Outdoor Time and PocketCHIP

2021-04-09

Walking, Bikes, Ebikes and Paris

We got a lot of good outdoor time today. In the morning we went for about an hour long walk and after dinner we went on a long bike ride. Add the time we spent just hanging out and playing in the yard after each of those and we were outside for at least 4 hours. During our ride my wife and I were remembering our trip to Paris a number of years ago and how nice it would have been to explore the city on ebikes. We were plenty happy to explore Paris on regular bikes thanks to the bike share program there that is very inexpensive and often even faster than a taxi thanks to the bike lanes and paths plus the ability to keep on our merry way while the cars are stuck in traffic. An ebike I think would be an excellent mode of transportation in a place like Paris.

PocketCHIP

I am still working on whipping this PocketCHIP into something I utilize regularly for more of my typical daily computer tasks. If you're wondering why well there are a few reasons. I'm testing and tweaking a setup that I hope to refine and transfer to my Pinephone once the keyboard accessory is available and I plan to make that my main mobile computer. Another reason is that I just find it fun because I love the terminal and seeing how much utility I can eek out of low-end hardware.

The small board that is the brain of the PocketCHIP is called just CHIP and can be easily removed and plugged into a different PocketCHIP. The last few days I've flashed a fresh image on a different CHIP that has more storage space than the one I've been experimenting on and selectively installing and moving the successful pieces of my experimentation to it. A command line audio player that plays smoothly and can remember my place in a podcast was one problem that took some searching but I've landed on cmus which meets the requirements. Now I can browse gemini and download gemcasts on the PocketCHIP and take the whole thing with me on walks to listen to them.

Once I settle on a mostly final configuration I might do a sort of tour or demo to show off how I'm doing all the things I use it for.

PocketCHIP playing a Chris Were gemcast

back to gemlog index