A Geek Goes Flying

$150 off an iPad mini 6 on sale at Amazon finally convinced me to upgrade from the iPad mini 4 I’ve been dragging between rental planes (with its slightly cracked screen and outdated operating system - iPadOS 16, released in 2023, left it behind ). Since it would now be USB C instead of Lightning, and since my old charging setup was woefully inadequate (10,000 mAh and 10W total output power), it was time to just sort of refresh things. Flight bag, 2020 edition , now: Center Section Four Top Pocket: Still the AO sunglasses and foggles. Main compartment: Same Stratus GPS / ADS-B receiver and RAM suction cup mount . At some point I might replace the battery, through the official kit ($125) or just an aftermarket battery ($30). Same  Bose A20 headset, but I needed to replace the ear pads ; I opted to use the official Bose SKU ($36 shipped). Same  Velcro PTT switch . New for the iPad mini 6: RAM-B-202-AP36U RAM® EZ-Roll'r™ Cradle with Ball for Apple iPad mini 6 ($36.50). I’ll als

Getting ready for NaNoWriMo. The BYOK isn’t out yet. I’m not going to drop $350 on something like a Freewrite Alpha , as cool as I think it is. But I have an old IdeaPad S10 netbook (10.2" 1024x600 screen, surprisingly good keyboard, Atom processor, 2.5 GB RAM, whatever old SATA SSD I had close at hand, and I picked up this DC 5.5x2.5mm to Type C USB cable , which so far works perfectly to charge and power the thing).  IdeaPad S10 netbook   Now I’m on the hunt for a decent Linux distribution (probably DSL 2024 ), and word processing software : I’ll probably end up with AbiWord , but old WordPerfect is still a contender (was using it for years on my 1024x768 VAIO PCG-Z505R), and FocusWriter looks interesting. LibreOffice is probably too heavy. Was not previously aware of FreeOffice TextMaker before, but I should check it out at some point It just needs to provide a relatively distraction-free writing environment that I can work on whenever I have spare time; think this’ll work.

Like most (?) Americans, I’ve always pronounced Nikon as “Nye-con.” Until a couple of years ago when some Japanese neighbors corrected me: “Nee-con.”Smug in my superiority, I adopted that pronunciation, certain it was the “correct” one (though it turns out, even that wasn’t quite correct, as the Japanese pronunciation has the ‘n’ silent; NEE-koh). Turns out, Nikon’s official policy is (reportedly): Say it however you do, regionally . But Porsche still has the “uh” at the end: How to pronounce Porsche properly And Linux is still Lih-nucks: Linux Pronunciation (from Revolution OS). So, uh, there it is.

I temporarily have a foster dog, now named Mason. Mason napping on the balcony while I iPad. He’s awesome, but my senior street stray mutt isn’t having any part of it, and my Labrador loves him so much, my home won’t long survive their hours of excited play. (Imagine zoomies on meth, with a dose of Sunday Night Football.) So I’ve been working on the balcony at night (it’s pleasantly cool, for now...) while Mason chills with me, my Lab looks out at us longingly, and my senior mutt curls up in the bedroom, ignoring all the commotion.  I’ve had this Best Choice Products Folding Zero Gravity Outdoor Recliner ($70) for a couple of years and it’s comfortable, but not perfect. The elastics on the “pillow” are toast, so it wants to sit around where my waist hits. And the side tray is junk, it doesn’t attach securely and I’m super leery of putting anything of value, or containing liquids, on it. In fact, I don’t even have it attached. Instead, I picked up this Mr.Power Mic Stand Cup Holder wit

Back in January I sent off a Schiit Hel 2E to be repaired. It had just stopped supplying a signal to the headphones (was still being recognized by the computer when connected via USB). In February, I got it back, with a swapped board and a new serial number sticker - it’s now a Hel+ . According to the support person I swapped emails with, all their repairs have a one (1) year warranty – good thing, since it just started doing exactly the same thing as before . I can hear the relay inside clicking, so it’s getting power. I can see it on the computer when USB connected. But no audio. Meh. Just sent it back today, this time to Corpus Christi, Texas. I guess the move is complete, or nearly so. (They used to be just over the hill from me, in Valencia, California.) Sigh. So now I’m limping along with my Fulla E, which has never given me any issues (but is very lightly used; after I got the Hel for the office I moved the Fulla E to my “kitchen table workstation,” which has since been disman

I was never their hugest fan (I have never even seen them in concert). Their debut album, Hybrid Theory , came out a few months after I graduated college, just before I started law school and saturated my life. But I own that album, and  Meteora , on CD. I have a few songs bought on the iTunes Music Store from Minutes to Midnight and A Thousand Suns ( Robot Boy is a mood). Their music wove itself into my life significantly and, kind of like The Killers, just always seemed to be a part of my soundtrack. When Chester Bennington shuffled off this mortal coil, I kinda figured the band’s hiatus would become permanent. Until last week, when I was cycling home, wearing my Bose Frames Tempo sunglasses (decidedly mid audio) listening to Turbo with Covino on SiriusXM and heard The Emptiness Machine for the first time. Intrigued, but not yet sold. Until I heard it on a decent setup . Okay. Emily Armstrong brings it. (Though, watching the video below, I wonder how sustainable that screaming

I present the Nook GlowLight Plus (model BNVR510):         Nook GlowLight Plus (BNVR510) eReader I have no idea when, where, or how I acquired this thing, or how much I spent on it, but even though it’s almost 10 years old, it’s still a compelling little gadget. Mine already has a couple of small marks in the screen that aren’t gonna “buff out,” so when I decided to carry an eReader in my unisex shoulder bag , I figured I’d load this up and not risk my more expensive, larger, Libra 2 or Elipsa 2E . In the process, I found out I really like it. It’s diminutive (6.4x4.7x0.34"), light, backlit, has 4GB of storage (about 2.5 GB usable) which is plenty to carry a reasonable number of books around, it’s IP67 certified for dust / water protection, and it shares an E Ink Carta HD display (1080 by 1440 resolution on the 6" screen for 300 ppi) it shares with the Kindle Voyage, Oasis, Scribe, Paperwhite 3 and newer, Tolino Vision 2, Kobo Klo HD, PocketBook Touch HD and HD 2, and the