
- 🪐 Memmy for Lemmy - Memmy is built for the community, not for a profit. Fully open source and transparent; all code is available on GitHub: I am still not into Lemmy (as I was never really into Reddit) but there seems to be some traction in client development lately, c.f. below
- 🫘 Bean for Lemmy - Bean is the best way to explore the Lemmy and the threadiverse with a beautiful UI designed for iPhone and iPad, and with a number of themes, customisation, and view options to choose from [...].
- 📝 Goodnotes 6 was released: Replace your paper notebooks and reimagine digital note-taking with Goodnotes. But I think I'll stick to Notability - Note-taking Notebook, PDF & Voice Notes.
- 📷 I use an older version of QR Generator Factory 5: The Ultimate Batch QR Designer. But I might look into the newly released QReate - QR code editor as an alternative: Say hello to the ultimate app for creating fully customizable, stunning QR codes!
- 📆 Dato was updated: Calendar events and world clocks in your menu bar.
- ☀️ Mercury Weather - "It's a weather app. How much is there to say?": My Carrot Weather subscription is about to expire and Mercury Weather seems to be a nice (and cheaper) alternative, now with a macOS version included.
- 🦾 As a longtime Keyboard Maestro user I am not in for another macOS automation tool but if you don't use it and BetterTouchTool neither, this might be an alternative to look into: Keyboard Cowboy 3 - With Keyboard Cowboy, users can automate repetitive actions, launch applications and scripts, control system settings, manipulate files and folders, and perform a wide range of actions – all without ever having to take their hands off the keyboard.
- ⚙️ Glad to see, that Toolbox Pro, Logger for Shortcuts, and Nautomate will live on.
- 🗿 Some Obsidian related stuff:
- My essential and useful Obsidian plugins: Certainly not super interesting for advanced Obsidian users, but for beginners a nice compilation. I also found a few new suggestions.
- Basic Dataview Query Builder - The goal is to help you on your first dataview queries and to give you a better understanding of the syntax and needed information to build dataview queries from scratch: Also rather for beginners, but to understand a little better to design the queries certainly a useful help.
- Obsidian Minimal Theme was updated to Release 7.2.0 - Adds and new experimental color scheme Eink and a new way to turn bullet lists into Cards.
- Obsidian Web Clipper was updated to work better together with the new Properties feature: A bookmarklet for Obsidian that saves articles and pages from the web as Markdown files.
- Speaking of Obsidian and its CEO, I like this story.
- There were some micro.blog related "news" as well:
- 📝 Scribe - A Micro.blog Editor was released.
- 🖼 Pixelfed cross-posting was added to Micro.blog - This joins our existing set of cross-posting services like Mastodon, Tumblr, Flickr, Bluesky, Nostr, and others. I still wish there was an option to cross-post per post, rather than an all or nothing approach.
- ✏️ I had my first use case for Micro.publish - an Obsidian plugin to publish notes directly to Micro.blog, written in TypeScript by Otávio. Awesome plugin!
- Web related stuff and some other things:
- 🔗 Adam Nowak added a Blogroll to his awesome blog. And therefore, I've updated my blogroll for blogrolls as well ;-)
- 🔍 Kagi Search - A Premium Search Engine - Kagi is an ad-free, premium search engine for people who value their time, attention and privacy: I've started using their free trial and like what I've seen so far. Still not sure if it's worth $5/month over using DuckDuckGo, but I will evaluate it further. To delve a bit deeper, I've installed their Safari extension and set up a Search Template for Launchbar.
- 🛑 Stop using Brave Browser - Seriously.
- 🐘 Followgraph for Mastodon - This tool allows you to expand your connection graph and find new people to follow. It works by looking up your "follows' follows".
- 🐔 Another Farm Roguelike on Steam - Another Farm Roguelike is a 2D farming & crafting game with rougelike elements where your job is to earn as much money as possible to pay the rent: it looks compelling, just have to use my son's gaming PC then. Nope, no chance, I have too many other ways to play games anyways (c.f. above) 🤦♂️
- 🖼 Flow Mac Wallpaper: A vibrant and fluid chromatic wallpaper for your Apple devices. And another one: Accidental iOS 4 Wallpaper.
- 🌌 Stunning: Unveiling hidden features in M51 using 255hours - An astrophotograph by Tim Schaeffer on AstroBin.
- 🐦 I love the idea of Birdbuddy but unfortunately it's way too expensive for me. I think there were some Raspberry Pi DIY projects out there, too. How to search for them someday.
- 🔨 There were some reports on failing SanDisk SSDs. So, checked mine but WD told me they were all fine. 🤞
- 🪿 I've 3D printed a goose and it's sooooo cute!
- 🥰 Justin, the developer of Mastowatch, sent me some stickers.
- 🎙 Not that much podcast listening in the last three weeks:
- Accidental Tech Podcast: 547: Own Your Pricing,
- Accidental Tech Podcast: 548: Starting to Count Chickens,
- Accidental Tech Podcast: 549: Unauthorized Trash Can,
- Bits und so: Bits und so #858 (Bandbreite),
- Connected: 464: I Got Myself Some Thermal Paste,
- Hemispheric Views: 091: The Dongle Was My Best Friend!,
- Hemispheric Views: 092: Sushi Mouse!,
- Upgrade: 471: A Technological 23rd Century Star Trek Thing, and
- Upgrade: 473: I Can Talk About the George Foreman Grill Now.
- TV and Movie:
- 🍿 We watched Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3,
- 📺 I binged Hijack: Season 1 over the course of two evenings, and
- 📺 we started watching Ahsoka.
- 🙋♂️ Okay, it was nice not to sit in front of a Mac for three weeks more or less, but I hope that I will manage to write my Weeknotes weekly again and keep them shorter. Thanks for reading and maybe see you next week.