I’m beautiful and tough like a diamond…or beef jerky in a ball gown.

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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2025

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  • I have an old rotary phone / bluetooth “headset”! Though it’s only technically portable.

    It’s a 50’s wall-mount model that the phone company would have hardwired (no RJ-11). I’ve got it hooked to a Bluetooth -> POTS adapter that will decode the pulse coding. It rings when my cell rings, you can answer/place calls from it, and you can dial 0 to engage the voice assistant. Technically speaking, I can absolutely text people from a rotary phone.

    Is it practical? No. Do I use it? Rarely. It’s mostly decorative, but if I’m going to have retro tech as decorations, I like to make it work. Next “wish list” is an old payphone.


  • not amazing as a Bluetooth device. Microphone didn’t pick up super-well

    That’s disappointing. Seemed to work well in that video, though it was quiet; I did wonder how it would fare in the real world, though.

    A Bluetooth version of the TMP communicators might have better success albeit at the cost of having to hold your arm up for the whole conversation.

    I’ve used smart watches for phone calls like that, and it was pretty annoying after not very long at all.

    I could probably easily make a Bluetooth TOS communicator, but that would be two roughly phone-sized things to carry around, so not really practical.

    OTOH: