Johan Bové

Jumped on the Obsidian train - was keeping my notes in markdown already for some time, but it got a bit disorganised - now hoping to bring back a bit of structure with Obsidian's organisational features. Syncing everything between my phone and my PC using Syncthing.

Using #Rsync for backing up the videos and pictures from my phone to a DAS (Direct-Attached Storage) on my #Fedora machine - it just works!™

I would want an image recognition AI to be able to identify the groceries I just bought from a simple picture I took with my phone, so I can keep track of my household supplies without having to type and enter anything myself in a database.

Yesterday I burned a bunch of MP3s on a 700 MB CD-R because our new leasing car still has a Sony CD slide-in slot - just for the heck of not having to take out the phone and open an app. Slot-in, press play.

First thing I did after upgrading to Android 13 on my Fairphone 3 was to turn off UI animations. I really do not need my phone's UI to dance all the time.

A new week brings a new Android issue to resolve. The phone now goes into screen lock whenever I play a video from Firefox. Having a hard time ploughing through loads of crappy websites to be able to find any thing remotely related to find out what to do about this. The Internet is a mess.

Managed to spend 20 minutes time today on figuring out why a file wouldn't _simply_ sync with the Nextcloud app on my Android phone after being edited by Markor. It would not sync to my Nextcloud server at home and then the bytes would not sync back to another instance of NextCloud on my Fedora virtual machine that is running on this Mac... and while I am writing this I just realise just how scifi all of this is, compared to what we had 20 so years ago: physical drives and FTP.

The original "admin" user account on my #Android 11 phone got messed up, due to a faulty sdcard, and could not store pictures any longer. Luckily I could still add another account on the same phone and reinstalled all apps, changed the sdcard, and the camera works again. Now i need to figure out how to make the new account the "admin".

Instead of reading interesting articles on my phone, I am now providing testing services to the developers of that app. I did not plan for this. The A in agile, stands for annoying. Not a fan of "Break things fast, then fix and deploy again". The end users pay for that with frustration and lost time.

Linkedin really wants to get access to the contacts on your phone (amongst other private things accessible through permission flags). Looking at the ridiculous effort they put in introducing thirty or so banners and popups on their mobile site trying to convince the "experience is better on the mobile app", which is essentially breaking their own site.

Deleted my Dropdox account multiple years ago - or so I thought... Last Friday a friend shared some excellent photos from a fun event we were at through his Dropbox account. He posted the link on our WhatsApp chat. I clicked it using my Android phone and enjoyed seeing the pictures. This morning I receive a message on the e-mail address I used to have with Dropdox about their updated terms and services. How did Dropbox found out I accessed their services? Was it Google, through Android, was it Meta through WhatsApp? Or what dark marketing magic was applied to detect I "came back" to Dropbox? You can check out, but you can never leave.
#privacy #dropbox

So the #grocy app can be useful, but after a month of frantically keeping track of all the groceries and food we buy and consume I've had a bit enough... I felt myself carrying my phone around much more than usual. And after a couple of days of missing out on tracking and registering, it kinda lost its point. Nevertheless, it's a great application; just not something I am able to keeping spending my time on.

Need more space on your Android phone? Use an SD card! At least, that's the promise, reality is that using an SD card as an expansion is still (after all these years) still a terrible process which is super unstable. Tried three times copying an app's storage to the "SD Card" on Android 11 and every time the phone ends up crashing.

Is it a trend you noticed too that businesses simply ignore phone calls on their own listed phone numbers during regular business hours? Most painful are the ones with messages on their websites and auto-reply mails to call them ON THE PHONE in case of urgency. Tried for days reaching out to three different businesses with nobody picking up the phone. I even checked if my phone could have been listed on one of those spam-reporting lists, but it doesn't seem to be. I also tried with different phones and phone numbers.

It's the time of the year again where the fingerprint reader on my phone is useless because of my sweaty hands.

Reading the 134 pages of the #chatcontrol bill, I understand the proposal to be a state-run "antivirus" program that must be installed on every digital device and server connected to the Internet, analyzing every text, image and video. If it finds something, you will be reported automatically to Interpol and the program will read the file and remove it from your device and any other server. Before you can use any device, you must identify yourself, no matter if it is a cell phone or a computer.

Replaced the failing battery and bottom module, with the USB connector, in my Fairphone 3 and now all is working again. Feels good to be able to "fix" a phone yourself. The price of the replacement parts is not cheap, but I do believe it is worth it. I sent the old parts to the iFixit location in Germany for proper recycling.

Had a great time at the Labyrinth at the "Three Countries Point" in Vaals. It's where The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany share their borders.

But, I got soaked and I think my phone is no longer charging. So since the battery was losing capacity too, I ordered a replacement bottom module part and a replacement battery from Fairphone.

Wasted too much time this weekend getting my phone back as it was after a reset. Shows how ridiculous complex our online and digital presences have become.