Tech Related

Over the last five and a half years I have tracked every walk that I have been on, and I have tracked about five and a half million steps per year. That’s a lot of steps and a lot of going around in clrcles. Going around in clrcles makes tracking walks with smart watches/gps watches less interesting. That’s probably why I have been distracted by Casio watches.

I haven’t been distracted by the 300-600 CHF watches. I’ve been distracted by the 30-50CHF ones. The simple watches that people of my age wore as children. These are simple, easy to use watches that have batteries that are meant to last for 10 years between battery changes. Compare that to one day for the Apple Watch and 30 days for Suunto and Garmin watches.

I love using Atom because it’s light and fast, even on a six year old machine like mine. Github is soon going to archive atom. I will lose my favourite editor. That’s why I played with VS Code, Sublime Text and other solutions. Vim is the winner for now.

Vim is on every linux and mac machine, and can be installed on Windows. Out of the box Vim is a really simple, limited editor but if you invest the time, to find plugins, and learn how to use it then it becomes a great application.

Recently I learned that PHP has a built in server. You don’t need xampp or any of the other solutions. All you need is terminal open, have the current directory be the one with the PHP files you want to serve and type: “php -S localhost:8000”

This might sound obvious to some but it took years for me to come across this. When you have to install xampp or other solutions you need to dedicate HD space, run the servers and more.

For a while I had a mac book air and I used it for everything. I saw the mac book air as the machine to use for everything except for video editing. That’s what the mac book pro was for. Eventually I sold the Mac Book Air and then I took the MBP to an event and it was stolen and I found myself without a machine.

I regretted selling the mac book air then, because if I had kept the mac book air then I would not have taken the MBP and it would not have been stolen.

I have not studied electronics but I have studied the Google IT support course among others so I have some basics of how computers and tech work. This type of documentary series is interesting because it brings history to life, and explains how things work. It is not sensationalist, does not use too much music and more. It just guides you through how technology works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v49ucdZcx9s

I was surprised to hear that transmission was as low as 2 watts and as high as just 11 watts. I also learned that for some communications they used just two watts of power for Apollo 13, 57 hours into the mission, to reduce power consumption. Of course on Earth they had a 270ft antenna to receive the signal. Compare this to a radio station that may use 50,000 watts. I don’t remember how many watts were used in satellite broadcasting but from a quick skim it’s about 20 watts but this goes to smaller and smaller dishes on earth. Starlink uses about 2 watts of power.

Today I went for my first flight with the DJI Mini SE and it feels very familiar, after flying a spark so frequently, until I crashed that drone. I would have replaced the spark but I didn’t because it would either cost two thirds to replace the old one, or cost a lot to buy a new drone, with batteries and the rest of the gear. I waited. I didn’t wait for four weeks, four months, or four seasons. I waited for two years, until I saw the DJI Mini SE was about to come out.

If I had been smart I would have changed career path around 2006-2007 when I was in London surrounded by entrepreneurs and web developers, rather than now during a pandemic. Normally I struggle to find new contracts because of two things. The first is that for camera and editing work there are very few opportunities per year, and the opportunities that do arise have hundreds, if not thousands of candidates so the probability of success is low. The other issue is that because there are few jobs, if you fail you may have to wait months for an opportunity to appear.

Not for FB or Twitter

Today I started to play with the Crosscall Core-S4 and my impressions of it so far is that the Facebook and Twitter apps are not optimal for this device. They do not consider that with a small screen you should prioritise text over images. For those reasons I think that FB and Twitter are a reason to avoid this phone. This might actually encourage you to buy this phone.

Sometimes we experiment and play with technology. The clock below is an SVG clock using SVG and Canvas technology to display local time. Doing it with these two technologies was easier than with JavaScript. The code doesn’t require calculating thousandths of a second like another clock I tried. The tutorial to make this clock is here: W3 Canvas Clock.

var canvas = document.getElementById(“canvas”); var ctx = canvas.getContext(“2d”); var radius = canvas.height / 2; ctx.translate(radius, radius); radius = radius * 0.90 setInterval(drawClock, 1000); drawClock(); function drawClock(){ drawFace(ctx,radius); drawNumbers(ctx, radius); drawTime(ctx, radius); // drawHand(ctx, pos, length, width) } function drawFace(ctx, radius) { var grad; ctx.beginPath(); ctx.arc(0, 0, radius, 0 , 2*Math.PI); ctx.fillStyle = “white”; ctx.fill(); grad = ctx.createRadialGradient(0, 0 ,radius* 0.95, 0, 0, radius*1.05); grad.addColorStop(0, ‘#333’); grad.addColorStop(0.5, ‘white’); grad.addColorStop(1, ‘#333’); ctx.strokeStyle = grad; ctx.lineWidth = radius*0.1; ctx.stroke(); ctx.beginPath(); ctx.arc(0, 0, radius * 0.1, 0, 2*Math.PI); ctx.fillStyle = ‘#333’; ctx.fill(); } function drawNumbers (ctx, radius) { var ang; var num; ctx.font = radius*0.15 + “px arial”; ctx.textBaseline=“middle”; ctx.textAlign=“center”; for(num = 1; num < 13; num++){ ang = num * Math.PI / 6; ctx.rotate(ang); ctx.translate(0, -radius*0.85); ctx.rotate(-ang); ctx.fillText(num.toString(), 0, 0); ctx.rotate(ang); ctx.translate(0, radius*0.85); ctx.rotate(-ang); } } function drawTime(ctx, radius){ var now = new Date(); var hour = now.getHours(); var minute = now.getMinutes(); var second = now.getSeconds(); // Hour hour = hour%12; hour=(hour*Math.PI/6)+(minute*Math.PI/(6*60))+(second*Math.PI/(360*60)); drawHand(ctx, hour, radius*0.5, radius*0.07); //Minute minute = (minute*Math.PI/30)+(second*Math.PI/(30*60)); drawHand(ctx, minute, radius*0.8, radius*0.07); //Second second=(second*Math.PI/30); drawHand(ctx, second, radius*0.9, radius*0.02); } function drawHand(ctx, pos, length, width) { ctx.beginPath(); ctx.lineWidth = width; ctx.linecap = “round”; ctx.moveTo(0,0); ctx.rotate(pos); ctx.lineTo(0, -length); ctx.stroke(); ctx.rotate(-pos); }

A few weeks ago I bought some software via the Apple Store but changed my mind about wanting the software. I requested a refund, as I have in the past, and they asked for a justification so I gave them one, and they refused again. Out of principle I then cancelled all my app subscription renewals, as well as stopped looking at the Apple book store.

One reason for using the Apple store, rather than buying apps direct from companies, is that reimbursements and more should be simpler. It also means that we have a single point of failure, rather than a dozen. In theory this keeps us safer.