Throwback Post #1: Waxing Nostalgic on Blogs and Smartphones
Sunday, March 10, 2024
As a few-times reporter in the bustling world of full-time journalism, I found solace and expression through my personal blogging. The keyboard was my faithful companion as I clickity-clacked out my thoughts, observations, and narratives. Back then, my blog was not merely an online diary; it was a sanctuary where I unwound the string of my day-to-day musings and expressed the long-form versions well before 240 character limited social media sites were a thing.
As a journalist, my professional life brimmed with structured stories where I plied my trade, each article meticulous in its pursuit of impartiality and substance. In stark contrast, I like blogging because it cultivates my of creativity, offering me a place where my voice dances freely without the restraints of newsroom protocols... Within restraint of course, coz' I didn't wanna get fired either! Usually my blogs were there to expand on something I wrote professionally and jump into the comments with my homies and chop it up about whatever. Or put a thought into the world to be expanded/pitched/seen/delt with later.
Well, life threw a curveball, and bam! Digital disaster struck. My precious data backups got hit by some unexpected corruption. (That, and I was hella lackadaisical with the 3/2/1 method to backing stuff up sometimes.) Those digital memories, once crystal clear and at my fingertips, just poofed into oblivion😵🌪️💔.
Yet, the universe works in mysterious ways. Occasionally, as if by serendipity, the fabric of the internet yields treasures from the past. An old post surfaces—a ghost from the bygone days of fervent blogging, offering a glimpse into my former self.
ThrowBack Posting to Rediscover the Past: The Journey of a Journalist and Blogger
Today I'm starting "Throwback Posts" as a category on this here blog thang. Each salvaged post is a time capsule, a fragment of the 'me' that once was, now presented anew on my current platform. Reposting these entries is also an act of preservation, solidifying my experiences and lessons learned for historical context and aides in digital garden cultivation.
Through these rediscovered writings, I invite you to embark on a retrospective journey with me. Let's check out some of my aged scrawlings, now ready to be appreciated once more—or criticized and mocked in a new age! 🤦🏾♂️
The Case For The Blackberry KeyOne
📆 Originally published May 09, 2017
Remember Blackberry? Some of y'all may have had one back in the day; the phone with a keyboard and all that. What if there was an up-to-today's-spec version though? What if instead of bastardizing their hardware with crappy software while trying to keep up with iOS and Android, they simply got down with the program and rolled onto Android?
Wonder no more. This is the Blackberry KeyOne. Here's a video to tell you about it better than I can right now...
Ok, but why would I want one of these things? Well for those keeping track at home, some of you know I have a OnePlus One that has a battery that can't make it through HALF A DAY now 'coz it's 3 years old. I also have a Samsung Galaxy S4 that's 4 years old. But it has a replaceable battery that's 6 months old... too bad its processor and 1gig of memory is OUTDATED and stutters on pretty much every app now.
Truth is, I was supposed to upgrade last year to The Next Big Thing, but... well we all know how that turned out...
And the upgrade from my OnePlus One to the Two to the Three wasn't impressive enough for me to try and "win the lottery for the right to buy" (although thank goodness OnePlus doesn't have that system anymore...
In the interim, I've had a bit of a revelation into how I actually am using my smartphone over the past year and it's really helped me see why a device such as the Blackberry KeyOne is a better fit for me.
More than anything else, I type A LOT on my devices. Whether I'm looking up an address here in Tokyo, using Telegram or FB Messenger to contact friends, respond to emails from work or drop some Reddit bombs here or there, I am usually poking around my keyboard...and I ABSOLUTELY HATE IT. I'm one of those folks who hates "typing" on glass. My first smartphone was a Palm Treo 600. With a keyboard that had tic-tac keys. Then I got a Windows Mobile Treo 750. Then Apple ruined it for everyone with the iPhone and here we are 10 years later where every damn phone makes you swipe, slide, or poke the damn glass. I can't get used to it either; I type in two, sometimes three languages. Ain't no damn swipe-typing in Japanese! Just once I'd like to go back to the HTC TYTN days where I had a slide-out keyboard so I can Get Shit Done again.
2. I am doing more emergency sysop-ing on my smartphone. Damn you Android for being so open and flexible! Stupid Termux app and its ability to offer a miniscule chroot environment so I can SSH into stuff and fix errant config files and reset user passwords while I'm listening to Kendrick Lamar on the Keio Line in Tokyo rush hour and damn my clients who know I have that power! (But thank you for paying me for it!) Seriously, if you muck around the Linux server world like I do, then Termux is a lifesaver. Basically a small Ubuntu core distro, it turns your Android smartphone into a real toolkit. But you'll need special virtual keyboards to be able to do the stuff you're used to -- unless you already have <ALT><SUPER> and <CTRL> keys on yours... But the KeyOne's hardware keyboard can turn one of the <SHIFT> keys into a <CTRL> key. Then I can assign the volume rockers to do <ALT> and <SUPER> duties if needed. Job done.
3. I want just once to walk out the house without needing to remember to bring the damn portable battery pack. Again, eff you iPhone for starting the trend of non-and removable batteries. Special mention goes to Samsung for bucking the trend right up to the bitter end when vanity and flashiness usurped the functionality of being able to swap the battery out or better yet, getting one of those big-ass-double-wide battery packs. Back in my Treo days, I had 3 batteries for my phone, and I'd carry them in my pockets... regular trouser pockets... so when the thing was about to give up the ghost, I could power down, swap, power up and keep on truckin', all in about 2 minutes. Now I gotta carry around a battery pack, and a charger and USB cable... And OF COURSE my ol' ass phone does NOT have quick charge! Problem solved with the KeyOne though; it's Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor and 3505mAh battery pack has shown it can go 2 days with normal use. Plenty of time for me to Instagram my JapanLife all day then get back to HQ and my charger without missing a beat. A dead phone is as good as no phone here.
4. I even have to do all this stuff AT WORK too now. I currently work on a college campus that's blanketed in the warm, sweet embrace of free Wi-Fi connectivity (if you're a faculty or student!) and it's actually way easier for me to message my students, post on the class page, look up my notes and other stuff on the fly from the device in my pocket, rather than wait and do in on the PC in between sessions. I'd go so much quicker though if I had that keyboard though...and my battery wasn't at 15% already!
OK, so those are the major reasons for me thinking I'll go and grab this thing for now. $549 for a decent phone I'll keep for at least 2 years ain't a bad price to pay to be rid of some of my pet peeves of smartphone usage.
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