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This is a continuation of my recent entry about what I think makes a good laptop.
Display And Keyboard Size
I used to think a larger screen would be better, because you could see things better. But when sitting directly in front of the thing, it doesn't really make a difference whether the screen is 12 or 15 inches across. Larger screens tend to be available with higher resolutions. I think my preference for 15 inch laptops come from a time where there was a notable difference in price between laptops with screens with hardly acceptable and good resolution. But I've come to accept smaller-than-HD resolutions even though there are tasks where it really makes a difference. But with 15 year-old laptops, an HD screen doesn't have to make the thing much more expensive. So there are options, even with 12 inch devices.
The other thing is the keyboard (again). A larger device has more room for a more comfortable keyboard. HP makes use of the extra room. Dell didn't, at the time the laptops I'm interested in were made. In mobile workstations with a 15.6 inch screen can have a numblock, a 14 inch one can be less crowded (no half-size keys, spaced out special keys, extra rows). EliteBooks used to do a good job at that up until the 3rd generation. 12.1 inch Thinkpads (or the newer 12.5 inch ones) are a good example for crowded laptop keyboards. Not a bad keyboard. But there just isn't enough space to include and position all the keys one might want to have where one might want to ghave them. The thing is: 14 and 15 inch ThinkPads and Latitudes use the same keyboard layouts as their 12 inch counterparts. That's another plus for EliteBooks if you want a larger than 12 inch device.
So, since I'm on the ThinkPad bandwagon right now, and somebody gave me a ThinkPad X201 from their scrap box, I think that might be what I'm going to use next. I wouldn't have considered a 12 inch device. But, internals aside, it's just as nice to use as a T400, but ligher and taking up less space. I think if I had been introduced to ThinkPads through an X201, X200 or similar, I would have understood the hype much quicker. I will not go much into other manufacturer's counterparts to the ThinkPad X2xx series. But it is worth mentioning that both HP and Dell had similar devices to the X200/X201 both in clamshell and convertable/talet versions and their keyboards aren't worse. The Dell XP2 has a little fan in me. But those might be a topics for another entry.
Old Case With New Oragns, Frankenpads
I don't have anything agains newer hardware. I'm just not ready to give up on laptop keyboards that feel nice to use. The trend of thinner laptops with larger batteries in recent years has been made possible by smaller mainboards with highly integrated CPUs or SoCs. I imagine that the size of modern laptop keyboards is very helpful if one would decide to build a newer PC into an old laptop case. The X201 doesn't seem to be popular for this anymore. Most people seem to preferr newer models for some reason. I would have thought that is one of the most popular devices for Frankenpads, even if it's a bit more work. The keyboard is of the old style, small case still with a lid latch, but there already was an option for a track pad. I have not gathered too much information about doing this myself. But there seems to be enough resources and support in forums to make it a doable project. But you don't even have to. There is a commercial offer for X201s with 10th generation Core i CPU.
I did think about getting a 486 laptop with a really nice keyboard and mod a newer board into that. It would be a nice project. But not as practical as an X201 or similar. After all, the case would be much thicker. Most 486 laptops were about twice as thick. That would make it easier to fit a different board into it and position connectors in the right spots. Most designs wouldn't have room for a trackpad. The availability of replacement parts for ThinkPads is also a good reason to use a ThinkPad for this. But it would be a nice project. Maybe even with an ultraportable electronic typewriter. But for a laptop to buy, the X2100 si the best compromise for many reasons; and you can get it readily built by someone with experience in doing exactly that.
A lot has been written about the declining usablity of the World Wide Web due to web sites not respecting what visitors really want or need. So I'll just summarise here before I'll try to get to the point.
Megabytes of CSS and JS to display 15 Kilobytes of content and another few megabytes of ads and other bloat. It has become completely normal to have a hundret and more tracking cookies installed for wisiting a single web page. Many popular sites can't be read by at least some people because the distracting ads have become too much. Thise are the first major problems that come to my mind. Depending on who you ask the problematic development has started in the last couple of years, about a decade ago, in the mid-2000s or even in the 1990s. But most people above a necessary age to have experienced the difference seem to agree that the web experience was a better one in 2005 than today. Back then RSS was integrated by many popular sites. You could use it to read Twitter and subscribe to YouTube channels, for example, and sites that still offer it in the background used to place links to feeds visibly, not hidden in the source code for browser extensions to discover them. Web browsers themselves could not only display RSS feeds but placed an icon next to the address bar when a feed for the currently viewed page was available. RSS is often used to show how the web was more open in general. Even commercial web sites were created with a more open approach. A site were you had to register before you could view its content was an exception for which privacy was the reason, not monetary expectation or greed. This is the time to which most people seem to want to return to. When I say most people, I mean most people whose thoughts on the open web I read, which is those who post to the open web and are interested in such things to a degree that they want to write about it. So what I probably mean is "most people who are dissatisfied with the current state of the web". It's possibly that most people, or most internet users, love the way things are going now and hate the ideas advocated of the open web have, whether that is for or against their own good.
Sometimes I boost thought-out or new takes on the subject, well formulated demands or promotions of software solutions on the fediverse. And I often think about this myself. Because the web has brought me so many nice things and I want it to be a positive thing in society as well, which, overall, it doesn't seem to be anymore. What does the web need to make it better again?
First of all, the open web isn't gone, nor has it shrunk in size. There way more personal blogs, open networks and non-commercial projects out there than 20 years ago. Even new web forums open all the time. But it's less visible below the very very loud, commercial web. Maybe the greedy web is a good name for what I mean. Not every commercial web site is an example of how the web is devdeloping in a bad direction in my view. I want to be able to get information about a business from the business-owner themselves when I'm interested in their services, for example.
A search engine that returns links to non-commercial sites first, unless you really need information that can only be found on a page of a greedy site. I think- let's just not talk about the many problems (not even just challanges) that such a search engine would introduce if it is to be useful in practice.
A browser that only links to non-bloated/non-tracking/non-greedy/open web sites or warns when a link leads to a less-nice site. Again, I don't have the time right now to list all the problem that there would be if an attempt to implement this would be made. Maybe I'll write another entry about my deeper thoughts on the technological solutions that I mention here. But these thoughts don't contain any real solutions. So I don't know.
Create a literal small web, that only uses resources from and only links to, web sites that are following the same standard (e.g. only (X)HTML4, maybe only CSS2, possibly restriction on JS usage). That is in principle similar to building a whole new network, as is Gemini and Gopher doing. (I know Gopher isn't new, but I reckon the majority of sites is.) I forgot what other protocols with similar aims are there. As far as I know none that are widely used. There are initiatives to restrict the WWW to a smaller or older set of standards. Those probably influence site builders (mainly in personal web sites), but won't change the web as a hole. And so you'll eventually while browsing come across a site that doesn't restrict itself it what it's linking to, or you'll catch yourself linking to a bloated site because it's important to link to the original source of something.
JavaScript needs to be optional again. I've recently come to think that this is actually the one major goal among the technological changes that the current web would need to undergo in order to make it user-friendly and more usable again. In a time where you couldn't 100% expect that visitors were using a client that understood JavaScript, and had it enabled, web developers didn't have much of a choice and built in fallbacks so that a site was still usable without JavaScript. But the number of visiting clients without very good JavaScript became so small that it started to look optional, and in reality became not only optional but even rare, that fallbacks are included. JavaScript really took over the web. I could make so many words around this but don't have much time left this morning. Not only are there sites that are empty without JS loading the entire HTML. Such a thing isn't even special anymore.
If you are creating a new web browser, please include a switch in the GUI that allows to enable/disable JavaScript permanently (until deliberately switched on again) either entirely or for the currently viewed site. Or, maybe make it off by default.
tbd:this entry needs some links;write follow-up entries
I once had an HP Compaq 6710b. A typical 15 inch business laptop from 2014: A Core2 Duo, 4 GB, thick and reliable. Thin laptops are nice. But I like about thick, older laptops how well they took a fall on a hard object or a hit with a hard object. There used to be a thick plastic cover followed by an even thicker layer of space before the backlight and the actual LCD panel start. Enough room to make all sorts of fun case mods easy.
Those were the laptop screen covers.
So, what I wanted to do is put a piece of transparent plastic in there, engrave something onto it and light is with colouful LEDs from the side to make the engraved lines light up.
This is the type of look that I initially had in mind. The light from the LEDs enters the sheet from the side and becomes visible to somebody viewing from the front, in places where it is refracted by a rough spot.
I removed the cover and used a Dremel-like tool with a thin burr to cut along a line that I had drown on with a felt pen. But before I continued I learned that the way the LCD backlight apparently works is that it not only lights through a diffusor sheet to cover the whole LCD evenly, but also towards the back, where the light gets reflected by a sheet of aluminium back towards the front. So, in order to make the whole light up pink, as I intended, I had to cover the backlight first so the white light from the backlight wouldn't drown out my pink LEDs. I decided to go the easier way and use the white light and forget about my pink LEDs.
The piece that I cut out. (The scrap.)
After I had cut out the hole in the back cover in the shape that I wanted, I put the cover back on the screen to see how the image looks with a whole in the back cover. I couldn't notice any spots or any difference to before whatsoever. So instead of thinking of a way to mount the LEDs and bring a wire up to them, I found a pink piece of transparent plastic (a slim CD case), cut out a piece a bit larger than the hole that I made in the cover, and engraved my picture into that.
White shines the light of the back. Of the light shines back the white shine. Shine of white light shines back the shine. Shine, shine, white light; back of the shine, the shine. Shine shine the shine shine of the back light white shine.
I don't remember exactly why. But additionally to the pink plastic with Pinkie Pie engraved into, I put in a piece of linen-ish cloth. That's where the line structure comes from.
This is how it looks like after glueing both pieces onto the inside of the screen cover and putting the cover back on.
And this is how it looks like turned in, from the view of someboding sitting across of the opened laptop, looking at the back cover of the screen.
I used this laptop for some more time, then gave it away when I got a new one. (I think it was because the keyboard started to fail and I felt it was time for a new one.)
That was the first anything that I engraved into a plastic sheet with the intention to light it. Next in the evolution of me engraving things into sheets of plastic with the intention of lighting them are these LED pictures of My Little Ponies
File Attachments (6 files)
Distinguishing Line Separation in Texts
Entry created on 2023-12-30
Authors: steeph (314)
Categories: Reading (1)
incomplete (28)
Languages used: en (178)
Distinguishing Line Separation in Texts
Entry created on 2023-12-30
Authors: steeph (314)
Categories: Reading (1)
incomplete (28)
Languages used: en (178)
When reading an article or a book I often accidently read a line several times because I slip at the moment where my eyes run back to the beginning of a line. I thought maybe there could be a solution to this. My need for a solution for this problem may be unique. Probably almost everybody knows from expereince what I mean by slipping into the wrong line on a line break. But it sometimes really prevents fluid reading for me. So I thought of a few ways of formatting or presenting a text in a way that prevents this slipping.
The basic idea is to separate every other line visually so that it is intuitively obvious which line comes next when jumping to the beginning of the next line after a line break. An interlacing pattern that does not disturb the reading but just slightly guides the reader into automatically falling into the correct line after a line break. This may be an alternating pattern, marking every second line, or a more elaborate one that repeats overy three or more lines. In theory any such method should be possible to implement in a e-book reader. Maybe that would get me to switch from paper books to a tablet-like device.
One already commonly used mothod to achieve the same is alternating white and gray backgrounds. For some reason this is only commonly used with tables. Any colour combination could be used.
Another idea is to mark the line beginnings and endings in the free space left and right of the text. I like the idea of different shapes, e.g. a filled circle, a cross and a square outline; three symbolds that aren't easily confused on first sight.
The following I like best, visually, but it interferes with existing common formatting. The end of every second line becomes bolder at the end; the beginning of every other line starts out bold and becomes less so towards the middle of the lin, creating alternating lines of bold at the beginning and bold at the end. This way when you reach a line break on a thick line, you should continue on the next thick line after the line break. You may keep any typos that you may find in the following example.
This is just a list of topics I may want to write a post about at some point. I'll refer to it in the unlikely scenario that I want to take some time writing something but don't know what. I don't really know why I made this public. I'bve read a good argument recently on not keeping such a list. And it's neither complete nor up to date anyway. I think I'll remove this entry. But not today.
- Posts that I wrote for other web sites that are not online anymore
- Sharing posts that I wrote for other web sites that are still online
- Web sites that I started but that never went online (casemodding, t-shirts, ...)
- A generic post about programmes that I've written that nobody ever saw because it never got into a state in which it would have been worth sharing before I lost interest in the project. (DOS and Windows software)
- Zeitraffervideos (RdB hauptsächlich)
- RGB mood lights
- old crappy case mods
- Generating BMP files with bash
- https://winworldpc.com/home
- http://toastytech.com/guis/
- Reverse Proxy Services: localhost.run, ngrok, serveo, sish
- My Serendipity
- GalaCon 2022
- Lucid Dreaming Electronic Devices
- YouTube Clients
- Klik & Play Games
- short post about blucid intro recognising the musician
My Favourite Movies
Entry created on 2022-04-03 (edited 2022-07-24)
Authors: steeph (314)
Categories: Films (15)
incomplete (28)
Languages used: en (178)
Topics: Films (11)
My Favourite Movies
Entry created on 2022-04-03 (edited 2022-07-24)
Authors: steeph (314)
Categories: Films (15)
incomplete (28)
Languages used: en (178)
Topics: Films (11)
I've been meaning to put together this list for years but never took the time to do it properly. I'm not taking that time right now, either. But I'm starting with
a few titles and am hoping that I'll find the time to fill this list peace by piece over the next weekscenturies.
These aren't really my favourite movies and shows. It would be nearly impossible to compile such a list. Some of them I enjoyed very much, some of them probably are among my favourites, but some I'd just like to share because I think more people should be aware of them.
Movies made me cry and are actually dramas
| Title | Year | Genre | Keywords or reasons why I like it |
|---|---|---|---|
| And Then I Go | 2017 | Drama | empathy, youthful, drama |
| The Cure | 1995 | Drama/Comedy | sad, adventurous, sickness, drama |
| Pay it Forward | 2000 | Drama/Romance | sad, drama, naivety |
| Die Beste Aller Welten | 2017 | Drama | Austrian German Language, drama, drugs, small child |
| The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things | 2004 | Drama | sad, fucked up, drugs |
| Honey Boy | 2019 | Drama | sad, emotional abuse, mental health |
| I Know My First Name Is Steven | 1989 | Drama | Child Obduction, Abuse, |
Movies that made me laugh a lot
| Title | Year | Genre | Keywords or reasons why I like it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy | 2004 | Comedy | funny, absurd, drama, romance |
| Airplane! | 1980 | Comedy/Romance | absurd, funny, romance |
| Ace Ventura: Pet Detective | 1994 | Comedy | Silly, Cheap |
| Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls | 1995 | Comedy | Silly, Cheap |
| Office Space | 1999 | Comedy | Rebellious, Non-caring, Revenge, Crime though |
Child psychopath movies and movies that I put in the same category despite not being about psychopathy
| Title | Year | Genre | Keywords or reasons why I like it |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Good Son | 1993 | Soft Psychological Thriller | interesting, tragedy |
| We Need to Talk About Kevin | 2011 | Psychological Thriller | emotions, tragedy |
| The Boy | 2015 | Light Horror | suspense |
| Luminous Motion | 1998 | Drama | fun, adventurous, fucked up? |
Sweet movies (Wholesome movies)
| Title | Year | Genre | Keywords or reasons why I like it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harold and Maude | 1971 | Comedy/Romance | sweet |
| Chef | 2014 | Comedy/Drama | sweet |
| The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) | 2020 | Drama | sweet |
| Malcolm | 1986 | Comedy? | sweet, criminal though |
| Once | 2007 | Drama, Romance | Music, Charming, Mellow, Sweet |
Weird movies (Movies that I find or found confusing or hard to understand or that have a very unusual way of telling a story and that I like for it)
| Title | Year | Genre | Keywords or reasons why I like it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stay | 2005 | Drama(/Mystery) (Thriller?) | Dreamlike, Mental Health |
| I'm Thinking of Ending Things | 2020 | Drama, Thriller | Dreamlike, Serious |
| Memento | 2000 | Mystery, Thriller | Crime, Violence |
I have been wanting to write about this piece of 16 bit Windows software for a quite a while. I don't know why.
I'll just start this entry and continue whenever. Just want to have it started for now…
When I got my first own computer - that must have been around 1996 or 1998 (probably closer to 1998) - I got most of the software that I used for free from magazines that came with diskettes or CDs. Because it was cheap. I reckon the publishers didn't really pay for the software that was on them, or may even have gotten payed for including restricted freeware/shareware on them. Because most of these magazines weren't even pricey for the magazine themselves, and you got the software for free. One of these disks included a demo of "Klik & Play" (That's how it's spelled everywhere. I'm pretty sure it was spelled "Klik 'n' Play" in the logo/intro animation, though. But whatever.) A programme that promised to enable the user to create computer games without previous knowledge, without writing any code, without knowing how to programme at all. I checked it out just because it was there. I remember thinking "who are they trying to fool with that language and why?" because of the slogan and promises (that I don't remember word by word). But after playing with it for a while, I was positively surprised by how true the claims seemed to be. You could really create a video game without knowing how to code.
I thought this piece of software genius back in the day. I was - idk - 12 and hadn't really thought of writing my own software. Computer software, in the minds of the people that I had to do, wasn't something that you wrote or edited yourself. Creating your own programme, writing your own code wasn't really in the realm of possible things to do with a computer. Almost as much as it is viewed now. I mean, editing a .BAT file in DOS was the hackiest one would get among my friends, and even that was rare. So the fact that the developers (Europress Software - Wikipedia credits Francois Lionet and Yves Lamoureux) managed to allow me, to create a simple, 2D, actually playable game, and the way they managed to allow this by using mostly to only the mouse, impressed me.
I think I don't want to explain how creating a game with Klik & Play works in detail. You can search the web or watch a video for that. But to get an idea of what it was like, and of how simple it was: On any given screen ("level") you can click an icon to add an object. You can select from a number of categories or add your own graphics and GIF animations. Then you could choose whether that object is just a background object (not doing anything, not moving, not interacting with other objects, not changing, ...) or if it represents one of the players. If it's a player, you can choose a set of controls. Most of the actual programming takes place in a table. On one axis are all the objects, on another axis something that can happen to or with them. And in the fields of the table, you choose what's supposed to happen when this circumstance ever comes true. So the table sort of represents a huge set of possible interrupts. Common things that can be acted upon are: An object touches an edge of the screen, an object touches another object, a key has been pressed and released, ... And examples for possible actions are: Move an object by incrementing/decreasing coordinates or by setting them to a fixed value, changing an objects velocity, jumping to the next or a specific screen ("level") in the game, increasing the player's points by 1. Just with there few examples, you could: Make the player object jump when you hit the space bar (e.g. in a jump&run style game), make it stand on the ground object and platforms (e.g. in a platform style game), make it move left and right when you hit the arrow keys, make it reappear on the other side of the screen when it leaves of side (like in Asteroids), make it collect and count coins, make it die when it touches a deadly enimy and only one life was left on the counter, go to the next level when this one is won, ... and much more.
Note that this is all done by only clicking on objects, buttons, lists, menus. Once you got used to the interface and know what's available, it's really easy to use. There is a feature that makes getting started with a new game even easier though. You can run the game in a mode where every event for which an action can be defined, interrupts the game and lets you choose an action (or choose that for this event it shouldn't ask/interrupt again) and then continue the game. The ball touched a stone, what do you want to happen? Bounce the ball, delete the stone object, increase variable A by 1, play CLICK.WAV. The ball touched the left edge of the screen. What do you want to happen? Bounce the ball, play CLACK.WAV. …
I think I could have handled writing code myself at that age, at least after having created some silly game-like things in Klik & Play. But nobody showed me and teaching myself seemed overwhelming. (It wasn't really. Good books and reference guides existed back then. But I didn't know.) Anyway.
You could play the game file by opening it with Klik & Play or you could compile it, which produced two files: an 16 bit EXE and a game file. I think the latter contained all the graphics and sounds and the executable was the actual game. But I'm not sure.
There were a number of programmes around in the 90s that promised to let you programme and/or create your own games without knowing anything about computers first (or that made some similar claims of that sort.) I tried two others, that took a completely different approaches. But I think they deserve their own entries. I could probably plan to make a series about these sort of tools where I start with the goal to create a complete list of functional, worth mentioning programmes, and end up with a pile of unexpected feelings of resignation over the fact that there are too many products to mention, like I did with alternative operating systems.
(tbd: proofreading, add links, add screenshots, fix misremembered details, write continuation about Klik & Play games.)
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