Computers

Flash, flash, flash–storage fest

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In thinking about cutting down my load, I’ve come up with an idea. Stark has a forward SD slot under its trackpad that usually houses a simple slug that Dell pre-installed. Swapping this with my spare MicroSD and a SD adapter is one less thing to keep track of.

Experimenting with this idea, I also opted to try a few drives in my standard kit.

My old 1TB Transcend drive works pretty snazzy. This is one of those old green laced grey “Milspec” framed drives connected with an old Samsung MicroB 3.0 cable.

root@stark:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/terryp/Transcend/dd.img bs=1M count=10241024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 1.80687 s, 594 MB/s
root@stark:~# rm /media/terryp/Transcend/dd.img 

Generally, I use this drive for backing up my laptop since it’s one of the better portable drives that I own. Give or take how old it is, lol. This drive is also formatted exFAT unlike the other drives, which are all FAT32.

Here’s the 128G SanDisk Ultra flash drive I bought some years back:

root@stark:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/terryp/DE47-D1C8/dd.img bs=1M count=10241024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 14.8877 s, 72.1 MB/s
root@stark:~# rm /media/terryp/DE47-D1C8/dd.img 

Which mostly serves for shuffling files around, since it’s a decent capacity for a small size.

Here’s a pair of USB drives from Microcenter free coupons. A slower 32G drive labelled USB 3.0 and a faster 16G drive labelled USB 3.1; the translucent cases look like the board designs are the same.

root@stark:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/terryp/USB DISK/dd.img bs=1M count=10241024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 196.081 s, 5.5 MB/s
root@stark:~# rm /media/terryp/USB DISK/dd.img 

root@stark:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/terryp/USB DISK/dd.img bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 32.868 s, 32.7 MB/s
root@stark:~# rm /media/terryp/USB DISK/dd.img 
root@stark:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/terryp/DE47-D1C8/dd.img bs=1M count=1024

The 32G which is slow, serves as my offline video cache for my tablet. The 16G I just got tonight courtesy of another coupon.

And here’s the 32G TF/MicroSD card that caused this line of testing, also from Microcenter.

root@stark:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/terryp/32 GB/dd.img bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 95.4401 s, 11.3 MB/s
root@stark:~# rm /media/terryp/32 GB/dd.img

Hmm. I think that I will just leave the card in there. It’s pretty unlikely to get knocked out, and I don’t expect it would cause notable impact to the battery life. Keep the USB adapter in my usual travel gear, but keep the card in Stark.

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Microsoft Surface Pro X Three Week Review: Better Than I Expected For My Productivity Use Case
https://flip.it/Fe2Ydr

While I think many people would be unhappy with Windows on ARM, I expect most people would be happier with the traditional desktop experience than the flatter model used over in Android and iOS. For those that can get away with largely first party software, you also get the perks of not having to buck the software catalog.

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Dropbox And Other Major Apps Need To Get On Board With Windows On Snapdragon.

The PC revolution, I think had enjoyed a pretty remarkable binary portability: one that I think today’s users just take for granted. CP/M while a bit tricky, did surprisingly well for the hardware variations. MS-DOS managed to improve the concept of copying some shit and expecting it to run on your computer. And then there was Windows, which has probably had one of the strongest ABIs for decades while Unix systems came to prefer the portability of source code over the resulting redistributibles.

Today, the concept that you can download some program and that it won’t run because your processor architecture isn’t an Intel chip made within the past ten to twenty five years, is less familiar to everyday Windows users. As opposed to folks who have managed multiple flavors of Unix system across several processor architectures.

In many ways, I think the ease of jockeying binaries around on floppy diskettes and bulletin boards is as important to our computing history as the rise of sharing the source code over the Internet. But the systemic effects kinda work the other way as well: it’s hard to maximize the value of multiple processor architectures if you’re surrounded by binaries that won’t run, and it isn’t so practical to just solve the problem with virtualization and translation.

I think it is telling that modern methods of binary software distribution tend to address the problem from the get go. Installing packages on my Debian systems are pretty much the same whether they’re x86 or ARM based, and that’s probably true of the many supported architectures. Dealing with native code on Android  has long dealt with the issue of bundling binaries for different Android ABIs as well. The path from random ass files to a structured delivery from a repository has its upsides.

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To cut down on bugs, Apple is changing how it develops its software

Well, at least it sounds like Apple gives a damn.

The report also says that Apple “privately considered” iOS 13.1 to be “the actual public release” and that the company expected only die-hard fans would update to iOS 13 within the short week between its initial release and the iOS 13.1 update. This is a surprising expectation, given that the company often publicly boasts of how quickly its users adopt new software updates compared to competing platforms.

And that’s just funny when you’ve got your own cult, or several.

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Signs it’s time to recycle old equipment: when replacement parts cost almost as much as the machine.

Also, when you’ve been more inclined to use the machine for propping open a window than actually using it.

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My Modern iPad Home Screen: Apps, Widgets, Files, Folders, and Shortcuts
http://flip.it/jQ8Bd3

The idea of putting apps you frequently multitask with in the dock is one that makes me think. The small number of apps in my dock reflect applications that I frequently switch to, and plenty that I split or slide are somewhere in my home screens.

Most of my use for folders has been to group related but infrequent applications together. E.g. all the banking apps I might launch a few times a month get a folder. But most document related apps get an entire page of the home screen.

Largely I find it amusing as well. The operating system and apps are more giant phone like than Android tablets, for most of the platform’s respective lives. But iPad OS 13 and other recent iOS releases for iPad, really make the user experience suck less.

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Classic PC: Atari Portfolio.

I can’t help but think: one of these would have been really damned lovely when I was a teenager, but good luck finding that at a garage sale.

The thing that scares me, is less that I would have used such a thing back then, and more that the parallel connection makes me remember some of the squirrely things I’ve had to do in the name of serial ports…hahaha.

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Part of me is tempted to try a keyboard case like this one, and part of me thinks I have enough useless things. There’s at least two variants by various mostly generic vendors, Procase just happens to be one of the cheaper offerings with USB-C charging support.

My experience with keyboards and tablets have been a touch spotty, given my taste in device size versus my requirements for a keyboard. The smallest that I find really useful for a keyboard are models like Logitech’s K380, and their old K810. Which is about as full size a keyboard as you can get while ditching the keys that don’t really matter, and settling for laptop style arrow keys.

Device wise, I’ve usually favored smaller. One of my most heavily used tablets was the Galaxy Note 8.0, but it was useless with a keyboard case. An external keyboard like the K810 works beautifully, but a 16:10 tablet just yields a useless keyboard if you make it fit a case. An 8″ wide case means the keyboard will be so ridiculously cramped that you’re better off using the touch screen keyboard^.

The only good thing about 10″ widescreen tablets were their screen size overlapped with the smallest you could squish a laptop keyboard down and expect it to be worth typing on. The 9.7″ standard tablets I’ve had push that down a peg, but aren’t useless. Using the keyboard case that Zagg made for the Tab S2, I found it a bit too cramped to really want to use seriously, but at least it was large enough to be useful rather than counter productive.

When I look at the size difference between my K810 and my 11″ iPad Pro, I contemplate where this winds up. I’ve usually found 12″/4:3 laptops a rather a touch cramped.

One of the differences, I think is also the OS. In Android, using Gboard I generally could write a couple dozen paragraphs on my Tab S2 and Tab S3 without caring about the touch screen; throw in glide/swype typing using an S-Pen and I was damned efficient. Rather using keyboards with Android was more important for tasks like bash and vim sessions over SSH.

On the other hand, the way iOS works for editing text using Apple’s keyboard: I’m inclined to think that text editing on an iPad was more of a scream at the top of your lungs and beat people with a stick kind of necessary for iOS 12; in iOS 13, it’s not as bad but due to the buggy’ass nature of Apple’s on screen keyboard, I would still say use a keyboard. It’s like the most important iPad accessory, where as for an Android device, I would say a real (i.e. Wacom based) stylus is the most important accessory.

So I find myself wondering if it’ll actually be worth it. The lossage to keyboard space is worrisome but it’s much closer to normal than other tablets I’ve owned, and if I had gone with the 12.9″ behmeth, I wouldn’t even be contemplating the question since its so huge ^_^. But in my head, I figure if all else fails, I could velcro a real keyboard to the thing, and if I really wanted to get jiggy I could put my dock and hard drive on the back in a similar fashion.

In any event: the case would be getting removed and attached fairly often. The little magnetic case I use with my Pro, mostly serves for times when I want a stand to go and when I want a little more protection at work. At home, my device pretty much runs naked unless I’m using the case for a stand at my desk, and I prefer my devices naked.

^ To be fair, I also feel the same way about sliders. My HTC Doubleshot’s keyboard didn’t make up for the dinky 3.7″ screen, and I was better off with the Galaxy SIII’s 4.8″ screen in every single sense of typing shit.

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Well, my back hurts and I need a fresh shower, but my closet is a box of shit lighter and now back into an organized tech state.

The dogs, Corky especially, were about half convinced that I had lost my mind.

Last time I cleaned tech, I had eliminated some of the oldest stuff. E.g. limiting myself to a single graphics card that’s AGP, one SATA DVD burner, and a lone floppy drive/cable: just in case. But that did nothing for ~20 years of VGA, Ethernet, AC power, IDE, and other cables. Most of which survived.

For some of the harder to kill items like VGA and IDE, I’m keeping at least one decent pair for the odds that someday I’ll actually need one, and that’ll probably be in enough decades that they won’t be so cheap without visiting a landfill.

Likewise it feels good to have things back to order. One drawer is everything audio, video, network, and power that isn’t collected else where. Another bin collects the various USB things that aren’t the above, and another for misc stuff like my spare keyboards. Boxes used to collect internal components, like old PCI-E graphics cards(, and yes, still one AGP card), my old Audigy 4, internal cables and fans and shit, etc. Some larger things like an old tape drive

It’s kinda interesting how over the past thirty years, we went from having hardly anything but the Tandy 1000 set, to a closet full of computer shit. I feel bad for how unlikely some of it is—might need a VGA cable within the next twenty years, but I doubt MHL and SlimPort DP over MicroUSB-B are ever going to make the “Just in case” bin. Actually in another five to ten years, those should probably join the last composite video cables on their way out….lol.

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https://youtu.be/VES1KHFa_vk

It’s probably sad that when such machines were less well suited for propping open a window, and more suited to getting work done, I probably would have loved such a machine. I always wondered what use that form of Windows might be, especially when I learned there was a sorta-port of vim to CE.

The reality is, while by the time I reached the stage of wanting such machines, I didn’t really like Windows. But the reality is, what I really wanted was a device that was portable and capable of doing text editing and file management. In a better way than setting an e-mail to yourself off a phone.

When I was younger, the sexist thing a phone might be able to do is send an e-mail. That was part of why I looked at the launch of the T-Mobile G1 with sad, watery eyes; because I realized the devices I wanted were coming down the pike, and at my age, I may as well have wanted a Camaro for that kind of price tag, lol.