The Kyle File

  • About Kyle
  • Copying
  • Music
  • Poetry
  • Videos
  • Email
  • Feed
  • Archive
  • Log in

December 2022

  • I Bit the Apple,…

    Well, I did see this coming for about a month and a half as I was trying to get accommodations set up for work. I do have to say that I was filled with dread at the prospect of having to try to learn how to use an iPhone for anything at all, even just for one app, especially since I played with one at a store about 10 years ago and said at that time that I wouldn't take one if someone paid me to take it off their hands. But as time went on, my dread decreased and my technically-minded nature asserted itself. Maybe, just maybe I could learn to use it. Perhaps maybe after 10 years, the technology has improved to become easier to use. After all, I learned how to evolve with Android when the manufacturers all took away the keyboards I relied upon, and I've heard lots of people say iPhones are easy to use, although there are just as many who need special classes to help them figure them out. Still, when I received it a week ago, I was ready to give it a shot. The company paid for it for…

    Permanent link to “I Bit the Apple, and It Bit Back”
  • As Smart Phones Get…

    Last week I wrote a rather critical blog post about a line of overpriced junk phones that someone decided to call Blind Shell. It seems that these are being sold on Amazon, or at least I can see a product description for at least one of them, but that still changes nothing. Their overall value can in no way even come close to justifying the prices they want for any of them, and the website is still riddled with enough typos to make a dictionary bleed. That said, I did mention in that post a rather interesting phone simply called a TCL Flip that my phone service provider cells unlocked with a SIM included for around $95 including taxes and shipping, about 30% of the base price before any tax or shipping of the least expensive Blind Shell phone that can be purchased in the States where I live, and the TCL is said to be compatible with every major network in the States, although Visible tells me it's incompatible with their network, but nothing I have ever tried has told me it's…

    Permanent link to “As Smart Phones Get Dumber, the Dumb Phones are Getting Smarter”
  • The Blind Shell…

    A few days ago, someone in a technology group I'm part of told me of this phone they called Blind Shell. I had seen it somewhere not long ago, but didn't think much of it other than being a little put off by the product name. The person telling me about it said it has all kinds of nice assistive technologies including BeMyEyes, and has physical buttons, actually a full keyboard was what was mentioned, to make it easy for those of us who don't care for or simply can't use touch screens - I fall into the category of those who don't particularly care for them, and find real buttons much easier to use, even if I have to use T9 for messaging, so I totally get it. And then I heard the price ... can you say my jaw hit the floor! I nearly fainted from the shock of it, nearly 500 dollars, and locked to a carrier at that. The description really sounded like something I may want to try, a nice inexpensive flip, but then the price matches more closely with a carrier-locked iPhone than an…

    Permanent link to “The Blind Shell Phone: Is This Some Kind of a Cruel Joke?”

November 2022

  • I Will Press

    This is the song that I initially wrote for the Christ Conduit Podcast in October of 2009. I rerecorded this song and submitted it to Nicole Bus in May of 2021 and won one of two producer kits she gave away, which included a microphone and isolation filter, monitor speakers, a USB MIDI keyboard and noise cancelling headphones that can connect via either bluetooth or a 3.5mm cable. Honestly I only wanted her to hear me. I didn't expect to win anything. But it really felt good to find out I had won, and this kit has gotten lots of good use since then, though I haven't got anything ready for release yet. This recording is released to the public domain by the author. Enjoy and be blessed.

    Permanent link to “I Will Press”
  • Adventures with…

    Out of the box, Chyrp Lite gave me just about everything I needed to rebuild my blog from the broken pieces of WordPress, but it gave me something else as well: functionality similar to Tumblr, which I find that I like very much. It even includes two themes that are described as "tumbleblog" themes. I especially like the theme called Umbra, as I have always liked dark themes, though I may still change some of the background colors. For example, I may want to modify it so that the background is blue like my main website and the template that I wrote for making basic websites. Still, the default theme called Blossom and the similar Topaz theme had some elements I found missing from Umbra and Sparrow, which are the "tumblelog" themes. I really like how the tumblelog themes have the navigation bar across the top, but I find that they don't show my pages. Not to worry though, it is very easy to modify them. One thing to note is that the first time I tried to modify a…

    Permanent link to “Adventures with Chyrp Lite: theming 🐦”
  • I'm back!

    It's been a very long time since I posted to my blog, but I'm back 😊 I had been considering moving this blog away from WordPress for a long time as well, but I guess it took actually losing it to an unexplainable "critical error" to finally get me to make the switch. The Problem I wanted to upgrade my server from Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 22.04, which normally is an easy process. But I have been managing most of my server's functions through the ISPConfig3 hosting control panel, and unfortunately it still does not support the latest Ubuntu LTS release after 6 months. Looking for alternatives, which are few in number, I stumbled upon Hestia Control Panel, which is a fork, or could probably be better described as the continuation, of the venerable Vesta Control Panel, but Hestia Control Panel is still very actively developed, and it supports PHP 8.0 and 8.1 as well as Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Testing Hestia Control Panel on a couple of non-production servers first, I found that I like…

    Permanent link to “I'm back!”
2016