wiki on Andy Goetz

A Kobo Remote for Cheapskates

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 07:00:34 -0700

I am a big fan of my Kobo Clara E-Reader. But sometimes the lack of buttons on the touchscreen are a little annoying. Rakuten has a bluetooth remote available now that is by all account quite lovely. Forward button, back button, nice materials, for the quite reasonable price of $29.99. But what if you don’t want to spend the unreasonable sum, or what if you want to get a bunch of remotes on the cheap? In that case, I have a solution for you. You can use the quite amazing kobo-btpt project, which allows the use of any Bluetooth HID device as remote source for your Kobo E-Reader. The only hard part is determining what bluetooth remote device to use.

I recommend using these cheapo camera shutter remotes, that you can find at Ebay, Walmart, AliExpress (see pic below). The listing here has 2 remotes for 8.99, which is kind of a saving of 85%! These remote shutters are intended to use with cellphones, where (fortunately for us), Iphone users need a shutter button that simulates volume down button presses, while Android users need a button that simulates volume up button presses. We can take advantage of this by using the big IOS (Volume Down) button as a Next Page button, and the smaller Android button for Prev Page.

Below are some instructions to get the kobo-btpt project working with your E-Reader.

Connect your cheap camera shutter to your phone via bluetooth, and write down what the name of the device is. For my remote shutter, this was the confusing text “AB Shutter3”
Delete the shutter connection from the list of paired devices, so your remote does not accidentally connect again when you want to read. Or stop here if you actually just want a phone camera shutter.
Download the latest KoboRoot.tgz file from the kobo-btpt releases.
Connect your Kobo to your PC, and copy the file KoboRoot.tgz to the directory .kobo, then unplug your Kobo.
Wait for your Kobo to reboot, and then connect it again
There will be a new .btpt folder on your Kobo, this is where we will configure our Bluetooth Camera shutter as a page turner.
Make a new file called “AB Shutter3” (Or whatever the bluetooth name of your camera shutter was) in this folder. Make sure to delete the extension if your PC added it!. Copy the contents from this section into the new file.
Disconnect your Kobo, and pair your camera shutter remote with your Kobo. It should start working as a page turner as soon as you open a book!

Contents of kobo-btpt config file for Camera shutter

The below contents work for me for the cheap camera shutter I linked above. Your mileage may vary. Especially the last 0 on each line below: This indicates the page turn command is interpretted when the camera shutter button is released. You may need to change this to a 1 for your device to get it working for you.

prevPage EV_KEY KEY_VOLUMEUP 0
nextPage EV_KEY KEY_VOLUMEDOWN 0

On the Hunt

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 21:09:53 -0700

We like to go thrift shopping on the weekends with our kids. It gives us something to do: the kids can play with the gently used toys without us worrying about them breaking something, and then my wife and I can take a chance to look around for treasures at the store.

Sometimes in the heat of the moment it’s hard to remember what we are on the lookout for, so below I have a “most wanted” list to watch out for.

Grolsch bottles - These reusable glass bottles can be sealed, and I can reuse them for homebrew cider
IEC C7 “figure 8” cable - It’s always handy to have a few extra of these. Right now I want an extra one for our Apple TV to use when traveling
Sled - Right now we have one sled for two kids: this will definitely become unsustainable next winter
Extra large digital alarm clock - I have horrible eyesight, which means that when I am in bed at night without my glasses, I can’t really check the time easily. So I am always on the lookout for a giant clock to put at my bedside
Food Mill - We make a lot of jams and jellies in the summer with fresh berries, and a food mill would help with macerating the fruit. Last year I found a very nice Norpro model, but I gave it to my mom. Now I just need to find another one…
Electric Kettle - Years ago I had an electric kettle at work that I would use to make pourovers in the late afternoon. Basically, a smoke break without the tar. I would love to be able to do this again, but I don’t need a new kettle, so might as well look at the thrift store.

Favorite Books

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 16:28:35 -0700

Below is a list of books that have really resonated with me. Over time, I hope to add a review on the site for each of these.

A Canticle for Leibowitz

by Walter M. Miller Jr.

A story that shows how even after a nuclear apocalypse there can still be humor.

A Fine and Pleasant Misery

by Patrick F. McManus

I first read this as a kid while on a family vacation visiting relatives in the country. When I was growing up, we didn’t do many outdoor activities, such as camping or hiking, so this collection of essays showed me an alternative world in the woods that I was missing out on. I like to think that this led to me spending my time as an adult exploring instead of being cooped up indoors.

Kobo

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 07:56:57 -0700

I am currently reading with a Kobo Clara BW. I prefer this device to a Kindle, because 1. I don’t want to give Amazon any money and 2. I prefer the japanese approach to device security.

What I mean by this is that if you want to hack on your Kobo you can just drop files into the root directory, and after a reboot your patch without checking any signatures, or crap like that. See my remote for example. Contrast that with my failed hack attempts on an Alexa gen2 where there are multiple signatures and signing chains and all kind of crap to keep me from using the device the way I want to.

Dictionaries for Kobo

If you want a nicer dictionary, over the basic installed one from Rakuten, I recommend using the Wiktionary dictionary from reader.dict

Book Reviews

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 22:59:42 -0700

See the backlinks for a list of book reviews I have completed.

Wuthering Heights

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 22:59:42 -0700

As a change of pace from all the weird photos here, I thought I would write some thoughts on recent books I have read. Mostly recently, is Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë.

Most of my recent reading has been more contemporary fiction, so it was interesting to take a step back and look at what is obviously considered “Classic Literature”, at least for the English Language. I came into this book without any kind of clear expectations, other than that I had always thought of Wuthering Heights as a kind of generic “period drama”. There will be sighing, and hand holding, men not interested in women for the wrong reasons. Of course, it would be a good read, probably groundbreaking at the time, (otherwise, why would it be classic?) but it would mostly remind me of the kind of early 2000’s BBC America period dramas I would watch as a kid.

I was not expecting the kind of weird this book would turn out to be. I guess the first half of the book could be generically described as genre romance piece. Catherine Earnhardt grows up in a dilapidated farm (the titular Wuthering Heights) with her older brother Hinton. While on business in Liverpool, their father brings back a young kid, Heathcliff. Its not clear exactly what the backstory of Heathcliff is, or why the Earnshaw patriarch has decided to incorporate him into the family, but what’s important is that Heathcliff and Catherine become inseparable as kids.

As the Earnshaw brood is growing up, a new family, the Lintons move into the neighborhood. The Lintons are the right kind of people, and as Catherine is grows up she inevitably finds herself engaged and married to Edgar Linton, the scion of the neighboring family.

Now, again, if this was a BBC period drama, the next steps would be pretty clear. Catherine is made the wrong choice for the right reasons, marrying the respectable Edgar, and realizing too late that her heart belongs to the wild Heathcliff, even if he isn’t respectable. (Seriously, he doesn’t even have a last name, everyone calls him Heathcliff or Mr. Heathcliff interchangeably). Catherine dies tragically in childbirth, only realizing at the last minute her true love was Heathcliff.

But this is only the midpoint of the book. Heathcliff in the first half, who could have been the tragic antihero who pines for a woman he can’t have, embraces revenge, and vows to destroy the Linton and Earnshaw families. And given that this was written in the mid 19th Century, that means the rest of the book is all about property.

Remember when I said that the Elder Earnshaw brought in Healthcliff to live with his kids at Wuthering Heights? I was careful to say at the beginning that Heathcliff was not adopted. It is very clear that he is tolerated but not part of the family. The property and inheritance of Wuthering Heights goes to Hinton as the elder brother, while Heathcliff gets nothing. Heathcliff returns though, in the second half of the book, mysteriously weathy, and proceeds through various plots to trick the elder Hinton into mortgaging Wuthering Heights to him. And to get back at Edgar Linton, the man that stole Catherine from him, he tricks/abducts Edgar’s sister Isabella, marries her (against her will, in 19th century speak, which clearly means misogyny and sexual assault when translated to the 21st century). Isabella runs off, but not before having a child, Linton Heathcliff, which the elder Mr Heathcliff schemes to marry off to Catherine and Edgar’s daughter (the confusingly named Cathy Linton).

This means by the end of the book, Heathcliff owns both Wuthering Heights, and Thrushcross Grange, the Linton estate, and he has succeeed in going from street urchin to owning everything.

So in the end this book did not turn out to be the clichéd period drama you might have thought it would be. Wuthering Heights is a classic book that has been adapted to screen a million times, but it turns out that almost every time this has happened, the adaptations stop in the middle of the book. This only helps to reinforce the period drama trappings, because if you stop halfway through, Heathcliff gets to be a tragic figure. We don’t really see how awful he is until the second half is revealed.

And I guess this kind of reinforces why my media diet recently has mostly been books. The dark complexity and craziness of Wuthering Heights doesn’t translate well to the screen: it becomes a little one dimensional and loses the texture of the original plot.

In the end though, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone that wants a break from Netflix Bridgerton aesthetic. It’s been around for a while, but there is a reason Wuthering Heights is considered a classic.

Website Layout

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s be realistic: I don’t actually blog that much on this website. I have maybe written a grand total of like 5 posts over the last decade. So in an effort to increase the amount of content on this website I have decided to reorganize: There is a new section (you are in it right now!) called the wiki section. My idea is that instead of writing fully formed posts once a year, I can continuously update draft content with my notes from daily life, and once I have something worth putting on the feed, it will be crossposted to the main feed. Lets see if this results in any more writing for 2026!