This also means my TUI button interface that I use on the #PineDA might be useable on the Beepy too. I was planning on figuring something else out but being able to easily swipe the optical pointer to navigate the buttons could work.

Ok, so a while back I setup a makeshift podcast "app" for my #PineDA that is basically a really simple shell script that runs podget to download new episodes, puts the files into fzf and plays them with mpv when you select one.

I think I've come up with an even better solution which has become a theme lately. Just use offpunk and comitium for everything. X-)

For my #PineDA terminal interface I've been able to replace some specialized programs with #gemini. Instead of a CLI wikipedia search I can just launch Gemipedia in a terminal gemini client. For a weather forecast I can just pipe Chilly Weather to less.

This blog post by Jeff Geerling has a nice look at the Beepberry. It sounds like it should be pretty functional when it arrives which is nice. I'm hoping that they will soon have a nice enclosure for it up for sale like they did with the Watchy.

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/messing-beepberry

What I want to do is adapt my TUI interface that I use on my #PineDA for the Beepberry. Put a big ole sd card in there too and I can have a bunch of music on it too. Only BT headphones would work though unless I hacked an i2s audio module into.

Thinking about the Beepberry. It is somewhat PDA like or could be made to be with the right software. Kind of like how I have my Pinephone setup with with the terminal launcher and various CLI/TUI programs to be like a faux PDA. This would have to be all keyboard drive though with no touchscreen. The tui launcher I'm using on the #PineDA can be keyboard driven already so that should still work. It will just be less screen real estate to work with or a different and more space efficient interface might be a better solution.

My other thought was since it will have a Pi Zero W in it I could sync my actual PDA with my beepberry PDA.

Dang, I really love Kodi. Just installed it on my #PineDA and it runs surprisingly smoothly on this little Allwinner 1.1GHz quad-core arm SoC.

I think what I like most about my #PineDA environment setup is that it leverages the speed and minimal resource needs of the terminal while not completely throwing "graphics" out the window. I can still view images and videos, I have a visually pleasing (to me anyways) launcher that can be operated with touchscreen or keyboard. Its just that instead of spending computing resources on a glossy overbuilt GUI for text its just, the text.

I was planning on redoing the stickers on my #PineDA but the extremely stubborn residue from the ones I just removed makes me not want to deal with this again.

@ajroach42 Ok, it's not exactly what you lay out here but I'm kind of sorta doing a lot of this with the way I have my #PineDA (Pinephone) setup.

- Tmux with customized config and keybinds
- Custom launcher for all the things I want to get to easily
- terminal email client
- terminal xmpp client
- gemini client(s)
- elinks
- podget for DL of podcasts/peertube videos
- newsboat feed reader

There's other things too but that's the main stuff

Something I've decided I like about the Pinephone with the kbd attachment, which I hadn't really considered, is the closing of it. Folding it back shut is a satisfying tactile way to mentally signify being done with it for the moment. Like, a smartphone is just sitting there screen available to be woken up and distract me at any moment. The #PineDA clamshell has a very clear differentiation between in use and not.

Alright, now I've cut the size of my music folder on the #PineDA in half by re-encoding flacs to opus with a lot of legacy mp3 mixed in there as well. As I continue to replace a lot of the old mp3s with flacs on the music server the locations sizes will go in opposite directions. The server directory will grow as mp3s are replaced with flacs and the PineDA music dir will shrink as those mp3s get replaced with opus.

I have my music collection on my #PineDA but out of laziness I just copied it as is which is a lot of FLAC files and thus huge. I have a big ole sd card in there but it will become an issue at some point X-).

I need to start thinking about what devices I want to take with me on our overseas trip in Feb. Things have changed since the last long flight I've been on.

The #PineDA is a given and I'll probably reencode some movies down to 720p for it and get flashbacks to watching movies on the PSP.

Trying to be as nerdy as possible this morning with #PineDA offline #gemini browsing with animated gifs in the terminal.

@kelbot I just want a QWERTY smartphone ala the old slide-out or Blackberry designs… g i m m e :ablobreach:

The #PineDA looks dope AF but I’ve heard the base model Pinephone is very underpowered: I’d have to splurge for a Pro instead. $450 w/ keyboard is a big ask, especially when I can get a Pixel 6a for the same price, install GrapheneOS on it, and likely get way better performance.

The Pinephone w/keyboard is pretty close to a really nice pocket computer. I say pocket computer because I have a clear distinction between something that is pocketable and something that is merely portable. Vastly different use case to me and it makes a huge difference in how much I use something. I used to use my PocketCHIP quite a bit but it would rarely leave the house with me. The Pinephone w/kbd that I affectionately call my #PineDA goes with me lots of places. The folding design and just barely compact enough form when closed means I can actually slip it in my pocket and be reasonably sure I won't destroy it while moving around with it there.

The PineDA is not perfect but it's the closest combination of things I've found thus far. The addition of the keyboard battery lofted the runtime to a point that I can not worry about it for at least a day which is huge to me. The keyboard mostly gets over the barrier of being less annoying to type with than an on screen keyboard; It absolutely could be much better though. I don't have too much of an issue with the overall size but if I were to have the choice I'd prefer something just slightly smaller and the keyboard to be designed better for thumb typing. The performance of the SoC is sufficient for me. A little more processing power would be nice maybe but I'm fine with what it is. The most intensive thing I do with a machine like this is watching video and the Pinephone can manage to playback video at the native resolution so that's good enough for me. I'm hoping at some point that the hardware video decoding stuff getting worked out makes that even better.

The computer nerd in me really wants the uConsole but I have too many unknowns as far as battery life and how the keyboard feels plus I'm just not sure I'd use it enough because of the whole pocketability thing.

Something else I'd like to see in the future is a similarly sized pocket computer like the PineDA but a little smaller and with a slide out keyboard rather than the notebook design. Pine64 was considering this way back in the early days of planning the keyboard accessory but I'm pretty doubtful that we'll ever see that for the Pinephone at this point.

Just because I haven't posted much about itin a while. #PineDA

Like, I want a little pocket computer somewhere in the realm of my #PineDA or a PocketCHIP or something similar with good thumb keyboard, reasonable display size for a pocketable handheld but something that doesn't require an always on backlight. Plus an efficient low power CPU and large battery that let it go for days and days of moderate usage.

Or a small laptop/netbook with the same type of display that doesn't need a backlight on to be usable and efficient CPU etc. Pretty easy to fit a big honkin battery in a laptop frame too.

My plan is to have two different modes that I can use the #PineDA in. PDA mode where wifi is turned off and I have access to various things that got pulled down last time a sync was done. And PC mode where I have wifi and can fire up XMPP to chat, check email and what not.

I've pretty much been doing this already but too many of the things have been manual. I need to automate the sync stuff and maybe the whole mode switch part too. PC mode I also use as a kind of weird silly convergence setup. My main interface to the PineDA is a terminal with tmux and a custom launcher that can be keyboard or mouse or touchscreen operated. So I ssh into it from my desktop to gain that extra screen space and can even open images and videos on the Pinephone display as like a little dual monitor setup.

@twizzay Yep. I call it my #PineDA as in Pine PDA :-P. That hashtag should turn up some of my previous posts about it.