2024-09-06 08:17:08
Last year, I joined the crowdfunding campaign for a neat little 7-inch, open hardware laptop called the MNT Pocket Reform. After much anticipation, I finally got it in the mail a couple days ago, and absolutely love it so far. Here are some first impressions.
As someone who uses computers every day for work and life, I’ve gone through many devices over the years. I’ve taken old ones apart when I was young just to see how they worked, upgraded others, and kept others nice and sealed up so I could just use the thing.
I was interested in the Pocket Reform because I wanted an ultra-portable device with a real keyboard that I could take with me on a day out in the city or an extended trip into the woods, and always be within reach of my business — communicating with customers, accessing servers, or doing some emergency bug squashing. (Plus I still miss my circa-2010, 10-inch netbook from college, may it rest in peace.)
These days, I don’t tinker with the inside of computers unless I absolutely have to. It can be fun, but I mostly need them to just work, and I don’t want to have to send them off if something fails.
The Pocket Reform really has me covered here, since it works almost perfectly out of the box, and is very friendly if I need to open it up, due to its open hardware design. This is a tinkerer’s dream device, but it still works great for me as someone who doesn’t want to get too into the weeds, hardware-wise.
For me, this was useful right away. To first turn the device on after getting it, you need to slide a switch in a tiny slot with a tiny pin, such as a SIM card ejector. I didn’t have one laying around, but I did have some screwdrivers. So I just removed two screws on a side panel and flipped the switch with my finger. If this wasn’t a device meant for modification, this would’ve been much more tedious.
Otherwise, it took only a little bit of futzing with things to get my new Pocket Reform working.
I actually had to flip the power switch twice to get it to boot up. The first time, only the system controller screen turned on, and I thought the device was just broken. But once I eventually reset the switch again and it started up, I was immediately impressed. The screen is bright and clear, and the backlit keyboard brilliantly came to life.
I went through the nice setup wizard that MNT put together, setting my timezone and default desktop environment. However, none of the settings I chose actually stuck — my clock was still on Berlin time instead of New York, and the default desktop environment wasn’t the one I selected. So I spent about 10 minutes Googling and digging into the command-line to change the timezone, as I couldn’t find a graphical interface for changing it, either. I’m sure this will be a minor pain whenever I travel, but it’s nothing I’m not used to as a Linux user 😅.
Overall, it was easy to get my normal apps installed and my settings set. This isn’t a fault with the device itself, but I only ran into problems with my preferred browser, Vivaldi. When I started it up, the screen started glitching out. I didn’t know what the cause was — maybe the device, or the desktop environment. I eventually narrowed it down to Vivaldi’s lack of Wayland support, and found this reddit thread, which only partially fixed it.
So I exported everything from Vivaldi and decided to just stick with Firefox, which works flawlessly.
From reading the MNT forums over the last few months, I knew about the dreaded Wi-Fi issues. And within about 30 minutes of booting up the device, I encountered this too. The connection dropped, reconnected, stayed dropped. Another time after booting, it didn’t connect at all.
When it is connected, the fastest speeds I’ve seen are around 800kbps, so the internet feels a bit like being back in rural Virginia on DSL again. But it doesn’t bug me too much, as long as I can actually connect to the internet. (Maybe I can improve the experience for Write.as users with slow internet connections, thanks to this device.)
Recent firmware and kernel updates seem to have improved stability just slightly, and MNT has released a new Wi-Fi card and antenna to address this. But I’m not excited to shell out more money / risk more issues for such basic functionality. So for now, I’ll endure and just hope for the best.
This is the first laptop I’ve owned that charges with USB-C, so I didn’t have the right adapter when the device arrived. Still, I was able to charge it a bit with my Nintendo Switch power adapter, and then bought a proper 30W charger to use permanently.
Using that, I was able to get the batteries up to 67% on the first “full” charge. Then after fully discharging and charging up again, based on other users’ advice, it hit 100% — no problem!
One nice thing about the Pocket Reform is that you can see your battery status without booting it up, thanks to the microcontroller screen. I regularly use this to see if I need to charge up before going out.
My only last complaint was the lack of a suspend capability. Apparently there are a few issues preventing this from working. But for now, I’m fine shutting down every time I’m done using the Pocket for a bit, or at least dimming the screen and keyboard to save some juice.
Some of these things are to be expected with a hacker-friendly device like this. But the joy of using it daily has vastly outweighed any initial issues.
The Pocket Reform is really a beautiful device. It’s thick and hefty, but really solidly built. I worry much less about breaking it (for example) than I would my flimsy smartphone, or even my normal ThinkPad. The hinge holds the screen firmly at any angle, and it all snaps together with a satisfying thunk. Some solid engineering has gone into this thing, and it shows from the second you see it.
Despite its small size, the keyboard is such a joy to use. I went with the Choc White keys, which are so satisfyingly clicky. They have way more travel than what you’d find on most modern laptops, which also makes it pleasant to type on. The keyboard backlight is easy to adjust by pressing Hyper and scrolling the trackball, and I find myself regularly changing the color to match my mood.
I’m used to an ortholinear keyboard layout, since I normally use an Advantage Kinesis keyboard on my desktop machine. But I’ve had a little trouble adjusting to the compacted keyboard layout, which is most problematic when working in the terminal. For example, the up-arrow key on the Pocket is where you’d normally find the forward slash (/) key on a standard keyboard, so I’m regularly hitting the wrong key when typing out a file path, for example. And the right-pinky key on the Pocket is the single-quote key instead of semicolon, which is constantly messing me up when trying to exit Vim.
I’ve read it’s possible to change the keyboard layout, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. For now, I just have to think harder while typing and live without that crucial muscle memory while on the device.
The Pocket Reform uses a trackball for pointing, and it’s a real joy to use as well. It’s smooth, and even a little more enjoyable to use than my ThinkPad’s Trackpoint nub. My only complaint is how close it is to the bottom edge of the device, especially when working with the device on my lap, but this is very minor.
I’ve used the Pocket Reform every single day since I got it. Put simply, I love it.
I regularly keep it next to my couch while I’m out of my home office or watching TV, and already took it out for a night at my weekly writing group (where they all were intrigued by this funky little computer I opened up at the bar).
As I mentioned in the beginning, I really wanted a portable device with a real keyboard — and the Pocket Reform perfectly meets my expectations. From my couch, I can casually open it up and respond to some forum posts or fire off a quick email — all things that are painful to do on a phone. I can moderate Read Write.as, and access our servers. Out in the world, I can do some writing here on Write.as — the editor already looks great on its tiny screen — or do a little coding.
The constraints of the device itself are also helpful in some unexpected ways. Because of how small it is, I find myself being able to focus on the task at hand better. While I have probably 250 tabs open on my desktop computer, I’ll open no more than 6 or so on my Pocket Reform, and close them as soon as I’m done with them. I don’t waste my time scrolling articles or social media unless I need to. And since I have to shut the device down every time I take a break, I don’t open needless apps I’m not immediately using. It’s a calmer experience overall, even as a fully-capable computer.
My favorite part of the Pocket Reform has been how it replaces my smartphone for many of the things I need to do on a daily basis. I can better respond to Write.as customers, since I don’t have to slap my thumbs on a lifeless touchscreen to type out a message. I can research things across the web with the quickness you only get with a multi-input device like this. I can build and modify my software no matter where I am. And I can take it with me everywhere I go, just like I do with my phone. But beyond that, I can rest easy knowing this is an open, hackable device that will last me for many years.
Overall, I’m extremely pleased with the Pocket Reform, even after using it for just a few days. @[email protected] and the MNT Research team have done an incredible job putting this together and getting it out to everyone. Though this is my first experience with their work, I’m already an instant fan, and I look forward to what they come out with in the future.
2024-06-12 03:42:33
It’s funny to end up in June and realize how quickly the year has slipped by. But I’ve been keeping pretty busy, especially over the last few months.
Today I finished wrapping up things from the NYC Photo Stroll Portraiture Workshop we held at the beginning of the month. It was a blast, with some great instructors and a beautiful studio to shoot in. I learned a ton about lighting and direction, and got some great inspiration from our “experimental” class on the third day.
(Photo by me)
(Photo by @picturemanbob.)
I moved to another neighborhood in Brooklyn in May, and I may or may not still be unpacking.
It’s a smaller place, but in better proximity to where I spend most of my time. It’s nice having more stores and parks within walking distance, bumping into friends on the street, and just being in the middle of a lively neighborhood.
If I had to complain, it’d only be about these pesky cars passing down the street. Somehow, they must all have glue stuck to their steering wheel; or maybe just broken horns, making them blare all morning. I’m still getting to the bottom of that one…
These days, most of my daily Write.as work involves supporting our customers — and I’ve fallen behind lately. I’m catching up on a backlog of issues now (and if you’re waiting on me, I appreciate your patience!).
When I get through everything, I’ll turn my focus back to what I was working on in May: comments. I’m excited to make some progress, and see all it enables for everyone on the platform.
Beyond that, I want to update some aspects of the site that I haven’t given much attention to recently. For one, I want to launch a cheaper subscription plan again, so that more people can join.
In short, the current moment on the web demands more open social platforms, and I want ours to be as accessible as possible (while remaining sustainable for us).
Along those lines, I’ll release the next WriteFreely version (v0.15.1) soon. It’ll mostly include some important fixes that have been waiting around (once again, falling a bit behind). But after that, I should be able to get back to more significant new features and have another release ready this summer.
Speaking of WriteFreely, I went to the Netherlands last month to talk about it and the fediverse at the NLUUG conference. I haven’t done a talk like that in a while, but it sparked some great discussions. As always, seeing that kind of excitement around the fediverse in-person gave me a new boost of energy to keep building what we’re building.
After the conference, I managed to see some of Utrecht, and even meet up with Laurens for a tour around town (and some tasty beer) before I headed home.
(Photos by me)
(Photo by @[email protected])
Should I launch a search engine? I’ve been thinking of it lately, with Google seemingly trying to kill the web by launching their uh, misinformed AI assistant.
If I did, it would be small, in the style of engines like searchmysite.net or Marginalia, and only index the human-powered web. Just something I’m thinking about.
Discuss... or reply to @[email protected].
2024-03-07 02:36:47
Last month I went to Brussels for FOSDEM, for the first time since 2020. While I didn’t go to many talks, I was able to connect with many people there, from WriteFreely users to old friends to many new people I met along the way.
I first connected with @[email protected] of the Fediverse Report. He shared some great insights about publishing long-form content on the fediverse, and what works or not. Our conversation gave me a new perspective on it all, and got me thinking a lot about what’s most important as I build better fediverse support into WriteFreely and Write.as.
I met some of the Mastodon team, including @[email protected], and talked about how other fediverse platforms might better support long-form content. I’m now looped in a little better with development on their end, both as an application developer and Mastodon instance admin.
I also chatted with @[email protected] about WriteFreely. It was so nice meeting, and hearing how the software has worked well for everything he’s doing. The chat also helped me prioritize some missing features.
Finally, I met @[email protected], who builds a really neat platform called Readup. It’s a very cool social way to read on the web — I’d highly recommend checking it out! Here, again our conversation turned to the fediverse, and ways that non-microblogging platforms might interact over ActivityPub.
The weekend was really a blur — there are many other great people I met, reconnected with, and had great conversations with. But overall it was refreshing to see people in real life and chat over drinks or music, in a city I always love coming back to.
Especially after all this time away from major WriteFreely development, it got me excited about ramping it up again this year, collaborating with more people, and seeing what we can all build together.
Thoughts? Discuss... or reply to @[email protected].
2023-08-25 11:06:33
It was late 2013 when I drove past a little dog head with big floppy ears attached poking out of the long grass in the backwoods of Florida. My girlfriend at the time said we had to go back and get him, so we did.
He was timid at first but friendly, and came right up to us when we approached. We took him home and fed him. I was reading a lot of Salinger then, so I named him Holden.
Over the years, he and I grew up together — me through the rest of my 20s, and him into old age.
We traveled up and down the east coast, hiking cities and waterfalls; camping among canyon coyotes or highway trucks.
We developed our own language — I knew his wants and needs, and he knew where we were going and (of course) when we'd eat.
He'd snuggle close and keep watch in our tent. I'd pet his nose until he fell asleep. He'd be my morning alarm clock. I'd make sure he never got separated from the pack.
Throughout it all, he had many other humans raising and caring for him over the years, through friendships and relationships. They all gave him the love he deserved, and helped make him into the wonderful companion he came to be.
From Florida to New York City, he experienced so much, and was a part of so many lives.
Last night, a friend said Holden was lucky I stole him from the woods that late October day — and that I've served him well.
But he did just the same for me in our 10 years together, right until his last breath. We were both lucky to have found each other, and I'm so thankful for all the time I had with my sweet boy.
A growing collection of photos on Snap.as: Adventures with Holden.
2023-04-23 00:14:51
After taking a bit of a sabbatical in 2022, I’m back into Write.as and WriteFreely development. My views on the product naturally change over time, so I want to share where I’m at now.
It was always my grand vision to have a set of standalone, but interconnected, tools for publishing on the web. There’s Write.as for words, Snap.as for photos, Submit.as for submissions, and Remark.as for socializing.
While I’m going to continue building in this direction as it makes sense for our hosted tools, I’m more focused on a new approach, particularly for WriteFreely as a product: having a unified platform.
It’s become clear over time that in order to make WriteFreely (and Write.as) as useful as it can be, it needs to have a much more unified experience.
As a user, you shouldn’t need to go to a completely separate photo-hosting app just to add a photo to your blog post — you should be able to seamlessly upload it as you write. You shouldn’t need to switch to another site to interact with readers — their comments and discussions should be shown directly on your post.
This is especially true for our self-hosted, open source tool, WriteFreely. Today, it’s extremely easy for a sysadmin to spin up a single WriteFreely blog or multi-user community. All you need is a VPS and a domain name — there really isn’t much more to configure.
Until now, I’ve left complementing features like photo hosting out of WriteFreely entirely, as I figured out what the best approach is product-wise — e.g. do we want SnapFreely, SubmitFreely, etc? Or have it all in WriteFreely?
At this point, I don’t think it makes sense for our self-hosted product to be chopped up into multiple components like our hosted tools are. Instead, I want to bring all those tools into a single application in WriteFreely.
On one side, the WriteFreely / Write.as UX has been long-due for an overhaul. It’s still built around anonymous posts as the default product that results from using this tool. The UI assumes you’re mostly just hammering out an essay and sharing it as an anonymous post — not as a blog post, not to repeat readers, and not for the purpose of hearing feedback.
While that still works for many people, and we’re one of the few products out there that stick to this “less is more” idea, we also enable so many other things — and we need to support them as well.
To get there, I’ll need to develop some important and long-requested features. These are some of the ones that are top of my mind.
One part of this will involve full support for private drafts. Today, “drafts” are just anonymous posts — a hacky solution to a real problem. First-class support for drafts will help writers build up work over time and across devices, compose multiple posts at once, safely preview posts, schedule them for publishing, collaborate with their team before publishing, and ensure their writing is truly private throughout the process.
As a very far-off aside, this may evolve into another simple tool like Draft.as. But first and foremost, it’ll be baked into WriteFreely and Write.as.
Along with drafts will come better post management. Right now, you have to fumble through all the blog posts you’ve ever written, in their full form, just to manage them. There’s no way to search old posts on the platform itself, making it difficult to build up an interconnected archive over time. Instead of richly growing over the years, your blog becomes more difficult to manage, and ultimately less useful. This will be one of my first priorities to fix.
It’ll probably involve a dedicated section for managing posts.
After launching Remark.as early last year, I got some great feedback on what people want from a “social” side to the platform. Now, especially with the fediverse growing so rapidly after Twitter changed ownership, I’d like to help people socialize through their Write.as / WriteFreely publication on the open web.
For anyone using our hosted tools, this will start with Remark.as getting full support for replies directly from the fediverse. This will help more people interact with your writing from outside of Write.as.
Then WriteFreely will get the same ability, especially once adequate moderation tools are built out.
What do you think? What have I missed? Discuss...
2023-02-19 07:42:31
Took an 18-hour train ride home from Jacksonville, FL to New York after some time in the snow out west and a friend's wedding down south.
Usually I'll work, write, or read on a long trip like this, but this time I just put on some music and watched the swamps, small towns, and Spanish moss-covered oaks pass me by. I took some pictures out the dirt-covered window of my sleeping car room. I gladly helped the lady across the hall connect to the wifi (she asked because “All young people know how to do it”).
After a nice dinner in the dining car, I sipped a beer that I'd packed, and eventually climbed into my top bunk, comforted by a bedside net that would catch me if the train ever tried to roll me off.
In the morning, the gentle swaying that had rocked me to sleep had somehow ceased, and the long stillness woke me. We were stopped south of Richmond, VA as the engineer hit their 12-hour driving limit, and we waited for a new one to come on board.
The lady across the hall asked our car attendant, Sonny, how late we'd be getting into Philadelphia — her husband would be waiting there. I poured some coffee from a pot at the end of the car, and watched the sun peek out over the hills from back in my room.
We eventually lurched forward, coasting into the Richmond station. I stepped off to stretch and get some air. Birds were chirping from rafters above the platform; it was warmer than I expected.
Embarking again, I went to the dining car for breakfast — an omelette, muffin, yogurt, and orange juice. The server echoed my feelings about sleeping better on a moving train. Outside the window, marsh slowly turned into concrete and commuter train stations; the suburbs I grew up in; the towns I used to drive to.
Past DC, the world sped by faster after they had swapped our diesel engine for electric. It was smoother now, on some of this country's only “higher-speed rail” tracks — we were going 108 mph.
It was nice to end a long trip this way, with a 1,000-mile interlude of calm. When I stepped off and into the crowds of midtown Manhattan, the calm stayed. Cars revved and honked, someone yelled, and a pigeon asked me for food. It was good to be home.
Shot on a Leica M10 Monochrom.
