I bought a new keyboard

I bought a new keyboard. It is a inexpensive mechanical keyboard with blue switches. I am really liking it so far. It arrived yesterday. That is not a lot of time to get to know it but so far I have replaced my laptop’s keyboard with it. I bought my laptop in 2017 and have hated the keyboard from the beginning. The laptop’s keyboard is horrible to type on. I have regularly used and external keyboard when I have needed to type something important. Those keyboards have always been thrift store purchases. I have not had a mechanical keyboard in a long time I think I had an IBM model M at one point when I got my second computer. I did not know what I had at that point. The computer was a 386 in the age of Pentium computers and did not last long. I rapidly changed it out for a much faster computer with a far different keyboard. I went to amazon and searched for hot swappable mechanical keyboard and sorted by lowest price. The keyboard was $27 with a 30% off coupon. With taxes and prime shipping it came to around $22. It is made in China of course. If it is made in another country it would be far more expensive.

https://www.amazon.com/CHONCHOW-Mechanical-Tenkeyless-Keyboard-Switches/dp/B08M5G9RF7/ref=sr_1_11?crid=9JEB54M2JICJ&keywords=hot+swappable+mechanical+keyboard&qid=1650322435&sprefix=hot+swap%2Caps%2C164&sr=8-11

this is a test

I am testing different offline editors for wordpress.com. I really don’t like the wordpress webinterface. This entry was made in QTM.

#!/bin/bash
#
# A quick call to a text editor to open the daily journal
#
code /home/pi/Documents/journal/`date +%A_%b_%d_%G.txt`

Journal take two

The journal file I put in the previous entry doesn’t seem to work. It doesn’t work because WordPress adds a bunch of formating code while removing stuff it decides is unnecessary. It the process of trying to “fix” my code it renders it unuseable and nonfunctional. The wordpress editor is pretty much garbage.

#!/bin/bash
#A quick call to a text editor to open the daily journal
code /home/pi/Documents/journal/’date +%A_%b_%d_%G.txt’

journal script

This is a short script which will open a text editor with a file named with today’s date. It saves in a directory called journal located in your home directory on Linux. You probably need to make the journal directory. You can uses whatever text editor that you choose. Just change the script to the name of your editor and add your user name in the path.

#!/bin/bash
#A quick call to vs_code to open the daily journal

#
code /home/pi/journal/date +%A_%b_%d_%G

Rasberry Pi 400

I have a new toy. It is a Rasberry pi 400. A tiny computer housed within a keyboard like a Commodore 64. I have only had it for a couple of days right now but I am liking it a lot so far. I am going to have to get used to the keyboard though. It is just a little bit small and the lay out is slightly different from my laptop. The differences are wreaking havoc on my ability to type. I tend to type gibberish with keyboards that are familiar. When I change keyboards it gets seriously ramped up. I like my new computer and I am going to enjoy using it. I have installed Ubuntu on the sdcard and I am back on Linux as a result. My typing will get better I am sure.

I bought the kit because I don’t have all the bits that I needed to make it work. The only part of the kit I will probably not use is the mouse because I prefer my track ball.

I don’t know what to type about but I need to type something about my computer. I need to practice my I guess. My typing speed has dropped through the floor because I have not practiced much in the last year. Some of that is being done with school which leaves me with no papers to write and some it is laptops crappy keyboard. The keyboard would be ok if the right shift key was in the correct place. The up arrow key is where the shift key should be which is irritating. I go to hit the shift key and the cursor jumps to the line above where it should be and I end up typing in the middle of the word above where I am at. I have looked into how to remap the keys but have not really seen any plausible way to do so.

I am also looking into the possibility of getting a different computer. I am really liking the idea of getting a desktop computer rather than a laptop. I would like something which would be easily upgradeable and possibly allow me to play some games. I would like to play the more recent Tomb Raider games. I recently purchased two of them on steam.

Laptop

I am feeling dirty at the moment. I reinstalled windows 10 on my laptop. I don’t like it but I want to play some games that don’t run well on linux. I don’t really have enough room for a dual boot right now.

I am seriously thinking about doing some upgrades on my laptop. I recently read that my laptop would take an eight gig memory chip. I had been under the impression that it would take eight gigs of ram total. My reading hints that I can get the memory up to at least 12 gigs total. That is four soldered on the board and an Eight gig expansion module That would make a big difference in how my computer works. I am going to pair the memory upgrade with a 1 terrabyte ssd. Right now I have a 500gig ssd. I am starting to feel a little bit cramped in that amount of space. Windows takes far more space then linux does combined with the games which take far more space then they did when I was younger. I bought a couple of games on steam which take more then 9 gigs a piece. Those games are beautifully drawn but that is a lot of space.

Plan?

I don’t really have a plan right now. I am trying to figure out what I want to do. I know I want to use my computer and it’s various peripherals to accomplish something.

The peripherals that I have are mostly made by Logitech. That is almost entirely accidental. I have a c920 webcam, a USB headset with microphone, a trackball and a game pad.

The only peripheral that I have that is not Logitech is my printer which is a second hand Epson WorkForce wf-2750. It is an older multi-function printer. It does print, copy, scan, and fax. Fax is going to be pretty useless; I don’t have a landline to plug it into.

My computer skills are very rusty. I can surf the net and write a document in LibreOffice but beyond that I have fallen way behind in everything computer related. I have begun to remedy that by watching Youtube videos on computers and technology. I have been thinking about making some of my own videos to upload to Youtube. I have to clean up my mess first … Just for the sake of optics.

Here I go again.

It has been over a year since I have written anything because I wanted too. I have written some papers for the classes that I needed in order to finish my degree. Thankfully I am done with that.

It is time to start writing again. I don’t have a firm direction to head with my writing. It is going to be technology related of course but beyond that I am very uncertain.

My technology collection consists of two laptops and a cell phone that I am actively using. I have more of both that are sitting around unused.

Laptop 1 is a Dell Latitude e5520 which I purchased for cheap at a thrift store last year. It has a Core I5 processor, 4 gigs of ram and a 250 gig SSD. It is currently running Microsoft Window 10 pro. The battery is toast.

Laptop 2 is a Lenovo Ideapad 110 which I bought brand new in 2017. It has a Core I3 processor, 6 gigs of ram and a 500 gig SSD. I put the SSD in after the much larger hard drive it came with croaked. It is currently running Ubuntu 20.04.

My Cell Phone is a Motorola Moto G7. It is nothing special beyond being the most advanced smart phone that I have owned. It has a finger print reader and face unlock. I don’t use either because I consider both of those things to be rather insecure. I would rather rely on a password or a pin. Those seem to be more secure.

Music

I found a way to reclaim my music without windows. Google’s Music sync tool called Music Manager. I had tried it on Linux before and it did not work. I don’t know why but it worked this time. My music library is downloaded.