A bright and happy home screen on the Meta Quest

VR was teased in the early '90s. A simple concept: a display updates depending on the physical position of your head. Given sufficient technology, with the display stuck to your face, you can look around a virtual environment and, given the technology, interact with it. I was there 3,000 years ago, at the London Trocadero just off Picadilly Circus, where you could don massive plastic ‘Virtuality’ headsets (produced by Virtuality Group) and marvel at the 7 polygons on a shaky 3D landscape. The promise was set. ‘Hot God, I can do anything in a virtual world’ we thought to ourselves, aloud. The Lawnmower Man film came out and hot Christ, we were living the future.

During that time, Palmer Luckey was born, the founder of Oculus VR. Fast forward going on forty years (Jesus), Palmer and friends release the ‘Oculus Rift’ VR headset in 2013, nearly 15 years ago (Jesus). Using all the advances of mobile phone technology, the bulky, black, but not too heavy headset would plug into your (very powerful) PC, connect with a controller (Microsoft - boo!), external motion sensor, to display high resolution (for the time) stereoscopic video with an accelerometer reference frame. The games were mostly disappointing and derivative, the headset got uncomfortable quickly, using the hardware got tedious and physically frictitious super quick. At best, it was an interesting proof of concept, and a promise of what might come.

Fast forward a bit more time—a year or so, Facebook buys Oculus for a couple of billion. Luckey by name, lucky by nature*. The real life Wii/Mii avatar Mark Zuckerberg bets big on VR, even renaming the company to ‘Meta’ and investing many, many billions into the Metaverse. Billions. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the first original idea by Zuck would result in a good, low friction, shared VR experience. Headsets were refined into the relatively affordable ‘Quest’ line, a sprawling app store was connected up—Developers, Developers, Developers!

Beat Saber was a hit. Released in 2018, it's still the best game on the platform. What we have today is still a high friction experience with very few worth the hassle. The hardware is amazing, insofar the technology, but still uncomfortable and inconvenient—at least, uncomfortable given the available software.

The friction

Wearing glasses takes some getting used to. Even if you wear specs every day and have worn them for most of your life, they can be quite annoying when perched on your nose, let alone all the nuisances when not near your face: damage, expense, loss, etc. Wearing a large, heavy, noisy pair of glasses which completely block your view (in the case of VR), or at best, pipe in a laggy, low definition video feed of the real world, takes a lot more getting used to. The state of the art is still very clunky and uncomfortable. Of course, as is our general experience with necessary or popular technology, things will get better—not that VR currently, is either of those things.

Some of the niggles that prompt the headset off your head and into a closet for a few years include:

• Authentication Logging in to anything is a major hassle these days. Passwords, passkeys, two factor, accounts, sub-accounts, migration, connected services—it's enough to make you flip the table on all our techno time vampirism and storm off into the woods. VR makes it harder because you can't easily read the scribbled note, credit card, phone screen when nagged by an app inside the headset. As it is, the 'pass-through' video still isn't quite good enough on any model. And there's a lot of authentication, believe it.
• Weight There are no light weight headsets. They all have what is effectively mobile phone giblets powered by the usual lithium battery. Cameras, speakers, displays, fans, batteries—it's not going to weight nothing. Yet. If all the tech can be packed into a pair of standard reading glasses or contact lenses or brain implants, then along with compelling software, it'll be a winner.
• GUI There are still no agreed conventions on how to interact with the software running on these devices. We don't know what to call the floaty thingies that aren't doing what we want or expect, much to frustrate our Googling.
• Boundary The headset needs to know where you are in space, your orientation, velocity etc. Similar to Satnav when you're setting off from a stationary position with immediate directional options, and you drive only to swear and u-turn, modern VR headsets frustrate you when confusing their location and position memory. It's a literal dance just to get into position before launching your software.
• Currency VR ‘ecosystems’ of course have the obligatory App Store where 3rd party developers can hawk their wares. To purchase applications, you may be able to tap in your credit card details on a floating keyboard or mobile app to make a purchase or, as would obviously be preferable by the platform owner, use ‘in platform’ or ‘in app’ tokens. [Which you buy with real money at a rate set by the owner.] Of course, it's a costly ball ache to subscribe to multiple platforms just as it is with streaming video services.
• Loneliness Wrapping your head with opaque tech is inherently a solitary pursuit, despite what avatars you may meet in the virtual world. Interacting with real people is still an audio affair. It's just not the same looking at a low-rez non-representational face.
• Applications They're mostly crap and unnecessary. The tech sounds like it offers a bonanza for amazing software but it's just not there. As I've said, the best VR app is still Beatsaber. I think the friction of the physicals is still too high and hampers all software.
• Cynicism People (a loose definition) like Zuckerberg have made their fortunes by siphoning data from users. We all know the deal with these ‘Tech Bros’ and their driving ambition to suck out our very souls for profit and control. The idea that they're convincing people to strap potentially brain reading devices onto our heads is more than a little worrying. What may end up preventing further refinement of the technology is the proven fact that firms want to know everything there is to know about us for commodity reasons.

We are where we are and the hardware is unfortunately, still quite cumbersome. However, the technology is quite amazing, if mostly on paper. Nowadays, the battery life is sufficient for the amount of time one can tolerate the wearing, and the visual fidelity good enough to engage in the content. This is where the main problem lies.

* Palmer Luckey claims he always wanted to build robotic super soldiers and is now concerned with ‘Turning Soldiers into Superheroes’ using VR augmentation technology, ‘If you die in the game, you die in real life’, he said portentously in a blog post.

~~~~~

Way back in the day, during the 8-Bit video game golden era, when any of your player character's pixels touched those of a hazard or enemy sprite, it was game over, literally. Early ‘Platformers’ like Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner really leaned into the ‘pixel perfect’ precision needed to complete a level. Despite the Heisenberg blur of the CRT telly, collision detection really was down to the single, albeit quite large, pixel. You knew where you were, what you needed to do, what would happen, what your name was. Precision mattered, at least, when it mattered.

Touch anything in Manic Miner or Knight Lore on the Spectrum, and you're toast.

Fast forward forty-odd years and we're in the era of the open world Triple A multi-tens of millions of pounds in production giga-titles. Thousands if not millions of rendered polygons on the screen, 4K scale, ray tracing, AI smoothing, and everything powerful CPUs and dedicated graphics chips can generate. However, with these complicated, modular polygonal mesh characters and creatures with their clothing/costume/skin collectibles, vast array of weapons and carryables, the outline of collision detection or ‘hitbox’ becomes too complex to bother about. Consequently, all the beautiful textures, lighting, and effects become significantly marred (to my picky mind) by ghostly ‘clipping’—when the polygons of different objects overlap. We commonly see weapons effortlessly gliding through walls, shields, surfaces, as if they're holographic projections, completely dispelling the illusion of solidity and weight.

Elden Ring avatar with a 2.5 metre long pole-axe attached at the back (somehow), then performing a graceful forward roll.

Given how ubiquitous the problem is, and the compute power that's been available for years now, I would have thought there would be more of an effort to address the issue. Very occasionally there is, weapons colliding and clanging apart, characters reacting and contorting around walls, but it's still very rare.

Link adapting to a tree root in Breath of the Wild, a game developed for and initially released on the Nintendo Wii U, 2017.

Perhaps with the inclusion of AI in development and gameplay, we'll finally see a renaissance where character clothing reacts properly with the shifting position of the wearer, moving convincingly with worn weapons. Swords clashing with shields producing commensurate recoil on both sides of the melee, character bodies twisting, repositioning and using limbs and hands/claws/tentacles in physically correct ways to move over and around obstacles. In short, creating the missing dimension of adaptive physicality in gameplay. It can be done, particularly if the heavy lifting can be taken care of by more automated systems such as the new machine learning systems everyone is losing their minds over. If ever it happens, it will be a glorious day. Imagine the possibilities: disarming your foe, shield barging through a crowd, realistically losing purchase and tumbling down a rock face, getting caught up in a flowing cape and falling from your horse. The content creators will go berserk.

~~~~~

I'm sorry, they're just not. I'm as nostalgic for portable, physical keyboards as the next (old) nerd, but we're all guilty of romanticising the misremembered productivity not afforded by past incarnations.

Sticky and virtually unusable keys on my old Blackberry Q10

There are a few phones on the market currently that have physical keyboards but they're mostly terrible and ugly Chinese Android affairs catering for a virtually non-existent market (I'm looking at you, Unihertz).

The latest attempt to bring the buttons back is the recently announced ‘Clicks Communicator’. Currently vapourware, it's an Android phone designed with the help of one of the original Blackberry handset designers, apparently (Joseph somebody, I forget) and a ‘YouTuber’ tech reviewer personality who's name I also cannot recollect. It certainly evokes a wobble of the old nostalgia beans. It's a mix tape of features from the Palm phones, iPhone 5C plastic, Blackberry Curve (the ‘Chiclet’ models). It will have a touchscreen in addition to Blackberry Passport-like touch sensitive keypad, allowing for directional scrolling by gently stroking the keys. I couldn't get along with this feature on the Passport, it was superfluous given the touchscreen and only added mis-typing to the large friction surface that blighted the handset.

Clicks 'Communicator' concept phone. (Image from their site.)

It certainly looks the business but the reality is, screen real estate is king. I think the Clicks people know this, they're marketing it as a ‘companion’ phone i.e., an additional charge/e-waste gadget in your pocket. Or, a watch collection like don't think you'll need a good camera or big screen today? No problem! Just swap in your SIM, reboot a couple of times, and off you go!

Clean keypad, lovely plastic, weird, surely needless bulge at the back.

Many reservations aside, if it's powerful enough—at least as much as a current Mid-Ranger, it could be quite a nice little retro console for ~£400. Wait a minute! Gosh, it nearly got me there. This phone just doesn't make sense. People are not going to be put off of socials/doom scrolling/video streaming owing to the small screen form factor, rather, they will simply get annoyed and return to their normal widescreen candy-bar phone. There's no benefit to having a physical keypad any longer, touchscreens have gotten too good. Steve Jobs was right.

My reasons for hesitation

• The market will be tiny, there will be a steep fall-off in software patches.
• The removable back cover is lame and emphasises the non-removability of the battery.
• It's not the sort of handset for a case but it's probably more fragile than most candybars, so it's vulnerable.
• It looks needlessly bulky.
• The CPU/GPU is unannounced, yet they're taking ‘reservation’ money. It will be weak.
• It's marketed as a ‘complement’ phone. It will be weak.
• Finger print reader on the front rather than the side button. That's a miss.
• YouTuber products never live long.
• Tiny screen utterly unsuitable for video consumption which, unless completely impossible, is what I'll mostly be using.
• It's the first phone the firm has is promises to make.
• Dopey position for the notification light.
• There will be a sticky key in the first 3 months.

The biggest problem with these sorts of cut-down tech is that they're nonsensically aspirational. Their designers and backers think we spend too much time on these devices (we do) and that by making them crappier will some how encourage us to use them less. They are mistaken, that ship has sailed. All they will actually achieve is short lived posturing and virtue signalling, short lived hyper-frustration and more e-waste. These people are vulture capitalists wanting to make a quick buck off our weaknesses for blurry nostalgia, desire to impress our peers and the definite, building fear that we're going terminally astray with all this consumer electronic garbage that will surely be the end of us as a species.

~~~~~

What on Earth is the appeal here?

Why do so many people get giddy about cheap, trashy resin-cased Casio digital watches? It's some sort of mandatory virtue signalling towards ’80s nostalgia. Having survived the ’80s, I can assure you, people wore these plastic design horrors because they couldn't afford anything good.

The basic experience of the standard cheap Casio watch is:

• Initially or soon to be shiny black/grey slimy plastic
• Grime on the inside strap and on the edges of the razor-thin case back
• Function pushers that are so recessed and with so little travel as to require 5,000 PSI to engage
• A plastic ‘lens’ so soft that a sleeping baby's breath will fatally scratch it
• Captive, moulded strap difficult to thread through the buckle
• Features and function instructions permanently printed onto the face and bezel
• Garish use of colliding typefaces
• LCD screen 15cm below the lens
• Metal bracelets that would randomly pluck out your arm hairs
• Light function that only illuminates the hour and only works as long as you can withstand muscle cramps and a hole in your thumb
• One viewing angle
• An alarm tone that sounds like the electronic soul leaving its tiny digital body

A watch no mother could love

It's the classic feigned delusional ‘good old days’ romanticisation for likes and subscribes. Even well respected watch connoisseurs lose their minds when fondling these wrist warts. Teddy Baldassarre himself fawns over his memorably named A168W-1 in gold-tone finish, the ferociously ugly ‘G-Shock’ line and the utterly ridiculous calculator/data bank variant. These things are hideous, difficult to use, poorly designed, uncomfortable and should be banned, confiscated, melted down, shredded into micro-plastics and dumped in the ocean.

~~~~~

I walk down high streets occasionally and when I do, I try to look about to see what might seem out of the ordinary. I'm so used to the ‘Clone Town’ template that anything non-standard scream out so, it's quite weird that I noticed this standard component of shop fronts.

A succession of broken fibre internet ingress boxes (contiguous shops)

It seems every single shop (but one) has a dangerously destroyed fibre internet ingress box. Once I noticed this, I was amazed at how many there are and the degree to which the casing is destroyed. Yes, I suppose they are typically in the perfect position to get kicked by kids, bashed by trolleys etc. But golly, virtually every single one is in a severe state of disrepair. Very rarely, there will be some sort of indication of repair.

A perfectly repaired FTTP box

This is clearly poor design. The box should be pre-vandalised to the point where it is either reduced in size and/or hardened to withstand impact. It's in the street, and like other street furniture, it really ought to be armoured i.e., metal or constructed of wheelie bin plastic.

~~~~~

Apple have released a new iPhone model line, the ‘Air’. The main distinction is that it's thin—thinner than the other thin handsets in the line-up. Of course, they have achieved this feat by combining engineering wizardry, marketing misdirection and lashings of compromise. Consider this blurb from their site:

The all-new iPhone Air is so impossibly thin and light that it nearly disappears in your hand. At 5.6 mm and weighing just 165 grams, it’s the thinnest iPhone ever—even with a large, immersive 6.5‑inch display and the power of the A19 Pro chip. It’s a paradox you have to hold to believe. - Apple.com

To be tediously pedantic, it's not impossibly thin or light, it certainly does not disappear in your hand, it's not a paradox and I can imagine the power of the A19 Pro SoC is its staged power and performance delivery e.g., it can be operated at a lower level of performance to lessen the need for cooling.

It is 5.64mm thin, I'll have you know. (www.dimensions.com)

A marvel of machining to be sure but it does make me titter how they've simply shuffled the guts (they've not removed) into the camera bulge leaving the expansive body to contain the battery, and then simply ignore the mountain at the back as a dimension. Even 3rd party commentators don't consider it (above), such is the unbridled power of the famous ‘reality distortion field’. Users will invariably buy a protective case that may equalise the thickness and thus temper the impressiveness of its slender frame.

iPhone Air: At least double the claimed thickness?

I have a few older Apple phones and they have always pushed thinner is better even when it was apparent most customers don't really care and would always prefer a better battery life. My iPhone 5C looks to be thinner as it is minuscule and with an entirely flush camera assembly. It is, in my opinion, the greatest phone they ever made where date, requirements, usability, and toughness are qualifiers. If asked, would anyone not opt for a few more hours of battery life for a few extra millimetres of girth?

I'd be willing to bet this model is thinner (support.apple.com)

They call it ‘iPhone Air’, possibly because it won't have an incremental upgrade next year as the returns on thinness have been diminishing since the products inception. Although, that's not to say returns won't be a problem for Apple.

Is Desperate Dan A or B thick?

~~~~~

The (my) struggle is real.

The pivot points are opposite each other

I've always been amazed at how complicated and uncomfortable it is to get into and out of a modern car, even for the able bodied. Literally every single time I'm trying to egress the vehicle, I bothersomely whinge and moan about how my shoe is caught in the armpit of the door, particularly when squeezed in a sadistically narrow parking space where I'm subsequently enraged at the cost. The door apertures tend to be shorter than the average adult (male) height—although this is slowly changing with the rise in popularity of ‘Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV)’ but typically, you'll be crumpling, twisting and lowering your body to slowly flumpf into the chair whether a driver or passenger. Throughout the process, you'll probably be leaning on the door and given that you'll soon be sitting back into the seat, in the same direction as the close of the door, it provides little reassurance should you suffer a mishap during the negotiation. The principle issue is that the door is hinged opposite to your bottom. This is particularly aggravating when you wish to reverse the process and leave the vehicle. In the front seat, you must pull out your feet from the footwell to clear the door jamb, negotiate your big dopey and scantily innervated feet around the door bin and pull yourself up and out all the while changing your points of purchase. It's more of a dance than you're consciously aware of. These regular, subconscious strains contribute to a rising well of misgivings which I firmly believe lessen our aggregate view of life in general.

Consider a door hinged alongside your seated position, that is, extend your arms forward and open them as if you're gesticulating the size of that huge fish you once caught. When the door is fully open, you merely need to rotate your derriere by a small angle and tilt forwards. Plenty of room for your legs, feet, you can see the ground/curb/puddle, you can push on the door if required. All things become possible. Life is good.

‘Suicide doors’ hinged at the back. The pivot points work in the same direction.

There are some production vehicles that have correctly configured doors but alas, they are few and far between. The reasons why we've standardised on awkward inconvenience seem weak to me. Safety when opening a door at speed is one such weak argument I've heard. Should you need to open a door while travelling at motorway speeds for instance, it may be tricky to close a correctly hinged door if the air forces its most obtuse angle. This sounds dated to me. We have the technology now to prevent this sort of unlikely event from happening. Regarding the safety element, we seem perfectly fine with staring at an iPad in the middle of the dashboard for two straight minutes trying to figure out how to roll the windows down but doors opening the other way? Noooo. (Unless you can afford a Rolls Royce.)

A Rolls Royce model with sensible doors

As a keen ex-cyclist, I think such conveniently engineered doors would help to prevent many horrific accidents whereby doors are opened on cyclists resulting in virtual bisection owing to the bizarrely razor sharp sheet metal edge of all car doors. Furthermore, as you are seated facing the open side of the door, any unexpected/unperceived oncoming vehicle will likely converge on you from behind, your natural blind spot, therefore colliding with the sympathetic side of the mechanism and slamming the door shut with a glancing blow reducing the impact of rapid deceleration. I rest my case.

~~~~~

Of all the Operating System tools I use a hundred times a day, the clipboard is in the top 1. Most of us digital workers are dealing with repetitive tasks where cutting and pasting between documents, web pages, notepads is a highly frequent task in itself. Often, you'll want to retrieve a password or pertinent stanza copied earlier in the day. Perhaps you can't remember where it came from but you do know it's stored in the clipboard. I use Linux on the daily and while not spoiled for choice on the clipboard manager front, there are a couple that just about have all the features you might expect. When the need to use Windows a little more regularly was demanded of me, I half expected to be delighted by the maturity of its clipboard management solution. Mature it may be, delighted I was not.

Copy the text, Windows key + V to see Kaomoji?

Indeed, if I copy text, bearing in mind how little of the displayed text in Windows is selectable (DB passim), it is squirrelled away into the Clipboard database, wherever that is. So far, so good. A simple, logical key combo brings up the clipboard history. Great! As a bonus, there are GIFs (hard G), emoji, emoticons, Kaomoji (whatever they are), and symbols. Nice. There is no search facility which is a major bummer and if you click any of the entries, the contents will be immediately pasted. This is really annoying. It should simply move the selected entry into the ‘current’ clipboard position, ready to be pasted at your leisure. This is a similar mistake to the screenshot snipping tool, you aren't given the ability to resize a regional selection. There is a ‘pin’ widget to ensure selected entries aren't shuffled off the threshold but, what are the thresholds? What we need to know include:

• Where is it stored?
• What is the storage limit?
• Where's the help?
• How to search?

I'll have a look at the Windows ‘Help’ app.

Sorry, there are no results for your issue.

As an aside, the clipboard manager GUI is of course, not resizable (DB passim). There is a superfluous bar at the top of the window indicating a click-drag target, a list of views without any sort of graphical segregation, and a truncation at the very edge of the window. Awful.

Seriously dodgy looking Kaomoji

The clipboard management program I'm currently using with Linux Mint, CopyQ. I haven't investigated non-integrated Windows programs, so this is an unfair comparison—CopyQ is also available for Windows. However, great features include:

• Any mapped key/combo will bring up a standard window interface
• Typing search criteria will raise matching entries
• Clicking the desired entry will ready the text for a CTRL + V paste
• Macro-style canned text and actions
• Tabbed groups of common text snippets

CopyQ interface. It's resizable, searchable without needing to click for focus.

On both platforms, I'm fairly disappointed with the choice, given how indispensable I find copy pasta.

~~~~~

The world of physical product innovation seems to be cringing into banal, brainless irrelevancy. I am indefatigably advertised to by various purveyors of such mental weaknesses as water bottles, meal kit delivery services, energy drinks, wallets, belts, shaving razors, mattresses, godammed phone cases to name but a few a lot; all trying to dupe the cognitively under-served into paying over the odds for Rube Goldbergian and craven over-complication of erstwhile basic products, signing up to ridiculous subscription services or some god awful free complimentary product/service impuse aislery. Are these pathetic, embarrassing, marketed-to-death ventures really the best we can think of? If so, we're doomed.

Let's consider two recent desperate marketing gambits. First ‘Suri’, the sustainable electric toothbrush by two ex-‘Big Pharma’ wunderkinds. The clownery here is that it's electric, therefore better than your manual toothbrush, and for only £105 for the design sensation, ‘Suri 2.0’—An icon. Redfined., you too can ‘Keep the planet as clean as your teeth.’. Its unlike any other electric toothbrush of course, it's sustainable, just don't let the removable but proprietary battery, captive, proprietary charger (with exposed metal contacts which absolutely will corrode), or any of the highly engineered, imported components bother you. ‘It doesn't have Bluetooth! Eschew that ridiculous novelty. See? We're stripping out all the cruft you don't need and getting down to the bare essentials namely, complex circuitry, tons of packaging, multiple, separate components, rare earth elements, and plenty of non-recyclables.’

Utterly pathetic offers. “No thanks, I've just given you £105 + consumables.”

Compare and contrast Suri or any electric effort with Unilever's ‘Ecolo Clean’ line of manual toothbrushes.

The new Signal Ecolo Clean toothbrush is made from 100% food-grade post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic, while its smart design features a comfortable, ergonomic hollow handle with 40% less plastic than an ordinary toothbrush – saving 10 tonnes of plastic in its first year. - Unilever.com

It's a plastic toothbrush that you wiggle about in your mouth to remove food particles from your teeth. Once the bristles aren't perky enough, you can recycle it. There are thousands of such products. Is the Suri electric toothbrush more ‘sustainable’ than a roughly standard toothbrush like the Unilever job? Of course it isn't but that's not the argument the marketeers at Suri are making, it's ‘compared to other ludicrous electronic toothbrushes’. Relativity makes your claims sound better. Relative to a Ferrari, our 5 seater is efficient. Etc.

Suri is a lame idea. Two chaps thought ‘hey, I bet we can disrupt the boring toothbrush market (make a lot of money) with an expensive looking website, minimalist (cheap) product design that Jony Ive would be proud of, dodgy and probably purchased accreditation, tons of social media bullshit, and lashings of follow on sales like proprietary brush heads.’ No one needs an electric toothbrush and to say it's in any way ‘sustainable’, is a transparent lie. Stop giving these investor driven charlatans money!

It's a plastic water bottle for £30 + consumables

Next, it's snake oil filled water bottles. Actually, it's just the smell of snake oil and water in a bottle (water not included). ‘AirUp’ is a plastic bottle but wait, imagine how giddy with excitement the geniuses were who imagined it—“It's a plastic water bottle with perfume around the top! Omg, omg, omg, stop, I'm going to pee! People drink water but [passes out, recovers, passes out again, recovers, mops away tears] they think they're drinking a sweet double cream pumpkin spice chocolate doughnut rice pudding tropical fruit caramel matcha birds of paradise latte but, get this, omg, they just think they are—they're just drinking water (maybe we can supply fancy sounding water as a subscription service) but smelling chemicals! Genius!”

Subscribe and save! We need bank details and recurring revenue to impress the banks and swell our EBITDA (so we can sell).

Again with the ‘Angel Investor’ fuelled social media, YouTube advertising bombardment, Trustpilot reviews, expensive consumables. Polishing any turd is the edgy, disruptive, devil-may-care whimsy that the world needs. Should we really stand by and let such shameless profiteers exploit the mentally challenged? Is this not a modern for of grinding the faces of the poor? Should they not be challenged on their reality distorting claims of environmental friendliness? What next? Aerodynamic, Bluetooth toilet rolls for £34.99pm with auto-replenishment? Wifi enabled door mats? Cordless pepper grinders? We live in an age of going through the motions, playing out the sequence of best practices, but not actually having anything of any value, perpetuating consumption and all the while, accelerating towards a climate catastrophe.

~~~~~

OK, so I have a bizarre keyboard fetish and I've bumped into yet another backlit gaming keyboard. I have a problem but I will^*get help. This time, it's a hybrid membrane low-profile job from Razer, not a brand I'm overly familiar with. Out of the box, it is set to ‘Spectrum’ mode—alternately fading into all the main colours of the rainbow. I don't want this. I want it to be static white always. ALWAYS. Unfortunately, while I can adjust the brightness of the backlighting via keyboard shortcuts, I can only adjust the lighting effects with the Razer software. Specifically, ‘Razer Synapse 4’. Hot God, I wasn't ready for this.

I thought I'd be clever and install the software on a Windows VM running on my Linux PC, slyly pushing settings to the firmware then vaporising the software. Jesus H. Tap Dancing Christ was I not prepared for the cavalcade of ‘Ecosystem’ bloatware. I only want to change the style of backlighting.

Allow this executable and all bets are off

OK, I'm expecting a big install with additional, library/component downloads akin to hidden charges.

The small print that's pointless to read because they'll probably change it

Only 4,081 words in the ‘Razer Software License Agreement’ where any one could provide a hotshot lawyer enough ammo to crush you like a grape.

Oh look, a beautiful ecosystem

OK, so I've installed an installer. It's a programme of four programs.

• Synapse 4 A ‘Configurator’ presumably for all their smart hardware.
• Chroma A colour and brightness controller for all their LED festooned hardware and no doubt, an extended inventory of brands opting in to an API.
• Axon Wallpaper. What the heck? This needs a program?
• Cortex A ‘System Performance Booster’. Don't make me laugh. I wouldn't be surprised if these programs snaffle up 10% of the CPU in the background.

I'll install the Chroma app only, thanking you very much.

Are you sure you don't want to install a CPU sucking suite of sensors that will send back god only knows what data to the HQ

They really want me to install the no doubt, incredibly invasive ‘System Performance Booster’ with telemetry back to HQ—and it's ‘Beta’, there's plausible deniability right there. Skip.

Click Launch and you'll be sorry

154MB to change the keyboard lighting. OK, so a white box appeared when clicking Launch. The taskbar tells the story.

Give us your email address too, while you're at it

Why wouldn't I need to log-in to change the lighting on my keyboard? Anyway, this clearly isn't working so now it's time to see if there's an open source way of doing this directly on my Linux PC. Oh, look. Yes, there is. The Openrazer project and the Polychromatic program GUI. Boom, done. Static white backlighting. Nice.

So I then thought it best to remove the bloatware from the Windows machine. How hard could it be? Clickety click, uninstalled using the Windows ‘Apps & features’ utility. Reboot to be sure... no dice. A lovely green account login dialogue box popped upon arrival. A re-visit to the program manager and:

Oh hello. Thought we'd hang around just in case you change your mind.

Shady as hell. Uninstall.

Are you surely sure you want to uninstall this particular program (and not the platform)?

Yes, I'm sure. Let me check if there's anything still hanging about.

Peekaboo!

Godammit! Let me check the hidden Installer directory.

PS C:\Users\enraged> ls C:\Windows\Installer\Razer\Installer2\ Directory: C:\Windows\Installer\Razer\Installer2 Mode LastWriteTime Length Name ---- ------------- ------ ---- d---- 03/05/2025 17:01 App d---- 05/05/2025 14:18 AppIconCache d---- 05/05/2025 14:18 AppPromotionCache d---- 05/05/2025 14:18 AppUspCache d---- 05/05/2025 14:20 DownloadCache d---- 05/05/2025 14:17 ManifesetCache d---- 05/05/2025 14:18 MediaCache -a--- 03/05/2025 17:01 14438688 RazerInstaller.exe

Sigh. What's the betting that if I delete this directory I'll get Windows XP style .dll warnings? Is it worth it? Have they won? I get that everyone wants a ‘Platform’ in the Attention Economy but do the gloves have to be off? Do we really want to live in a future where fair's fair buster, you slipped and fell so we're completely within our rights to take advantage. In fact, you ought to respect us for our shameless cunning.

* Won't

~~~~~

Large handle with a broken fixture

I have a few Velux windows on a sloping ceiling. They're too high to reach and require the use of a pole with a plastic hook at the end to open and close them. The handle has two positions: closed and vented, where it is at a angle revealing a vent to the outside world. Pulling on the handle at this point will open the window. The handle requires quite a lot of force to open and close, more than I think anyone unfamiliar with these devices might think. I believe it is due to the amount of force required that one of the hinges (pictured) has come loose.

A slot where sheer friction alone was gripping the metal hinge wing

Imagine my surprise when I climbed a ladder to get a better look at the issue. The hinge wing/flange has holes where you would assume fixings would fit but no, much as I looked, there were no metal pins, screws etc. The thin handle bar is made from soft wood—I was very surprised at this. I knew that the window frame is wooden but the handle into which I necessarily put so much force? Very strange. I have tried wood glue. I'm a staunch believer in wood glue in wood-to-wood interfaces, it's incredibly strong. Wood to metal? My hopes aren't high.

Why would they skimp like this? I can live with the wood, I can even live with the surface of the handle being scratchable by the plastic hook on the end of the purpose built pole, as baffling as that is, but not to fix the handle to the frame properly? Madness. At least, searching about on the web, I was able to find similar tales of woe:

Basically the handle that opens the velux window came off on one side where the hinge goes into the wood. The wood was split and metal hinge pulled out. After much googling I took it apart to reveal what looks to be a piece of metal simply sandwiched into the wood with no fixings of any sort holding it there. Seems a bizarre design and I'm confused as to why no one else appears to have moaned about this yet on the Internet? All I can find is a replacement part at great cost from Velux. - ‘Revellbikes’

~~~~~

Poor formatting from the Grid to Meatspace

I was unfortunately travelling on the London Underground recently and sat opposite this ‘behavioural modelling’ message on a window sticker—on every window. What on earth were they thinking? Is this a real world CSS problem? Maybe it's not a sticker but a graphic on a transparent screen. Definitely a possibility give the extreme hi-spec fit and finish on the Picadilly Line. In fact I was admiring a pattern of impact stains on the seats during a particularly refreshing 90dB screech.

I'll always point out the terrible signage graphics in other countries; “What are those meant to be? Children? What's that the little one is carrying? A giant lollipop? Laughable!”. Here in the UK, we are masters of minimalist public notice graphics. Consider these similar ‘Children Crossing’ road signs, reminiscent of Richard Dawkins' ‘Blind Watchmaker’ computer program from the early '80s.

Clear iterations on a singular design

You can plainly see how the British design is more balanced, better scaled, positioned and minimalistically detailed than the others. The way the figures fit and compliment the constraint of the triangle while affording a decent amount of white space. Masterpiece. Although, having said all that, you will always find local councils who will take it upon themselves to generate signage where the guidelines are known, understood and considered, but very specific messages are required and cleverly taken off the rails.

These following behaviours may be tolerated elsewhere

~~~~~

I was intending to upload a directory of photos through the Shotwell gallery management program when it froze trying to automagically connect to my temperamental Android phone when it wasn't quite ready. This is a feature I do not need, so I headed to Help > Preferences Edit > Preferences to look for the import settings by typing ‘import’ into the Settings search box—ha ha, not really. It doesn't have such a convenience. Instead, a dialogue box popped up.

Where are the Cancel and Apply buttons?

There are two panes: sections listed on the left-hand side, setting widgets on the right. You can toggle settings such as ‘Import photos to’ and they immediately take effect. What is this madness? The proper behaviour is to allow you to make any drunken changes you like, precisely none of which will take effect unless you confirm the changes. This is logically and paradigmatically the right thing to do.

Another example, this time on the horrible Gnome GUI

I believe this is a an Apple nonsense. Yes, it is more time efficient to implement changes when selected, but owing to the human condition, not all changes are desired. Always, always, require ‘write memory’ before implementing changes to the configuration of a computer system. Imagine if someone asks you to ‘choke the dog’ when they meant ‘stroke the dog’. You'd (hopefully) ask for clarification and confirmation before taking the mangy beast out.

~~~~~

The backlighting confidently shining everywhere but through the keys.

I'm in the market for a keyboard. I'm not dictating this, I'm using one of the many keyboards I own so you may legitimately ask, ‘what's wrong with the other twenty keyboards gathering dust in your home?’. Good question, you're going to regret asking.

I used to get excited by keyboards, I've used tiny, Mac keyboards from the naughties, the desk engulfing Cherry G80-3000, self-proclaimed ‘smart’ keyboards like the Logitech MX Keys (don't get me started on that one), various other mechanical models from Ducky, Corsair, Red Dragon to name but a few. Sadly, they've all fallen short in some respect and I'm still searching for the perfect tool, one that doesn't cause me any pain and simply recedes into the fabric of blissful productivity.

Needlessly rechargeable, No additional keys for volume control. No, I'm not going to use combos for mute—I'm not a savage.

Non-negotiable features

• ‘Full’ There must be three distinct sections to the keyboard: QWERTY & function keys, cursor & page functions, number pad. I can't be doing with the fashionable ‘Tenkeyless’ or 60% nonsense. Those are major compromises for aesthetics, beneficial to the manufacturers as they expend fewer keys.
• Volume control It must have additional, programmable keys above the number pad for mute, up & down. The idea of reaching across to a speaker to adjust the volume there, turning the knob, analogue crunching sounds—it doesn't warrant thought. I would consider a keyboard mounted knob or roller however.
• Backlighting Despite having been typing for a million years, I still find myself looking at the keys between sentences. I really, really like being able to see the key legends in the dark. It's possible the letters could have a high enough contrast to be visible in a darkened room, but I've never encountered it. The letters should be illuminated only—zero bleed. I'm asking a lot here I know.
• Cable I don't need wireless, there's no benefit and only downsides e.g., pricier, needs charging, possible connectivity problems. A non-captive USB-C port is preferred. (Except for the cable position problem, mentioned below..)
• Decent cable routing I've noticed newer keyboards will have a captive or USB-C cable projecting directly from the outer casing rather than having an underside termination with multiple routes out. This is frustrating because if the egress point is sub-optimal for your particular scenario, you're out of luck.
• Quiet I went through a phase of clicky and thoccy so-called mechanical keys which can sound great but become annoyingly loud when trying to focus. As quiet as can be albeit, with a nearly imperceptible thocc would be perfect.
• Shallow I spent years struggling with tall keys on relatively tall cases and it's uncomfortable, I never got used to it. A low-profile experience is best.
• Small footprint I don't have much desk space owing to using two computers and therefore, the width and depth need to be as svelte as possible, no borders around the keys would be preferred.

I thought I had found the perfect keyboard, the Keychron K5 Max. It ticks all (most) of the boxes, pricey but if it's the one, it'll be worth it. However, as soon as I learned it has ‘full RGB’, I was wary. After checking a video review, sure enough, the lighting bleeds from the underside of the non-transmissive keycaps and does not illuminate the letters! If anything, the light will glare away any contrast that exist! This faintly reminds me of the lunacy of backlit white keys—letters imperceptible if the light is on and the room isn't pitch black. The odd thing was, the reviewer didn't mention this, just went on about how glorious the lighting looked. Madness. The quest continues. I'll just have to tough it out in the meantime on my perfectly functioning and usable current keyboard (cheapy from Amazon).

Specific model failures

• Ducky One Poor build quality, handful of LEDs failed. Too tall.
• ADX Noisier than Mig 25 Foxbat at full tilt. Captive, centrally positioned cable. No volume control.
• Logitech MX Keys S Sensors that switch off the backlighting until your hands approach the keys. There's a maddening delay with this, there's no ‘always on’ mode. Lights are too quick to turn off. Concave keys are frequently glared out. Unusable.
• B.FRIENDIT Cheap but promising Amazon special. Suffers from keystroke duplication. Farr too many repeated characters.
• Corsair K70 Core Far too loud and ugly.
• Epomaker Galaxy100 American enter key. Yik!
• Logitech G413 Shockingly poorly designed keys; held in place with the weakest possible connectors. A couple of keys broke and they don't sell replacements. Took a right scunner to Logitech after that.
• Perixx 718 My current struggle. This is the best of the bunch, very satisfying to type on, decent legends. There are no additional keys I can dedicate to volume control—I've had to re-map the numpad operators. Backlight is too quick to turn off, even when cabled. Call me picky.

~~~~~

The deliberate insanity of imperial measurements.

I was perusing the tags on cushion ‘blanks’ the other day, specifically looking for 42cm and 45cm squares amidst a jumble (half expected to find a toddler sleeping off manic exhaustion), and was frustrated by perhaps the most ubiquitous deployment of American cultural interference: ‘Imperial’ measurements. I don't know what 13' & 8"⅝ is, but I'm led to believe it got men to the moon. Sadly, I had forgotten my slide rule and was unable to calculate 18 x 18" so, having left the store without finding the correctly sized cushion—perhaps I did.

~~~~~

The insane car chase through relentlessly spawning, immovable dialogue boxes in Microsoft Word.

I am not a fan in equal measure of Microsoft software and business practices. ‘Extend, Embrace, Extinguish’, that's the inside mantra I remember them for. If I had my druthers, I'd not touch any of their products ever and a day however, owing to their seemingly deliberate convoluting of the XML that underpins their ‘accessible’ document schema, open source alternatives like LibreOffice just aren't fully compatible. Also, possibly for the same reasons, the ‘365’ browser-based implementation is a complete mess, when it comes to formatting in particular. It's as if Microsoft is subtly yet violently corralling users onto their Windows operating (eco)system.

So here I am, trying to build a Word document containing various obscure exotica including numbered lists, table of contents, formatted tables and it's like trying to land an adult Bull shark steeled with vengeance, on a boat gone rogue, while struggling with an untethered rod with two broken arms—tied behind my back. Drunk and blindfolded. It's a constant battle with unexpected outcomes from simple intentions. For example, I want Heading 1 and Heading 2 to share the same numbering, with ‘1, 1.1, 1.2..’ multi-level adherence throughout the document. Nothing too out of the ordinary I wouldn't have thought—I want reference to any particular section to be simple and clear. The default formatting however, appears to indent the second level to a tab stop then another after the number. This is ugly, inconsistent (1.11 is different), and not at all what I nor anyone else wants.

This is the default spacing and indentation.

This default is terrible, why on earth would you want headings to indent to such a degree—or at all for that matter. Is this an Arabic influence? I'll right-click directly on a number. It took me too long to understand just how contextual Word is when it comes to effecting changed settings on document ‘features’.

Clicking that button should solve the problem.

I guess I'll just ‘Set for all levels..’, what could possibly go right? The trailing punctuation there is foreboding.

Clicking this button should solve the problem?

Let me just change that ‘Additional’ setting to zero.. OK, wait a minute. I'm being gas-lit. That actually worked. I swear to the Mamas & the Papas this wasn't the case the last time I tried this. Something fishy is going on. What I absolutely know for sure is that something somewhere else will have paid the price.

TOC's buggered.

Oh look, the table of contents has gone all weird. Now, this is how it plays out. Like a one-armed bandit in a casino, you're patted on the head and fed a doggy snack while being nudged onto the rails of the long game—zero sum tweaks and changes get you tantalisingly close but the banana was an illusion all along.

~~~~~