Phil Bell

Dev 30+Years - Building CALMFAX a calm, teletext-styled daily dashboard

[Phil Bell @philblines]

Tomorrow I'm launching CALMFAX on Reddit. If you miss Ceefax, you might
want to follow along.

https://t.co/68TI7hg2Cm 📺

[Phil Bell @philblines]

Just got this bad boy !!!

[Phil Bell @philblines]

@P3KO Love that teletext is still the cleanest way to follow a stage race. No autoplay, no comments section, just the standings. Proper way to watch it.

[Phil Bell @philblines]

@TheCarlWheatley bringing back Ceefax would fix most things. The weather map alone was better than anything we have now.

[Phil Bell @philblines]

@RTEArchives Aertel had such a distinct look, that teal/blue palette was gorgeous. The fact that teletex services ran for decades on the back of a few hundred bytes per page is still remarkable engineering.

[Phil Bell @philblines]

Day 7. One week of daily testing done.

What I found and fixed:
- Daily quiz questions weren't refreshing at midnight
- PWA was caching old versions
- News navigation was clunky (5 actions to read a story, now 2)
- Page 150 was using 30% of the grid and no colour

What's working:
- Quiz streaks
- News feed cycling
- Analytics events landing in Firebase
- The 90-second daily ritual feels natural

Launching this week. 📺

[Phil Bell @philblines]

On mobile, the teletext keypad appears automatically. Red, green, yellow,
blue — just like the Fastext buttons on a 1990s TV remote.

The whole interaction model is: type a number, press a colour. That's it.
No menus, no hamburger, no settings gear. 📺

[Phil Bell @philblines]

My old and new C64, can you tell which is which ?

[Phil Bell @philblines]

@kapilansh_twt i pay so I dont have to watch ads on my TV - hate ads

[Phil Bell @philblines]

@fgasking @davidcrookes @shopper_mag Eight pages on teletext in a current magazine — love that there's still an appetite for this stuff. The block graphics never really age.

[Phil Bell @philblines]

@Telescore302 The proper Ceefax look is harder to nail than people think, getting the colours and spacing right is a proper labour of love. Looks great.

[Phil Bell @philblines]

Day 6. CALMFAX is a PWA — install it to your home screen, and it opens like an app. No app store, no download, no update notifications.

Tap the icon. Check the weather. Read 11 headlines. Do the quiz. Close. 90 seconds. Done. 📺

[Phil Bell @philblines]

@GreatRootBear Thanks Richard! The grid really does force clarity — live game data was teletext showing off. Appreciate the kind words about the project 📺

[Phil Bell @philblines]

Built like Bamboozle — the Channel 4 teletext quiz that ran for 16 years and
5,900 episodes. Same Fastext colour buttons. Same "one wrong and you go back"
tension. But kinder — drop back 3, not to the start.

Nostalgia with better UX. 📺

[Phil Bell @philblines]

@hackaday The fact that Ceefax ran on ISA cards and a Lattice CPLD is genuinely charming. Imagine explaining to someone in 1997 that one day people would be nostalgic for this hardware.

[Phil Bell @philblines]

@Telescore302 You undersell yourself — that's exactly the kind of person they should hire. The block graphics alone would be worth the consultation fee.

[Phil Bell @philblines]

Day 5. The daily quiz is the part of CALMFAX I'm most proud of.

12 questions every day. Same set for everyone. Get one wrong, you drop back
3. Your first-try score is what counts — from "Off Air" to "Signal Master".

Streak: 5 days. The teletext quiz is back. 📺

[Phil Bell @philblines]

@SahilBloom 4.5 hours back per day is staggering. The hardest part isn't the first week — it's month two when the novelty of "being productive" wears off and the old habits try to creep back. Did you find a stable equilibrium or is it still active maintenance?

[Phil Bell @philblines]

@ssamat This is a genuinely good idea. The problem with willpower-based approaches is they fail precisely when you're most tempted. A small bit of friction at the moment of impulse — that's the right place to intervene.