iPod
I created my own AI, but it is not what you are thinking.
As I’ve said many other times, I believe there are some technologies that reached a stage of maturity where they could just be used indefinitely. What many people seem not to know is that it’s possible to go back to enjoying that sweet spot.
If we look back a few decades, it feels like things eventually got out of control. I remember using the iPhone when information and even the OS upgrades were done by connecting the phone to a computer. Back then, apps with online synchronization like Evernote were rare.
At some point, everything started becoming so fast and instantaneous. Not only messages, but almost everything. I’m not old enough to remember when breaking news used to be the next day’s newspaper cover. But before the popularization of the Internet, I remember the We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin message on the TV and radio. Now, we get flooded by information about everything all the time. Many times inaccurate or, worse, fake news.
If we stop to think about it, unless you are a reporter, stock trader, or work with anything that is time-sensitive, there’s no practical use for all this immediacy. On the contrary, it generates a lot of stress. As ordinary people, there’s absolutely nothing practical we’ll be able to do with most of the instant information we get bombarded with.
The most recent I-must-be-part-of-it-no-matter-what fad is AI. There’s no reason to use AI for everything, nor is there a need for AI in every single app. Also, just so you know, yes, I do use AI. Every day! But I try to keep it siloed.
Back to my point. Although using or repurposing old tech was something I always did, it feels like I’m doing it more and more these days. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or because I refuse to subject myself to imposed anxiety.
For example, I did try streaming for a while but |never stopped using my iPod 5.5 Gen. The modern Supernote I use and love is constantly bringing me back to a pleasant time when I used my Palm for everything. You’re probably aware of my Digital Caveman project. And there are all those apps, like Instapaper, that look and work just like they did a billion years ago. All these are great examples of the point of ‘tech maturity’ I mentioned at the beginning.
Anyway, the more I look at modernity from the perspective of people who are constantly anxious and chasing novelty just for novelty’s sake, the more I think of products and services I should have never stopped using. The good news is that many of them still exist, and after going back to using some of them, I can now clearly see how good they really are, as they have withstood the test of time.
Maybe that’s why I related so much to Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants book. Not only does he directly challenge the common perception that old technologies become obsolete and vanish, but he comes up with several examples of technologies, no matter how old, that still exist somewhere. Perhaps in a modified form, for a specific purpose, or in a niche market.
Of course, using old tech or new tech with old tech vibes, like Obsidian, comes with its challenges. It often demands what I call Attention & Intention, my kind of ‘AI’. For example, I see people complaining all the time about how complicated Obsidian is. It’s difficult to disagree with that, but doing things with Attention & Intention means that you were paying attention and will probably remember where you stored that information.
I’m not going to pretend I didn’t fall for modern tech promises, like social media. Thankfully, many years ago I started disconnecting from all those toxic spaces, and recently, I’m finding that going [[vladcampos.com/Timeline/Blog/2025/2025-06-28 • A few cool things I recently discovered about RSS feeds. Spoiler — they have super-powers.|back to using RSS]] to follow blogs is bringing me a lot of joy. I don’t have words to describe how pleasant it is to read like this. I’m overwhelmed by how much great content I was missing.
Of course, it’s not as simple or easy as the infinite scroll provided by a mysterious algorithm with a single mission: keep you hooked, no matter what. No matter what! It comes slowly from here and there: from a conversation you had on Mastodon, a page that appeared in a search result, and even trying to remember the names of the websites of those old friends. But since it’s all done with Attention & Intention, it pays off.
It’s true for all the other non-anxious tech I mentioned above. Adding music to an iPod means connecting it to a computer. To find music, you have to know at least a few things about it, like its name, or the singer, or album, etc. As for the Supernote, it has a simple OS running on a basic device with a monochromatic display. No browser, no notifications, and disconnected most of the time, much like my Palm used to be. And let’s not even start with all the effort one has to put into an Obsidian Vault.
Next in my wishlist of mindful devices is a Fairphone, most likely running /e/OS.
Attention & Intention is beautiful, pleasant, and, most importantly, relaxing.
Our modern society is nothing but a delicate house of cards
If you don’t live in Portugal or Spain, it will be impossible for you to understand the feelings I’m trying to convey below. And I sincerely hope you never have to deal with it.**
Around 11:30 a.m., the external monitor I have hooked to my laptop, went black while I was editing a video. If the room’s light hadn’t been also shut off, I would think it was a simple connection issue. This type of incident is such a rare phenomenon that at first I thought it was related to my apartment or building and decided to go for a walk with my dog.
Heading to the dog park, I grabbed my phone to share the “morning event” with my wife. Yes, we keep in touch all the time using Signal.
This was the moment I sensed something bigger was happening, but I still thought it was a local thing. My phone data connection was down, and as someone who has worked for 10 years in the telecommunications sector, I know that something like that rarely happens. There are so many contingencies and backups. Something else must be going on.
Maybe the entire neighborhood lost power, and, for some reason, the backup generator at the mobile phone tower closest to me didn’t kick off, I thought, trying to rationalize the situation.
I don’t know if it was instinct, but I immediately sent my wife an SMS: “I have no idea what’s happening, but we lost power and I have no data on my phone”. Again, because of many years of experience, I know how SMS works and how it is such a robust feature of the network.
The SMS took longer than expected to be sent, and that was another undesired sign. Perhaps she didn’t get it. My wife is currently on an overseas trip, so I text a friend here in Portugal: “We lost power and I have no data on my phone. What about you?” “We also lost power and I can barely use data. It looks like it’s affecting the entire country.”
This is when I started having very unwanted thoughts. Instant communication is a crucial element that we take for granted. But if you think about it, modern society has been building on top of this core infrastructure since the invention of the telegraph.
Let me provide you with further context of the situation I found myself in at that moment. Every single appliance and equipment in my house is electric, so there’s no way to cook or take a hot shower. The TV cable is an Ethernet connector that plugs to an Internet hub, so there’s no way to watch the news. I also just sold my car, so no analog radio as well.
To make coffee that day, I used my gas-powered camping stove, which I ironically set up on top of its modern induction successor.
Okay, this is a national situation. A big one because the phones went down. If there’s a positive side to this, it’s that there are probably dozens of people working tirelessly to fix it. Again, little did I know.
Here’s when I decided I had to stay calm. I ate the rest of yesterday’s salad, grabbed my iPod, a book (the paper type), and thought to myself: If this is not solved until 4 p.m., I’ll go buy some extra supplies.
I read for two hours, but at some less engaging parts, I couldn’t help but stop and think about this unusual and unexpected situation. Looking around, I began to see all these wonderful sparks of beauty in the midst of the chaos. From my balcony, where I was reading, I could see all the other people on their balconies, kids playing on the street, and neighbors having fun conversations on their doorsteps.
I remember it now. This is how the world used to be when I was a kid, and even a teenager. This is how people used to behave before mobile phones existed.
Back to reality. “It’s 4 p.m. Time to buy some supplies,” I reminded myself.
I decided to bring my dog to a nice place we usually go together to relax, before heading to the supermarket. If there was one happy soul in the house, that was my dog. Ignorance is bliss.
Going to another dog park on the same day must be winning the dog’s lottery, right? It’s a somewhat hidden micro forest on the way to the supermarket. We stayed there, going back and forth from having fun to relaxing for a while. Then we headed to our main mission.
With no shopping carts available and so many people inside, the outcome couldn’t be different. The number of shelves empty was impressive. To give you some context, something like this never happened during COVID-19. Thankfully, I don’t need much, but that’s one more unwelcoming sign to add to my list, I thought to myself.
On the other hand, I kept seeing all these kids playing on the streets and so many adults in front of houses having conversations face to face and laughing without looking at their phones. Those scenes were absolutely beautiful.
As all of this was going on, I still didn’t have any mobile data and, shortly after texting my wife and my friend in the morning, the SMS system stopped working. If you haven’t guessed yet, there was no calling as well.
All the information I had, was collected here and there, talking to others on the street. But because most people didn’t have access to the rest of the world, it was impossible to know what was really happening. Moreover, all the ones I talked to would start the sentence with something like “I heard that…”
Experience, or perhaps hope, was telling me to keep sending journaling messages to my wife, and so I did. At this point, I was already back to using Signal, where I started narrating everything I was doing. That was the only app I kept opened all the time, hooping for momentarily breaths of the network.
If, for some reason, the network comes up for a few seconds or minutes, she’ll get all the updates. I didn’t know it at that moment, but she was doing the same on her side, and at about 7 p.m., a relieving exchange happened. I saw a burst of messages from her, and the read update pop-up on all the messages I had previously sent here. That would never happen again until the power and network came back to life at about 11 p.m. But at least she was now aware of what was happening to me.
I don’t know if this applies to everyone, but as I grew older, I started understanding that many things in life were never supposed to be about me. At some point, I learned that it’s about what I mean to other people, and that’s why I have to take care of myself. That’s for them! And it goes both ways, of course. Anything we do is always affecting the ones who love us, and this perception became so important to me that I’m constantly more worried about the feelings of the others, the loved ones. It’s like going to a funeral. Our main responsibility there is to comfort the ones that are still alive. We are there for them. Loving is seldom about us, and I wish I had learned this early in life.
Anyway, back to my ordeal. You know me, I’ve been detaching my digital life from the cloud for a long time. And I do have equipment to survive in a situation like this for a few days. Of course, I learned some new lessons with this test the world just tossed at me, and I’ll do my homework.
However, as a society, I think we are digging our own grave. Why are we increasingly relying on the cloud for everything? Why do all things have to have an app that has to be connected to the Internet to work? The more I think about it, the more I see unreliable digital conveniences replacing the so-called “outdated” gadgets that are still working so well. This is nothing more than building a gigantic house of cards. And to further add more salt to the injury, it is probably being built on top of a single point of failure.
This digital modern life of ours is so bizarre. Among all the real and relevant concerns I was having yesterday, it also occurred to me that I would lose my 775 streak on Duolingo if I couldn’t do my lesson today. Seriously?! The simple fact that something as futile as that crossed my mind is so absurd!
Today, I woke up feeling slightly stressed from my adventures and I still have a bit of a headache. Nothing terrible or distressing happened yesterday. Thankfully, I was working from home and everything was calm in my neighborhood. But, in retrospect, I think the real burden I felt was the thought of possibly not being able to connect with my loved ones living in different parts of the world. That, and the fact that nobody knew exactly what was happening or how many days would be like that. I didn’t miss anything else related to the Internet, just that connection with others and the real-time information that comes with instant communication.
By the way, I’m old enough to say that most of what we did at the beginning of the web was communicating via email, forums, blog comments, etc. It was a lot of fun!
I’m grateful to have power and communication back, but, when walking with my dog this morning, I saw people quickly resuming their lives just like if nothing had happened, and, in a way, that made me sad. Yesterday’s flourishes of harmony and beauty are now gone, like busted soap bubbles.
The insane society we are building for ourselves is now back on track, and the house of cards is sitting there waiting for the next breeze. Until then, the only sign of the now gone problems was a possible bug that kept the public lighting still on during this morning.
First 15K (using my Nike+iPod hack)
Yesterday, I completed my first 15K!
It was very difficult, and my time was terrible, but I am so happy to have completed it. It has not been that long since I started jogging, with my first small victory being running around a park with less than a third of this distance.
Oh, and I used the hack I created for the Nike+iPad.
Nike+iPod hack
Even though I don’t like Nike running shoes, I love running with my iPod, so I got the Nike+iPod tracker as soon as I could. But since it was announced, I have been trying to figure out how to attach it to my non-Nike shoes. Inspired by some adaptors being sold online, I came up with a simple hack.
These are just two sides of a velcro trip attached to each other on one end. Because one is facing the other, the attachment sides will also meet on the opposing end, closing the loop after passing it under the laces. I don’t really think it was necessary, but I stitched the center part just in case. As for the Nike+iPod, I glued it using 3M double-sided tape.
