Of Tablets and Phones and Raspberry Pis

Of Tablets and Phones and Raspberry Pis

Byrichard

This morning when driving back from the shops I heard someone in a podcast say that his fourteen year old niece was disgusted at the thought of using a laptop rather than a mobile phone and it made me think of something. In the age of iOS and Android devices replacing computers it makes sense to setup Raspberry Pi as Nextcloud servers, photoprism servers, Pi Holes and more. It makes sense becaue if we move away from the laptop and the desktop then we come across a serious limitation. Storage.

Apple Cost of Storage

There is a 160 CHF difference between a 64GB iPhone SE and a 256GB iPhone SE for example. With the Mac Book Air 13″ you pay a minimum of 1100 CHF for 256GB of storage and 1900 CHF for 2TB of storage. With the iPad Mini you range from 64 GB for 571 CHF to 256GB for 741.70CHF.

A Cheaper shared Option

A Raspberry Pi 4 8GB will cost 110 CHF at the time of writing and a one TB SDXC card will cost 106 CHF. For 200 CHF and Nextcloud you have a low wattage storage solution that is always on and always available when you are on the home network.

Cloud backup

With such a solution you can take one hundreds of pictures during a hike or night out, and back them up to your home nextcloud instance. You can then either link two nextcloud intances in different buildings, or find the cheapest cloud storage solution. iCloud is 120 CHF per year, Google One is 100 CHF per year and Kdrive is just 67 CHF per year.

By having a full backup in your home you can slide between cloud storage solutions more easily because you don’t need to wait for days while all the files download.

NextCloud and Mobile Devices

With Nextcloud you have time tracking options so you can keep track of the projects you’re working on as well as how much you’re owed, if the time tracked has monetary value. With the Passwords plugin for nextcloud you can replace onepass, lastpass and other password solutions.

With the memories add on you can view photos and videos as moments in time, by people, and more. It also logs locations and more, but rather than Google or Apple knowing about this, your own server does.

It has word processors, project management tools, task tools, Kanban boards and more. It’s versatile.

Pi Hole

When you’re surfing the web adverts can become really annoying, either by auto-playing, or by just taking a lot of space on a screen. By routing DNS requests from your server to Pi Hole you can reduce the amount of bandwidth used by ads on mobile devices.

CUPS Server

Although quite boring you can setup a Pi to work as a CUPS print server. Plug a Pi running CUPS into a printer and you can set it up. With this move you don’t need to plug in a laptop every time you want to print. Since Apple went to USB C this has become especially annoying because you need to find the USB dongle each time.

PhotoPrism

PhotoPrism is an interesting photo management tool that allows you to import photos that have been exported from Google Takout. It also has two apps, PhotoPrismUpload and Photosync. It automatically organises photos according to EXIF data and machine learning models.

Immich is similar and offers more control of users but feels less complete, for now.

HomeAssistant

Home Assistant, like Google Home and Apple Home is a home automation tool where you can add aranet devices, netatmo devices, your Apple TV and mobile phones. With this device you can keep track of your steps via the iphone and other devices.

It can detect when you leave home, and when you return, as well as whether you’ve been walking, stationary and more.

It also provides you with monitoring of Nextcloud instances, to see if they are under heavy loads, or light loads, but also, via the history feature, to see how things are changing over time.

Tailscale

With the free tier of Tailscale you can have up to three people and 100 devices connected to a single VPN. With Tailscale VPN active on your Pi devices and mobile devices you can access your instances of Nextcloud, Pi Hole, Home Assistant, Photoprism and more, whether you’re at home, or using the 4g network. Image backup and sharing doesn’t have to wait until you’re home to happen. This gives you the flexibility and freedom of iCloud and Google Drive, without going through their servers. Everything stays within your own reality, if you so desire.

And Finally

In a Pi home you can almost do away with laptops, to replace them with Raspberry Pi. These devices can serve as video servers via apps like Plex, or photo sharing tools via Photoprism. They can also keep your other files safe, and accessible, as long as you’re on the Tailscale VPN. You can even print from your mobile device to a CUPS accessible printer, at least in theory.

For future generations that prefer mobile phones, and tablets, to computers, the age of Pi makes sense. When discussions took place, that talked about the shift away from laptops and desktops, they didn’t mention that self-hosting would thrive as a result. Self-hosting is about setting up thin clients as servers to enable people to do things via web interfaces and apps. I got a few instances to work, over a period of weeks, so now I see how the thin client age requires static machines like Pi to provide services.

I think the age of Bare Bone PCs will be interesting.

Mobile Phone Games

Mobile Phone Games

Byrichard

Our mobile phones are almost always near us, or on us. The only time we don’t have our phone with us is when we’re scuba diving, driving, unless we count Waze as a game. When I am home alone I usually don’t play mobile phone games because I’m distracted by other things. 


One of the flaws with plenty of games today is that they are pay to win, or pay to play. I don’t like this model. I also don’t like games that require you to follow instructions, rather than play and experiment. I want to play, not follow instructions. 


Games I Still Play


Fitness App Games


Garmin, Strava, Pacer and other apps do provide us with gaming when we walk, run, cycle or more. They count our steps, our distance, our climbing and more. I am currently walking the Appalachian Trail via Garmin, walking the Coffee trail on Pacer and more. I am also competing for step counts with others. Some games require you to be physically active to progress. Others require you to sit still and stare at a phone.


Ingress


Ingress is a game that I played for a while. I travelled to Paris, to Florence, to Fribourg and other places specifically to play the game with other people. It was a great way to meet unenergetic geeks and to explore geographic space. It’s similar to geocaching, but with virtual portals that are monuments, bridges and more. That data was then used for Pokemon Go and other games. 


Ingress requires a lot of walking, or driving. I found that it is quite fun to play while cycling. You can get to distant portals more quickly than walking, but without the carbon footprint of using the car, which is another reason I slowed down the playing. 


The key factor that got me to play far less is time. From a certain level upwards, especially if you live in the countryside it goes from taking days or weeks to level up, to months. If you live in town then it’s easy to make progress, but if you’re in a rural setting then you get stuck on a level for months or years, as I have. 


TrainStation2


At first I didn’t like TrainStation2 because I expect to play a game for the time that I am free for. I don’t like to wait for hours in between actions. You can speed up the game by paying to win, but the flaw in this approach is that you can spend thousands and never be satisfied. That’s how Clash of Clans made a fortune. 


What I like about this is that if you want you can play for 30 seconds, once an hour or less, so you don’t accidentally lose hours a day on the game. 


Clash of Clans


Clash of Clans is another game that I played with passion for years, but eventually stopped playing. The problem with these games is that they are good, when you have a few minutes free at regular intervals, for example when you’re commuting, or stuck in an office waiting for a file to render, or some other task. If you have no moments of waiting then these games are less relevant. 


Hay Day


I have played Hay Day for years but on and off. I used to play a lot but eventually it became more complex and took more time to achieve anything so I stopped playing. 


Asphalt 8


Asphalt 8 is a game that I played for hours at a time for weeks or even months. I logged plenty of hours in the game and it expanded as I progressed. Eventually I played tiles, but it’s still a great game. Cars are intuitive to control and with time and practice you do make progress. 


Rise of Kingdoms


Rise of Kingdoms is an acceptable game that you can play throughout the day when you have some free time. It is a game that requires an investment of weeks or months to progress and although they encourage you to pay to speed things up you don’t need to. 


Games I don’t play anymore


Boom Beach and Clash Royale


I installed it, played a few times, but never engaged fully. 


Pokemon Go


This game is crap. It’s built off of Ingress, but re-skinned for a different set of users. It’s crap because when you throw poke balls it fails more often than succeeds, so you end up frustrated. Worse than that, it encourages you to spend money because the code was written in a flawed manner. 


Cooking Madness


I started by really enjoying this game, until I got to a certain level, and then the game stopped being fun. It stopped being fun because levels require you to use diamonds to get extra time, or to get cooking aids. This wouldn’t be so bad, if not for the fact that after a certain amount of playing those are earned by completing levels, or paying. They say that games are pay to win. This one becomes pay to play. At one point you get blocked and you can no longer progress, without spending 3 CHF, more than once. 


It’s when I saw that I had to pay more than once that I removed the game. I come from the time when we payed to own, not to play. 


Conclusion


I like mobile phone games that can be played in short bursts. I don’t like mobile phone games that are pay to win. I play games when I am in between two activities, rather than all the time. I can go for months without playing much. It depends on how free I am to get on with things. I expect that I will forget about mobile phones games now, for a while.

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Sending HTC M8 phones to the Middle of the Stratosphere

Byrichard

A few months ago I saw the video of a mobility scooter going fast across snow. The video was shared as an anim gif with no context. As I explored the diversity of content on Youtube I came across Colin Furze videos. In one project he sent mobile phones to the Middle of the Stratosphere at about thirty three thousand meters.

He usually produces at least two videos. The first video usually shows him building his latest project and the second video shows him using the finished project. To celebrate the million subscriber marks he creates fireworks contraptions. He has created a hover bike, a centripetal chicken cooker, an underground bunker, magnetic shoes, a jet powered barbecue and has tried to set fireworks off in the stratosphere.

When you look at individual videos you see that they can get up to nineteen million views. He has just over three million subscribers at the time of writing this blog post. I suspect that he has more video views than subscribers because of the subject matter. As the projects vary from jet propulsion to mobility scooters to cooking content is compelling part of the time. Youtube also recommends his content so we might watch it through recommendations rather than direct searches for specific terms or keywords.

In the video where he tried to make magnetic shoes to walk across a ceiling we see him try and fail several times before he finally manages to achieve his goal. Once his goal is achieved the video ends and you can “wait” for next week’s video to appear online. When you learn about youtube personalities weeks, months or years in to their “career” the more content you can watch in a single sitting.

What unique or eccentric topics or projects could you document?

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On the lack of Common interests and mobile phones getting the blame

Byrichard

On Linkedin and Facebook people believe that mobile phones are making people less sociable then they would be if phones were not around. They believe that the world in which we lived before mobile phones was an open and sociable place where everyone communicated with everyone. These people are forgetting the social context that brought them Home Alone, Problem Child and other films.

Society and social interactions have always been about finding the people whom you appreciate and those whom you prefer to keep away from. In the age before mobile phones I remember watching films and cartoons where certain characters were ostracised for being different. These people were seen as isolated or loners. Society does not like these people. We see it conversation and we see it in films.

If a group of people in the physical world does not want to spend time with you, does not want to listen to you because your passions are incompatible with theirs, because your tone of voice is not right then that is their right. These people though, are not satisfied with excluding you from their conversations, are not satisfied with having their monologues and showing no interest in you. They will go a step further. They will prevent you from entertaining yourself.

One of the most common forms of entertainment when people are not fully engaged with groups is the mobile phone. Mobile phone use is stigmatised by a lot of people. Just a few weeks ago I took a chance and met with a new group. As I am an ingress player and as I had nothing positive to add to the conversation I took the opportunity to farm from two portals that were in range. As I live in the countryside Ingress “farming” is a treat and I took advantage of the opportunity.

I was listening to the conversations taking place on both sides of me. On one side it was the stereotypical “What do you do?” International community conversation and on the other they were discussing a few topics. One of these topics was music festivals. I have had a lot of fun at music festivals but I also have some views that I share with facebook friends rather than the wider world as it would see me ostracised.

As I drove home from the meeting above I got a text message and felt that it would be bad. I read it when I got home and left the group. I won’t be told how to behave by strangers. I won’t be judged in a town by a group of people who hike and do via ferrata. If you participate in both of these sports there is a good chance that you will appreciate my company. When I am in the mountains one of the cameras I carry around is out but my mobile phone is in a pocket until I get to the end of the activity or the car.

I am a member of the Geneva Ingress Resistance as well as the Lausanne Ingress resistance. As a result of this I have access via Google Hangouts to at least 120 people in the Lac Léman (lake Geneva) region. These people are unique. What makes them stand out is that they’re always looking at their mobile phones and when you see the entire group is silent it’s because they’re “glyphing”. I like to spend time with these groups because we eat crisps, drink wine, eat ice creams, hike and do other activities. These people meet because of the game but you see that there are deep friendships that have benefited from mobile phone use.

I love the paradox. The paradox is as follows. Every user is in the Google Plus community, every user converses with other players in Google Hangouts and every player meets other players in the real world. The mobile phone is a link between those who are not present and those who are present. In effect whether you converse with these people from a computer, by mobile phone or in person changes little.

Last week at the end of one operation to field over Yverdon with blue fields and another operation to field another city a phone call was made via google hangouts and we all answered and put the phones to our heads for a conference call. Instead of the mobile phone isolating people it is doing the opposite. It is uniting people.

Look at the conventional social interaction. When two normal people call each other the people you’re with are isolated for a period of time. It’s the same when people in face to face conversations start talking about mutual friends, certain types of activities and more. Sometimes the conversation that two conventional people are having is more likely to isolate the people you’re in the same physical location with. More often than not small talk is frustrating because A) you don’t know whom they’re talking about and B) you don’t know the context. As a result small talk is less polite than mobile phone use.

I love the mountains and I enjoy via ferrata and hiking when it’s with the right people. I also enjoy spending time with ingress players. With these three groups of people I feel that I can be myself. I spend no time acting and performing. They appreciate the real me.  When I go to towns and listen to normal people small talk I get bored and I feel isolated. It has nothing to do with the mobile phone and everything to do with the difference in interests and passions.

If we don’t have the same interests and passions then don’t blame mobile phones for our lack of conversation. Either we find something we are both passionate about or we co-exist in the same space without talking much… Sometimes the inability for people to accept silence when they are not alone encourages others to be alone.

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Oversimplification

Byrichard

The more time you spend online the more headlines and articles you read, the more you see mass idiocy. Every time a phone comes out that’s slightly similar to the iPhone they rant about how similar to the iPhone it is. It’s not. There are several models of phones preceding it.

My phone is very similar in design to the Samsung f700 but I’ve had it since October/November of the year. It’s got a touch screen and the slide-out keyboard and it’s got all the synchronization features.

Why has Apple become the standard for a product they’re not even releasing to the market for another half a year. What a lot of excitement for a device that’s more of a gimmick than anything else.

The iPhone is for the myspace generation. Those who are looking for entertainment value in electronic devices rather than usefulness. How are you going to write notes in lectures with the i-phone?

One of the things I hate most about web 2.0 is that it’s all about hype, what’s popular, what’s not. What does the mass want, what doesn’t it want? Why is everything over-simplified to such an extent?

At the moment you can’t open a paper without the aftermath of the CBB article being rammed down your media-saturated throat yet intelligent articles like “Identity and Migration” by Francis Fukuyama published in Prospect for February 2007 goes unnoticed. It’s a well-written article that looks in-depth at the issues that are relevant to the future of the international community as a whole.

The disjuncture between one’s inner and outer selves comes not merely out of the realm of ideas, but from the social reality of modern market democracies. After the American and French revolutions, the ideal of la carrière ouverte aux talents was increasingly put into practice as traditional barriers to social mobility were removed. One’s social status was now achieved rather than ascribed; it was the product of one’s talents, work, and effort rather than an accident of birth. One’s life story was the search for fulfilment of an inner plan, rather than conformity to the expectations of one’s parents, kin, village or priest.

One of the strongest arguments within the article is this one:

The first prong of the solution is to recognise that the old multicultural model has not been a big success in countries such as the Netherlands and Britain, and that it needs to be replaced by more energetic efforts to integrate non-western populations into a common liberal culture. The old multicultural model was based on group recognition and group rights. Out of a misplaced sense of respect for cultural differences—and in some cases out of imperial guilt—it ceded too much authority to cultural communities to define rules of behaviour for their own members. Liberalism cannot ultimately be based on group rights, because not all groups uphold liberal values. The civilisation of the European Enlightenment, of which contemporary liberal democracy is the heir, cannot be culturally neutral, since liberal societies have their own values regarding the equal worth and dignity of individuals. Cultures that do not accept these premises do not deserve equal protection in a liberal democracy. Members of immigrant communities and their offspring deserve to be treated equally as individuals, not as members of cultural communities. There is no reason for a Muslim girl to be treated differently under the law from a Christian or Jewish one, whatever the feelings of her relatives.

There are some valid and interesting points within the article. Take a few minutes to read it.

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On social determinism and the media

Byrichard

My week started at 10 this morning and was over by 1300 this afternoon. It was a lecture and a seminar about Brian Winston and social determinism in relation to the media. It’s a theory which is exploring whether social factors affect the technology that we use. I was taking notes during that lecture but not with pen and paper and without a laptop. Instead I was using the O2 XDA minis. It’s a really nice device and I’ve had it for over two months now.

What I love about it is it’s size, being about the size of my palm it’s large for a fun but tiny for a laptop. It’s got a big display and a sign out keyboard. It’s also got a good scribling interface which makes handwriting notes just as easy as typing. It’s a friend that played with this feature and I’m quite impressed.

The reason I love it is that it’s got all the features you’d expect from the i-phone but in the windows operating system and for a European market. The fact it’s got a keyboard makes it ideal for fast typing of sms. I often find myself writing over 200 characters because it’s so simple.

Checking e-mail is a doddle. Simply download the gmail interface and connect to the web. The download of messages is easy and intuitive. It’s a shame that data transfer over gprs is still expensive otherwise it’d be perfect.

I’ve made a skype call with it and it’s worked well. I was able to make a phone call to a mobile phone and talk and hear myself at the same time. Being alone that’s complicated but I know it works.

I bought a program and that makes the synchronisation extremely straight forward. I have contacts, pictures and some word documents synced on the ibook and the mobile phone this way.

It’s perfect for students and I really enjoy using the device.

I’m speaking as someone who’s owned at least 5-10 mobile phones over the past few years.