Tag Archives: Tech Blog

Digital Sovereignty

According to Wikipedia,

The Darlington Bus War was a series of events between 1986 and 1995 in the UK bus industry in the town of Darlington, County Durham, culminating in the wholesale entry of Stagecoach Group onto the Darlington bus scene, and the collapse of Darlington Corporation Transport.

Follow this link to read the full article

but the relevant paragraph is this one

It was the combination of Busways’ actions in recruiting so many of DTC’s drivers so quickly, registering services on all its routes and running free services which caused DTC’s final collapse. We find these actions to be predatory, deplorable and against the public interest.

— Monopolies and Mergers Commission

Essentially, Darlington Transport Company Ltd (DTC) was unfairly forced out of business by a much bigger competitor offering free rides.

I grew up near Darlington, and I remember the bus war. I remember seeing three different nearly empty buses pulling up at bus stops. Naturally, given the choice, passengers would catch the free one. The free buses were funded by a much bigger company, DTC couldn’t compete and went out of business. After that, the fares went up and the service plummeted.

It’s a business model used by tech companies all the time. Undercut the competition, drive them out of business and then raise the prices for all. It’s one of the driving forces behind enshittification

Apple, Microsoft and Google are all guilty of this. I touched on it in this recent post: It’s the dishonesty I can’t stand

Frankly, I’ve had enough. I’ve championed open source software for years. I’m now going all in. I’m beginning the process of cutting my ties with the big tech firms completely. I’m not alone in this. Here’s one example of a German State that is replacing Microsoft with open source software. There are many other examples.

This is an example of Digital Sovereignty, taking back control of your data, something I’ve been doing for years, but am now stepping up the pace.

Why? Because as long as the big tech firms hold my data, they can lock me out of it.

It can happen by accident as happened to this long term Apple user who lost access to 20 years of his digital life

Or worse, it can happen deliberately. The current situation in the Middle East has thrown up examples where all sides have been locked out of accounts by the big tech firms. You can search for your own examples of this.

And even if I still have access to those services, who is regulating the cost?

Tech firms have long introduced charges for services that used to be free, they are now rapidly raising prices at will, and by all sorts of ways. Pay extra to remove adverts that never used to be there from streaming services, anyone?

But can an individual establish digital sovereignty? Of course you can. Throw away all your computers and go back to pen an paper.

Okay. Can you do this whilst still enjoying the benefits of IT? Yes, quite easily. You’re going to lose some of the convenience of modern integrated systems, but you are regaining control of your life. And the more people that do it, the better it will be for everyone.

Listen to me. I’m a survivor of the Darlington Bus War. I know what I’m talking about.

I’ll be writing about the process here occasionally. Let me know if you want to know more…

The Queen’s Gambit

Mitchell and Webb once did a Medical Drama sketch, where two fictional screenwriters explained that the emphasis in their new series was on drama and not medicine, as “you can get bogged down too much on the so called research.”

This resulted in a show with doctors shouting such things as “This patient is poorly! Bring me the medicine! No, you fool, that’s the wrong medicine!”

I was reminded of this sketch whilst watching The Queen’s Gambit recently. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a series about a female chess prodigy who goes on to become World Champion in the 1960’s. Apparently the matches played on screen were meticulously researched, and reflected real games played back then.

But that doesn’t matter. I don’t think most people watching would follow the play – I certainly couldn’t – but that doesn’t matter because what made the show so watchable was the way the drama of the games was communicated.

I was gripped by the ebb and flow of the matches, by the pace of the game: the way players would make a series of moves quickly and then spend ages pondering the next one. There was drama in the expression on their faces, even in the way they moved the pieces…

But that was just the games themselves. Painstakingly recreated they might have been, but they weren’t the story.

David Hepworth, the music writer, gave this advice – Don’t write about the music, write about all the things around it.

I think that’s true of all writing.

Would the Queen’s Gambit have been as good if it had been about draughts or backgammon? I don’t think so. Maybe you could have made the tournament scenes themselves as exciting, but the drama was heightened through the 60s setting, the Cold War tension and the single minded devotion of the characters in studying past games. The story wasn’t about the chess.

It’s often said that the essence of drama is conflict. Many beginner writers misunderstand what this means. A fight doesn’t make a story exciting. Why the people are fighting, that’s what’s interesting.

On a separate note, I saw Hamnet last night. That was two hours of my life I’ll never get back. The only bit I enjoyed was the last ten minutes, and that was because it was a scene from Hamlet.

But there was a bit where Shakespeare was sharpening his quills whilst awaiting for inspiration to strike. I felt happy when I saw that. That was the Elizabethan equivalent of me messing around with my emacs config file on my computer rather than getting down to work.

Finally, it’s getting harder and harder to share these posts. The algorithms on social media sites favour internal content, not external blogs like this. If you’ve been relying on say Facebook to send you to this site then you’ve probably not being seeing many posts recently.

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It’s the dishonesty I can’t stand

I don’t know if you’ve ever used the Vivaldi browser, but take a look at this announcement for their latest update:

We’re launching Vivaldi 7.8 today, and honestly, this one’s different. While every major browser is racing to cram AI assistants into their products, Vivaldi is dropping a middle finger to that entire approach.

Good for them. Dell have realised that users don’t care about AI too. You can read about that here.

Pages used to be a rather nice little word processor that I occasionally used on my iPhone. Apple have just updated it to try and make me take out a subscription to their Creator suite. Two things:

1) I don’t want to use Apple Intelligence when I’m being creative. The pleasure is in the act of creativity, not in the output. You might as well pay someone to have sex for you.

2) Apple say that Pages will continue to have a free tier. No it won’t. Pages was never free, any more than iOS is free. You pay for them as part of the cost of the device. It’s the dishonesty I can’t stand.

If you want to use AI, fine. Personally, I don’t want AI anywhere near my computer. My thoughts are my own, I don’t want my thoughts rewritten by AI. It’s not what the markets want, either. Here’s what Analog says about AI

Statement on the Use of “AI” writing tools such as ChatGPT

We will not consider any submissions written, developed, or assisted by these tools. Attempting to submit these works may result in being banned from submitting works in the future.

Most other publications say something similar. So if you’re marketing a word processor, don’t pretend that it’s going to help me write saleable stories. It’s quite the opposite.

Finally, it’s getting harder and harder to share these posts. The algorithms on social media sites favour internal content, not external blogs like this. If you’ve been relying on say Facebook to send you to this site then you’ve probably not being seeing many posts recently.

If you don’t want to miss anything, enter your email below to subscribe to this blog and receive posts by email.

Why You Should Write Down Everything: The Power of GTD

My colleague recently noticed me updating my todo list.

“Have you really included walk the dog on your list?” he asked. “Even if you did forget, wouldn’t the dog remind you?”

The dog would remind, but that’s no reason for omitting the task.

I’ve followed GTD for years. One of the most useful bits of advice it gives is to capture everything, and I learned a long time ago this means EVERYTHING.

Yes, I wouldn’t forget to walk the dog, but walking the dog will take an hour of my time and this is time I can’t use for something else. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to use the time for anything else. I like walking. I like walking the dog. This is something I want to do.

It’s important to write everything down so I know how much time I have for things I want to do and things I have to do. That way I ensure I do both.

I wrote in some detail about my GTD process years ago. I’ve recently removed those posts from my website as part of the ongoing reorganisation.

The reason for removing the post is that Todoist explained it all far better than I did. If you’ve never seen GTD before I strongly suggest you follow this link. It might just change your life.

Speaking of Todoist, I’m planning a new section to discuss my current writing tools and how they’re evolving. Watch this space.

All Change!

You might notice that my websites are changing. There are a number of reasons for this, but the big one is I’ve been forced into changing hosting providers (again).

For years I’ve run my websites on WordPress, installing WordPress software on servers hosted by third party providers and maintaining the site myself. Doing things this way was cheaper and offered me a greater range of features. It was more work, but it was fun.

The trouble is the hosting providers I used always started out providing an excellent service, but were then bought out by larger companies. When that happened the price went up and the service level plummeted.

For small sites like mine, letting WordPress do the hosting has become the preferred choice. They may be a bit more expensive but they’ve been around for a long time and, in my experience, their support has been very good. I don’t care if they try and upsell when they’ve solved a problem, at least they solve the problem first.

So for the moment I have two WordPress sites:

TonyBallantyne.com will remain as it is. It needs tidying, due to the rushed import from my old host, but bear with me.

tech.tonyballantyne.com will be moving to my Obsidian site: notes.tonyballantyne.com.

Obsidian is easier to maintain for the sort posts that go on my tech site. Plus, with Obsidian, the notes are mine. I keep control over them when things change. And with constant enshittification, Obsidian is my escape hatch from whatever happens next…

Au Revoir Evernote, Hello Obsidian

I know, I know. I’ve been in and out of love with Evernote for years now. You and I both know I’ll be probably writing a post in a year’s time saying how I’m using it again.

But not for now.

There are many, many positive things about Evernote. It’s the only app that does everything I need. The web app is superb, the web clipper and the facility to email notes are unequalled. You don’t realise just how thoroughly Evernote covers your needs until you try another app.

But there are problems too. Evernote’s direction of travel has diverged from mine. I don’t need RTE, I’m not really interested in AI support.

I want something that takes me to the right note straight away, that allows me to edit my notes quickly and effectively. I want to be able to get information into and out of the system without having to download it first. I want to be able to rearrange things without hassle. And that’s where Obsidian excels.

Obsidian isn’t perfect. Its not for casual users, the lack of a web app is a big problem, especially in a work environment with strict firewalls (I’ve bought an iPad to use at work to get round this). But the pluses are so much more than the minuses. Evernote seems to have lost interest in updating the note editor, the editing experience in Obsidian is fantastic, partly because it’s all based on Markdown, partly because it’s just so well thought out.

Even so, I would have probably remained with Evernote but for two things. First, they ceased development on the Linux client. This might be temporary, but no Linux support is always a deal breaker for me. I believe in paying for the software I use. I’m not paying for something that doesn’t support my preferred platform

But more importantly, it’s the realisation that it’s been five years since Ian Small acknowledged Evernote had stagnated and started to turn things around. Bending Spoons are making great strides in fixing things, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if in three months it will be near perfect, but that will be too late for me. Six months ago I got fed up with notes not syncing, I downloaded Yarle and jumped ship to Obsidian and I’ve never looked back.

I still use Evernote. On those occasions when I want to share or collaborate its ideal. I still use the web app. I may yet be back, fully on board, in a year’s time, but for the moment I love Obsidian.

Lightweight .emacs

The last couple of years have seen a change in my Emacs setup. Work dictates that I have to use a number of different machines; in the past I’ve tried to give a consistent experience no matter which machine I was working on. Bookmarks, abbreviations, org-agendas were all stored on Dropbox, and an increasingly complicated set of code took into account paths for different operating systems and network setups. 

It came to a point where I seemed to be spending more time on my .emacs files than I was on actually doing anything.  I began to ask myself, was consistency that important?

The answer was no.

So I changed my approach.

I’ve streamlined my init file as much as possible. I now spend my time trying to find a way to use existing features as far as possible, If possible, I write lightweight code to solve a problem,  only installing packages as a last resort.  (take a look at my really simple scrivener mode for an example of this)

I still use packages, of course. I’m not going to stop using org mode or evil or magit, but I don’t need them on every computer. 

As far as my Emacs setup goes, I now only use Dropbox to enable the use of Orgzly and Beorg on my portable devices (I still use it to sync all my other files, of course)

Lastly, I’ve had a love hate relationship with Evernote over the years but I’ve been really impressed by the direction that it’s been going over the past 18 months.  All my records are now stored there, my agenda and editing is all done on Emacs (I sometimes forget that editing was its initial purpose).

Goodbye Simplenote, Hello Again Evernote

We’ve all got a list of our favourite CEOs.

Okay, we haven’t. But if we did, mine would be Ian Small of Evernote.  You can see him here, clearly uncomfortable at being in front of the camera. I rather like him for that. Being good on camera doesn’t mean you can do the job. I’m increasingly wondering if the opposite might be true.

Anyway, read this message Ian Small wrote back in January, stating Evernote’s priorities for the year ahead. I particularly liked this passage:

And honesty requires us to state—straight out—that we can do better with the product you have today than we are currently doing. In fact, we can do better than we have been doing for some years.

He goes on to promise to concentrate on getting the foundations of the product right before adding new features.

Since then he seems to be making good on his promise.  

You might remember this article I wrote in 2016 saying I was leaving Evernote for Simplenote. Well, I’ve now gone back to Evernote. I like the direction things are going. I’m still disappointed with the lack of Linux support but I’ll trade that in for something that’s solid, or at least is attempting to get things right.

And I must admit, I rather like Ian Small’s (rather awkward) style.  Many people seek advancement by promising to make big changes.  They go for the grand gesture and then move on, leaving others to sort out the mess they’ve made. It’s rather refreshing to see someone quietly getting on with the challenge of trying to make something that’s already quite good work just that little bit better.

WordPress Pharma Hack

Someone kindly emailed me to point out that my writing site had been hacked. Links for Cialis were now appearing scattered throughout the text.

A quick Google search revealed that this was a common hack, and was probably the result of some rogue code embedded in a file after a brute force attack. I ran a site security check (there are many free services if you search for them) which suggested that the problem was located in wp-config.php. I could have paid for a clear up, but taking a look at the file in question it was clear the code wasn’t exactly trying to conceal itself. Once snipped out, my site’s performance improved immediately.

… or so I thought.

A few days later, the adverts reappeared. This is a clever hack – snip out the code and it regenerates itself.

There are various flavours of the Pharma Hack, (a search for WordPress Pharma Hack will give you all the details you need and more) the one that hit me had added an innocent looking file: /wp-includes/init.php

I only discovered this after I’d deleted all my themes and plugins and installed fresh versions of wp-admin and wp-includes. When I restarted the site, the following message appeared at the top of the page:

include_once(.../public_html//wp-includes/init.php) [function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in .../public_html/wp-config.php on line 93

Checking line 93 of wp-config showed the offending line (I’ve surrounded it with **s):

** include_once(ABSPATH . '/wp-includes/init.php'); ** 
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');//Disable File Edits
define('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true);

I removed the line, reset my passwords, including the database passwords, reinstalled my plugins and (hopefully) that’s it.

I should have noticed this sooner, of course, but I’ve not been blogging recently as I’ve been concentrating on finishing my next novel.

Even so, I must hold my hands up and admit that I’ve not given my sites the attention they deserve. I’ve installed some security software following a quick search for WordPress security plugins on Google, I’ll take some time to monitor what’s going on in future.

Map AltGr to Alt on Linux

All I wanted was to make my AltGr key to work the same as my Alt key…

As my poor hands continue to struggle with RSI, I’ve been looking at ways to make my typing more efficient. One thing that occurred to me was to fix something that had bugged me for ages: the fact that I never use AltGr on my keyboard. Things would be easier if it acted like Alt. It would certainly make it more comfortable to hit M-x and M-g in Emacs

And so I searched and searched for ways to do this. The simplest way I found was to type the following command into the terminal:

setxkbmap -option altwin:meta_alt

But how to run that at startup?

My Arch Linux setup uses the i3 window manager, which is called from ~/.xinitrc. Adding setxkbmap -option altwin:meta_alt to the beginning of ~/.xinitrc did the trick.

That doesn’t work on Ubuntu 16.04, however. The easiest way there is to use dconf editor.

sudo apt-get install dconf-editor if you’ve not already got it, then navigate to org|gnome|desktop|input-sources and choose xkb-options.

Insert the following in the value box: ['altwin:meta_alt']

… and that’s it.