And yet, I’ll write
I’m too tired to write, and yet, I’ll write. At least a meta thing about how tired I am to write.
Nokia N810: Lock code woes
You can lock the N810 with a secret number code. I thought: what if someone else set it and locked me out? You can’t bypass the code, the only option is the nuclear one: reflash the device anew. I tried to set it and I was surprised to see it asked for the current code to change it. Uuh, I don’t remember setting a code. Or did I? All my tries failed. I was feeling uneasy with this, and started looking at how the process of reflashing was.
While having supper, I mentioned Thalía about this and had the idea of reading the N810’s User Manual. Surprise! The manual said the default code was 12345. What? So, maybe I never set a code in the first place…? I ran to my office, picked up the N810 and, bam, that was indeed the code!
I set a new code of my own, then tested locking it and discovered you first have to enter the code to lock it, and then the code again to unlock it. So, my fear of someone locking me out by accident were completely unfounded. Well, I wouldn’t have known otherwise, it would have been suicide to attempt locking it while not knowing the code.
I feel so happy this is solved!
Nokia N810: Trying Xournal
Xournal was one of many unofficial ports to Maemo made by volunteers. That’s, by the way, what Nokia intended by choosing Linux and Open Source for their Internet Tablets; they placed their bet on enthusiast developers porting a wide range of applications to their devices. A noble effort and a winning idea that, sadly, didn’t take off.
Xournal is a note-taking application designed for tablet PCs and touch-enabled computers. It’s pretty nifty. I did a lot of searching to find the .deb package with no success until I read it was never released for Diablo but for Chinook. I had to look for its dependencies and the dependencies of its dependencies. My prize was a running, working version of Xournal!
It works quite well, a bit slow, but very usable. I’m still tweaking and using it, with more seriousness than I did back in the day. The Nokia N810’s screen, while resistive, is very responsive. And, unlike a smartphone doing smart guesses for fat fingers, the N810 can handle more precise input from its thin built-in stylus.
Will this be the «killer app» for my N810? A quick, handy, note taking tool. As someone who prefers writing on paper, this is a nice alternative.
No need for an N810, you can try Xournal++, its successor, on Linux, Windows and MacOS!
Nokia N810: Close, but no
maemo.org packages listing works, but the subdomain that hosts the .deb files doesn’t. Wayback Machine to the rescue! What a blessing Archive.org is.
You can use these URLs to browse the package listings:
- https://web.archive.org/web/20250210062931/http://repository.maemo.org/extras/pool/diablo/free/
- https://web.archive.org/web/20250210062931/http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel/pool/diablo/free/
Replace diablo with chinook if you need packages from that OS. I download them on my desktop computer, copy the .deb file to my N810 and then either use dpkg -i package-name.deb or use the Package Manager application. I prefer the dpkg way because it lists missing dependencies, if any.
I installed and got working:
- MilkyTracker, but the interface is oh so small and impractical. I thought I had found the «killer app» for my N810 but it’s way too cumbersome, boohoo.
- CBRPager, a comic reader. The screen is too small to be readable. I don’t have good eyes anymore.
- vncviewer, for some reason, the remote screen is turned sideways. That’s no problem. What is a problem is not having Function keys and, especially, the Meta key I require to operate on my remote desktop. Bummer.
I tried a lot more programs, they get pretty close, but «no.»
I created a simple web page, served from Tomcat with PHP, plain old unencrypted HTTP. It works. I’m discovering what this small web browser can do. It’s a stripped-down version of Mozilla called MicroB and I find very hard to remember what it can do in terms of CSS and JavaScript.
This would be much more versatile than using a terminal emulator with tmux but there’s something about leaving the screen always on when charging that bothers me. But, on the other hand, it wouldn’t be useful if I had to be unblanking the screen manually.
This is turning again into another «close, but no.»
Another idea would be to copy the HTML file into the N810 and load it locally. Upside is, if network goes down, it will still work. Downside is, I can’t do server-side dynamic stuff with PHP or something. And copying assets (images) would be slower.
Yes, there’s PHP Maemo packages. They’re version 5.3. But the built-in web server was released in 5.4. Close, but no.
Yeah, let’s just treat it like a thin, dumb terminal.
I tried pairing my Apple Wireless Keyboard via Bluetooth. It worked! But there’s a noticeable lag, it’s not instantaneous. Yes, «close, but no» again. It’s usable, tho, not the end of the world, if you see it from the angle of «it’s an slightly faster keyboard than the built-in keyboard,» but I’m not keen on carrying two devices as of now.
So, to recap:
- It works for SSH work sessions with tmux; there’s glitches, but it’s usable.
- I can build simple web pages for it. Lots of possibilities here. It does a great job given its vintage.
- eBook reader, or short articles reading. Also does a good job here.
You know what’s cool? I copied over the JetBrains Mono Nerd Font and it worked! I’ve got Nerd Fonts in my N810 terminal emulator! Take that, Termius!
I don’t like the idea of using it as a «monitor» or secondary screen. I don’t think that screen’s designed to be always-on.
My Journal Comic is back!
Well, look at that! I’m drawing again on my Journal Comic!
There will never be a perfect time to get (re)started, so today’s as good as any day. There will always be busy days, bad days, and terrible, terrible days.
And, of course, just today we got a heavy load of work for the upcoming weeks. Perfect timing, dude.
Nokia N810: Not a writing machine
Disappointedly reporting that writing long content on the Nokia N810 using its hardware keyboard is slow, uncomfortable and not practical. Typing requires more effort than tapping on a glass surface. My thumbs get tired.
As a dedicated writing machine it doesn’t cut it, unless maybe pairing it with a Bluetooth keyboard. Of course, the form factor and portability changes radically; you might wonder, «why not use a smartphone instead?»
And you’d be right.
Nokia N810: Discovering limitations
I’m discovering the limitations of using my Nokia N810 internet tablet in 2025.
Big one is, the web has moved. SSL ciphers have evolved, HTTPS pages won’t load. I’m aware there are proxies for old browsers, but I’m not keen on pursuing that way.
Neovim over SSH glitches. There must be some escape codes or stuff not in terminfo. I thought it was tmux, but it glitches the same outside of it. ROXTerm has only 16 colors. Mutt throws errors with my 256-colors configuration but fallbacks to black and white.
Nethack works, hah!
I can read ePubs using FBReader. But I prefer reading on my old Kindle Paperwhite.
I don’t think reading comics will work that well. The screen is smaller compared to my iPhone, I don’t think it will be a comfortable experience given that I don’t like to read comics on my iPhone as well.
I can always use it as what nowadays they call a «WriterDeck» — a dedicated, portable, writing device for focused writing. I can start writing my Morning Pages there and copy them over with rsync. I have Vim 7 here. It’s funny that Vim thinks an .md file is a Modula source code. Markdown existed back then, but wasn’t as widely popular as it is today.
There’s a port of Leafpad, a GTK+ text editor. Wow, did I really used that small font size? I’m getting old!
Nokia N810: setting up SSH
Resuming setting up SSH on my Nokia N810 (aka Nyon).
I couldn’t login from Nyon to Tomcat, but I made it work from Tomcat to Nyon! I had to add RSA as an acceptable algorithm (because SHA-1 went bye-bye) and login as root:
ssh -oHostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-rsa root@192.168.0.115Afterwards, I copied an SSH key to login as user, rather than root. Makes me nervous.
Look at that, rsync works!
Next up, I configured the reverse. Now I can login from Nyon to Tomcat! Aaaand it’s so insecure, haha. I’m deliberately poking holes in my secure configuration. I should be ashamed. But, this is for science!
First, I tried generating the RSA key in Tomcat since it was awfully slow in Nyon, but for some reason, it didn’t work. Rather than figuring out why not, I generated it in Nyon again. I went to prepare some tea and, when I returned, it was finished. I copied it manually to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys and, bam, it worked. So. Great.
Also, I deleted the Bomberman stale entry in the main menu. There was a stray /usr/share/applications/hildon/bomberman.desktop file that apparently wasn’t correctly removed when I uninstalled the game a long time ago.