This device logs GPS coordinates to a microSD card and is far more accurate than using my phone or even the dedicated Insta360 GPS Remote. I have had issues where the GPS signal recorded by those devices is glitchy enough that Google Street View will reject the data.
Thus, a dedicated hardware device.
When I first got it, I could plug it up to my Mac and it would mount as a USB drive. At some point, this stopped working. I just tested it with the same cable on a Windows 11 machine and it indeed mounts as a flash drive, as it should.
What happened? I notice when I check it out on macOS it is there, but is in the GNSS Receive Mode rather than the USB flash drive mode:
GNSS Receiver Mode is a feature that lets the device act as a USB GPS receiver using software on a PC/Mac/etc.
The way you select these modes is simple: Plug it in while powered off and it should be a USB drive. Plug it in with the power ON, and it should be a receiver.
It is unclear what control the computer has over the power mode of the device.
Anyone ran into this? Posting for the search engines…
I have not used my personal Facebook page in years, and do not have Facebook Messenger installed so the only thing I really use Facebook for these days is for Pages I admin, and groups I participate in.
I think two of my Pages are monetized, though I do not recall how they got that way. One has only earned me a few dollars, but the other recently earned me $33, then $78 and the next payment should be about $180. Surprising, considering I do nothing any different today than I ever have — I just posted something that touched a nerve and folks decided to share. Neat.
But, when this happened, Facebook decided something was wrong and blocked me from being able to Reply to comments on my own pages. I would receive noticed like this:
Fun. I spent a few days trying to get this corrected (there were no notifications on my mobile apps), and eventually found where they needed me to “verify” again. I had already previously had to send them scans of my driver’s license (when money is involved, the government wants to track it). I did that again, or at least tried to. App problems, image rejection problems, etc. On the third try it worked and their AI robot said everything looks good and it could find no problems.
But I still kept receiving this message.
A.I. robot help is useless. It gave me three different instructions telling me where to go and what to click on. Each time, I would explain “there is no such option in that menu.” It wasted my time, and I stopped. The only thing it said was that I should want another 24-48 hours and not touch my pages since that could be resetting the block.
I took the week off…
And it has been GREAT! Even though most of what I post is scheduled ahead of time, scheduling those posts still might take me 15-30 minutes to do for the next few weeks of posts. I also liked to go in and Like or respond to Comments on posts that were getting a lot of attention (one has been seen over 250,000 times, which is weird considering my page only has a few thousands followers).
Just when I thought “maybe I will enjoy posting more now that they are paying me to do it,” they take away my ability to do so ;-)
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Anyway, just wanted to say … they certainly did help me use their service much less. Maybe next week I will check again and see if I can get back to becoming rich by wasting time on Facebook.
There is a thing known as calibrating a battery that sources say you should do once a month. This is done by running your device all the way down (such as a phone, tablet or notebook computer) and then giving it a full charge to reset the battery life estimates. For some devices, just running it down until it shuts off and recharging is enough. Others, such as notebooks with backup suspend modes and such, the instructions might say to run it down, then leave it for another 5 hours before recharging.
Apple may actually be doing this internally on their devices now, or perhaps I do not understand the jargon here:
This week I decided to do this for my iPhone, MacBook Air, and iPad.
But my iPad never came back. After running it all the way down, I plugged it into a charge and got the expected “please recharge me” screen:
iPad “Recharge Me” screen.
It did not seem to recognize my charging cable that I always use. I ended up trying three things:
Old style USB-to-C cable on a dock USB port.
USB-C cable from MacBook Air to the iPad.
Original iPad charger and original cable.
Even after leaving it plugged up overnight to the (confirmed working) original Apple iPad charger and cable, the iPad still had no charge the next morning. Attempts to reset it did not work. Perhaps it just died.
I am posting this here in case anyone else runs into this.
This iPad is over 5 years old, but still under AppleCare+ warranty, so I am taking it in to see what they can find. Gotta love extended warranties ;-)
On August 6, 2026, Insta360 seems to have allowed the preview videos for their new 360 camera to be posted. Some “reviewers” do up-front explain they were sent the hardware for free (which should be obvious; you cannot buy it yet), while others do not mention their video is sponsored with hardware. Of course.
Go to YouTube and take a look, but don’t expect too much yet. They seem quite limited to what they can say right now, and are unable to show any comparison videos — making the early release pretty pointless.
“Pro Tip” (again, there is no such thing unless your professional job really is giving tip): If a video does not tell you they got the gear for free, you may wish to skip their later “review.” If they are hiding the fact that they have been compensated with hardware, what else are they willing to hide? Also, be aware that if a “reviewer” who receives free hardware says bad things about that hardware, the company is less likely to send them more hardware in the future.
As you read this post, please keep in mind that, while I am an old fart when it comes to 360 photography (I have been experimenting with this stuff for over 20 years), I am still a relative newbie with Insta360. I have only been following Insta360 since 2021 when I began researching their ONE X2 360-degree camera. Back then, the Internet seemed to agree that the ONE X2 picture quality was worse than the RICOH Theta camera I already, had but you could do more “fun things” with it thanks to a more advanced app. In January 2022, I became an Insta360 owner. I speak with a whopping five years experience following the brand.
Although I missed the release cycle of the ONE X2, I did follow the announcements and releases for the subsequent X3, X4 and X5 models.
On August 3, Insta360 posted this recap of their camera evolution to YouTube:
A day later, they posted this announcement (teaser?) for their next camera – the Insta360 X6:
I am posting this with the hope that one of you will know much more about Insta360 than I do. This release feels different.
First, in the past, Insta360 would post a cryptic teaser with a date, and no specific information about what they were going to announce on that date. Here is how they teased the X5:
As you see, nowhere did they give us the product model “X5” — but since the video clearly showed 360-degree footage, “everyone” assumed this would be the followup to the X4 and that it would be called the X5.
Assumptions are not always correct.
It goes without saying that assumptions are seldom always correct. For example, when the X3 was released, “everyone” assumed it would be called the “ONE X3” because the previous two “X” cameras were the “ONE X” and “ONE X2“.
“everyone” was wrong.
It looks like Insta360 is changing things up yet again. This time, instead of a cryptic teaser with an announcement date, we got an actual video with the product name and a date – August 12, 2026. Many think this is when you will be able to buy the camera. But for the X5 release, the date in the teaser was when the product name and details would be announced, with the availability (i.e., “when can I buy it?”) happening shortly after.
The first time the name “X5” was announced, we were given all the details:
…but for this X6, we just get a teaser with the product name and a date, and no details.
If August 12th is the date you can buy it, what are you buying? Do folks really think Insta360 is really able to just say “hey, buy the new model on this date, without knowing anything about it.” Even Apple doesn’t do that, and that is a brand folks used to line up to buy before they figured out how to handle preorders ;-)
So perhaps, for 2026 and the X6, “shrinkflation” is just hitting marketing. Instead of a teaser giving an announcement date, then an announcement date with the name and details, followed by availability, we just get an announcement without details, and then will get the details on the day we get to place our order.
We shall see.
Even if the only improvement is better low light, that would be enough to make me interested in having one. I currently travel with a DJI Osmo 360 for low light, and the X5 for everything else.
Sometime in June 2026, I saw a random post on LinkedIn where someone said they created an emulator for the Texas Instruments TI-99 computer using AI. Could AI really create a full emulator that actually worked? And if so, could it do that for the CoCo?
Turns out, yes, and yes. A CoCo emulator, mostly crafted by AI, has been released. It runs in a web browser! You can find the code here:
I did my original post as a joke, showing a funny (to me) mockup of what a retro BACKROOMS video game on the CoCo might look like ;-)
CoCo Backrooms game prototype screen ;-P
But if we really are going to try to make some silly game, we need to understand what the game is based on. First, BACKROOMS comes from a photo that was shared online and folks started telling stories about it. You can read the history here:
And here is that original photo and the description that started it all:
By Bill Magritz – https://archive.org/details/backrooms-photos/807OREGON/DSC00161.jpg, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151138961
Folks did not know the origin of this photo, at that time, but have since figured it out. It was a photo from a former furniture store (which explains the odd walls) with poor color correction (making it yellow) before that location was turned into a HobbyTown. Apparently.
And the description of this image read:
“If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you”
— Anonymous, 4chan (May 13, 2019)
And thus, the fandom began. Folks wrote stories, created fan wikis, and even made video games based on the lore that was developing around this photo and paragraph.
One such creator was the Kane Pixels channel on YouTube where a teenager began creating his own take on the BACKROOMS lore. His first video was uploaded on January 22, 2022 and has had over 84 million views. The story is that it is a “found footage” video taken from a camcorder that recorded in 1990. You an watch it here to get the idea:
This led to a series of other first-person camcorder type videos recorded at different points in the timeline of this version of the BACKROOMS. The lore Kane Parsons (the real name behind the Kane Pixels channel) created the mysterious corporation A-SYNC Research.
The popularity of his particular take on this meme ended up having the A24 movie company approach him about a theatrical film based on his version. That was the BACKROOMS movie that opened in 2026 with the highest opening release of any A24 movie to date, and making Kane Parsons the youngest director (at age 20) to have a film make that kind of money ;-)
So obviously, any game based on this lore would feature a yellow maze with a first person view of someone wandering around in it.
But not on a 1980s CoCo ;-) On this era hardware, we could convert it into a top-down view of the yellow maze, similar to the 1980 Atari VCS game Adventure. Longtime readers of this blog may recall I have played with doing this type of game on the CoCo in the past by literally translating the game level maps into the CoCo’s 32×16 text screen using the semi graphics block characters:
Atari Adventure screen graphics plotted in Color BASIC.
And, frankly, if someone has not already done an Atari VCS/2600 BACKROOMS game (possibly as a hack to Adventure itself), I would be surprised.
Maybe we can dig into this together and figure out what the game will be. Basically, a player wandering through an endless yellow maze, and entities chasing you… Not much to it. But maybe we can spend some time and flesh out the concept a bit into something fun to play, at least for a few minutes.
A few years ago, I discovered Topaz Labs and their video/photo enhancement software. They were running online ads showing split screens on how their software could upscale older video to HD (or beyond). It caught my attention because they used a clip from the original Star Trek TV series.
Since I had so much legacy video from my Digital8 camcorder days, I thought it might be useful for upscaling my old tapes to something that would look better on modern displays. Topaz Labs was pricy, so I took on upscaling gigs on Fiverr to pay for it. I did enough $5 gigs there to be able to afford Topaz Labs for the years I used it.
Here was an example of an old Disneyland VHS I upscaled with it back then:
Then they went subscription.
Since I would often go months without touching any of these tools, it did not make sense for me to pay monthly fees for something I wasn’t using. Now, if these subscriptions services allowed me to just “turn on” a month and use it, then let it lapse, that would probably be cheaper overall. But Adobe, etc. all want you to commit to minimum subscription terms. I found this out the hard way when I chose the higher “monthly” plan for some Adobe tools, not seeing in the fine print that I had just committed myself to six months at that higher rate.
But I digress.
Recently, I saw the news that Adobe is acquiring Topaz Labs. I had already stopped using Dreamweaver years ago when it went subscription for the same reason. I could justify buying a $$$ web development tool because I could just run that “forever”. I only needed to update if some new OS version broke it, or if they added some must-have feature I couldn’t live without. Today, that is no longer an option.
So yeah, I kinda miss Topaz Labs. Their subscription model does not work for a casual user like myself. And from searching online, it looks like many others had similar views.
Since they will be part of Adobe, I guess anyone using those tools is able to justify the subscription (like full time professional users) so they will probably enjoy having this Topaz technology available.
A few years ago, both the 1986 and 1987 versions of the Tandy Color Computer 3 GIME chip were de-capped and photographed under a microscope. This work was done thanks to the efforts of Sean Riddle, Erik Gavriluk, and Roger Taylor.
When the first CoCo 3 emulator was released by Jeff Vavasour, he would have had to recreate the CoCo 3 font manually by looking at the screen and counting the pixels. Over the years, we have seen updates to various emulators in regards to the fonts as folks figured out some pixels were wrong here and there.
I believe we know the full font of the CoCo 1/2 MC6847 VDG so those should be accurate these days, but we really never had confirmation of the font in the CoCo 3 until these de-caps were done.
Here is a low-resolution image of the 1986 and 1987 GIMEs:
Tandy CoCo 3 GIME scans.
Quite different! I do not know what the contents of the two ROM areas are, but I suspect the font data is part of it. In the GIME archive (available on my Dropbox or as a torrent), there is an image of the bits from those ROM areas:
CoCo 3 GIME rom bits.
And also from the archive is the font data represented in a text file that Roger Taylor (or one of the others) extracted:
