Gernot Pointner’s 🏠 on the Internet

My first visit to Socrates Conference

2022-09-05T07:26:35+00:00


Image credits: Softwerkskammer

This year was the first time that I visited the Socrates Conference in Soltau. There were many things that made me look forward to it. At first it has been a long time since I had visited a conference in real life, so I was excited to see that many people in person again. I was also curious, how many people from different countries would participate. My hope was to get exposed to topics that are completely new for me and also learn about different approaches and opinions about aspects of software engineering that I am already familiar with. I always enjoy talking to people that are passionate about software crafting.

As I enjoyed it a lot, I decided to share my experiences that I made during the event.

How does the conference work?

Socrates is a non-profit and community run (un)conference about all things related to software craft. The focus is on creating an inclusive environment where everyone is able to learn together, connect and participate. There is a lot of help for people who are new to the conference or software crafting in general. At first there is a Foundation Day with sessions covering foundational topics like TDD or Refactoring intended to open up the world of crafting and testing for newcomers. The conference also supports the concept of a Conference Buddy offering support for persons who are at a conference for the first time. The main part of the conference is a 2-day Open Space where people present sessions they would like to talk about, which means that there is no fixed agenda before the event as this evolves depending on the participants interests.

How was the actual experience?


A still empty schedule

I already got to know some people during the World Cafe that took place on Thursday evening. Some told me, that they had been attending the conference for many years and always wanted to go back because of the unique experience. A running group was announced that started in the morning, which I joined throughout the whole conference. In the following 2 days the main part of the conference, an Open Space, took place. I was really amazed how many people were eager to present a session, so that the schedule would never run out. The topics of the sessions were quite diverse, including TDD, clojure, hiring, code katas, agile working and many others. And also sheep :-) The format of each session was quite open, ranging from presentations, discussions or other formats like 4-2-2-all. You did not have to be an expert for a topic to propose a session, it was ok to just ask other people to teach you. To give you an idea, I attended the following sessions throughout the conference:

Note-taking and knowledge management
Test Commit Revert
How bad are mono repos actually?
How can we cultivate a learning culture
Experiences with trunk-based-development
Non-binary people in binary organizations
Clojure Workshop
Building your own keyboard AMA
Unit test Anti-patterns

On top of all the sessions for knowledge sharing, there were a lot of things going on in the evening as well. You could choose from playing boardgames, powerpoint karaoke and much more in the evening or going for a run or doing morning meditation. All of this was run by the participants.

Things I took from the conference

Overall the organizers managed to created a super inclusive atmosphere where everyone could come as they are. People were super friendly, I had a lot of great discussions in the evening or in between the sessions. I learned a lot during the various sessions and enjoyed the flexible schedule. And food was great :-) In total: An awesome experience, I hope that I can be part of this next year!

Special thanks to my employer jambit who acts as a sponsor for this event, which made it possible for me to attend this great event. Not to forget my colleague Ajit who is part of the Socrates organizer team and introduced me to the conference in the first place.

The quest for finding an e-ink note taker: The Boox series

2022-08-22T15:12:35+00:00

One of the first e-ink note takers that I took a closer look at during my quest for finding an e-ink note taker where some products from the Onyx Boox series. Onyx offers a wide range of e-ink note taking devices and readers, starting its business in already 2006.

Onyx Book Nova 3 Color

The first product from the Boox series that I took a look at was the Nova 3 Color. It is an Android-powered tablet that comes with an included Stylus pen. Compared to the other note-taking devices it clearly stands out because of its 7.8 inch coloured display which is capable of displaying 4096 colors. While this does not really benefit my usecase, the reviews were quite positive about it. With a price of about 420-460€ it is definitely in a higher segment.

According to the PCMag Review the Stylus Pen works very well for all apps that are included in the Onxy Suite. This also allows for editing PDFs, which is part one of my most important usecases. The notes can also be exported to a variety of formats. As you can enable the Play Store and download Android apps, there are apps available to allow for syncing files via SFTP for uploading to my Cloud Storage (e.g. FolderSync) and mirroring the screen to my Mac (e.g. X-Mirage).

The review on Android central rates the support for note taking as a great experience that feels like writing on paper. The pen supports 4096 levels of pressure and is said to being comparable to the Remarkable 2 pen. The Book Nova 3 Color is described as lighter than most tablets. Telling from the review, especially when using Android apps the note taker is laggy despite its 3GB of RAM.

One common criticism from the reviews is that for apps with frequent screen changes like youtube videos or games ghosting appears (which means that some fragments of the screen are not properly updated). This also seemed to be the case sometimes when reading PDFs.

Summary

In summary, the Onxy Book Nova 3 Color seems to meet all requirements for my use cases although being quite pricey and its main selling point, the color display, being of very little importance to my needs. Ghosting also seems to be a minor problem, but should not affect me that much. The great writing experience and the high-quality pen is definitely a plus.

🧰Use cases: supported, screen mirroring and file syncing via Android apps
💰Price: ~460 €
🔋Battery time: 40 days of standby time, 4 to 5 days of moderate use

Onxy Note Book 2

The Onyx Note Book 2 is also a note taking device powered by Android. Unlike the Nova 3 Color, it does not have a color display. With its 10.3 inch display it is significantly larger than other e-ink note takers. The available software allows for editing PDFs and sketching functionality. The Onyx Note Book 2 supports PDF and Epubs and is also capable of playing MP3s. It comes with a Wacom stylus pen and protective slip case. According to the specifications the battery time is up to 4 weeks in standby mode. It is about 500€.

According to Techradar one big plus is the paper-like screen which results in a incredibly natural feeling for writing and editing. The Boox software allows for exporting the notes to PDF and PNG files. Despite its large screen, the note taker only weighs 420g. Regarding battery time the review states that with Wifi on and the device in heavy use, it ran out of power after a week. The Wacom stylus pen does not have to be recharged. Drawbacks mentioned are the weak magnet of the Stylus pen and that sometimes there is a ghosting effect. And the high price, of course :-) The verdict is that this tablet is ideal for note taking and editing DIN-A4 sized documents.

Summary

The Onyx Note Book 2 meets all my requirements and looks a like a perfect fit because of its great writing and reading experience (if you believe the reviews). Compared to to the Nova Color 3 it is even slightly pricier and lacks a color display. On the other hand it has the benefit of a bigger screen, which makes it perfekt for working with DIN-A4 sized documents editing and it has a longer battery runtime. This makes it more favourable for me given my needs.

🧰Use cases: supported, screen mirroring and file syncing via Android apps
💰Price: ~500 €
🔋Battery time: Up to 4 weeks standby time, one week of heavy usage

Onyx Book Nova Air

Last but not least I took a closer look at the Onyx Book Nova Air. Like the other tablets mentioned in this post it is also powered by Android. It has a 7.8 inch screen which makes it remarkably smaller than the other devices mentioned before. It supports various file format, taking notes and editing PDFs. Like the other devices, it has a stylus included. As the name suggests, the tablet is very light (only 235 grams) and also very thin, which makes it very portable and handy. At a cost of about 340€ it is the cheapest one of the three discussed note-taking devices.

The reviews for the device are twofold. Let’s start with the critical one on Input. The overall message is that it is “pretty good for reading books, meh for most other tasks and comes with a steep learning courve all around”. The review mentions that the modified version of Android 10 that is the UI sometimes uses very abstract symbols and results in an non-intuitive navigation. As mentioned in other reviews, ghosting appears from time to time especially when playing videos. Regarding the note talking capabilities, the writing is described as feeling suprisingly paper-like, but the screen being a little bit too small for serious note talking sessions. In summary the the tablet is described as a good reader, passable note-taking device and a bad tablet.

The review on Techradar is somewhat more positive, but has the same verdict. The Nova Air offers a fast and smooth experience for note taking, but is definitely too small for working with A4-sized documents. In addition it mentions that it offers a great experience when reading at night or long haul flights due to its adjustable front light.

Summary

Although the device supports all my usescases, it seems to do this in a non-optimal way. Especially the negative review about the note talking ability and the screen being to small for working with DIN-A4 sized documents are big negative points. For me the advantages of being very lightweight and cheaper price compared to the other devices do not make up for the drawbacks mentioned.

🧰Use cases: supported, screen mirroring and file syncing via Android apps. Quite small for editing DIN-A4 sized documents, passable for note-taking.
💰Price: ~340 €
🔋Battery time: Up to two weeks of light use

The quest for finding an e-ink note taker

2022-05-26T09:50:35+00:00

Why don’t just use a digital tool for note-taking?


Image credits: Dim Hou on unsplash

For my private software projects I often find myself switching between numerous digital tools for note-taking (e.g. github wikis, notion and markdown files).

Nevertheless I still find myself using plain old pen and paper for some usecases:

Making quick notes
Drawing mind-map like or architecture diagrams
Sketching ideas when discussing with other people
Annotating print-outs of documents with questions and summarizing paragraphs

For me this mixture of using digital tools and pen and paper lead to some problems:

Sometimes the same information is spread across digital tools and pieces of paper
Information on pieces of paper is barely searchable
Manual digitization of notes (by taking photos or scanning them) creates additional effort which often results in not doing it at all
When annotating larger documents, I have to print the whole document at first and then rescan it again to retain my notes

For keeping the feeling of “writing on a piece of paper” and tackle the aforementioned problems of analogous note-taking, an e-ink note taking device seems to be the obvious choice.

Bridging the gap

My setup consists of my Macbook and a cloud based file share (HiDrive in my case). The cloud based service is accessible via SFTP and also via native Android/iOS apps and a web based interface. For my e-ink note taker I would like to have the following 🧰use cases supported

taking notes and saving them as an image to the cloud service
mirroring the screen of the note taking device to the Macbook so it can be used during online meetings or for presentations
annotating pdf documents on the cloud file share

Of course a long 🔋battery run-time and a moderate 💰price are also favourable. For the device I am not looking for any functionality besides note-taking (like a media player or web browsing). Also OCR is not a high-priority feature for my usecase, as I consider my notes to be more sketching than texting.

I’ll document my findings in the posts to follow. Stay tuned :-)

Hello World!

2022-04-10T12:33:35+00:00

I thought to try out Jekyll for my personal site! Let’s see, how this goes :-) First thing to do is to update the About page. I also want to introduce some pet projects that I have been working on.