Steve Roberts built a chording keyboard into the handlebars of his recumbent bike. Unclear how much writing he really got done while riding the behemoth Winnebiko II around, but it was definitely a key event that inspired me towards computing & ubiquitous computing, made me see adulting as possibly being cool.

https://microship.com/winnebiko-ii/

I haven't been as excited about technology in a very long time as I have upon discovering eInk devices this year.

Most of my Internet usage is skimfeed/Hacker News and the occasional jaunt on Reddit. I've also gotten back into books given how parasitic the Internet has become writ large.

The iPad Pro is overkill for this use case, and its screen is harsh on the eyes (unless you use it in what I call "red mode", i.e. dark mode with a 100% red filter overlay).

Given this, I wanted an eReader that I could read articles on the Internet with.

The Kindle nails the first part, but its web browser sucks all sorts of shit.

Enter the BOOX Go Color 7. This thing is exactly what I wanted: a super-capable eReader that's easy on the eyes and small enough to fit in my bum bag. It sucks at videos and is kind of slow, which makes it a slam dunk for my narrow use case.

This inspired me to get a reMarkable 2 for keeping track of customer notes (I'm a sales engineer at the moment) and journal my work when I'm hacking on stuff. Loads of people have gushed over how much better this is than an iPad for writing; they are 100% correct. Having a paper feel is everything. No good solutions exist for this on an iPad, but it's totally possible with eInk displays.

The rM2 inspired me even further to ditch my iOS weightlifting journal app (Strong) for a Go Color 10.3.

I've used all sorts of apps for this purpose over the years (Google Sheets, then JEFIT, then Hevy, then Strong). Since there isn't an open standard for weightlifting logs (lol; can you imagine), all of these have different data schemas that you need to normalize yourself. Gigantic pain in the ass. For this reason, logging reps and sets is so much easier on paper, but I hated keeping track of paper notebooks.

This is the perfect replacement. No futzing around on an app, and I can leave my phone at home. It spends nearly 0% battery when its off and barely anything when its on. I can put this in a soft case and leave it in my gym bag for weeks at a time. I even have Kindle and Firefox on this too so I can read books during rest periods. It's incredible.

These days, my iPad Pro is only good for being a HDMI and macOS Sidecar monitor.

Yes, Onyx refuses to comply with the GPL and has super duper shady stuff pre-installed in their BOOX devices. ONYX is also the only manufacturer that's putting serious money into this niche. Root them, install AFWall+, install AdAway, don't connect your Google account; problem solved.

(One last positive I'll mention for the reMarkable: the RM1 and RM2 come with SSH and are rooted out of the box. It even uses systemd to run Xochitl, its frontend. You can hack the living daylights out of these things if you're into that.)