Saturday 23 of August, 2025
Not really into computer games appeared today as I cleared out a lot of open tabs on Firefox. I'd been working on a few bits and realised that there were too many open tabs with side thoughts from the last couple of weeks. I also need to have a look at solid and see if that is going to be any use going forward. I set up an account with use.id, but when I log in it just keeps sending the authentication email so not sure just what is going on there.
The other irritation this morning and should probably be a rant is the annoyance that the Watch8 does not use the same alarm ringtone as the phone, which the Watch4 had no problem with! I did try reaching out to Samsung and now have a chat open, but it seems that we have the same problem as just about every other big organisation ... each app does it's own thing so the alarm app is not managed via the notifications setting page, and although I can see a list of sounds if I set up an alarm on the watch now, I can't change the one it uses for the existing phone alarms ... and apparently it does not sync THAT information when restoring the backup from the Watch4. I've got as far as installing file manager on the watch so I can copy the sound files over to the watch but THAT should be handled from the watch Ware application just as I can do between the phone and the desktop machine. NOW if I could get the watch to appear on KDEConnect? That would be something useful.
I've also found a useful fix on Thunderbird thanks to an article on The Register about the latest version. I've actually got an Unread Folders view above the All Folders one, but at present it's flagging the last message, which I have read, but not clearing the count on that folder. Lets see how things go after a few more messages have been seen. At times I do come across things that would have been nice to know some time ago and it is often articles in The Register which prompt me to did deeper. I still get anoyed that IMAP is not as flexible as I would like, but currently the phone and tablet are seeing what is left on the email server and I just have to manually run the mail filters to move traffic to the right local folders. A 'run all filters' button would be very welcome! Time to visit Thunderbird and see if they have a wish list ...
Another area that is outstanding and which I could do with setting up a TODO item is an 'Assiatant' ... mistral gave me a list of 8 options a week ago but it prompted another line of thought as many of them are listed for the Raspberry Pi, of which I have several cold in a box here. I can see the reasoning as for home automation that is probably the right base for a connection to things like the lights, thermostat and perhaps even motors on the curtains, but it was not quite what Iw as asking. What ideally I need is something to replace mistral that actually knows about me today WITHOUT passing all that personal data to one of the big players. Hence the look at solid and also my building of bitweaver in the first place. I want a locally stored archive of material that can be searched as required and can answer questions relating to every day life. The last option on the list looks interesting, Kalliope, but I've not got any further than the first page as yet. To many irons in the fire and not enough time in the day to juggle them! At least the bitweaver side of things is now in a much more stable state, and I'm even fixing little bugs and adjusting that have been a problem for years. So pushing all this new content is happening a lot more quickly and reliably. And search can find historic pages to link back to.
And a blast from the past PDP11/73 was a machine that Macro Marketing ran 100+ text terminals on for the sales floor. I can't remeber now just what OS they were using but I had a much more powerful VAX computer with two graphics terminals for the chip design suite. The PHP's machines were eventually replaced by a pair of Amdahl 'super computers' which needed their own room built to house them.