I just got a new internet provider (might blog in more detail about them another time. One of the reasons I like them is they are not restrictive. I get a static IP address on my router. Nothing is filtered. I even get a /64 IPv6 range. Now I am trying to figure out how to use that many addresses. To non tech folks it’s never. That is how much it is.
Technology
All I Want Is A Dumb TV
We got a new television back in October 2022. As much as I try to stay up on the trends in technology, purchasing televisions has always made me apprehensive. When I bought the television in our living room nine years ago, I remember spending a lot of time researching and still not being 100% sure what I was getting was just right. The time before that, when I got my first LCD TV, was just as stressful. There are so many features that I really don’t know if having them matters. Even when reviewers say you need 240 Hz or whatever is the thing to get, I question whether it’s really worth the extra money when M doesn’t really care and my eyes aren’t exactly perfect anyway. I digress. I just want to talk about one bell and whistle in TVs today that you cannot avoid: the smart in smart TVs.
When I bought my last television in 2013, it was pretty hard, if not impossible, to get a decent TV without smart software. I didn’t like it then. I only used the Wi-Fi on our other television a few times to update firmware. That turned out to be a great decision on my part. The Vizio TV we had was one of the models where they were caught up spying on their customers. I forget exactly what they were doing, but I think it was either using the microphone to listen in or to see what advertisements people were interacting with. Either way, it was creepy and illegal. It didn’t impact me since my Wi-Fi on the TV was off, so there was no way for the TV to communicate with the vendor.
When I received our new TV, the folks from John Lewis went to set it up for me (it was part of the deal of mounting it on the wall). They asked what my Wi-Fi details were. I told them they didn’t need to do anything and that the television would never join my Wi-Fi network. It turns out, however, that I was incorrect. I tried to keep the television off the Wi-Fi network, but if I did that, I got a warning that remained on the screen until I connected it to the Wi-Fi. I guess the TV was smarter than I thought! 😂
Full disclosure I took the original complete blog entry I wrote previously and ran it through Microsoft Copilot, because why not. The results were not far from what I wrote but just better enough that for fun I am posting it!
The Story of my Technology Stress Dream
In the summer of 2019 I woke up to wrote down the details of a crazy stress dream I had. In the dream, I was working for the leader of a country that was just a bit unstable. Everyone around them seemed pretty out of it and I was trying to be reasonable and rationalise my working there.
Then I woke up. For a minute I was really confused and was not really sure why in the world I had a dream like that. Then I told M about it. And as I was talking to her it dawned on me. The night before I had purchased a SIM card from Google-Fi for our trip to New York that summer. Now it was not as difficult as you might think to associate working for an almost dictator and buying a Google-Fi.SIM card. I actually fretted over the SIM card purchase. I had spent many months previously ridding myself of all direct usage of Google services. Now here I am buying their phone service that inevitably was tracking me in ways that if I fully understood I would probably be very concerned. Then I rationalised the purchase because it was inexpensive compared to most other options and gave me a US number for our trip.
If I’m honest with myself I subconsciously associated buying Fi mobile service with going to work for an evil dictator. It’s not however I should have gone with my initial instinct and stayed away from their services. I know that they harvest data from my information and that’s okay if you know that and are okay with it. I’m not ok with it. I typically try to avoid it for my privacy. I’m also happy to encourage others not to do it. That doesn’t mean that Google is a horrible company. They really aren’t. I have friends that work there that love it. I even went to several interviews with them years ago and seriously contemplated working there.
I found it fascinating that I had that particular stress stream the day after I. made that purchase. I did use the service for the month we were in New York. I then cancelled it and have no intention of getting it again. Besides whatever data collection they do when you have the service it actually was pretty good service. And that is the problem. Not many people say google doesn’t offer nice stuff. it is the true cost that I am not ok with.
Is This Tech Snobbery?
Is it wrong to be tech biased against businesses (by not using them) in 2023 that still say email us and they give a Hotmail address?
Replace Hotmail with AOL and it’s the same question.
If you said ok to the first question do I assume the same is true if a merchants website looks like it originally was on geocities? Points for you if my last sentance makes any sense and you know what Geocities was!
Maybe I have a Hoarding Problem
So saving one or maybe 3 of something “just in case” is ok. Having 15 micro SD to SD card adapters is likely past the point of being considered a hoarder.
If having 15 was borderline hoarder then realizing I did not even have a slot on my computer to use the SD card adapters most likely put me over the top.
Classic Text to Speech Voices
I do not know why I find it funny every time I hear the automated announcements from Amtrak or the LIRR for that matter too. It’s 2023 (almost 2024). In the age of Siri and Google Assistant sounding almost like real people, Amtrak is sticking with a voice that reminds me of (because it’s the exact voice) a text to speech voice used in bad (and good) YouTube video voice overs from 2009.
London or all of England Train announcements are made by real people or pre recorded by people. Amtrak is at least trying to be modern with a full text to speech system. Or cheap, since they don’t have to hire voice actors. I think this particular voice was so widely used because it was free.
So what sounds more modern the old school person recordings or the synthetic one that is literally used in cheap cartoons?
Why Do We Always Have to Choose Between Convenience and Privacy?
It was a bit disturbing how fast using Global Entry got me through Passport Control at JFK today. I did not show my passport at all. I just had my picture taken and then walked by a guy at a terminal and he said my name as I walked by saying I was good to go. Entire process was maybe 2 minutes including the one minute for a kiosk to open up to let me take my photo.
In one way that entire process was right out of several movies. So cool us. On the other hand is having a US government agency have my facial recognition profile on file for a few minutes quicker passport control? I am struggling to answer that after looking at the passport control line as I walked briskly to the exit.
Spoilers, I am in New York for 3 days this weekend. Surprise everyone I did not mention that to. That is not the focus of this post but kind of a tip off that I am in the states going through Global Entry. This trip may spawn some other posts especially since I may have time to write while further traveling.
Let The Waiting For The Raspberry Pi 5 Begin…
So of course I pre-ordered the Raspberry Pi 5 (8gb) after I saw that it was announced. Sadly I missed the announcement by a day or two. I then saw the guidance that by the time I pre-ordered it would have to wait till sometime in early 2024 to receive it.
I also saw even after the launch if you subscribed to either of two Pi magazines you could get yours straight away. Yes I almost subscribed, but i am proud of myself for not doing it and waiting patiently. Or am I?
The Story of My Upgrade Partially Pi Powered Backup Network
I have written a few posts on using Resilio Sync to replicate my personal data as a backup network. Currently I have several nodes running at home on various devices. I have one remote nodes running. It is on a VPS that I may write about in more detail separately. I had another remote Pi at a friends house for years. With the cost of the VPS being so cheap and easier to manage remotely I gave up on the extra node with my friend.
Instead I have 2 Pi’s running Resilio at home. In addition to a ODROID HC2 and instances on my laptop and NAS. Every device does not have all the data on it except for the NAS. Some of the shares are so big I had to shard them out. Only the NAS has all the data. However all of my data is replicated at least twice in the house. All, but my videos are replicated to the VPS.
I also started using Amazon Glacial Deep Freeze to backup (approx $1 per tb) some shares. Deep Freeze is so cheap my intention is to add bigger shares to backup. I just have not gotten around to it yet.
The Raspberry Pi’s photographed are the Pi 2’s (white cases) and Pi 3’s (Grey cases). The current generation of Pi’s I am running are two Pi 4’s. One with four gigs of RAM and the other with eight. I have a third Pi 4 with four gigs of RAM that I am playing around with alternative configurations on. I still have the second and third generation Pi’s. I use the third-generation ones periodically. Most recently one was a dedicated Pi-hole, however I recently stopped using it.
Pull disclosure, pictured is the older P2 and P3’s.
My iPad Mini as a Phone?
I have had two mobile phones at the same time for years. One is my work number. The other one is my personal one. It is been that way ever since work stopped letting me expense my own number and required you to have your number on their shared account for at least 10 years or so. In the US I had concerns about moving my personal number to my work account. What if I left and I wanted my number back? Our human resources Department was actually very cool and had said you can absolutely have your number back. Only in rare situations (not a scenario I fell into) would there be a question of not allowing it. In any event I felt more comfortable keeping my personal number separate so I had my work phone and I had my personal phone.
When I got to the UK I could have simply got only a work phone. I didn’t have any history of a number that I have been tied to. In the end I got my own personal one for the same reasons I had one in the States. I wanted one separate from Work. In the UK it is significantly cheaper to do this. My personal phone SIM costs me 13 pounds for more data and minutes than I ever remotely use. In the US that same plan would cost 75-100 dollars.
The phone I use for work has varied greatly. It is generally my second phone. That means it is never a high end one. It has been everything from vanity of Android to an iPhone SE, the original. The SE is what came standard with the contract in the UK. The screen is frankly just too small for me. I find that funny since for years that was the standard size of an iPhone screen. I had many different iPhones of that screen size and didn’t like the size however got by ok. I guess age just catches up to you. Since the phone that came with the contract was virtually useless to me I used the SIM card to experiment with different phones. When are travelled internationally a bit in the summer of 2019 I bought an Android phone and they did dual SIM cards and used the Work SIM with it. I found that the very big sized screen of the android phone I was using specially as a second device made it useful for me. I didn’t always keep in my pocket so even though was bigger than my regular iPhone 11 pro it didn’t matter. I have written about my issues with the Android phone and why I sold it in another post. With that phone gone however I was back to either using the iPhone SE or an iPhone 6 that I had from the states. Neither option had a lot of storage. 32gb on an iPhone is basically unusable in my opinion now a days. To compensate for the poor storage and small screen of the SE I splurged for a used iPhone 7+. The screen size was nice. It was better than the 6 or SE I had. It just wasn’t bigger than my iPhone 11 Pro that I used for personal use. The physical size of the 7+ was bigger than the 11 Pro. That made it an oddity. The screen was smaller yet the size was bigger. The screen was nicer and the storage was better than the other options I had. I still found no value in carrying it around and left it in my bag for when I need it.
Even before the lockdown I had thought about using a tablet as a quasi phone. It was a good idea I never really did anything about it. During the lockdown I obviously did not really leave the house very much. I ended up using my iPad Mini 4 as a sort of phone replacement. In many use cases at least around the house the iPad mini was a pretty good phone replacement. I couldn’t keep it in my pocket all the time yet it was nearby most of the time. One challenge was that the iPad mini 4 was starting to see its age in performance. Before the mini 4 was being used as a sort of phone replacement I had meant to sell it on eBay anyway. My using it and feeling its limitations compelled me to sell the mini 4 on eBay and and upgrade to an ipad mini 5.
Sometime after getting my new iPad mini I moved my work SIM card to it. I have been using the mini basically as my second phone. Even though I can’t put it in my pocket (it is a bit big for that) I can carry around and even put it in my jacket pocket of some jackets. If I am out of the house for more than a brief trip to the market I usually have my backpack or messenger bag with me that I can easily put it in. I am finding the much larger screen size to be great.
Except for WhatsApp I think I can do pretty much everything on the tablet that I do on my phone. All my work apps work perfectly well and I take advantage of the bigger screen. I can make calls using FaceTime audio, Signal or Bria for voip calls using my US number. Let’s face I do not make many regular phone calls these days. Even if I need to I can use FaceTime tethering to my iPhone for that anyway.
I may end up needing to put the work SIM card into a real phone at some point in the future. I am not really sure. I am hoping not. The iPad mini isn’t perfect. I still use my phone more in the house since it in my pocket. I also use my iPad Pro more as a sort of computer replacement around the house. When I need to run out for short periods of time or even just to sit here and dictate this blog entry using the iPad mini is just right.