SamCritch's comments

I gave up on to-do apps as well. I have a text file I started in 2017. It's on my desktop and always open in a text editor. I just add the following at the top for a new entry:

20250811 - Core API - deploy to production 20250810 - Customer X - call about upgrading to new version

Every day I move items I have not yet done to the top of the list. Order in the list is the priority.

Old or done tasks naturally fall down the list.

I asked it to summarise my repo. It did a pretty good job. Then I asked it to see if it could summarise a specific function, but it said my $5 was up. Now I need to find whoever's in charge of our company account and spend half an hour busking in front of their desk to get some more credit.

Until then I'm sticking to a combination of Amazon Q Developer (with the @workspace tag in Intellij), ChatGPT and Gemini online.

Yeah, I think the UX here in the Netherlands is much simpler and easier than in other countries. When I go to the UK (e.g. Tesco Express) I have to select a bagging option, there's no "no bag" option at the beginning of the transaction even though I'm only buying a litre of milk, then when I put the carton down in the bagging area it triggers an alarm saying a store assistant is coming, but they never do because they're too busy serving all the other customers at the regular checkout. So I give up and try a different checkout, blocking the one I've just tried to use for 2 minutes.

I posted about this on Linkedin too and got a few comments about the complexity in the UK, USA, France and elsewhere. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/samcritchley_it-hasnt-deliver...

Bye bye CI builds (at least for now).

Mica is the main component used to give auto paints their metallic look. Mica is mined in sometimes terrible conditions in India and Madagascar. I wonder if Porsche joining the Responsible Mica Initiative has anything to do with the reduction in metallic finishes?

https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2020/company/porsche-joins-r...

Yeah, this is a pain and I hope there will be some good news soon. My family runs on this - the only advantage over free Gmail is that we can use our own domain name, and we're going to suddenly have to pay $42 per month (okay, $36 if I trim one of the accounts I hardly use). We've got loads of Photos, movie purchases etc which I don't want to lose, plus all the kids Android phones, 2 x Home, 2 x Chromecast.

Friends who use regular Gmail accounts get to use things like Family Link etc for parental approval/monitoring as well... which I'm still not going to be able to use.

Come on Google, please come up with a family service which allows you to use your own domain name. Pretty please! I'd still pay a few $ per month for it, especially if it's good on parental controls and monitoring.

I agree it's not an "infinity train" as such (especially as plenty of energy is used to haul the ore out of the ground), but it's impressive saving 82M litres of diesel a year (and amazing it wasn't done before).

Oh this is a monster pain in the ass. All 5 family members are using this service for mail, Android phones/apps, TV, movies etc, plus I have a couple of extra accounts (e.g. separate email account for e-commerce orders). I already pay for extra Drive space and I buy movies frequently enough.

All I want is to be able to use my own domain for my family, and carry on using the current settings on Android etc. Now I'll be paying over $40/mo for it.

Can't Google just come up with an "own domain for families" version at a lower price, and make it work with the child protection features?

I still have my Key2. Sending mails/WhatsApps/Slack/Messenger messages takes me half the time it takes someone on a touch-screen phone. It's the best BlackBerry I've ever had - I had an iPhone and a couple of Android phones for a while, but I just couldn't get as much stuff done. Those keyboard shortcuts - once you get used to it it's so fast. And I can touch-type on it!

These days I get people asking "what's that?" when they see my BlackBerry. Some of them then go "whoaaa, cool idea, a keyboard on a phone, I want one of those!" Others just say "do they still make those?"

It is unbelievably fast getting things done on my BlackBerry Key2 - I can bang off a message or reply to something way faster than on an iPhone or other Android phone. I can touch-type, there are tons of key-based shortcuts, the combined email/messaging/notifications app is the best there is, and yet it's also a touch-screen Android phone.

The Android-based BlackBerry phones (including my Key2) all support WhatsApp.

I'm a huge guy (6'5", big frame), with big thumbs, and my Key2 is the fastest, most productive phone I've ever owned (including various Androids and a couple iPhones). I don't mean fast in terms of raw processing power, I mean in terms of getting things done.

You get used to the keyboard fast. It's soooooo accurate, I can touch-type on it (I haven't had to look at the keyboard once whilst typing this comment), and there are loads of shortcuts, like hitting "w" to open WhatsApp or hitting "t" to get to the top of a list of messages in the BlackBerry email app (called "Hub").

Not only that, but it's an Android phone with a touch screen, so I can use any of the apps anyone else uses too.

I've got an Epson ink bottle printer. The bottles last for thousands of sheets, don't cost much, and don't dry out. I only print a couple of times a month and moved from a Brother printer because a set of four cartridges cost €120 and you couldn't use the scanner when any of the ink cartridges were empty.