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Because when I'm really into something I can't help but talk about it a lot here's another post about PDAs! I already have a dedicated page about why a PDA is still worthwhile but I have some more words to say about that. I have also been working on a script to sync gemini posts (and some rss feeds) to the PDA each morning for offline reading.
Lately I've been carrying my PDA with me every day and some things have struck me about why I enjoy it so much. The main thing is the way that I interact with it just feels so much more natural than most other devices. A combination of the non-backlit monochrome screen, the stylus and some things about the way the software is designed. Using it feels a lot more low-key than using a smartphone or other small computer. I can just set it next to me while I'm doing something else and occasionally poke at it with the stylus when I need or want to. It instantly turns on and in certain situations instantly turns on to exactly what I'm looking for. It kind of feels like a augmented little pocket-sized paper notebook in the sense that you use the stylus and it's mostly just sitting there like a little pad of paper, staying out of your way until you need it.
While it is ancient by technology standards it has a certain understated and extremely functional but also elegant look and feel to the interface. The stylus based input also allows the interface to be more compact and still functional than a device meant for fingers. This next point is a little more variable but for me it feels more intentional when I use it. Getting out the stylus and not having notifications and network connected apps means I get in there and do what I need and I'm done. Unless I want to play a game then all bets are off :-P.
You can definitely feel the amount of thought and research that went into making Palm OS as nice to use as it is. That's a pretty timeless thing and one that I don't think modern pocket computers have matched in the years since.
I now have an SL10 to go along with my two Palm m500s and the two Handspring Visor Platinums. Here are some initial impressions after getting my hands on it.
In typical Sony fashion the hardware feels very nice. I think the m500 is a nice PDA with a good design but I'd say the SL10 feels like a step up. The addition of the jog wheel is quite nice. It's a very intuitive extra input method that comes in handy for a number of different situations where it becomes easier to operate one-handed for many tasks.
The SL10 is thicker than the m500 and before getting it I thought that would be a turn off for me. But what I hadn't expected is that it's really just the lower portion where the AAA batteries go that is thicker and the other dimensions are also smaller so the whole thing actually feels a little more compact. It is both shorter and narrower than the m500 with smaller bezels and is just as pocketable despite being a little thicker.
The display was another area I was unsure about. Twice the typical Palm resolution (320x320 vs 160x160) certainly looks nice and the SL10's panel is even a hair smaller than the m500's making the pixel density even higher. I had read that the visibility of the SL10's screen was lower than the m500's and was concerned that I wouldn't be satisfied with it becuase non-backlit use is basically my main mode of use with my PDA. The jury is still out on this. It does appear to be a little less visible with only ambiant light, however, I think some of that is due to the text and icons being a little too thin and using too much grayscale rather than higher contrast full solid black. There is a hack that makes the system font thicker to make things more readable and it does help.
The AAA batteries and the mini USB port for syncing are two of the features I was most excited about. While I do enjoy using the cradle with the Palm switching to the SL10 would allow me to get one more thing off my desk and not have to worry about charging.
I have really been enjoying doing my gemini reading on the PDA and I've been working on a script that downloads the gemini posts from a few sources and converts them to be browsable offline on the PDA. My routine has become dropping the PDA on the cradle first thing in the morning and running my script to get the new stuff for reading throughout the day. My main source is my own comitium feed that aggregates all the different capsules/gemlogs I want to follow. The nice thing about this is that since it tracks the new posts for a configurable time period I can skip syncing for up to a week and not miss anything because it will still be there to find on the next sync. The RSS part is a second comitium feed I have unlisted on my capsule that is a handpicked selection of high quality sites/blogs that have good content and nice lightweight pages that convert well to the Palm and post at a reasonable frequency.
Personalizing This Script:
Depending on your particular model and configuration you will likely have to adjust the sync command to use whatever serial port your device shows up as. If you want to have a nice weather forecast too you can paste the generic Chilly Weather URL or the URL for a specific location into the WXURL variable at the top and uncomment the last plucker-build line. If you want to use your own or different comitium feeds just replace the URLs. I have not tried it but this may work with Antenna as is or only need very minor modification.
Shout Outs:
BIG thanks to nytpu who helped me out getting this to work with that rewrite-gmi awk script and for making comitium which turned out to be perfect for this. Thank you also to makeworld for the gemget program and Draco Metallium for the gmi2html awk script.
Prerequisites:
Linux/Unixy system (probably. only tested on linux)
gemget (might be in your distro's repos)
rewrite-gmi and gmi2html awk scripts (linked below)
PyPlucker
Oh yeah, the script!
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