retro things that aren't anachronisms
A lot of stuff being sold as "retro" ends up being a pile of suck because it's nothing more than an anachronism. An example of that is this thing, a CD player made to look like a record player with fake wood grain, fake tone arm and all. Yes, really. That audio player misses the mark so badly that it's living on a different planet.
Retro things that aren't anachronisms are the best kind. "True to original", if you will. And if it's cheap, that's even better.
I did find a few.
Coca-Cola Ruby Red plastic tumblersIf you ever ate pizza at Pizza Hut in the '80s or '90s, you will instantly recognize these. It's the tall red plastic Coca-Cola tumbler you'd always get your fountain drink in, for whatever that might be.
And does it have the texture on the outside like it's supposed to? Yes. Yes, it does.
Kit Kat ClockFunny enough is that I've never seen one of these in person, but have seen it a million times in television shows, movies, and even cartoons. It's that black cat wall clock with the swinging tail and the eyes that go back and forth.
This thing has been around since 1932! There is the classic black and white, but now there are also several other colors and color combinations. Still the same size as the original.
Light-Up Gyro WheelsI did play with these as a kid. It's just a wheel that attaches by magnetism to a handheld rail that lights up when it spins, and it's pretty much exactly the same as it was from decades ago.
Movie Wall ClockThis is another wall clock I've seen a bunch in both television and movies, usually seen in an office or restaurant if memory serves correctly. I do appreciate how clean the clock face is on this one. Very easy to read, and runs on battery so there will be no ugly power cable hanging from it. I believe the battery is just one AA, so it's ridiculously easy to replace.
Casio A158Couldn't end this without mentioning this digital watch. It's the same as the F-91W in a steel version, and is exactly how you remember it. The only thing that's changed is that it's made in Thailand instead of Japan now.
gamers have been screwed for years
I recently talked about deleting accounts to get rid of digital clutter in my life. I've made progress, but out of curiosity, I wanted to know the answer to a question:
Who has it the worst when it comes to having too many online accounts?
Answer: Gamers.
I thought my total number of accounts was pretty bad before I started my deleting. Nope. Gamers have it far worse.
It's so bad for gamers that a video game library manager exists in an attempt to handle it all.
That utility is Playnite, an open source free thing for Windows, although there might be a Linux version soon.
I don't game other than playing little time-waster games while taking a dump, such as on one of those cheap 200+ game handheld things. I'd even be happy with handheld Tetris. Even so, I do recognize gamers having ridiculous numbers of accounts is actually a big problem.
The entire point of Playnite is to have one unified launcher for all your games, regardless of what account the game uses. This literally means you can put all your Steam, Origin, GOG or whatever into this thing and it supposedly works. I do not know that for sure because I've not used it personally.
When I looked all the account types Playnite supports, the list is long. That's good, but it doesn't solve the problem of gamers having way too many accounts.
The funny thing is that I learned about Playnite from a forum thread discussion posted all the way back in 2018. What gamers were saying then is still a problem now, only worse. They were saying it was "normal" to have over 100 active online accounts sprawled out all over the place. Multiple gaming accounts, multiple Gmail and Outlook accounts, multiple accounts for PC control software updates, and all sorts of other ridiculousness.
I had an eyebrow-raising moment when I read over how most gamers manage all their accounts. A notepad. No, I don't mean Windows Notepad. I mean putting pen to paper, physically writing down account info, then putting that in a desk drawer until needed later. And no, I'm not kidding. Enough distrust for the Windows environment existed even back then due to fear of malware and keyloggers to where more than a few came to the conclusion the only way to safeguard account info was to never store that info in Windows.
Did things get any better now that it's 8 years later? No. It's worse now than ever, and gamers are still doing the pen-to-paper thing.
If I were ever to get back into PC gaming, there is absolutely no way I would touch the modern way it's done. Windows 11 is a complete dumpster fire, the cost of PC hardware is too high, and everything "requires" an account.
The way I would do PC gaming is use Linux only, play free open source games only with no ads whatsoever that run smoothly on old low-powered PC hardware, and very purposely avoid "required" accounts like the plague.
And there's also no way I would use a "gaming optimized" Linux distro since those are all trash. The best Linux distros for gaming are ones that support the most hardware while having a lightweight UI. For most people, that means Xubuntu. True, there are environments lighter than XFCE, but with Xubuntu, that's the kind of desktop environment which is light but still friendly. The most important thing to a gamer is getting to the game, so it's best to have an environment that's easy enough to use and stays the hell out of the way during gaming, which XFCE does. It's also important to be able to use your computer like a computer when out of the game, and XFCE is fine for that also.
Gamer account hell begins to end when the rage-quit moment happens
I'm not talking about rage-quitting a game, but rather a rage-quit directly due to account "security" garbage.
Here's how it happens:
Ordinarily, you login to Account on your PC. It's always worked, there's never been a problem, Account is in good standing, and everything is okay.
One day you login to Account using a different browser or maybe your phone. Why? Maybe you wanted to try a different web browser. Maybe you weren't at home and needed to check on something. You had a reason.
This is where you just officially screwed yourself.
Uh oh, Account no longer considers your main PC using the browser you've always used "trusted". From that point forward, you can NEVER login to Account on your PC ever again without extra "verification" steps. Or, you're flat out not allowed to login to the account the way you used to ever again.
What can you do about this? Not a damned thing.
The end result of this is that you have to spend 1 to 2 minutes jumping through hoops just to login to Account. Or worse yet, you aren't allowed to play your game at all. And you paid for it.
A very loud I'M DONE moment happens right then and there. That's the rage-quit. Later on, that will naturally lead to a rage-delete both for the game and the account. If Account slaps you in the face with all sorts of "reverify" crap and/or blocks you from playing the game, oh yes, you will delete it.
Deleting the account immediately solves the problem, because there is absolutely no game worth wasting your life over due to account login issues.
Then you start questioning why you have accounts for any game you have. After all, the rage-quit to rage-delete you just went through could happen for any "account required" game.
And this is when Linux and free open source games start looking very attractive. Neither the OS nor the games have any account required whatsoever. The only time you will ever see anything to do with an account is for a donation link to support the game developer(s). This is perfectly fine because it's a) it's optional, and b) that account has nothing to do with the game itself.
Are we having fun yet?
Gamer account hell will suck the fun right out of any game in the blink of an eye. Regardless of how good the game is, that account... that STUPID ACCOUNT ruins everything the moment it acts up. And it will.
It is no wonder to me at all why there are continued remakes and updates to DOOM, Quake, Ultima VII, Civilization and the like in Linux that you can run right now. Yes, there are newer game titles. But the older remade/updated stuff is fun enough to where it actually attracts young players and not just oldheads.
It is sad that no requirement of an account to play would be considered part of the fun these days, but here we are.
dumping digital clutter
I wasn't intending on deleting a bunch of internet accounts to be my New Year's Resolution, but that's just how things ended up happening.
While going through the account list in my password manager, I found some seriously old and crusty stuff there, and it was long overdue to do some jettisoning.
True, I could have just left those old crusty accounts as-is and nothing bad would have happened... probably. But that lingering doubt is something I couldn't shake, so I started deleting the old stuff.
I can best define the doubt as questions.
What if the site the account belongs to is bought by some corporation, and then all the personal data in every account is sold?
What if the site is run by idiots and everybody's account info is "leaked" later?
Then there is the most important question:
Why do I even have an account for insert-whatever-site-here in the first place?
There has to be an answer to that question, even if it's not a good one. If I can't come up with any answer at all, then that account has to go.
Of the deletions I made, some of them were:
- "Free" email accounts I had and didn't use.
- A "musicians wanted" account on a site that I probably hadn't used in over a decade.
- Three link shortening accounts.
- An email newsletter service account (for sending, not receiving) that I never used.
- A formerly free comment system account that turned freemium.
- An online cloud storage service account.
- Some blog host thing account I tried out forever ago and then never used.
- A social media management service account I stopped using years ago.
- Four social media accounts. Or maybe five. I'll talk about that fifth one in a minute.
It takes time to go through all this crap, but it's worth it
No two sites have the same process for deleting an account, so I was not able to get all my deletions done in a single sitting. It took days, especially for sites that "require" you to email them just to get an account deleted.
A few of them do that 30-day wait thing. Yes, you can delete, but the account isn't 100% gone until 30 days later, which is annoying, but whatever.
A few things learned
Some accounts I deleted had some images and/or videos I posted years ago that I completely forgot about. One of them was an imgur account, and this is that fifth social media account I mentioned a minute ago. Does imgur count as social media? I'm not sure, but I'll say it does. Before deleting that account, I downloaded an archive of everything in there (which imgur thankfully makes easy to do), and there was stuff dating all the way back to 2014. Just dopey things for the most part. I had no local backup of any of it, so I was happy to get that archive.
Thing I learned: When you have too many accounts, you completely forget what you have out there.
Some accounts I kept around solely for the reason of, "I might need this someday". The cloud storage account I mentioned was one of those. I don't use cloud storage and doubt I ever will. And if I had to transfer files online that were too big for email, I'd just use a file sharing service since no account is required.
Thing I learned: Just-in-case is weak justification to keep an account active, more often than not.
And there were some accounts I had belonging to sites that were basically dog slow versions of desktop programs, such as online image editors. Better to just use GIMP, because every online image editor sucks.
Thing I learned: Don't use a site that "requires" an account to do something a free desktop program with no account required can do 100x faster and better.
Happy new year.
plain text zen
It's funny how things work out.
Something about Linux I totally didn't expect is how much better it feels using text now.
Years ago, I would read about certain editors for Mac that bragged about distraction-free writing as a selling point. I was using Windows at the time, and it made no sense to me that the editor itself could somehow be distracting. My thought was why not just get Notepad++ and call it a day?
Yeah, I was wrong there.
Now that I'm 2.5 years into Linux and have tried several text editors both terminal and GUI-based, I understand the need for distraction-free editors. For example, ghostwriter definitely counts as one of them. But I'd argue the same "clean slate" text editing environment can be had with any terminal based editor.
The best text editors have five things. Lightning fast operation, automatic spell checking, tabs, macros, and syntax highlighting. In Linux, Kate, micro and vi can do all that and a whole lot more. Per the syntax highlighting, I appreciate that the most when editing markdown documents and bash scripts. That highlighting comes in handy more than just a little bit.
And then there's the whole email thing. I switched that over to 100% text with NeoMutt and am still using it.
And then there's the universal document converter Pandoc. Convert markdown to DOCX, ODT, RTF, PDF, whatever. The big deal for me there was being able to convert markdown to EPUB for e-books. I am in the process of writing more books, and oh yeah, having an easy way to output EPUB is nice. I still use LibreOffice Writer for when I need to generate things for print books like a table of contents and page numbers, but when actually writing the book, that's all markdown. I used to write everything in Writer first and then did the e-book conversion. Now it's markdown first, a conversion to EPUB for the e-book, then a conversion to ODT for print book stuff in Writer, then output that to PDF out of Writer. It sounds complicated, but it's actually easier having markdown as the source format.
The most impressive thing about all this is that with the exception of some print-specific stuff I need Writer for, everything is done with plain text.
Plain text was my home all along
When I think of all the document and text editors I've used over the years, it's been quite a list.
The three earliest I used was Write, Notepad and EDIT in MS-DOS/Win 3.1. After that it was Microsoft Works 2.0. Then it was Microsoft Word 6.0 that came with Microsoft Office 4.3. After that, Microsoft Word 97 (my favorite one), then Word 2000, and that was the last Word I used.
When I found OpenOffice Writer (which to this day still offers a 32-bit version that will work with Windows XP and possibly older Windows), I jumped ship over to that because I was sick of "borrowing" product keys just to make Word work. It was also around this time I found Notepad++ and stopped using Windows Notepad. I used both of these for a very long time.
I only stopped using OpenOffice and Notepad++ when I switched to Linux. LibreOffice is much better integrated into the Linux desktop environment compared to OO. It doesn't matter if it's GNOME, KDE Plasma, MATE, or whatever. LO simply looks and works better. For a GUI document editor, LO Writer is my go-to. Notepad++ doesn't have a Linux version, so I switched to Kate and micro.
It was this year 2025 specifically where I really started getting into markdown.
Before I get more into that, learning MD gave me a better understanding of why there are still a handful of writers out there that continue to use software such as WordStar 7.0d for DOS from 1992 (especially since Robert J. Sawyer released it for free with full documentation).
This is the understanding I came to know: Editing a document in a fast editor with syntax highlighting, a courier style font in use, and optionally showing bold/italic/underline is the better writing environment compared to WYSIWYG.
The reason? Crap is eliminated in two ways. Nothing in the interface to distract you from writing, and far less chance of choke.
Less distraction is easy to understand, but choke takes a little explanation.
Anybody that has ever edited a long document, such as a book, has experienced Big Pig Document Editor Choke.
You're in the middle of typing, Big Pig decides to pause (most likely due to auto-save), then after the pause your text slams into view. That's choke.
You're in the middle of typing, a pause happens (again, most likely due to auto-save), then Big Pig straight up crashes. Choke.
You're typing away, stop, then scroll up a few pages for whatever reason you need to. Big Pig doesn't redraw correctly, everything looks messed up, you have to save, exit, and restart Big Pig just to get everything looking correct again. Choke.
You stop typing because you need to edit something a few pages back. Scroll up, make your edit, and uh-oh, now the formatting for the ENTIRE DOCUMENT is all jacked up. Choke. Now you're in a panic situation. Do you save and restart Big Pig? Or do you not save, copy the edit you wanted to make to the clipboard, restart Big Pig and hope everything comes back the way you left it, and make your edits then? The answer is the latter, because if you save, the jacked-up document is what you might get back. Copy your edit, don't save, close and restart Big Pig, HOPE everything turns out okay, then redo your edits.
Every single GUI document editor has choke problems like this, even if your document has no images in it. The longer you go, the more paranoid you get, so much to the point where you turn off auto-save and mash CTRL+S every few minutes just to play it safe. Very stressful.
TUI editors don't have choke problems. Redraw is a nonissue since the editor doesn't mess around with multiple fonts and font sizes. Auto-save actually does work and doesn't cause any pausing or stuttering. Both ghostwriter and Kate have auto-save, and both work. Even vim has it.
Plain Text Just Works™
analog is real
Something I started last week is wearing an analog watch, but not just any analog. It's the sole 100% mechanical watch I own, an Orient Crystal (a.k.a. "3 Star" or "Tristar") that was gifted to me close to ten years ago. It still works. More on that in a bit.
I've said before that I hate analog watches because sometimes it's difficult for me to tell the time depending on where the hands are. Even so, I needed to get over that and get used to it.
I have both legitimate and kooky reasons for why I'm wearing it, so let's get into that.
Due to the fact I have skinny bony wrists, very few mechanical watches fit me properly. Generally speaking, only two types fit the bill.
The first type is what I'm wearing now. The Orient I have is an old school traditional 37mm case size Japanese automatic movement watch, which works very well for smaller wrists. Fortunately, Seiko still makes these. If you are of the skinny wrist persuasion like I am, that's the watch to get.
For traditional case shapes, it is only the Japanese 37mm that has a design with short lugs. Go anywhere smaller or larger, like 35mm-36mm or 38mm-39mm, and the lugs go way too long. On a 37mm, the lug-to-lug will be somewhere between 43 to 45mm, which for smaller wrists is fine. Go even 1mm outside that, and the lug-to-lug increases to 46 to 48mm.
Why I am not saying to go Orient Tristar? At the time I got mine almost ten years ago, the watch was 50 to 60 bucks, and now it's $250 to $300+. Worth it? NO. It's the same watch it was a decade ago and is absolutely not worth the price it sells for new today. I could see it selling for $85 or even $90 now, but over $250? Totally not worth it. A Seiko 37mm is the better option now.
The second type that's big but actually fits skinny wrists very well is what's known as the "tuna" diver, and is called as such because it resembles the shape of a can of tuna. If you look up tuna divers, they are all 44mm or greater in size. But you'll notice something else. Very short stubby lugs, spotted easily in the listings. From a top view, the watch almost looks lug-less, but they're there. This means a 45mm tuna diver has a very short 45mm or 45.5mm lug-to-lug. And that means yes, it will fit a small wrist with no overhang. Nice.
If I do go all-in with 100% mechanical watches, I will buy another. If it's the traditional 37mm Japanese automatic, I would very specifically seek out a Seiko. For a tuna diver, brand doesn't matter so much, especially considering a whole bunch of them already use Seiko movements anyway.
With sizing out of the way, these are the reasons for going with a mechanical analog:
316L stainless steel
As far as I know, nearly all automatic watches use 316L for case material, a.k.a. surgical stainless steel. This is decidedly better than the cheap stamped stainless steel Casio uses on their low-end digitals.
The deal with the cheap stamped stainless steel is how much nickel is released when sweat gets on it. Sweat on stainless steel can act as a corrosive. With cheaper steels, more nickel is released. With the better 316L, less nickel is released and considered to be much safer when in contact with human skin. The official numbers state that 316L ordinarily does not release more than 0.03 mcg of nickel per square centimeter when sweat upon. Safe territory is 0.05 mcg or less for things like earrings and other jewelry, so 316L passes that test easily.
I do not have a nickel allergy as far as I'm aware. However, what I don't know is if nickel released on my skin slowly over time is causing harm or not.
There is the bund strap option where the watch sits on top of leather, and the metal has no direct contact with my skin. But since I already had a watch with a 316L material case on hand, that's what I'm using.
PUR strap avoidance
With cheap Casios, the watch comes with a strap or bracelet. If a bracelet, it's obviously not made of 316L. If it's a strap, it will either be a low grade fabric that wears out quick, or polyurethane resin a.k.a. PUR.
Any PUR strap I wear always leaves a mark behind whether I've been sweating or not, so it's probably better to just avoid all of them.
I don't like steel bracelets because of the weight, and I've never found a leather strap I truly liked. My go-to is the nylon strap, and I have one for my Orient. It's okay, but I'll be replacing it. The good stuff is the sailcloth strap, which is ordinarily a combination of woven nylon and other materials. Some are a leather-nylon hybrid, some use neoprene padding, some have rubber, and so on. Generally speaking, these are tough straps that last and are absolutely better than 100% PUR. They wear like fabric should, breathe properly, and don't wear out fast like most NATO straps do.
On my wrist, nylon is a-okay. Skin irritation doesn't happen, and marks are never left behind. Sailcloth should work for me.
EMF avoidance
A poor man's method of checking a watch for EMF is using a portable AM/FM radio on the AM band tuned to a frequency with no radio station present. You turn the volume up, then place the watch directly over the tuning dial. Any time you hear a pulse or some other oddball frequency noise, that's EMF. The pulses or noises will be very obvious.
The worst offender for EMF is a quartz analog watch. Every time that second hand ticks, you will hear TICK... TICK... TICK... TICK... when using the AM radio test.
With LCD digital, the most EMF is generated whenever the watch beeps. With the watch over the tuning dial on the radio, you'll hear that BEEP blare right through to the radio speaker.
On the low end, some LCD digital watches sputter out some frequency crap that the AM band can pick up, but I don't think it's anything to get in a twist over since the EMF present there is so low.
It is easy enough to acquire a cheap Casio where you can shut up the beeps via "mute" feature, such as the WS1600H or AE1000W.
Alternatively, any Casio digital can be made to never beep again by removing the case back and removing one tiny spring from the quartz movement. Remove the case back, and a spring will be seen sticking straight up that touches the case back when screwed down. The spring's connection to that case back plate is what allows it to beep. Remove the spring, and the watch can't beep at all, but will still work fine otherwise. This means for something like a W218H that doesn't have a mute feature, taking out the spring will stop it from beeping.
What I wanted to do was remove electricity entirely with my watch, and the only way to do that was to go 100% mechanical.
Better for the eyes(?)
Some say that reading the time from a small LCD panel on a digital watch is bad for the eyes. I don't know if I buy that claim since the panel is almost always read in an unlighted state, meaning without the night light in use. If the panel were lighted all the time, then the claim would have some validity to it, but the LCD is unlighted the vast majority of the time.
What I can say is that there is less eye strain reading an analog dial, but only if the dial is legible. And by that I mean a dial with proper contrast. The dial on mine is a "clean" (as in "not busy") black with thin fence post style gold hands, so it works. In the past, I did own an analog with white dial and wide arrow-ish silver hands, and it was basically illegible. The reflection that came off those hands turned them almost the same color as the dial, so it was awful.
If proper legibility is there, then yes, analog is easier to read, if for no other reason it can be read at any angle.
Getting over my annoyance with reading time on an analog dial
I've said before I don't like analog dials, and I still don't.
A countdown timer on my wrist I can live without, but I don't like using one on my phone since authenticating myself past a lock screen just to run that is ridiculous. Fortunately, I have a cheap kitchen timer, so that works. Also, if I decide later to get a tuna diver, I would use the dive timer as that is quite handy.
I can also live without having an alarm on my wrist. If I absolutely need an alarm, I'd still use the Casio, just not on wrist. I also have the option of using one of my old phones that I can run without a lock screen.
Reading the time from an analog dial is the biggest challenge, but only because I'm not used to it. I am up to the challenge. Right now I don't like analog dials, but I'm hoping I get used to it.
Less accurate, but no battery crapola
Typical to most automatic mechanical watches, mine goes off by 15 to 40 seconds in a 24-hour period. Does this bother me? No, because all I do each day is adjust it once, if necessary, and I'm good.
I do have a small pile of quartz analog watches, and every single one of them has a dead battery. Briefly, I considered replacing the batteries. Nope, not doing it. I'm not going to wear them anyway. With a mechanical, a battery is a nonissue since it doesn't use one.
I'm starting to adopt a 1-minute rule
For a while, I felt I had to have a watch that was accurate TO THE SECOND, hence the reason I own a WV58 that has atomic timekeeping. I also could have went with a Bulova Precisionist, because that "262kHz" on the dial isn't just lip service. Not only does a Precisionist have a buttery smooth second sweep, it's ridiculously accurate without the need for atomic sync. But, like so many other watches, the Precisionist doesn't fit my small wrist. Same goes for the WV58 as it doesn't agree with my wrist either, so that's been relegated to being a bathroom clock. I have that watch sitting in its box (it makes for a good watch stand) at the bathroom window, and it successfully syncs the time every night. Good enough. At least I'm getting some actual use out of it.
My Orient automatic doesn't have hacking seconds, so it isn't even possible to have TO THE SECOND accuracy on it.
However, setting the time, day and date (it is a day-date watch) is a bit of a process.
Setting the Orient from a dead stop with no charge:
Shake the watch first to give it charge so the seconds hand starts sweeping.
Pull crown, spin the hands around until the date changes, keep spinning until the day changes at 4am (which is normal), continue spinning the hands all the way to 2pm. Having the watch at 2pm is the safest place to set day and date as it puts the least stress on the movement.
Set the day and date to yesterday.
Spin the hands until the date clicks over to today, set the time, push crown in, done.
After that, the watch holds charge with daily wear and only minor time adjustments are needed.
The minor time adjustments is where I started adopting the 1-minute rule. Again, I can't hack the seconds, so I just set to whatever the current minute is, and that's it. As long as I'm within 1 minute of the actual time, I'm good.
I'm coming to find I actually like the non-hacking seconds, because it's one less thing to worry about.
In the end, it is worrying about less that's the biggest draw to seeing if I get along with mechanical automatic. No bargain bin cheap steel, no PUR strap, no batteries. The setting of the day-date and time is the only complicated part, and I can live with that.