i'm sad the casio w213 is being discontinued
The Casio W213 at the time I write this is still available, but not for long because it appears it's being discontinued in the North American market.
Do I have confirmation the W213 is being discontinued? No, but it's not being shown as in stock any longer on the Casio USA web site. When a model disappears from there like that, it always means it either is or very soon will be not for sale any longer.
What makes the Casio W213 so great?
The W213 has a near-perfect set of features. Easy-press buttons that allow for lightning fast operation, great legibility, great night light, ridiculously light in weight at just 28g, and a 10-year battery life.
Imagine the AE1200 with its world time feature replaced with dual time, the "1-ON" alarm function (meaning "sound once and disable") removed, its display replaced with one that's easier to read, and its countdown timer had an auto-repeat function added in. That's the W213 in a nutshell. W213 has 5 independent daily alarms, stopwatch, countdown timer with auto-repeat and dual time. This exact same feature set is in the F201WA and MWD100H, but the W213 just does it all better, however...
The W213 has three flaws
First is that circle at top left. That's where the W213 shows how many alarms are enabled. A bit dim because of the blue background. The rest of the display (which is what matters more) is fantastic, however.
Second is the strap. Not the best.
Third is that this watch will never be a looker. Plain design, silver paint on most you'll see out there (the other common color is blue). Even with the plain look, the measurements are good. 45.5mm lug-to-lug, 40mm diameter, 11.7mm thick. It certainly doesn't look like a 40mm watch, but yes, it is.
W213 is one of the very few watches that gets it right
Even with its flaws, it's very difficult to find a model of low-cost Casio digital watch that's done as well as the W213.
The time is big. The date is big. The panel has that perfect light gray to it with thick segments for superior legibility. The night light is just right.
The speed of how fast you can go through the functions is incredible. You wouldn't think speed matters on a Casio watch, but you'd understand if you used the W213 at all. There is ZERO wait time function-to-function. The only time you wait for anything is a long press to set the time, alarm or countdown timer and that's it. Everything else is instantaneous. The easy-press buttons also add to the speed of operation. You can blaze through everything on the W213 like greased lightning.
F201WA I mentioned above is the only other model that's just as fast, except the panel isn't as legible. It's close, but not quite to W213 level.
I just bought a W213 since I'm pretty sure it's going away forever. I had owned two before, but threw them out because of strap and case modification that damaged both. Since the W213 is going away, I bought another while I can still get it...
...and this one is staying all-stock. No modifications this time around. It's good enough as-is, minor flaws and all.
video games. i don't get it.
I'm dating myself here, but the first video game consoles I ever played were the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. I also played games on the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore 64. After that came the Nintendo Entertainment System, and I was more or less the exact age Nintendo was targeting when that system was released. I also had a Sega Master System at one point, then some years later the Nintendo 64. After that, some PC games. Then a few years after that, the very last game console I ever bought, the Nintendo Wii.
And then that was it. I stopped playing video games completely. Well, almost completely. I do play KMahJongg on Linux...
...but that's pretty much it.
Did I get old?
Yes. As a middle aged dude, playing anything more than a casual game for a few minutes feels like a complete waste of my time. I'd rather be doing something else, such as playing guitar or writing.
However, it's more than just my age talking.
Modern games aren't easy anymore. I'm not talking about game difficulty, but rather all the crap you have to deal with just to play.
I'd argue there are only two ways to play games with the least amount of complications. Either play games using the offerings from the file repositories on a Linux distro, or open source games from F-Droid for the smartphone.
Anything, and I mean anything outside of that means dealing with complicated crap and a lot of it. Gotta sign up for an account. Gotta deal with long load times or be forced to wait through screens so companies can show their logos. An internet connection is "required" even for single player games (which makes no sense at all). Games even with minimal graphics take up gigs and gigs of space for no good reason. There's more, but you get the idea.
You really do have to deal with a lot of crap to play a modern video game these days.
A modern console like a Switch or PlayStation or Xbox is prohibitively expensive. Many PC games start at 40 bucks with some at $70, and not even for a special edition.
So there's high cost, a lot of crap to deal with and a lot of waiting just to get started playing.
In other words, a lot of suffering.
That doesn't sound like "fun" to me.
I'll stick to my KMahJongg.
candles and candy are the only halloween things worth buying
Every year during the fall season, all the Halloween stuff gets put out for sale in the grocery and department stores. The vast majority of what's sold is crap, except for the candy because it tastes better. I explain why that is here.
The other thing that's worth buying are highfalutin candles, if you get the right kind.
A go-to candle that is never cheap but genuinely awesome for Halloween is the Yankee Candle Honey Clementine Scented. The best type to get is the one in a glass jar with top. The candle is orange which is proper for Halloween and autumn, and you can reuse the glass jar after you burn the candle all the way through. Reuse for what? Any number of things. Candy jar, sugar jar, jar for nuts, jar for rice, whatever.
If you just said to yourself, "Screw the candle, I just want the jars!", not a problem. Glass candle jars are widely available. Metal screw-top, cork top, push top, clear glass, frosted glass, and so on. Have at it.
The other types of scented candles that work for Halloween and the autumn season in general are fall colors with sweet or woodsy scents. Yankee Candle rules the roost for this. See Kitchen Spice, Cinnamon Stick, Sparkling Cinnamon, Salted Caramel, Apple Wreath, Sicilian Lemon, Mango Peach Salsa, Balsam & Cedar, and Evergreen Mist. There are many more, but if you stick to one or more of those, you're good for the autumn season.
Candy and candles are always better than plastic crap.
With the candy, it's cheap, eaten quickly and the wrapper thrown away. Not a big deal. Very little waste involved, and the candy is as fresh as it gets for store-bought stuff.
With a candle in a jar (with top), you get to enjoy the scent while the candle is burning, and get a reusable jar afterward.
There's another good thing about jarred candles in that they make excellent gifts. These candles have some cost to them but don't cross into insanely expensive territory. Candles like this also have some fancy flair to them. After all, it comes in thick glass and has actual weight to it. Even the top feels substantial.
I have been gifted candles before and always appreciate it. They're just nice things. And I like nice things. Who doesn't?
why i stopped buying casio watches (for now)
On my wrist as I write this is my trusty Casio WS1600H. I wear it because it has almost every feature I want out of watch. The one thing it's missing is multiple alarms. But it has the countdown timer with auto-repeat (I use that often), great legibility, and is light in weight.
But if I want all the stuff, choices are darned few.
What I want is high legibility, multiple alarms, a display that shows time, month, date and day using three letters (such as THU for Thursday instead of just TH), a decent night light, a countdown timer with auto-repeat, and in a size that fits my smaller wrist.
I own a few Casios that almost get it right. Two of them are the F201WA and MWD100H. Both of these have an identical feature set even though they look very different. Feature-wise, everything is there. Five alarms, countdown timer with auto-repeat, time + month + date + day with 3 letters on display, but...
...the F201WA is a bit dim and the MWD100H doesn't fit my wrist that well. So close. So close.
Previously, I owned a WS1000H and WS1400H. These also share identical features. The WS1000H in particular is outstandingly good for legibility, and both models have all the features I want. So what's the problem? Front-facing buttons. I could not get used to that.
What's left that's available right now?
Two models, the WS1300H and WS1700H. And you guessed it, these both share the same feature set. I might be picking up one of these or both. The WS1300 looks to be the one that has a more legible display.
No front-facing buttons on either model, which is good. But there may be fitment issues. Both have lug-to-lug measurements of over 50mm. But based on my experience, that sometimes doesn't matter because the AE1500 - which is huge at a whopping 54.4mm lug-to-lug - does fit my smaller wrist. The only reason I'm not wearing one is because while it does have a countdown timer, it doesn't have auto-repeat, and I need that.
The WS1300 is a round case and the WS1700 is square, with the WS1700 being the larger of the two cases. In my experience, square digital Casios fit my wrist better. But the WS1700 has a really busy display going on.
Neither shows the day as 3 letters and goes with 2 instead, but I like the WS1300 display better because it's not as cluttered.
This is all the stuff I have to consider these days before even thinking about buying another Casio. It's why I wear the WS1600H now. That watch does not have have multiple alarms on it, but just about everything else checks out.
At this point, I've had enough experience from buying so many Casio digitals over the years that yeah, I get picky. I examine everything, read all the specs, watch YouTube videos on the watch if any exist, and so on. And I also make darned certain I can return the watch if it doesn't work out (which I have had to do several times).
Maybe there will be a WS1300 or WS1700 in my future, because at present, those are the only two I'm considering. I've gone through the entire Casio catalog, and if I make the buy, it will be one or the other. Or maybe both.
And if I do get either or both, I'll be sure to write about it here.
if my email ever broke, i'd switch to a day planner
Email. As in messaging on the internet that predates the web browser itself. Before there was browsing, there was messaging. Why? Because it's just text, and that's the smallest, simplest data you can transfer.
I use email to organize my life, so I get all sorts of super nerdy when it comes to using it exactly the way I want. Very recently, I just did a major switch in how I use it.
And by the way, yes, I really do mean it when I say that if email wasn't an option for me, I'd switch to a day planner. Or to be more accurate, a day planner with sticky note tabs for whenever I need to make minor corrections or place a higher importance on certain tasks by using bright colored tabs.
The very specific way I've been using email for years is with the Mozilla Thunderbird mail client with the Send Later add-on. That client with that add-on is the free way to have scheduled email, which is something I use a lot. Send Later allows one-time and repeating scheduled emails (weekly, monthly, biannual, annual, whatever). Brilliant software.
HOWEVER... my Thunderbird setup was best described as Frankenstein's Monster that's been beaten repeatedly. Years ago, I had to stop at Thunderbird version 52.9.1 and stay there because of other add-ons I used that were unsupported or just outright broke with any newer version of the software. Yeah, it worked, but it wasn't exactly an ideal setup.
There is an emoji bug with Thunderbird 52 in Linux where anything emoji blows up to giant size. It is a known problem with that version software that will NEVER BE FIXED. Why? It was fixed with version 60 and beyond, so nobody bothered fixing 52. That means if running 52, you're screwed. And I had to keep running 52 just to continue using the add-ons I liked that broke in 60 and beyond. The only "fix" for 52 is to disable the Noto Color emoji font...
...but then that can break other programs that use that font. This is the kind of crap you deal with when running old software. I didn't have the emoji problem in Thunderbird back when I was running Windows 10, but instead had other stuff that would sometimes break. In either OS, I just couldn't win.
Send Later was the only reason I kept using Thunderbird, but I finally found a way to get scheduled email without Thunderbird + Send Later. Three ways, actually.
First way: KDE's KMail using the Send Later Agent plugin, which does work. However, I didn't like the client all that much.
Second and third way: Sylpheed as my mail client, and a combination of mutt, at and cron jobs to do scheduled emails as a background process.
If I want to schedule an email and bcc myself on it (I prefer that over using a "Sent" folder), that's done like this in Terminal:
at 3pm tomorrow (enter)
echo "Message body here" | mutt -s "Subject here" -b somedude@example.com (enter, CTRL+D, enter)
...and that's it. The mail will go out at 3pm the next day. I can get more fancy with it by specifying a very specific date+time if I want to, such as 12am Jan 1 2025 or whatever.
Cron jobs are used if I need a specific email to repeat itself. If there's a reminder I need every week, it would be something like this in crontab:
0 12 * * 2 echo "Take out trash" | mutt -s "Take out trash" my-email-address@domain.tld
That job would send an email to me every Tuesday at noon. The way cron jobs work is that the first 5 characters are * * * * *, which from right-to-left are weekday, month, day, hour, minute. Sun-Sat is 0-7, so Tuesday is 2. Month and day don't need to be set, so those stay as asterisks. 12 is hour 12, 0 is the 0 minute, and that means 12:00pm.
Both the subject line and body of message is just "Take out trash", because that's all I need to see.
Yes, I go through all this crap just to have reliable scheduled emails.
Sylpheed is a GUI mail client that's just "barely-GUI", which is just fine. Very lightweight, very quick. Mutt is only used to send scheduled emails. And I had to learn at and make cron jobs that actually work...
...but it works, and I was finally able to dump old Thunderbird 52 that never worked correctly in Windows nor Linux with the add-ons I was using.
Why Sylpheed?
Other than it being very light, it has baked in regex filtering that works exactly as it's supposed to. Thunderbird TO THIS DAY does not have any native regular expression filtering ability, which is all sorts of stupid. Believe me, if you know regex, then you understand how valuable that is to sort emails on arrival.
Another thing Sylpheed has baked in is the ability minimize AND HIDE to tray.
On minimize, a little mail icon just sits there next to the clock, and changes whenever a new email is in the inbox. That seemingly very simple thing is for some reason IMPOSSIBLE on nearly all other mail clients. Thunderbird, depending on version, can be made to do this with add-ons. I had that working a certain way in Windows and a different way in Linux. Both were annoying to set up, but in Sylpheed it's dirt simple. No add-ons necessary because it just has it with a couple of checkboxes and it works. The tray icon is there with no space wasted in the taskbar. Brilliant.
Yeah, this is all some seriously nerdy crap, but that's what I had to do just to get my email working how I like.
But again, if it ever gets to a point where I can't schedule emails, that's when I go to the department store and buy a day planner and sticky note tabs.