529 lines
22 KiB
Plaintext
529 lines
22 KiB
Plaintext
[1]cliophate.wtf [2]Reading [3]About [4]Now
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[5]Review: The Boox Palma is the best purchase I've made in a long time
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[palma-head]
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[6]The Boox Palma might be the best purchase of the year so far. Maybe even of
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last year. (And I bought a motorcycle last year!)
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When I first saw this [7]device from Craig Mod, I didn't think I'd end up
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loving it so much. It is, after all, just a phone-sized Kindle with access to
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an Android store that costs $299. What I didn't expect is that this is
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precisely what makes it such a fantastic device. A few weeks in, it has become
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the device I use the most day by day—yes, even more than my phone.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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The Boox Palma is an Android-based E-Reader with a 6.13" e-ink screen. It has
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128 GB of integrated memory and a microSD slot (for comparison, my Kindle has
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8GB), a 16-megapixel camera I have and never will use, a two-speaker array, a
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microphone, volume buttons you can configure as page-turn buttons, USB-C
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connectivity, fantastic battery life (I use it heavily and charge it once a
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week), and a water-repellent design. However, I couldn't find its IP rating.
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The screen is significantly smaller than my Kindle Paperwhite but has much
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smaller bezels. It is also narrower but taller than the Kindle. It is clearly a
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phone-shaped and phone-sized device. This is both its curse and its blessing.
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Depending on your font settings, it fits much less text on one screen than a
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larger E-Reader. But on the other hand, you can easily fit it into the back
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pockets of jeans, and it won't feel comically large.
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[palma-kind]
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Comparing the devices side-by-side showcases the differences in size.
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The screen on the Palma has warmer backlighting than that of a Kindle
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Paperwhite. When the lights are off, it isn't as "white" as the Kindle. (The
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Kindle is called Paperwhite for a reason.) It has a slight greyish undertone
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that reminds me more of books made out of recycled paper than high-quality art
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books. I prefer the Kindle's more astonishing screen and backlighting in
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general, but it isn't a dealbreaker and only really obvious if you put both
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devices side-by-side.
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[palma-kind]
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The Kindle Paperwhite's backlighting looks "cleaner".
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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The Palma runs Android 11 and has access to all your typical Android apps
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available through the Play Store or that you sideload. While it isn't the
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newest version of Android (we're currently on Android 14), I have yet to run
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into any compatibility issues. Most apps you want to start on this device don't
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need any newer versions of the OS.
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Here is what apps I use, and they've all been great:
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• [8]KOReader is my book reader of choice. It's heavily customizable and
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powerful but doesn't get in your way. I find it much easier to use than
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Moon+, for example. It's also miles better than any of the major apps like
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Kindle or Kobo. More below.
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• [9]Readwise Reader is my reading-later app of choice. I've customized the
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experience, deactivating animation and changing how the app works to better
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suit e-ink screens. (Ping me if you want to know more.)
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• [10]Anki is how I currently learn Japanese. If you know Anki, you know how
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great this app is, and I can tell you it works perfectly on an e-ink
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screen.
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• [11]Shueisha Manga Plus is where I find nearly all of the manga I am
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currently interested in. I must admit that the screen might be a tad small,
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and a coloured LCD might be a better experience, thanks to better
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contrasts, even though most manga are in black and white.
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Boox also heavily customized the OS. You won't find any of the typical Google
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apps like Gmail or YouTube on this thing. Of course, you can download them from
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the Play Store, but there's not one situation where I can imagine this to be
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even remotely a good experience. The only one I downloaded is the Google's
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alarm app and the Files app, as I didn't like Boox's version.
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[palma-enha]
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Boox also added dedicated settings to configure any app to your liking. This is
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especially useful for apps that were not made for e-ink screens. Here, you can
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customize refresh modes, change colour enhancements, hard-overwrite font
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settings, and more. The Boox also has a dedicated button to refresh the screen
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and get rid of ghosting typical of e-ink displays.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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KOReader is the killer app
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If you've ever tried [12]jailbreaking your Kindle, you might be familiar with
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KOReader. It's the app hacked Kindles run to read books. Thankfully, on
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Android, you don't need to jailbreak anything; you can simply download the app
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from your browser and install it that way.
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KOReader is a beast. It does everything and then some. Just to make it obvious,
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you can write your own custom CSS so that books look exactly how you want them.
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[palma-font]
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These are the best settings I could find for the typography.
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I did not do that, though I customized books to my liking. First, I installed
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my reading font of choice: [13]Literata. (I'd like to try [14]Untitled Serif,
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but that's a tad expensive, not knowing how it fares on e-ink displays.)
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Then, I changed the font size, line heights, kernings, and margins to my
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liking, installed [15]dictionaries, and customized the overall UI around books.
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(Side note: the Boox Palma has an app called BooxDrop that allows you to
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connect your Palma to your computer via a web link. Here, you can drag and drop
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files wherever you want. This app is excellent, and I wish every other device
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I've ever interacted with would have a version of this.)
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[palma-dict]
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You can install whatever dictionary you want.
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I've also set up a [16]direct link to Calibre, where I manage all of my books.
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So, whenever I get a new book and add it to Calibre, I can open KOReader on the
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Palma, connect it to my library and "download" books directly from Calibre to
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the device. I did the same with Readwise for my highlights since there is a
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setting just for that. So whenever I highlight something in a book and trigger
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the sync, KOReader sends it to Readwise via an API key.
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What I have now is an incredibly powerful reading experience that is set up
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exactly how I want. It is much more work than setting up a Kindle at first, but
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by investing 30 minutes of my time, I created the perfect reading environment
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that is miles better than anything the Kindle ever offers. I'm sorry, Jeff, but
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I'm not coming back.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Some unexpected experiences
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The Palma, running on Android, allowed me to do a few things I didn't think of
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when I first ordered it. For one, it banned the iPhone from my bedroom.
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I am lucky to have enough self-control never to use my phone in the bedroom. I
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don't scroll TikTok or any timelines or chat with people when I'm in bed. I've
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only ever used it as an alarm clock.
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So, banning the iPhone from my bedroom doesn't change anything for me, except
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that it's not the first thing I grab when I wake up. While I don't use the
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phone when I'm trying to sleep, I open my notifications to see if anyone has
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tried to reach me. And from there, it's too easy to fall into the trap of
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checking website statistics, work emails, or what's going on on Discord.
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So I downloaded the Google Clock app (the default one; if you have other
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suggestions, please get in touch), added my alarms, and now use the Palma as an
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e-ink-powered bedside alarm.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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[palma-anki]
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Well, I do like sports.
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Another use case I mentioned above is my Japanese studies. I'm working my way
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through an Anki vocabulary deck, and so far, I have been doing so on the
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iPhone. But since I use the Palma more than my smartphone nowadays, I moved my
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studies to the Palma.
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And it's a good experience: all my decks have integrated audio clips (to nail
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the pronunciation), and the Palma plays them perfectly. There is not much to
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say besides it just works.
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Make it a phone, please
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I'm still dependent on my phone for most parts. But I've only been using the
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Palma for a few weeks, and it has replaced my phone for a few critical tasks.
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[palma-slot]
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What looks like a SIM-card slot is a microSD slot.
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This made me realize that if the Palma had cellphone connectivity and maybe a
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newer version of Android, it might turn into my day phone.
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If I boil down what I do on my iPhone on a daily basis — except checking
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timelines and multimedia content — there's not much the Palma can't do: stay in
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touch with my loved ones through chat apps, look up stuff on a browser or an AI
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tool (mostly Perplexity), listen to music and podcasts, and track my gym and my
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food. All of this works on the Palma right now, as long as I'm connected to
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wi-fi.
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Sure, I do much more on my iPhone, like run a business, consume content, do
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banking stuff, take notes, take pictures, take videos, play games, and much
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more. But I don't do that daily.
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So, while the Palma could never fully replace the phone, it could complement it
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in ways that might give me my sanity back. I fully understand Gen Z for
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(apparently, the data is a bit meh) [17]embracing dumb phones. While I wouldn't
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go as far — and a connected Palma is anything but dumb — I could see myself
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fully adopting this two-device lifestyle.
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Alas, for now, there is no such device. But I still wholeheartedly recommend
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[18]the Boox Palma. At $299, it might be twice as expensive as your typical
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Kindle, but it does more than twice as much, and I love mine!
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Though one (unfortunate?) consequence of owning the Palma: I'm wondering [19]if
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a Note Air 3C could replace my iPad.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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NB: If you buy any of the Boox devices, I might receive a small commission
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thanks to an affiliate link.
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[20]Technology
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What's next?
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Subscribe to the [21]RSS feed or via [22]email. Follow me on [23]weird social
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media 1 or [24]weird social media 2. Something you want to tell or show me?
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[25]Get in touch. And if you are into video games, check out [26]my other
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project.
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2024 April
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[27]
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Review: The Boox Palma is the best purchase I've made in a long time
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16th
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[28]
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The first book on the Boox Palma
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14th
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[29]
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I made a knife
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3rd
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March
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[30]
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Fixing Mastodon
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17th
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February
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[31]
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Some thoughts on online monetization
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13th
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[32]
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Some changes on cliophate.wtf
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12th
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[33]
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More Magic: The Gathering adventures
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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9th
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[34]
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On Arc Search
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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7th
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[35]
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Show me your RSS feeds, and I will tell you who you are
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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5th
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[36]
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My first Magic: The Gathering event
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4th
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January
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[37]
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My latest fascination
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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31st
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[38]
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I bought fancy perfume
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10th
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[39]
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Read: Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami
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10th
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[40]
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Read: Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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2nd
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2023 December
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[41]
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The 10 best things I bought this year
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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18th
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[42]
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I started playing Magic: The Gathering
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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13th
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[43]
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A perfect day
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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12th
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[44]
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Twelve (mostly) truths on money
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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11th
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[45]
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How to meditate
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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8th
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[46]
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Make good art
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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7th
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[47]
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|
How to be a better writer (part 2)
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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6th
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|
[48]
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|
I automated my money
|
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|
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
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5th
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[49]
|
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|
When life gets tough
|
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|
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
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4th
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|
[50]
|
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|
|
How to read more
|
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|
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
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1st
|
|
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|
November
|
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|
[51]
|
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|
|
How to be a better writer
|
|
|
|
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
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|
30th
|
|
|
|
[52]
|
|
|
|
The Shaman with the bank account
|
|
|
|
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
|
|
|
29th
|
|
|
|
[53]
|
|
|
|
14 writing prompts for your daily journaling
|
|
|
|
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
|
|
|
27th
|
|
|
|
[54]
|
|
|
|
32 things I learned this past year
|
|
|
|
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
|
|
|
27th
|
|
|
|
[55]
|
|
|
|
A few blog recommendations
|
|
|
|
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
|
|
|
26th
|
|
|
|
[56]
|
|
|
|
My Exercise Program
|
|
|
|
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
|
|
|
24th
|
|
|
|
[57]
|
|
|
|
Default Apps
|
|
|
|
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
|
|
|
23rd
|
|
|
|
|
|
References:
|
|
|
|
[1] https://cliophate.wtf/
|
|
[2] https://cliophate.wtf/reading
|
|
[3] https://cliophate.wtf/about
|
|
[4] https://cliophate.wtf/now
|
|
[5] https://cliophate.wtf/
|
|
[6] https://shop.boox.com/products/palma?ref=overkillwtf
|
|
[7] https://www.threads.net/@craigmod/post/C36xcJCSK8U
|
|
[8] https://github.com/koreader/koreader
|
|
[9] https://readwise.io/read
|
|
[10] https://apps.ankiweb.net/
|
|
[11] https://mangaplus.shueisha.co.jp/updates
|
|
[12] https://github.com/notmarek/LanguageBreak
|
|
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literata
|
|
[14] https://klim.co.nz/retail-fonts/untitled-serif/
|
|
[15] https://github.com/ahacop/websters-dict-1913-stardict
|
|
[16] https://koreader.rocks/user_guide/#transferring
|
|
[17] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/the-dumbphone-boom-is-real
|
|
[18] https://shop.boox.com/products/palma?ref=overkillwtf
|
|
[19] https://shop.boox.com/collections/all/products/noteair3
|
|
[20] https://cliophate.wtf/topic:Technology
|
|
[21] https://cliophate.wtf/feed
|
|
[22] https://buttondown.email/cliophate
|
|
[23] https://overkill.social/@cliophate
|
|
[24] https://www.threads.net/@cliophate
|
|
[25] mailto:desk@kvn.li
|
|
[26] https://overkill.wtf/
|
|
[27] https://cliophate.wtf/boox-palma-review
|
|
[28] https://cliophate.wtf/palma-book
|
|
[29] https://cliophate.wtf/knife-workshop
|
|
[30] https://cliophate.wtf/fixing-mastodon
|
|
[31] https://cliophate.wtf/online-monetization
|
|
[32] https://cliophate.wtf/some-changes
|
|
[33] https://cliophate.wtf/mtg-decks
|
|
[34] https://cliophate.wtf/arc-search
|
|
[35] https://cliophate.wtf/rss-horoscope
|
|
[36] https://cliophate.wtf/mtg-draft
|
|
[37] https://cliophate.wtf/keebs
|
|
[38] https://cliophate.wtf/noir-de-noir
|
|
[39] https://cliophate.wtf/read-naav
|
|
[40] https://cliophate.wtf/read-tbot
|
|
[41] https://cliophate.wtf/best-things-2023
|
|
[42] https://cliophate.wtf/mtg-start
|
|
[43] https://cliophate.wtf/perfect-day
|
|
[44] https://cliophate.wtf/money-truths
|
|
[45] https://cliophate.wtf/on-meditation
|
|
[46] https://cliophate.wtf/good-art
|
|
[47] https://cliophate.wtf/on-writing-part-2
|
|
[48] https://cliophate.wtf/automated-money
|
|
[49] https://cliophate.wtf/life-tough
|
|
[50] https://cliophate.wtf/read-more
|
|
[51] https://cliophate.wtf/on-writing
|
|
[52] https://cliophate.wtf/shaman
|
|
[53] https://cliophate.wtf/journaling-prompts
|
|
[54] https://cliophate.wtf/lessons-learned
|
|
[55] https://cliophate.wtf/blog-recommendations
|
|
[56] https://cliophate.wtf/exercise
|
|
[57] https://cliophate.wtf/default-apps
|