When I wrote about my new MacBook Neo my biggest complaint about it was the back of a backlit keyboard. You can read my review about the machine here: Since then I have been looking at potential solutions that work and don’t add too much weight for when…

Making up for the lack of backlit keyboard on the MacBook Neo

When I wrote about my new MacBook Neo my biggest complaint about it was the back of a backlit keyboard. You can read my review about the machine here: Since then I have been looking at potential so…

spokenlikeageek.com

CrossPoint the open source firmware for eReaders such as the Xteink range, has just released a new update that’s so significant that they have bumper the version number from 1 to 2. This release had two major changes: I’m going to be taking a look at …

Support for Page Turners in CrossPoint 2.0

CrossPoint the open source firmware for eReaders such as the Xteink range, has just released a new update that’s so significant that they have bumper the version number from 1 to 2. This rele…

spokenlikeageek.com

Your Office 2021 license is not supported with this version of the application. Are you seeing this message when you open Microsoft Office? If so you are not alone—this message started popping up for users following a Microsoft update. What Is Happening…

Your Office 2021 license is not supported with this version of the application

Your Office 2021 license is not supported with this version of the application. Are you seeing this message when you open Microsoft Office? If so you are not alone—this message started popping up f…

spokenlikeageek.com

WARNING! Make a copy of your database before trying any of this! A while back I found an online course called SQL for Genealogy which taught you how to extract and manipulate your family history data using SQL queries. I was, and still am, using a program…

Querying the MacFamilyTree Database

WARNING! Make a copy of your database before trying any of this! A while back I found an online course called SQL for Genealogy which taught you how to extract and manipulate your family history da…

spokenlikeageek.com

A fairly unusual php2Bluesky issue was raised recently, via Github, where when a site was being used as a link card and the main image on that site was a GIF it was being converted and sent to Bluesky as a video, which it didn’t like. I suppose that thi…

php2Bluesky: When is a GIF not a GIF?

A fairly unusual php2Bluesky issue was raised recently, via Github, where when a site was being used as a link card and the main image on that site was a GIF it was being converted and sent to Blue…

spokenlikeageek.com

A few updates to @php2bluesky.dev recently: 1. fixed when the link card image was a gif which was being converted to a video which Bluesky objected to 2. fixed where s3 was returning the mime type of an image as application/octet-stream Latest version is v2.3.16. github.com/williamsdb/p...

A user of my PHP2Bluesky package, Muzikals, raised an issue to say that Bluesky had increased the limits for both videos and images. Now you can upload larger-sized videos of up to 300MB and ten minutes in length, and the limit for images has been raised …

Increasing the video and image limits in php2Bluesky

A user of my PHP2Bluesky package, Muzikals, raised an issue to say that Bluesky had increased the limits for both videos and images. Now you can upload larger-sized videos of up to 300MB and ten mi…

spokenlikeageek.com

A while back I wrote a review of the Xteink X3 in which I said “Has NFC for, well, we’ll discuss that later”. Brian left a comment recently to ask “Will you still discuss the NFC later?” By later I had meant later in the review but it seems I ne…

What can you do with the NFC in the Xteink X3?

A while back I wrote a review of the Xteink X3 in which I said “Has NFC for, well, we’ll discuss that later”. Brian left a comment recently to ask “Will you still discuss the NFC …

spokenlikeageek.com

Sometimes, something you think should be simple turns out not to be. I’d assumed that it would be simple to create a file with a URL in it and then when it was double clicked would open the browser to the URL. This is partly true but not completely. For…

Creating a website link file in macOS

Sometimes, something you think should be simple turns out not to be. I’d assumed that it would be simple to create a file with a URL in it and then when it was double clicked would open the b…

spokenlikeageek.com

After I posted my review on the Xteink X3 someone left a comment about it and made an oblique reference to something that they were working on: I learned this working on my CrossPoint fork (hoping to get the device to pull my daily youtube summaries autom…

Headwater app – Summarising YouTube

After I posted my review on the Xteink X3 someone left a comment about it and made an oblique reference to something that they were working on: I learned this working on my CrossPoint fork (hoping …

spokenlikeageek.com

I wrote recently about using Ai to help Transcribing handwritten diary entries into Day One. On the whole this has been a great success but there have been one or two interesting hallucinations. A Blank Page Not every page in my diary has a written entry …

Ai Transcription Gone Rouge

I wrote recently about using Ai to help Transcribing handwritten diary entries into Day One. On the whole this has been a great success but there have been one or two interesting hallucinations. A …

spokenlikeageek.com

Late last year I wrote a script that took my Foursquare check-ins and created an entry for each of them in the Day One app. This continues to work well and you can read more about it here: I felt that there was more that could be done with the information…

Foursquare Check-in Stats

Late last year I wrote a script that took my Foursquare check-ins and created an entry for each of them in the Day One app. This continues to work well and you can read more about it here: I felt t…

spokenlikeageek.com

Do you keep seeing this notification pop-up on your MacBook? Do you know what it means? Do you know what to do about it? If not read on to find out. What is Rosetta and why is it needed? Rosetta 2* is Apple’s translation technology that lets Intel Mac a…

Checking which macOS apps rely on Rosetta

Do you keep seeing this notification pop-up on your MacBook? Do you know what it means? Do you know what to do about it? If not read on to find out. What is Rosetta and why is it needed? Rosetta 2*…

spokenlikeageek.com

I recently wrote a post about the ongoing project I have been doing to transcribe all my physical diaries and journals into the Day One app. In this post I lamented that when I had tried transcribing my handwritten entries using AI the results had been le…

Transcribing handwritten diary entries into Day One

I recently wrote a post about the ongoing project I have been doing to transcribe all my physical diaries and journals into the Day One app. In this post I lamented that when I had tried transcribi…

spokenlikeageek.com

I’ve been away on holiday, on a cruise at it happens. I mention that only as it is important to this story. On board there is a dedicated website that you can access to check your account, see what’s on today, book restaurants etc. The web address for…

Google has made us Stupid

I’ve been away on holiday, on a cruise at it happens. I mention that only as it is important to this story. On board there is a dedicated website that you can access to check your account, se…

spokenlikeageek.com

Hope my Neo doesn’t bend at the corners like the one in this ad!

If, like me, you are still persisting with Evernote’s aging API (I have two projects that use it) you will have come across the Auth Token that is used to validate requests. In today’s post we are going to try and unpack that. What does it contain? Th…

Decoding the Evernote Auth Token

If, like me, you are still persisting with Evernote’s aging API (I have two projects that use it) you will have come across the Auth Token that is used to validate requests. In today’s …

spokenlikeageek.com

In today’s fast changing AI world Apple is very much coming from behind with it’s products and services in this space. Apple now groups its on-device AI under the Apple Intelligence umbrella and includes things like Siri. What is Apple Intelligence La…

apfel for Alfred Workflow

In today’s fast changing AI world Apple is very much coming from behind with it’s products and services in this space. Apple now groups its on-device AI under the Apple Intelligence umb…

spokenlikeageek.com

I’d not tried this before but the Xteink Tong Card snaps to the back of the X4. Annoyingly it’s off centre due to the positioning of the magnets but it does work.

I’ve written about directly accessing the Day One database before along with a number of posts about getting data in from other services. This week I came across a niggle with the Day One Mac app in that you cannot go directly to a specific dated post j…

Go to a Specific Date in DayOne

I’ve written about directly accessing the Day One database before along with a number of posts about getting data in from other services. This week I came across a niggle with the Day One Mac…

spokenlikeageek.com

A while back I wrote about my experience of computer science education in the 1980s and, in particular, use of the CESIL language. You can read about that here: Since then I have been contacted both by the daughter of the pupil that wrote the CESIL interp…

Computer Education in Schools in the 1980s (Revisited)

A while back I wrote about my experience of computer science education in the 1980s and, in particular, use of the CESIL language. You can read about that here: Since then I have been contacted bot…

spokenlikeageek.com

I'm not sure why it took so long for Apple to add this as an option, but I'm very glad they have finally done so.

A new @php2bluesky.dev release! No longer do you have to put up with Australian pictures. With apologies to all my antipodean followers and users!

Neil Thompson@spokenlikeageek.com · 6mo ago

I have a PHP application that I use to post to my X, Mastodon and Bluesky accounts. This works well but I noticed the last time I posted an image from my iPhone that while it was fine on X and Mastodon on Bluesky the image was upside down (see above and h…

I have a PHP application that I use to post to my X, Mastodon and Bluesky accounts. This works well but I noticed the last time I posted an image from my iPhone that while it was fine on X and Mastodon on Bluesky the image was upside down (see above and h…

Automatically Rotating Images with php2Bluesky

I have a PHP application that I use to post to my X, Mastodon and Bluesky accounts. This works well but I noticed the last time I posted an image from my iPhone that while it was fine on X and Mast…

spokenlikeageek.com

I’d decided that I was going to setup my MacBook Neo as a new machine, rather than burden it with all the bloat from my MacBook Pro backup. This gave me both the opportunity to start with a clean machine but also to make a list of my essential software …

What I Install First on a New MacBook

I’d decided that I was going to setup my MacBook Neo as a new machine, rather than burden it with all the bloat from my MacBook Pro backup. This gave me both the opportunity to start with a c…

spokenlikeageek.com

Released a new update to @php2bluesky.dev. You can now restrict who can reply to a post. More here… www.spokenlikeageek.com/2026/04/23/r...

Restricting who can reply to a Bluesky post with php2Bluesky

I had an email from a php2Bluesky user who wanted to know how you could set the restrictions on who could reply to a post. This was something that php2Bluesky didn’t support, but I thought it…

spokenlikeageek.com

What's in my Alpaka Flight Sling 2L - my EDC.

@muzikals.eurosky.social Fixed it! bsky.app/profile/php2... Just need to do a bit more testing but will push later. Thanks for your help!

php2Bluesky@php2bluesky.dev · 7mo ago

This is a large gif test

Had to retire my original robotic mower and now he has kindly consented to be used for spare parts. Thanks Robbie for your service and welcome Laurie.

Lack of MacBook Neo keyboard backlight solved. This works surprisingly well.