Alex Markley

Executive Pastor. Formerly a software engineer and cloud architect with experience from hyperscalers to embedded systems.

Markley Bros. Entertainment: https://mbe.tv/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/alexmarkley
GitHub: https://github.com/alexmarkley
Personal Site: https://alexmarkley.com/

Last Notes

2025-12-22 18:42:27 GMT

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hey friend, looks like your photos are no longer coming through. I always enjoy your work, so I hope it can be fixed soon!

2025-01-27 22:48:06 GMT

I'm so excited to see the news about #Pebble today! Google has generously open sourced the original firmware ( https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/see-code-that-powered-pebble-smartwatches.html ) and Eric Migicovsky is planning on relaunching the company! ( https://ericmigi.com/blog/why-were-bringing-pebble-back )
My #pebblewatch was my first (and remains my favorite!) smart watch of any kind. I still miss it to this day. Can't wait to see what they come up with for the next generation!

2024-11-07 20:20:32 GMT

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Lucas, thanks for replying! Is this sort of timeline persistence something that could be implemented within the current codebase? Any chance it's on the roadmap? I'm currently paying for Ivory and I would be happy to (also) make a recurring financial donation to an Android app (especially a FOSS one) if it meets my needs.

2024-11-07 19:31:24 GMT

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Thanks for the recommendation!
I just downloaded it. Can you clarify what you mean by saying @npub1rx6…pdar remembers your timeline position? In my five minutes of testing it seems to forget/reload the timeline from the top every time the app starts.
Maybe I am missing a setting?

2024-11-07 02:33:42 GMT

Hey #Fediverse! Can anyone recommend a #Mastodon app for #Android that remembers your timeline position, displays an unread post count, and allows you to scroll through unread posts from oldest to newest?
Basically I am really spoiled by @npub1lyn…ve6v and I am jonesing for a similar experience on Android.
I’d ask @npub15c5…sjwd if there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that Ivory gets ported to Android, but I’m worried I would get blocked. 😅

2024-08-07 03:50:07 GMT

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this is really helpful, thank you! Is there documentation for how feedbackd maps / interprets notification categories? (In lieu of documentation, could you point me to the relevant code within freedesktop?)
I’m very interested in submitting patches to improve quality of life across the ecosystem.
Regarding suspend, I just needed to disable automatic suspend within postmarketos-tweaks. Actually the battery life today was fantastic, so I might not need to worry about it.

2024-08-06 13:31:50 GMT

This is my first week attempting to use @npub1vnu…8mqn on OnePlus 6T as my daily driver. Yesterday was my first full day with the device and it's fantastic! I was running errands, taking meetings out, and using the phone as my primary communicator.
For context, (and this is going to sound brutal, but it's the truth) I've been using a Librem 5 on PureOS as my daily driver since February, so my expectations are pretty low at this point.
In no particular order, here are my main observations so far.<li>This thing is fast! So responsive and slick. Again, I am comparing it to Librem 5, not iPhone. That said, <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@phosh" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@phosh</a> performs so well on this device, it really feels like THIS is how it is supposed to work. (This is an aside, but it's a real shame how stuck and abandoned Phosh is on Librem 5, when that was the device it was originally made for.)</li><li>Cellular phone calls on my carrier (AT&T) require VoLTE, so I am using this hack (a) (b) to enable voice calls. Some people have reported issues with call audio; I've only noticed call audio loss very occasionally, and they are resolved for me by toggling the modem on and off.</li><li>Battery life is good, but not great. I was using the phone pretty heavily yesterday and I needed to top up the battery once in the afternoon. I'm interested to see how it fares on a day when it spends most of the time in my pocket.</li><li>Do not allow the device to suspend! Unlike the Librem 5, it won't automatically wake up for calls or SMS messages. And very much like the Librem 5, you won't receive any other notifications while it's asleep.</li><li>I'm using Fractal / Matrix / iMessage bridging (c) for the majority of my instant messaging needs. This works great, but the notification integration kind of sucks.</li>
Core notification support appears to be handled by feedbackd (d) - thanks @npub1kzg…mdvv! - which works really well. However, there's no obvious way to link general Freedesktop/libnotify notifications (e) to a feedbackd event.
The practical effect of this is that messages coming in over Fractal are received immediately BUT with no visual, audible, or haptic cues to indicate that they've arrived.
I'm solving this problem right now with a horrible little Python script that watches for Fractal notifications on dbus, and triggers a message-new-instant event when it sees them.
This is working for me right now, and I'm happy to share the code if anyone wants to see it. But I'm sure it's not how things are supposed to work. I would love to hear from the developers on what the "right" solution is supposed to be here.
I'll have more thoughts to share over time, but I'll wrap it up for now. At this point I'm really pushing the limits of what a "microblog" entry should look like.
References:
(a) https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/issues/1878
(b) https://gitlab.com/flamingradian/81voltd
(c) https://github.com/mautrix/imessage
(d) https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/feedbackd
(e) https://specifications.freedesktop.org/notification-spec/latest/
#postmarketos #mobilelinux #phosh #oneplus6t #linux #librem5

2024-06-06 15:44:04 GMT

Yet another reason to run #mobilelinux instead of iOS or Android... No software updates are going to shove AI down your throat! Thanks @npub1vnu…8mqn (and many others) for giving us a lifeline to escape the deluge. #WWDC #wwdc24 #siri #AI

2024-06-01 14:29:50 GMT

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So hard to pick!

2024-05-30 19:55:13 GMT

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I'm so glad I don't have this problem. And yet, given our marriage vows, is it still in some ways my problem...? 🙃

2024-05-30 00:48:14 GMT

Hey everybody, welcome @npub16g5…weky to the #Fediverse! She's a FANTASTIC human, but perhaps a tad shy. Maybe if folks say hello we can convince her to do a short #introduction post? 😁