Blogging on the go
I was never a particularly techy guy. Well, not in the classical meaning of the word. I fixed a lot of things from PCs to phones and similar. I was somewhere between my mom and a guy who actually learned to code. However I never took a deep dive into such things like coding. For example if I saw a CLI, I almost screamed. I always needed a GUI. And currently it is slowly but steadily changing. It all begun with the idea to ditch iCloud for photos and have my own NAS, as I've found my old laptop from around 2010-2011. I researched a bit about self hosted, non-propiearatery software. My choice was OpenMediaVault (OMV). At the beginning I had to tinker a lot in the terminal and with Docker in the CLI. It was the first time I was forced to do so for longer than 10 minutes. And I really wanted a solution for my storage and backup needs, so it was a good reason to stick with it.
The desire for tactile keyboards on the go
In March 2026 I found the company Clicks and it's Power Keyboard. It's a wireless QWERTZ keyboard mainly for your phone but you can also connect to other Bluetooth capable devices. You attach the PK per Magsafe on your phone and slide the keys out. The device doubles as a powerbank. Clicks also has keyboard cases for some phone series. This line is limited as you can only use with the particular phone. Unless you cut the case and DIY a standalone keyboard for your phone. In March it was still possible to preorder the PK in the second batch. I always liked the idea of Blackberries, but somehow never had one. Mainly because I was financially broke all the time. I preordered the PK for 69 Euros. Planned delivery was June. Spoiler I'm still waiting for the delivery. I'm normally a patient guy, but as I formed the idea of blogging I came to the conclusion that I need a physical keyboard, because the keyboard on the iPhone sucks big time. And I needed something pocketable. Mainly I can write if I'm out of reach of my Macbook and carrying it around isn't an option. And nobody knows when the PK arrives. So I came to a Blackberry. I knew those phones can't be used as daily driver anymore, but it was intirguing to use one as a pure writing tool. Writing the blog posts on the Blackberry, transfering the post to my iPhone or Macbook. Finito.
Here comes the terminal
Deepdive into the Blackberry subreddit. For my surprise it is still a very active community and there are some people who are hacking those things. They make the devices more relevant for daily usage, repurpose as a writing deck, as a mobile coding platform. I decided to buy a Blackberry Classic. And I found one pretty fast for 20 Euros. In a very nice condition with two cases. I bought it immediately. It is so FANTASTIC to type on the Blackberry. It feels so good and I can really concentrate on my thoughts and what I want to write. Even if it may sound bold. I'm of course not so fast as on the desktop typing with 10 fingers. I'm at about the same speed as typing on the screen of the iPhone. But with a much better and tactile feeling. Much satisfying. I installed Berrycore on the Classic, which opened a lot of possibilities. I had to do a lot of command line tinkering on the Blackberry and you know what? I don't hate the terminal anymore. I write my posts (also this one) in vim on the Blackberry. Completely offline. Something I thought I'll never like.