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150 days of living and coding in a van

ruby-on-wheels.github.io

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Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#271

Post by lostboys67 »

phillc73 wrote: post #56
hycaria wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you worry about the objectively lower education for your children there ? As much as I dislike cities, I can't imagine raising children somewhere else. Education, culture and network potential (through friends) is just not the same.

No, it's not something I worry about at all. I'd be interested to know why you think the education would be objectively lower. I'm still living in a city, just a small one. Having checked Wikipedia, it tells me the population is officially 320k. There are six Universities and the city is UNESCO listed as a Cultural Heritage site. I just don't see this location disadvantaging my child. In fact, I think it's a location…

both of those are also very expensive areas to live in in the UK

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#272

Post by lostboys67 »

jarvist wrote: post #218
jbb67 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to add this. Education for possibly future children is one reason why I would move _out_ of London

I think your perception is incorrect. It is now well recognised that London has the highest quality teaching in the country: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/jan/20/top-local-... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/07/london... https://www.teachers.org.uk/expert-view/why-attainment-highe...

err no the top selective schools in the UK are in big cities the Oratory (London) and King Edward VII (Birmingham)

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#273

Post by crehn »

mmahemoff wrote: post #94

I'm curious - don't people miss big monitors when coding on a laptop? I've done a fair amount of coding on laptops while travelling and it's okay, but I feel like a big monitor is optimal for most work and wouldn't want a permanent situation with just laptop. I like to have logs, command line, and editor all visible, and ideally a browser too. The editor alone is much more useful in a big window where you can see a f…

I used to have 2 24" monitors and a 15" MacBook Pro.

Nowadays I prefer working on my 12" MacBook.

Instead of getting greedier, I learned to manage my space, reduce distractions and improve workflow.

I learned to appreciate sane defaults and keep shit simple. My Terminal.app+tmux+vim+Bash setup is plugin-free and a git clone away. I mostly use standard Unix tools and feel super comfortable on any box. My Mac is light, synced with iCloud, uses little battery and has very few dependencies. I can work from anywhere and expect little. It's very liberating.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#274

Post by robotresearcher »

bitexploder wrote: post #261
mmahemoff wrote: post #94

I'm curious - don't people miss big monitors when coding on a laptop? I've done a fair amount of coding on laptops while travelling and it's okay, but I feel like a big monitor is optimal for most work and wouldn't want a permanent situation with just laptop. I like to have logs, command line, and editor all visible, and ideally a browser too. The editor alone is much more useful in a big window where you can see a f…

I researched this. With a decent battery and solar system you can power a monitor and laptop all day long.

The most demanding hardware requirement list ever.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#275

Post by mikodin »

moretai wrote: post #202
toomanybeersies wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a whole community of us global travelers who have shunned the whole "being an adult" thing. I know several people that have been backpacking and doing the working-holiday thing for 4 or 5 years. Never staying in one city for more than around 3 months, and moving countries when their working holiday visa expires. Their families have mostly been saying the same thing. Settling down isn't for everyone.

Won't life eventually catch up to them? Or is that part of the adventure to see how long running away can last?

I'm curious as to what you even mean by that? What exactly is he running away from?

He's working full time as an engineer, and living life. Not only that but it's safe to assume his expenses are way lower than 90% of us here.

Is it because he isn't in crazy debt 'owning' a house, and 'owning' a nice car, married with a kid? What is there to catch up to him?

I would agree with you if he was just bumming about living off ramen and working random part time jobs that 13 year olds could have, but he isn't.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#276

Post by mjbrownie »

kzisme wrote: post #260
mjbrownie wrote: post #255

I drove around Australia whilst still maintaining several django projects for a web hosting company back in 2011. Started with an old 15 inch Dell and a Samsung Galaxy tab but got a 11 inch Mac Air later. Great fun! You really learn to optimise your setup around current draw and avoiding overheat :) My biggest lessons were combining mosh and tmux It'd be more of a struggle as a front end developer.

Did you blog or write about your experience at all? Are these projects you were working on before the trip - or were they a full time gig already? I'm always curious how people are able to do these sorts of things!

No public blog unfortunately...

It was a lucky mix of timing and life circumstance. Single, late twenties had just finished most heavy development work in 2010 and the sytems were running smoothely, a good bossfriend who knew I was hard to replace and I had a sister to catch up with on the other side of the country.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#277

Post by jsjohnst »

mmahemoff wrote: post #94

I'm curious - don't people miss big monitors when coding on a laptop? I've done a fair amount of coding on laptops while travelling and it's okay, but I feel like a big monitor is optimal for most work and wouldn't want a permanent situation with just laptop. I like to have logs, command line, and editor all visible, and ideally a browser too. The editor alone is much more useful in a big window where you can see a f…

I’ve been thinking about building an RV similarish to what’s described by the article for a long time. All the plans I’ve drawn up explicitly have a setup for big monitors (VESA mounts make for secure attachment).

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#278

Post by t----------- »

mmahemoff wrote: post #94

I'm curious - don't people miss big monitors when coding on a laptop? I've done a fair amount of coding on laptops while travelling and it's okay, but I feel like a big monitor is optimal for most work and wouldn't want a permanent situation with just laptop. I like to have logs, command line, and editor all visible, and ideally a browser too. The editor alone is much more useful in a big window where you can see a f…

I've been using an iPad with Duet as my secondary monitor when working from coffee shops. It's pretty awesome, very portable. The FPS is a bit low, but for a debugger window its excellent.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#280

Post by jsjohnst »

egeozcan wrote: post #224
googamooga wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm curious - don't people miss big monitors when coding on a laptop? I've done a fair amount of coding on laptops while travelling and it's okay, but I feel like a big monitor is optimal for most work and wouldn't want a permanent situation with just laptop. That is why we, coders, are different from other 99,99% of population of the Earth. I gave the original post to my wife and her first question was “How’s the…

I directly skipped to finding a solution to that "problem". I literally found myself browsing amazon for monitor stands that can be folded and easily mounted in a van. What happens if I break hard? Hmm... I came up with requirements for a monitor stand suitable for use in a van. For a moment, I remember being depressed about the zero number of perfect solutions for this "basic" use-case. Now I'm convinced that I'd ne…

You didn’t see VESA mounts in your Amazon search that allow you to screw the stand into the monitor and into a solid surface (desk or wall) with an articulating arm that allows you to adjust the monitor’s location!?
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