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Apple Shortcut – Toot Grab

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2026-03-13
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I’ve been messing around with Apple Shortcuts lately. It’s a weird thing, like most things from Apple that try to make complex things simple. Shortcuts (as we’ll call them) can run on macOS and iPadOS and iOS. (So on a Mac, an iPad, and an iPhone.) Not all shortcuts run on all seamlessly, as they may rely on things that work on one platform but not another.

Here is a Shortcuts User Guide but it’s for iOS (iPhone and iPad) and where’s the macOS guide? And try searching for “Apple Shortcuts” and you get plenty of results about keyboard shortcuts. Sigh…

But whatever. Besides all that, I’m just going to share some silly (and maybe some useful) shortcuts with you. I’ll show you them (so you can make your own) and explain them.

This one grabs the most recent Toot I’ve posted on Mastodon and displays it. You could change to use any RSS feed. Either another Mastodon account, or a blog you like, or any feed. (And it works on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS.)

Here’s what you see when it runs. It does run a bit slow (at least on the 2018 MBP I am typing on right now) but again, this is just a silly demo.

To make your own version you’ll need to explore Shortcuts and find the commands you need.

(And yes, I know I can share shortcuts to make them easy to install, but I’d prefer you explore it and look around and figure things out.)

Tags ios, mac, shortcuts

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Philips Sonicare Toothbrush Repair

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2026-03-05
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I have a Philips Sonicare Toothbrush and the power button is just a small PCB mounted button that is covered by a piece of rubber. I must be an aggressive tooth brusher because I seem to have worn through the rubber!

No one wants the rubber to break… and when it does you need to find a solution to that problem!

I had these small rubber bands so I figured sliding a few over the hole might be okay. They were not. They didn’t cover enough area and when I used the toothbrush I kept pushing the bands around.

Solution? We’re gonna need a bigger band! Bigger is always better, right?

Well, not always… but in this case it was definitely an improvement. The big band held in place pretty well. I have no idea where I got this rubber band from so I hope it never breaks!

Back to the old toothbrush board! I was worried about the large rubber band because it still left a tiny gap on either side of the band that could let water into the hole.

I wrapped some electrical tape around the shaft where the hole is and I covered the rubber part completely. I gave a few button presses with just the tape and could see it would not hold up.

So now we have two layers of protection! The electrical tape and the rubber band. That should do it.

So far it’s help up. Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to press the button because it’s quite small and the rubber band is thick. The other idea I had was a piece of heat shrink over the handle but I didn’t have any large enough to fit over the shaft.

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Tags repair, toothbrush

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This is the Pain (Part II)

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2026-03-04
2 Comments on This is the Pain (Part II)

I really planned to have an update since the last post, but it’s been difficult. The first update is that I’m getting used to it, to some degree. The pain, that is…

I typically wake up between 3:30am and 5:30am and I’m just in pain (to various and differing degrees) for anywhere from 5 or 6 hours on a good day, to 12+ hours for a very bad day. And the medication can cause dizziness and drowsiness and sometimes I just cannot focus. Ugh.

Oh! A lot has happened since the last post. I saw a doctor, got an injection in my hip (that did not work and offered no relief) and then I got an increase in my medication, and then I got an MRI and then another increase in my medication (sigh) and sometimes I have to take out-of-state medication.

On a strange/happy(?) side note I have not had an alcoholic drink since mid-December since I’ve been on so much medication since then.

I’m still limiting my work and activities, though on the days when it’s fewer than 6 hours of pain I try to spend the whole afternoon at work, or doing things I can do. There are days that by 2 or 3pm I feel totally fine.

So what’s next? Well, I got an EMG (electromyography) and the good news is my nerves are not damaged. So I saw another doctor this week and we’re going to move forward with getting me two injections into each side of my spine because they can’t do just one from the back due to the spacing. (Eww.)

So we’ve got at least another week and a half before any potential relief. If the injections do not work we’ll need to move forward and try something else. I really hope it’s not more medication because I am getting so sick of them.

Anyway, here’s hoping for the best!

Tags life, pain

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Kisnt KN85 75% Mechanical Keyboard

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2026-03-04
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I got myself a new keyboard. After talking to friends who build mechanical keyboards and watching way too many videos on keyboards I decided to haul out my old Apple keyboard and clean it up and put it back together and it was terrible. Just mushy and not enjoyable to type on.

(Also, look at the size difference between these two Apple keyboards!)

Okay, that Apple Keyboard is crap, so I managed to get this Kisnt KN85 keyboard for under $40 USD which is supposedly a very good price for a mechanical keyboard.

I do wish I could get Command and Option keys but I have yet to find a good option for them. I know it shouldn’t matter but I’d still like it.

I guess this keyboard is thocky or creamy or something. It’s all about the feel and also the sound I guess? It’s pretty wild how deep some people get into this keyboard thing.

I ended up swapping a few keys around, and then used Karabiner-Elements to remap them. I’m not sure if I’ll move keys around again but it’s nice I have the option.

Overall I’m really liking the keyboard. I am still getting used to it, but I find the size and layout nice. I didn’t think I’d care for the RGB lighting but hey, I let it ride… why not!? I do use it wirelessly but I feel like I have to charge it a bit more often than I’d expect. As for the lack of numpad, I realized that 90% of my using the numpad was for entering 2FA numbers and maybe I didn’t need one.

After a few weeks of use I’m feeling pretty good about it.

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Tags keyboard

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ListenBrainz – Track Your Listens

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2026-03-02
No Comments on ListenBrainz – Track Your Listens

This post is about ListenBrainz but we need to start with the Last.fm service. So 20 years ago I learned about Last.fm as a way to track my listening habits. I listen to a lot of music, mostly using a computer. I would run this “Audioscrobbler” program to send what I listened to over to Last.fm and you’d see it at https://www.last.fm/user/rasterweb

This was all super cool, except for one thing. I saw too many services shut down over the years and I did not want to lose my data, so in 2010 I created Heard – a Last.fm mirror, which is still running on this site.

Fast forward to 2025 and I’m using Jellyfin to listen to all my music. Jellyfin has a plugin to send data to Last.fm so all good! Except… remember that Last.fm is owned by CBS Interactive, and you know what? Fuck those guys.

Right now I am still sending my data to Last.fm but that will stop soon. I now use ListenBrainz, which is basically the open alternative to Last.fm and you can see my listens at https://listenbrainz.org/user/raster/

ListenBrainz is run by MetaBrainz, and organization which actually has a Social Contract you can read. Because of this I’ve also chosen to support them financially. When possible I’d prefer to pay for services from the good folks than get free stuff from the bad folks. (The bad folks will just use your data against you/for profit anyway.)

Also, there is a ListenBrainz plugin for Jellyfin so that’s all working fine, and there is a Last.fm compatible API for ListenBrainz so I should be able to update heard to work with it.

And yeah, heard was moved from GitHub to Codeberg because Fuck GitHub, Fuck Microsoft, and Fuck their AI Slop.

And also yeah, the ListenBrainz code repository is still on GitHub because you cannot win every battle. Sigh…

One more “Also” here! I do know about libre.fm but I had a heck of a time / wait getting an account set up so I’m behind on that but will still investigate it. (Dammit! GitHub again!)

Tags jellyfin, music, open, web