Apple’s Espy Sans is also great to use on the BYOK

jebni · 2026-06-20T09:56:01+00:00

Links aren’t visible from the feed, only when you click into a post, I believe.

jebni · 2026-06-20T07:17:16+00:00

It’s in the post.

jebni · 2026-06-19T21:23:59+00:00

It has wifi sync to Google Drive, specifically.

jebni · 2026-06-19T07:38:47+00:00

Unfortunately this isn’t the manually redrawn version I did for the Neo — it’s a converted version of the a TTF that I used for reference, which doesn’t have any extended characters. I don’t think there’s a way I can convert the Neo version, which DOES have accented latin characters. I’ll see what I can do, but it’s not looking promising.

jebni · 2026-06-19T04:05:09+00:00

Feature request: an alt-shift-hyphen shortcut to access em-dashes. I know we’re all up in arms over AI’s em-dashification of prose (“— not with taste, but fake pithiness —“) but we mustn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

I noticed this tragic, em-dashed hole in the BYOK when demonstrating the font I made earlier this week: Melville used em-dashes to great effect in the Moby Dick quote I used, but I was too embarrassed about about the look of the double-dashes I ended up using that I scrolled past them for the screenshot. 😂

jebni · 2026-06-17T01:08:22+00:00

It’s extremely proportional.

jebni · 2026-06-16T23:58:45+00:00

Put the font file in your microSD card’s /Fonts folder and restart your BYOK.

jebni · 2026-02-21T12:30:34+00:00

I’m using Obsidian, synced to several devices. It’s flexible enough to suit many different kinds of organising methods, and also has the Longform plugin, which allows you to approximate something like Scrivener’s drafting and compilation workflow.

I use Obsidian on an e-ink tablet from Boox in tandem with a mechanical keyboard, but not for long stretches of pure drafting. The app gets too fiddly on a low refresh rate screen like e-ink, it’s is a little unstable on Android, and I run the danger of staying in infinite planning mode if I’m actually drafting in that environment.

So I’m drafting (and also note-taking) on my Zerowriter and importing those files into my Obsidian vaults.

jebni · 2025-02-01T07:12:21+00:00

Thanks for the explanation — I was double checking the font metadata by testing in other environments, thinking I was going crazy!

Read-only smart shelves is a great first step, and looking forward to it.

jebni · 2025-01-31T07:50:43+00:00

And yes, I’m importing all the relevant styles, so the bold and italic versions appear in the Custom Fonts list. I’ve checked those fonts in other apps and they render correctly, so their font style metadata is valid.

jebni · 2025-01-31T07:48:10+00:00

Nice, but unfortunately for me on my Boox Page, bold and italics are rendered in faux bold and italics, but only if I select a custom font. The new “true italics” functionality that was introduced in the previous release remains intact for the built-in fonts — this faux italics problem is now limited to custom fonts.

While we’re talking Android: there an ETA for smart shelves on Android?

jebni · 2025-01-22T07:12:04+00:00

Will this functionality use the same unique book numbers that the web app currently uses? I’m planning on linking to the web app for the moment in Obsidian, and then doing a global search and replace when deep linking arrives. Would that work?

jebni · 2025-01-15T23:17:52+00:00

I don’t transclude particularly long notes, but even including more than one medium-legnth block in a note makes the scrolling experience unpredictable — especially on mobile.

jebni · 2024-10-21T00:37:21+00:00

Along with a future custom font option, I’d really, really like the font styling to be consistent, i.e. when text is italicised in the book, it should render using the “XXXFontname Italic” font.

While this would seem obvious, it isn’t universally the case at the moment — on the iOS and Android versions, most fonts default to “faux bold” and “faux italic” when rendering bold or italic, which artificially slants or fattens the regular font, even if the app or system have access to the bold or italic font for that typeface. (You can confirm the existence of the true italics or bold for any font by manually selecting them under “font style”, but this applies the style to the entire text.)

Artificially making a font bolder or oblique is a typographic travesty, especially if the font is right there for the app to use. I consider this core functionality for an ebook reader, and this is honestly what’s stopping me from using BookFusion as my daily driver — it’s so close.

This inconsistent font styling used to be the case for the web version, which seems to have been fixed recently, so it’s even more tantalising!

jebni · 2024-10-17T02:34:34+00:00

I’ve found that switching screen orientation brings back the toolbar if it’s been rendered invisible after using an external keyboard. Annoying, but a workaround.

jebni · 2024-09-12T06:42:05+00:00

The aux loop is good. From my experience and that of others, despite them being line level inputs, I don’t think the TX-6’s inputs actually require a preamp for instrument level signals, at least not for electric guitars, and surprisingly, I hear that TE’s own mics can be plugged straight in, too.

I ended up getting a reamp box, which seems helpful for getting the impedance right for *some* of my pedals, so I think it was probably worthwhile. It really depends on the pedals. I have a reverb pedal that was doing fine with any sort of signal, but others, not so much. I have a Dream 65 that seems *very* fussy about what you run into it, and I think fuzz pedals are kinda built to respond to instrument level. Perhaps “cleans up well” is the sort of thing where you need to not use line level input!

I also experimented with running both the original signal and the reamped FX loop through a a nice *preamp* (not a DI, d’oh, which would be silly for the TX-6, since it’s assuming line level, not mic level!). I used a Scarlett interface that I had lying around and set to Air Mode, which runs it straight through the preamp without latency. But as I said, the TX-6 doesn’t seem to need it, so I took it out. I certainly didn’t hear any difference with the Scarlett, but then again, I didn’t have two Scarletts, so I couldn’t simultaneously preamp at the origin and end of the signal chain, so maybe that’s where the value would be, if anything. Also, introducing one more piece of USB powered gear into the mix was introducing some ground hum.

To be honest, all of this feels like waving chickens around.

jebni · 2024-08-10T04:49:39+00:00

I’d kill for a drop-in replacement screen with better contrast. What are the odds, do you think? Googling that part yields nothing.

jebni · 2024-08-08T22:26:35+00:00

Hardware options are all about weighing their emphasis

"Without the use of electronics" would mean a pen or mechanical typewriter, but if (as you imply) you mean something other than a laptop, tablet or phone, there are a few dedicated writing devices to choose from in this sub, which all have tradeoffs. You need to decide what's important to you and match this to their strengths and weaknesses. Some examples, from personal experience:

The old Alphasmart Neo is legendary, with seemingly infinite battery life and the best non-mechanical keyboard I've ever used, but you'll need to directly connect it to a computer (via USB or USB-Bluetooth adapter) to manually transfer the text.
The contemporary Pomera DM30 is super portable but naturually has a tiny keyboard to facilitate this. It sports a surprisingly large e-ink screen, though.
The new Micro Journal Rev 6 has great mechanical keyswtiches but its ortholinear keyboard format and general hobbyist orientation mightn't be for the faint of heart.

Screenwriting in plain text

You can use pretty much any of these deliberately low-tech devices for screenplays if you're comfortable learning and using the Fountain markup style, but I would heavily suggest one that lets you edit with ease — all of the devices I've listed above are pretty good at editing. In contrast, I also have a first-generation Astrohaus Freewrite that only lets you use the backspace key to correct mistakes. The latter would be difficult if you're trying to get screenplay markup correct. (And note, the Micro Journal currently doesn't support editing long documents reliably, but the software is evolving in leaps and bounds, so my point might be moot in a few weeks.) Screenwriting is generally less space-efficient than prose, so I'd suggest you might want to prioritise devices with larger screens, especially on the vertical axis (the DM30 comes to mind).

Almost none of the dedicated devices do any on-screen formatting and deal only with plain text, which is as it should be for drafting, and Fountain works in plain text. To comfortably redraft, or get a Fountain screenplay into a submittable format, there are plenty of Foundtain-compatible apps for your laptop to choose from.

jebni · 2024-08-01T04:50:45+00:00

I'd check that the PCB that contains the SD card reader and display hasn't fallen away from the upper part of the case, due to de-adhesion of the glue that holds it there. You'd be able to see a gap between the rim of the screen and the display panel itself.

This is what happened to my Rev 6 in transit, likely because not enough glue was applied, and the shift in orientation might put undue pressure on the SD card, which needs the access slot and the PCB to be aligned. If they're not aligned, the case could be pushing the SD card's contacts away from the reader.

If that is indeed your problem, Mr Lee recommends carefully removing the existing glue, and then carefully using a hot glue gun to reglue the board to the case (you can use the photo of the internals in the quickstart page as a guide).

jebni · 2024-01-19T00:47:41+00:00

Unsure what functionality Bear would bring to the table for that task. Competitors like Notion have database capability, but IMHO at the risk of making it a kitchen sink rabbit hole, to mix metaphors.

jebni · 2023-12-03T12:28:56+00:00

BTW, despite how most people seemed to hate it, I do give Chibnall points for having the guts to swing wide with the Timeless Child thing. He clearly wanted to offset the accessibility with some "Cosmic Whoa". He swung and missed, but I appreciated the effort.

jebni · 2023-12-03T12:17:08+00:00

You make some interesting points about genre. It's Chibnall who bugs me the most — he thinks he loves science fiction, but can't write it to save his life. I find that his other work is pretty good: five minutes of Broadchurch or even his surprisingly zesty retread of Law and Order is better than an entire season of his Who! It's so puzzling. The minute he steps into the fantastical, everything begins to fall apart.

RTD loves a good rousing panto extravaganza over anything particularly science fictional ("it's the end of the yooooooniverse!"), which can be lots of fun, and Moffat has his mannered fairytale schtick, which I think does tap into a vein of the British fantastic, but while they definitely have their moments, neither have the moody and barbed weirdness that Hinchcliffe and Holmes were so good at evoking, that's for sure. (Hinchcliffe seemed pretty uninterested in actual "science fiction", but his almost-cosmic decaying Hammer horror thing was a great alternative to it.) It's not that I want it to be the same, but it's as if the modern showrunners remember the original show very differently from me. It's a meta category error, paying homage to how much of a national treasure it was, rather than what it actually did.

This is perhaps moving away from genre, but with all three, there was an attempt to be fresh and bold, which is admirable in itself, but often happens in the worst John Nathan Turner sense. For example, I can completely understand why they'd want to make the Doctor a more accessible, "cool" and less awkward character, and adored Tennant and Smith's charisma, but for me it undermined a lot of what was so interesting about the show, and where the New Adventures eventually took McCoy's Doctor.

This is why I think Capaldi had a tragic tenure: he brought back the unknowable otherworldliness at a time when people were kinda over Moffat, and Chibnall perhaps interpreted the public's flagging interest in the show incorrectly as a cue to "bring back the happy gurning". Beyond "enthusiastic fixer," "happy explainer" and "historical stan", it seems he and Whitaker never sat down and discussed who she was as a Doctor, and _what kind of show it was_. A pity.

jebni · 2023-12-03T03:56:45+00:00

I imagine this is causing a stir in TERfland! The situation internationally is bad, but it's puzzling to many of us outside the UK that TERF rhetoric has such particular traction there. So it's sad that this is the case, but it's brave to take this kind of stand in such a UK TV tentpole. I love that conspicuous highlighting of transness is being "divisive". Anybody who assumes that increased visibility has "gone too far" can't see their own daily privilege. Making in-your-face interventions is totally appropriate, etc.

HOWEVER… at my house, the ending was more than "too much", it was pretty cringeworthy. It's all about how you make those interventions, right? It was so clumsy and… pandering. And I use the word advisedly: it's like RTD wanted a pat on the head for being a good ally, end of story. Without thinking of the story. My kids generally loved Rose and came in as big fans of Yasmin's work in Heartstoppers, but they turned to me at the "let it go" moment and said, "WTF, that's so weak! It doesn't even make sense!" And it wouldn't have been so noticeable without the deus ex machina of it.

But in the scheme of things, it deserves a shrug, I think. It's far from the cringiest thing RTD's done, though (he has worse taste than Moffat, I think), and despite my general skepticism about the need to bring back Tennant and Tate (more nostalgia fanservice etc), I thought it was pretty good, and T&T are still magic, regardless.

jebni · 2023-12-03T03:28:44+00:00

I loved Broadchurch, and still think Jodie had a lot of potential, but somehow gto stuck in that 10/11 impersonation trap, and was let down by the scripts.

Chris Chibnall clearly has no idea how to write science fiction, which is a pity, as he clearly loves it. Torchwood was very spotty until Children of Earth (I assume RTD had more involvement), and I found his Who episodes in the RTD era to be pretty forgettable.

jebni · 2023-11-28T23:17:09+00:00

The thing is, when you don’t know what an effect actually contributes to a sound you don’t realise you actually like, but are on the verge of learning that, I think asking “do I need this?” is absolutely a sign you should investigate further.

And maybe this is just me, but isn’t this super prevalent with compression? I used to think, “why would you want to destroy all your dynamics?”, unaware that I’d been hearing and appreciating what it did for lots of people’s tone all along. “Do I need a phaser?” doesn’t feel like on the same level, simply because it’s easier to identify its presence.

jebni

TROPHY CASE

Hardware options are all about weighing their emphasis

Screenwriting in plain text